W.E.B. Du Bois
The full title of this book is The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. The term “double consciousness” was coined by groundbreaking African-American writer and social critic W.E.B. Du Bois to describe the experience of internal conflict within an oppressed minority of manifested by having to see the world through the perspective of the governing culture. Or, as Du Bois himself described it, “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.”
Richard Wright
Richard Wright is the author of the legendary novel of the black experience in mid-century America titled Native Son. The awarding of a Guggenheim Fellowship just one year before that novel exploded onto the scene combined to make him instantly the most successful and famous black writer in America. It is the consequence of his self-exile to Europe in the wake of this recognition and the debate over the quality of the work he produced there versus his earlier revolutionary texts that is the focus here.
George Wilhelm Hegel
The author points out that Hegel was the favorite philosopher Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It may also be one of the lesser known aspects of African-American aesthetics that Hegelian philosophy runs throughout the history of intellectual debate relative to the condition described as the “double consciousness.” His seemingly unlikely placement within a volume devoted to the black experience is primarily grounded in the universal agreement that he is one of the essential figures in the philosophical foundation of modernity.
Martin Robison Delany
Delany is described early in the book as “an early architect of black nationalism.” Born free during the era of slavery, he was one of the first black men to gain acceptance into Harvard Medical School only to be run out the school thanks to protests by white students. He fought as a Union officer in the Civil War, run for Lt. Governor of South Carolina after the war and is considered one of the most overlooked and little-known major figures of accomplishment in the history of African-Americans.
