W. E. B. Du Bois: An American Intellectual and Activist by Shawn Leigh Alexander (review)

It is unlikely that David Levering Lewis' monumental two-volume biography of American black sociologist, author and activist W. E. B. Du Bois (W. E. B Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1865-1919 [1993]; W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 [2000]) will ever be superceded. However, Shawn Alexander (African/African-American Studies, University of Kansas) has produced a marvelous concise version of Du Bois' life, one that will provide an excellent refresher course for those already familiar with the subject, as well as a fine short introduction to Du Bois for those who need one.

Alexander has scoured Du Bois' multiple and multifarious writings over his 70-year career, read all of the existing literature on Du Bois and has written a well-organized, clearly-written and short yet thorough overview of his subject, accompanied by a thorough 12-page bibliographical essay. Hopefully Alexander's work, along with Lewis' massive (1400+ page) study will help to rescue Du Bois from his Cold War status as the American equivalence of an "un-person," which he was consigned to for his repeated criticisms of American foreign policy and especially for advocating "peace" at a time when the enthusiastic embrace by the Soviet Union of a "peace campaign" led the U.S. government to view such advocacy as "un-American." Thus, Du Bois was prosecuted and had his passport revoked on the highly-strained claim that his Peace Information Center was an agent of the Soviet Union and that he had failed to register as a foreign agent, but the government's case was so weak that it was dismissed by the judge at trial.

Embittered by this experience and the un-ending discrimination faced by American blacks, Du Bois eventually joined the American Communist Party (ACP) and left the United States for Ghana, where he died in 1963 and was honored with a state funeral, attended by representatives of every embassy and consultate in the Ghanian capital of Accra, with the exception of the U.S. When the ACP organized the W. E. B. DuBois Club as its youth group in the mid-60s, "liberal" Johnson administration Attorney General Nicholas invoked the cold war Internal Security Act of 1950 to attempt to force the group to register with the government as a "subversive" organization and former Vice President Richard Nixon alleged that the communists had sought to confuse American youth into joining by misleading them into thinking the group was a "boys club."

As for the bulk of his book, Alexander traces Du Bois' career from his early work as a Harvard researcher and his Ph.D. studies at Fisk University, then his emergence as a leading young sociologist and expert on American blacks, especially marked by his landmark books, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Black Reconstruction (1935), which pioneered an interpretation of reconstruction which American historians largely embraced only 50 years later. Along the way, DuBois was a founder of the NAACP and editor of its influential newspaper, The Crisis, for 25 years (1910-35), a post which, along with his numerous other writings and hundreds of lectures, made him the leading American black spokesman following the death of Booker T. Washington in 1915.

This is a fine study, which deserves a broad audience and would be an excellent choice for college textbook adoption.