“If we neglect to mark this history, it may be distorted or forgotten”: Socialism and Democracy in W.E.B. Du Bois’s Life, Thought, and Legacy

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Notes

1. W.E.B. Du Bois, “Negro History Centenaries,” National Guardian, January 14, 1957, in W.E.B. Du Bois, Newspaper Columns by W.E.B. Du Bois, Volume 2: 1945-1961, ed. Herbert Aptheker (New York: Kraus-Thomson, 1986), 982.

2. The conference website, http://cauduboislegacy.net/Home_Page.html, hosts photos and videos of selected conference sessions, including Baraka’s concluding keynote. On Phylon’s rebirth, see Stephanie Y. Evans, “Sankofa: The Deed of Memory,” Phylon 51/1 (Fall 2014): vii.

3. Loretta Yarlow, “Reflections on Du Bois in Our Time,” in Ten Contemporary Artists Explore the Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois in Our Time, ed. Radcliffe Bailey, et. al. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 9.

4. Keith Feldman, “A Haunting Echo: W.E.B. Du Bois in a Time of Permanent War,” Al Jazeera, February 10, 2013, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/20132772031503974.html; Werner Lange, “On the Passing of W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Torch, 50 Years Ago,” Cleveland.com, August 25, 2013, http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/08/on_the_passing_of_web_dubois_a.html. For another 2013 commemorative reflection see Phillip Luke Sinitiere, “A Legacy of Scholarship and Struggle: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Political Affairs of His Twilight Years,” Political Affairs, August 26, 2013, http://politicalaffairs.net/a-legacy-of-scholarship-and-struggle-w-e-b-du-bois-and-the-political-affairs-of-his-twilight-years-2/ (link active as of 2013, until Political Affairs terminated its online publication).

5. Timely essays in 2017 anticipated the importance of marking Du Bois’s 150^th birthday. See, for example, Andrew Lanham, “When W.E.B. Du Bois Was Un-American,” Boston Review, January 13, 2017, http://bostonreview.net/race-politics/andrew-lanham-when-w-e-b-du-bois-was-un-american; Gary Wilder, “If You Want to Build an Alternative to Trumpism, You Need to Read Black Freedom Fighter W.E.B. Du Bois,” Open Democracy, May 6, 2017, https://www.opendemocracy.net/gary-wilder/if-you-want-to-build-alternative-to-trumpism-you-need-to-read-black-freedom-fighter-web-.

6. “Ghana’s W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Center and the Pan-African Spirit,” China Global Television Network, May 25, 2016, https://duboiscentreghana.org/sermon/ghanas-web-du-bois-center-and-the-pan-african-spirit/. Although released in 2016, the Memorial Center re-published the documentary on its website in February 2018.

7. Marcus Anthony Hunter, “A New Black Holiday, or Why W.E.B. Du Bois’s 150^th Birthday Matters,” Contexts, February 23, 2018, https://contexts.org/blog/a-new-black-holiday-dubois/.

8. For the conference program and videos of conference proceedings from “A Symposium Examining Race and Economic Inequality on the 150^th Anniversary of the Birth of W.E.B. Du Bois and the 50^th Anniversary of the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” see, http://www.cau.edu/curc/Du%20Bois%20King%20Symposium.html.

For the University of Pennsylvania meeting, see “The 2018 Souls of Du Bois Conference: 150^th Birthday Celebration,” Almanac, February 20, 2018, https://almanac.upenn.edu/articles/2018-souls-of-du-bois-conference-150th-birthday-celebration. For the Morgan State conference, see https://www.morgan.edu/college_of_liberal_arts/departments/english/programs_and_organizations/du_bois_symposium.html. For proceedings of the “Scholarship Above the Veil” conference at Harvard, see https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/dubois150/program.

9. See the “W.E.B. Du Bois @ 150” essays at Black Perspectives, https://www.aaihs.org/tag/DuBoisForum/ and the “Amplifying Du Bois at 150” forum at Sounding Out!, https://soundstudiesblog.com/category/amplifying-du-bois-forum/.

