In his later life, Du Bois joined the Communist Party and eventually left America to avoid harassment by the government. Read about his ideas on race relations in the 1960s and point out places in this 1907 poem that anticipate these later views.

Find a contemporary song that you think carries the same message as this poem and point out the similarities and the differences.

The poem makes much of the black man's ability to do physical labor, hailing "great, gritty, grimy hands." Given that this is an age of information, do you think that the capacity for manual work is still considered a positive trait? Why or why not?

Research scientific theories about the original human beings, homo erectus, who first appeared on the African continent nearly 1.7 million years ago.

Du Bois, a brilliant scholar, was the first black man to graduate...