A preacher enters the cell of a young man condemned by all before the trial has even begun, and begins powerfully exhorting the young man to give himself to the Lord Jesus and be redeemed. And yet this young man, standing at the very edge of...

In 1903 the controversial black rights leader W.E.B. DuBois wrote one of the most influential African-American books to date. In The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois proclaims that the "problem of the twentieth Century is the problem of the...

W. E. B. Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk, seems to be speaking for a raceless society where the quality of one's character was the sole basis for being judged. Yet this is not what Du Bois saw in his day and it is not what we see today. The...

In some sense, the stage for the debate over how best to address racial inequality was set by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois. In the aftermath of the civil war, these two leading Black figures put forth their contrasting ideas. Towards the...

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois illustrates the very poignant image of a color line that separates the two races in his society. He introduces the term double consciousness to explain how African-Americans view themselves, not as...

Within any society, there are borders that separate all of the citizens of the populace into different classifications. Among those borders are race, class, and gender. Crossing any of these borders stands as a great accomplishment for the person...

The power of education and the power of the literary form within slave narratives has been a consistent and resounding theme. From Frederick Douglass’ Narratives In The Life Of A Slave to Harriet Beecher Stowe saying in 1879 that “[Freedmen]...

In W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk, he introduces two concepts which are key to understanding what life is like for the modern Black American. These concepts are: Double Consciousness, and the Veil. These two concepts are intrinsically...

W.E.B. DuBois and Zora Neal Hurston, undoubtedly, had two distinct ways of writing, one through an analytical form of storytelling with interwoven fragments of moralistic and ethical themes and one through short fiction that exemplified the...

The latter years of the 19th century brought with them a time of vast change in race relations in the United States. The end of the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction that followed brought a slew of rights to the newly freed Southern...

In taking on the colossal notion of American culture, it would be ideal to begin with its inhabitants. The questions of what defines us and what we give value to are inherent challenges in themselves because the country is split by several...

As a type of power that is vital to the function of institutions, discipline works to control the thoughts and actions of individuals to fulfill a specific agenda, such as preserving public safety or maximizing profits. Although numerous...

Comparative Analysis on Memmi, Du Bois, and Fanon The process of colonization creates a lasting scar on future society. Colonization creates a destructive and selfish mechanism by which a nation state dominates another to take advantage of its...

Early 20th century Eugenicist Madison Grant, according to Robert Sussman’s The Myth of Race, believed that the union of black and white would “be the end of civilization” (183). However, W.E.B Du Bois’ short story, “The Comet”, sees the same union...