Gift of Black Folk

In 1924, William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois (1868-1963) penned The Gift of Black Folk in response to systemic racism in the United States, showing that “…the American spirit is a new and interesting result of diverse threads of thought and feeling coming not only from America but from Europe and Asia and indeed from Africa.”

Du Bois was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, and later became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University. In 1909 he co-founded the NAACP. Du Bois was a lifelong leader and proponent of civil rights.