W. E. B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk

Acknowledgments

ix acknowledgments In 1995, I read The Souls of Black Folk from cover to cover for the first time in about twenty years. The farther I got into the book the stranger it seemed, and the more exhilarating it became even though I had read it before. Moreover, I had been reading about the book ever since I first read it. Yet it no longer seemed like the book I had previously read, nor did it seem to be quite the same book I had been reading about all those years since. Ultimately, I did what any curious person would have done—I began rereading all the things I had read about the book, and then some. This process was made infinitely easier because of the superb research skills of two (then) graduate students, Tiwanna Simpson and Stephen G. Hall, who spent a couple or more weeks conducting literature searches for me—in the library and without the assistance of Google(!). Their accomplishment gave me more than a good start on what ultimately became this book and was worth far more than the hourly rate they were paid. Even my deeply felt gratitude is not enough. The more I read and reread, the more I talked about Du Bois’ masterwork . I might never have written a word about it had it not been for Julius Scott. For the next two or three years, almost every time we talked I ended up rambling on and on about The Souls of Black Folk. At some point Julius suggested that I write something. I was in the middle of another project, with five or six years’ worth of research already behind it, but one day I took Julius’s advice, and after two or three (or four or five) hours one weekend, I had written two paragraphs that became the opening of the one essay I intended to write about Souls. Thank you, Julius! Several years later, while a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, I completed a reasonable draft of that essay. I am grateful to Tom Holt, Julie Saville, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Elsa Barkley Brown, and Joe Reidy, who read and commented on it. Thanks also to Doug McAdam, who then directed the center, and Waldo Martin, Fred Cooper , and Sterling Stuckey, all fellows that year, for their comments on that draft. I met Nahum Chandler that year, and he immediately encouraged and promoted my efforts. Nahum shared his published and unpublished work and continued to support my efforts over the years that followed. Adolph Reed read that first essay in the form of an article manuscript for a journal and encouraged its publication. Later having the opportunity to x Acknowledgments talk with Reed, along with Kenneth Warren, about this work and others, and their subsequent critiques of new chapter drafts, helped me to improve my initial efforts and to extend them to what was slowly becoming a book. It might have remained “a becoming” had I not had the opportunity to meet David L. Lewis and to comment on his Distinguished Keynote Address at one of the events in the 2005–6 Buffalo State College yearlong centennial celebration of the meeting of the Niagara Conference. Although I had previously read both of Lewis’s volumes on Du Bois’ life, Lewis’s paper pushed me to read more classical philosophy. His response to my comments and his subsequent comments on what had become three drafted chapters helped me immensely. My thanks also go to Pat Sullivan and Shelia Martin for reading a draft of the essay that began as that commentary , and to Shelia, Wanda Davis, and Felix Armfield for their roles in my receiving the invitation to participate in this important celebration. Subsequent presentations at the American Historical Association meetings (2003) and the meetings of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (2009) yielded very helpful comments from Ernest Allen, Jim Grossman, Earl Lewis, and the audience members at both sessions. In particular, a question from Robert Harris at the AHA session forced me to relate my conclusions to Du Bois’ international concerns in Souls. My project was still in its early stages, and this single question was central to my rethinking everything. It led to my first efforts to tackle Hegel and, ultimately, to the one article’s becoming this book. I will always be grateful for the question. Audience members at the 1999 and 2005 meetings of...