10. On the “Du Bois 150^th Festival,” see the event’s website with archived recordings and bibliographic resources, https://dubois150th.com/ as well as Kristin Palpini, “‘Let’s celebrate Du Bois’s: Community gathers for 150^th birthday celebration,” The Berkshire Eagle, February 25, 2018, https://www.berkshireeagle.com/stories/lets-celebrate-du-bois-community-gathers-for-150th-birthday-celebration,533083. For the murals and history of Du Bois activism in Great Barrington, see Whitney Battle-Baptiste, “Bringing W.E.B. Du Bois Home Again,” Black Perspectives, February 23, 2018, https://www.aaihs.org/bringing-w-e-b-du-bois-home-again/. On the Du Bois statue, see Terry Cowgill, “Veterans protest statue to memorialize ‘communist’ Du Bois,” The Berkshire Edge, June 15, 2018, https://theberkshireedge.com/war-veterans-protest-statue-to-memorialize-communist-du-bois/. For more on the Du Bois Legacy Committee, see Heather Bellow, “Historic moment as Du Bois Legacy Committee kicks off in Great Barrington,” The Berkshire Eagle, October 16, 2018, https://www.berkshireeagle.com/stories/historic-moment-as-du-bois-legacy-committee-kicks-off-in-great-barrington,553325.

11. For the full scope of Philadelphia’s “The Year of Du Bois,” see the project’s website, https://www.yearofdubois.org/. Tony Monteiro spoke extensively about “The Year of W.E.B. Du Bois” on the Beyond Prisons podcast, https://shadowproof.com/2018/02/23/beyond-prisons-episode-21-year-du-bois-feat-dr-tony-monteiro/.

12. For one historical assessment of the history of Du Bois studies scholarship, see Phillip Luke Sinitiere, “‘A Legacy of Scholarship and Struggle’: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Life After Death,” in Phillip Luke Sinitiere, ed., Citizen of the World: The Late Career and Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019). For the latest Du Bois biography, see Gerald Horne and Charisse Burden-Stelly, W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2019).

13. Aldon Morris, The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015); Earl Wright III, The First American School of Sociology: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory (London: Ashgate, 2016); Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert, eds., W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2018). Recent representative articles that advance scholarship on Du Bois, social science, education, and literature include Shirley Moody-Turner, ““Dear Doctor Du Bois”: Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Gender Politics of Black Publishing,” MELUS 40/3 (Fall 2015): 47-68; Lawrence J. Oliver, “Apocalyptic and Slow Violence: The Environmental Vision of W.E.B. Du Bois’s Darkwater,” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 22/3 (Summer 2015): 466-484; Dan S. Green and Robert A. Wortham, “Sociology Hesitant: The Continuing Neglect of W.E.B. Du Bois,” Sociological Spectrum 35/6 (Nov/Dec 2015): 518-533; Marcus Anthony Hunter, “W.E.B. Du Bois and Black Heterogeneity: How The Philadelphia Negro Shaped American Sociology,” American Sociologist 46 (2015): 219-233; José Itzigsohn and Karida Brown, “Sociology and the Theory of Double Consciousness: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Phenomenology of Racialized Subjectivity,” Du Bois Review 12/2 (Fall 2015): 231-248; Les Black and Maggie Tate, “For a Sociological Reconstruction: W.E.B. Du Bois, Stuart Hall and Segregated Sociology,” Sociological Research Online 20/3 (2015); Michael J. Beilfuss, “Iconic Pastorals and Beautiful Swamps: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Troubled Landscapes of the American South,” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 22/3 (Summer 2015): 486-506; Kerry Burch, “Platonic & Freierean Interpretations of W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Of the Coming of John,”” Educational Studies 52/1 (2016): 38-50; Tommy J. Curry, “It’s for the Kids: The Sociological Significance of W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Brownies’ Books and Their Philosophical Relevance for our Understanding of Gender in the Ethnological Age,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 36/1 (2015): 27–57; Andrew J. Douglas, “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Critique of the Competitive Society,” Du Bois Review 12/1 (January 2015): 25-40; Derrick P. Alridge, “On the Education of Black Folk: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Paradox of Segregation,” Journal of African American History 100/3 (Summer 2015): 473-493.

14. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, With an Introduction by Shawn Leigh Alexander (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2018); W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Introduction by Ibram X. Kendi (New York: Penguin, 2018).

15. Nahum Dimitri Chandler, X—The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Thought (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014); W.E.B. Du Bois, The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early Essays, ed. Nahum Dimitri Chandler (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015); Stephanie J. Shaw, W.E.B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

16. On the unpublished Du Bois materials in The New Centennial Review and elsewhere, see Nahum Dimitri Chandler, “The Meaning of Japan,” CR: The New Centennial Review 12/1 (2012): 233-56; Nahum Dimitri Chandler, “Chapter 16—Jones in Japan,” CR: The New Centennial Review 12/1 (2012): 257-74; Nahum Dimitri Chandler, “Chapter 17—Jones looks back on China,” CR: The New Centennial Review 12/1 (2012): 275-90; Nahum Dimitri Chandler, “A Persistent Parallax: On the Writings of W. E. Burghardt Du Bois on Japan and China, 1936-1937,” CR: The New Centennial Review 12/1 (2012): 291–316. See also Nahum D. Chandler, “Of Horizon: An Introduction to “The Afro-American” by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois—Circa 1894” and W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, “The Afro-American” both of which appeared in The Journal of Transnational American Studies 2/1 (2010). Other unpublished Du Bois articles include W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, “A. D. 2150/W.E.B. Du Bois Looks at the Future from Beyond the Grave,” Edited by Nagueyalti Warren, African American Review 49/1 (Spring 2016): 53-57, W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Princess Steel,” Edited by Adrienne Brown and Britt Rusert, PMLA 130/3 (2015): 819-829, and Phillip Luke Sinitiere, ““Outline of Report on Economic Condition of the Negroes in the State of Texas”: W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1935 Speech at Prairie View State College,” Phylon 54/1 (Summer 2017): 3-24.

17. See Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000 [1983]); Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944-1963 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986); and Manning Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Boulder: Paradigm, 2005 [1986]), and the monographs that extended their analysis of the late-career Du Bois: Amy Bass, Those About Him Remained Silent: The Battle over W.E.B. Du Bois (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Eric Porter, The Problem of the Future World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Race Concept at Midcentury (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); Nahum Dimitri Chandler, Toward an African Future—Of the Limit of the World (London: Living Commons Collective, 2013); and Bill Mullen, Un-American: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Century of World Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015). A selection of articles on Du Bois’s late career includes, Yunxiang Gao, “W.E.B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois in Maoist China,” Du Bois Review 10/1 (2013): 59-85; Seok-Won Lee, “The Paradox of Racial Liberation: W.E.B. Du Bois and Pan-Asianism in Wartime Japan, 1931-1945,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 16/4 (2015): 513-530; Seneca Vaught, “Du Bois as Diplomat: Race Diplomacy in Foreign Affairs, 1926-1945,” Journal of Race and Global Social Change 1/1 (Summer 2014): 4-29; Michael Joseph Viola, “W.E.B. Du Bois and Filipino/a American Exposure Programs to the Philippines: Race Class Analysis in an Epoch of ‘Global Apartheid,’” Race Ethnicity and Education 19/3 (2016): 500-523. On Du Bois’s final literary efforts in The Black Flame trilogy, see Lily Wiatrowski Phillips, The Black Flame Revisited: Recursion and Return in the Reading of W.E.B. Du Bois’s Trilogy,” CR: The New Centennial Review 15/2 (Fall 2015): 157-169. The fall 2015 issue in which Phillips’s article appears, under the editorship of Nahum Dimitri Chandler, is singularly devoted to Du Bois. Also, see the essays in the following anthologies: Nick Bromell, ed., A Political Companion to W.E.B. Du Bois (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2018); Monique Leslie Akassi, ed., W.E.B. Du Bois and the Africana Rhetoric of Dealienation (United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2018); and Sinitiere, ed., Citizen of the World.