Customer Reviews

The Negro

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

W.E.B Dubois is most famous for being one of the founders of the N.A.A.C.P and for his critique of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise speech in his now famous The Souls of Black Folk which is required reading at most Black Studies Departments at universities throughout the United States in fact a typical United States History program may have you read it as well;however, DuBois book the Negro for which this review is about seems to be less popular and I find that many people have not read it and the historians who mention it rarely talk about it in detail, essentially the book gives a history of African people in Africa,America,and the Caribbean and talks about their accomplishments and struggles from ancient(5000B.C) to modern times(1915). After reading this book I now know why many programs rarely use this book I can't help but believe it is because the book is very Afrocentric in its structure.....I was shocked to find out that when it came to the history of ancient Africa Dubois has more in common with the afrocentrist Molefi Asante than many may realize and less in common with the more popular scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.(regardless of whether he is a part of the W.E.B Dubois Department at Harvard) I saw Henry Louis Gates PBS documentary Wonders of the African World maybe about five years ago and I remember how skeptical he was about connecting Ancient Egypt to the rest of sub-saharan Africa......DuBois is not shy at all when he states that Egypt is indeed a part of Africa and that the people who founded Egypt were Negro(this was the word used at the time the book was written)Dubois was more radical than people realize he was one of the founders of Pan-African Congress I believe there were five in all, he would eventually leave the N.A.A.C.P abandon the idea of integration, become a socialist(The F.B.I had a file on him), move back to Africa and die in Ghana.....in fact Dubois would have more in common with his enemy Marcus Garvey(Dubois in his early career would criticize Garvey for his back to Africa movement)than he would realize. Its a great read for anyone interested in this African-American intellectual giant it may change your perspective on the man you think you know, but it should make you find him even more interesting. I will warn you that the book is dated it was written in 1915 so some of his theories are proven wrong, one example would be that Dubois at the time thought that man originated in the Middle East, thanks to the archaeological and DNA record we now know that man originated in Africa, but enjoy this book and may it increase our understanding of this great man

This is what it says it is: a public domain text with hypertext navigation that allows the user to easily move from the contents page to the individual chapters and sections. Most public domain texts are just Project Gutenberg texts rendered into the Kindle format. This text was carefully constructed to make navigation easy.

This book took me on a deep journey. Granted it may take most more than giving it a once over, but if you spend the time and effort to really get to know the book, and research exactly what the author is saying it is well worth the time that you took to understand it. A great read, and will challenge even the most agile mind.

I am pleased that this book is available in a print that I can easily read.

I had to read this book for my African Diasopra class and I had to read most of the lines twice because I didn't understand it. I have read the whole thing at least once and still have little to say of the contents. The afterword, however, was most helpful. It must have some really powerful words in it, but the sentence structure threw me off too much to understand.