Born in 1868 in the small Massachusetts town of Great Barrington, William Edward Burghardt (known as W. E. B.) Du Bois was physically far removed from the South, where slavery had only recently been abolished. Nevertheless, Du Bois, a superior student and the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, would make it his life's mission to promote true equality for African Americans. The Souls of Black Folk is a collection of fourteen of Du Bois's essays that discuss what emancipation meant to blacks, how contemporary black leadership was going astray, and how difficult it was for blacks to escape slavery's turbulent legacy and obtain equality in white society.
Slavery's legacy. Though black slaves in the South had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and their liberty was confirmed by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, their new status brought few of the benefits most had expected it would. During Reconstruction (1865-77), when the United States Army occupied the South, blacks did make numerous gains. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed them their rights as American citizens and the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited discrimination in voting.
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