The Souls of Black FolkBetween 1897 and 1903, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, a 35 year-old African American sociology professor at Atlanta University, blended together a classicalcollection of thirteen essays and one story containing historical events, sociological data, poetry, and songs. The book itself acknowledges Dubois's distinctiveconception of black racial identity as he paints a catastrophic portrait of the African American struggle for social recognition or equality and culturalintegrity.Web Du Bois proposed his view of how and why color causes such problematic divisions among African American people of the twentieth century. His affirmations werefortuitous, and his collections continue to provide insight into the ways that African-American culture reflected into the larger American culture. Du Bois begins hiswork by stating his objective in certain terms; his goal is to portray what it is like to be African American and the lack of getting a good education because race wasthe central problem of the twentieth century. He concluded that race remained to be a major issue on the century to come.Web Du Bois was born in the small New England village of Great Barrington, Massachusetts on February 23, 1868 to Alfred Du Bois and Mary Silvina Du Bois. Unlike mostAfrican Americans, Du Bois had more privilege to attend his goals because his family roots had not just emerged from slavery but his great-grandfather had fought inthe American Revolution, and the Burghardts had been an accepted part of the white community for generations. Du Bois was aware of an earlier tradition that set himapart from his New England community, a distant past shrouded in mystery, in sharp contrast to the detailed chronicle of Western Civilization that he learned atschool. Du Bois’ father left home soon after Du Bois was born. The youngster was raised largely by his mother, who imparted to her child the sense of a specialdestiny. She encouraged his studies and his adherence to the Victorian virtues and pieties characteristic of rural New England in the 19th century.Du Bois had always wanted to go to Harvard University and was initially disappointed when he learned that it had been arranged to attend Fisk University in Nashville.Despite the rejections, Du Bois was eager to learn without any accommodations and the experience changed his life completely. As an illustration, it helped to clarifyhis true identity and be aware of the things that set him apart from the opposite race. He also gave him a great sense of direction of what he wanted to be. He was anAmerican sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Du Bois attended Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn adoctorate degree. He was a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University.Dubois had been notably flattered for his extraordinary works. In the journal Crisis Du Bois was mainly focus and campaigned on lynching, Jim Crow laws, sexualinequality or women suffrage. He argued that: "Let, us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks." Du Bois wrote a number of books oncivil rights issues including The Philadelphia Negro (1899), The Souls of Black Folks (1903), John Brown (1909), The Negro (1915), The Gift of Black Folk (1924), BlackReconstruction in America (1935), Dusk of Dawn (1940) and Colour and Democracy (1945). A former member of the Socialist Party, Du Bois began to develop a Marxistinterpretation of race relations in the 1930s.The introduction by David Blight and Robert Gooding-Williams could also stand alone as an excellent piece of writing. They provide the reader with a series of contextsin which to understand Dubois's Souls of Black Folk, always emphasizing its literary value, but also acknowledging its historical and sociological importance. Theypoint out ideas such as 'double-consciousness' and 'spiritual striving', and the way in which Dubois brilliantly describes the African American efforts to cope with asociety submerged in racial prejudices. Dubois brilliantly envisages the ideas of the 'double-consciousness' and 'twoness' when he states, 'a conflict between twoopposed selves: the one seeing and the other seen; the one contemptuous and the other remote; the one American and the other Negro.' These ideas of national identityare submerged throughout The Souls of Black Folk, and make extremely compelling visions of the position of the African-American in society.Souls of Black Folk are a complex, tragic, and deeply moving vision of the fate of black folk in America. It is very hard to actually accept this book in any kind ofgenre simply because it moves from a literary, to a social, and then an historical perspective with a poetic beauty that is rarely found outside literature. Du Bois'thesis is that African Americans live in "a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.It is a peculiar sensation, this dual consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of the other, of measuring one's soul by the tape of aworld that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One of the most attentive thought Du Bois stated in the book in chapter nine: “whatever we may say of the results ofsuch contact in the past, it certainly forms a chapter in human action not pleasant to look back upon, war, murder, slavery etc…”One ever feels this twoness, an American and a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, and two warring ideals in one dark body, whose doggedstrength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. God created us equal no matter what color, race, height and those blasphemous words that human puts in our head shouldbe abolished. Nonetheless, Du Bois's original concept in The Souls of Black Folk is still important today. Du Bois, the son of a Civil War veteran, was one of thefounders of the NAACP along with the children and grandchildren of the abolitionists. He died on the very day Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speechin Washington D.C. The cause of African American liberation shaped his entire life. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn about African Americanlife and struggles and will influence or benefits those who want to make a difference in the world.