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W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963

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By his own admission, David Levering Lewis' first installment on the life of W.E.B. DuBois was "ambitiously subtitled". His "Biography of a Race", which followed DuBois from birth to age 50, lived up to its appointment, garnering among others, the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1994. And while his latest work is less loftily titled, it is no less worthy of the acclaim accorded the first.

DuBois, intellectual giant, master propoagandist, patron of the storied Harlem Renaissance and Co-Founder of the NAACP, was indisputably one of the most influential African Americans of the frst half of the 20th century. Lewis opens the book (which continues chronicling DuBois's life from 1919 through to his death at 95, in 1963)detailing DuBois' ascent to power as the pre-eminent "Race Leader". Almost from the moment Dubois received such recognition, he found himself under siege; if not from the disciples of his sometime bitter rival, Booker T. Washington (who died in 1915), then from at the hands of his colleagues in the leadership of the NAACP, or the upwardly mobile young adults whom he doubtless had in mind when he coined the phrase, "Talented Tenth". Lewis's narrative fairly crackles with tension, setting the tone for the rest of the book.

Lewis also shows the reader the sometimes contradictory aspects found in the life of this most complicated man: often deeply suspicious, yet generous enough with his research to have indiscriminately shared sensitive information with foreign agents from nations friendly and not; a fierce Pan-Aficanist with a distinct love for things continental; an ardent feminist who subjugated his wife, and served as mentor and paramour with a host of his protegees. Again Lewis's deft pen, along with a sensitivity to the paradoxes portrays DuBois as a hero with a tragic flaw.

Disillusioned by betrayal from the "Talented Tenth" - whom he repudiates in a "Memorial Address", having his relevance and authority all but dismissed, and dealing with the loss of friends and his wife, a deeply embittered DuBois chooses to live out the rest of his days in West Africa. His death on the morning of the historic 1963 March on Washington, is epic in its poetic poignancy, and again, Lewis's hand lends beautiful brush strokes to the canvas of this most impressive man.

This book is assiduously researched, (700 pages, including more than 100 pages of notes), yet one never feels a sense of overwhelm. It is powerfully beautiful and a must read for any who seek to learn of the birth of the 20th century American Civil Rights struggle.

With his astounding "W.E.B. DuBois, Fight for Equality and the American Century" David Levering Lewis has exceeded his monumental first part of the biography. Buy this book before it wins for Lewis a second Pulitzer!

With volume two Lewis completes his magisterial work chronicling the life and times of the controversial W. E. B. Du Bois, and this second volume is every bit as fascinating and scholarly as the first one which won the Pulitzer Prize. This volume follows Du Bois' descent from a founder and spokesman for the NAACP to his self-imposed exile in Ghana in 1963. Throughout the journey Lewis thoroughly develops the changing viewpoints Du Bois put forth as solutions to the problems of racial discrimination and the powerlessness of people of color in this country and around the world. From an integrationist (who at the same time criticized the assimilationist attitude of Frederick Douglas), Du Bois moved into the Pan-Africa movement (although he disliked and opposed Marcus Garvey and his movement), and eventually supported Black separatism before settling on socialism and Marxism in the later years of his life. His "petty bourgeois" ideas concerning Black economic separatism were, of course, vehemently criticized by his Marxist friends. Many believed "Du Bois was a romantic, a racialist, and an old man given to dreams of a 'shopkeepers paradise' as a solution to the depression."

Although Lewis soft-pedals Du Bois' deep character flaws which caused him to be constantly at odds with others who were "on his side" in the fight for racial equality, and permitted him to excuse the murder and outrages of Stalinism and the Japanese military aggression and ethnic cleansing in Asia, the author clearly reveals these facts of Du Bois' life. Lewis reveals how Du Bois' mind became so poisoned with a visceral hatred of White power, and its adjunct Western capitalism, that he eventually reached the point where he could look the other way or excuse the outrages committed by peoples or regimes opposed to Western interests (which he never seemed to quite grasp were really his own interests and those of the Negro in America). In the end Du Bois seemed opposed to almost any policy his country adopted and he supported any force in the world (be it Pan-Africanism, Bolshevism, Japanese militarism, or Chinese communism) that opposed the interests of the "White governments." Thus, did a brilliant social critic end up a confused mind destined to play the role of a pawn for regimes opposed to Western interests.

Lewis is very good at highlighting Du Bois' conflict with Marcus Garvey of whom he draws a great character sketch. He points out that Garvey's early followers were often poor, less educated, and often of West Indian origins, while the more "elitist" Du Bois circulated among, and pretended to speak for, the Talented Tenth of the African American people. Du Bois was an elitist and intellectual who could not stomach the irrational pronouncements of Marcus Garvey. Du Bois' viewpoint was that of the Black urban, educated, professional.

Lewis is also very strong with detail concerning Du Bois' widening differences with the NAACP leadership and the association's approach to fighting for equality. Du Bois was not a great fan of Walter White, Roy Wilkins, and Thurgood Marshall who, with their legalistic approach, stressed working within the "White system." As in volume one, Lewis does a good job of discussing Du Bois' many writings and shows how Du Bois himself (as witnessed by his "The Gift of Black Folks") never outgrew his own racial stereotyping. Lewis also soft-pedals Du Bois' many affairs with intellectual women, but he does document these relationships. He shows how Du Bois, a believer in the rights of women, virtually abandoned his wife Nina over a period of many years in almost every sense but financial (many of his friends and intellectual acquanitances never met his wife) and how he was less than a father to his unfortunate daughter Yolande (who was one of the great disappointments of his life.)

Lewis' book is possibly most fascinating when he deals with the Harlem Renaissance and the various figures with whom Du Bois was familiar. He details Du Bois' eventual alienation from the creative people of this era who depicted the seediness of Black urban life and culture. This too realistic depiction of Black life by the Renaissance literary figures embarrassed and angered Du Bois who wanted to believe that the "Negro race" was destined for a special place in history and, as a race, manifest certain elements of racial superiority. Du Bois criticized the Harlem Renaissance writers, poets, and artists for not sharing his belief that art and culture should serve racial politics. As Lewis shows, "Du Bois's own deep anti-modernist taboos surfaced" in his criticism of the Renaissance literati. Lewis also spends a good deal of time on the historiography of the Reconstruction Era to enable his reader to grasp the importance of Du Bois' writings on the subject and how they served as a necessary correction (despite Du Bois' own one-sidedness and exaggerated claims) to the more traditional school of historical writing on the Reconstruction Era. He also reveals the extent to which Du Bois would never give up the ridiculous notion that the freed slaves saved democracy in America. He desperatly needed to find a special role for the African American in the history of the the great country. Despite Du Bois' brilliant intellect, it was his tendency to see "White" hatred of the Negro as the central paradigm of all modern history, that prevented him from being widely accepted as a scholar. For him, all historical understanding began with this simple fact. Often his own worst enemy, Du Bois, Lewis tells us, "managed to give the impression that racial discrimination had been invented soley to make his life miserable."

In the end, Du Bois felt the American Negro had let him down and he lost his faith in the special role the Negro was to play in history. As he himself admitted, "I misinterpreted the age in which I lived." One has to think that this disillusionment played as much a role in his decision to leave the country as any other reason. All in all, Lewis' biography portrays Du Bois as not so much a heroic figure, as a tragic one; a brilliant mind warped by a troubled soul that was the reflection of much of the pain experienced by an educated African American in the first half of the twentieth century.

W.E.B. DuBois was born 2 years after slavery was abolished, and died two years before the wide ranging civil rights acts of 1965 were enacted. During this century, America was transformed from a largely rural nation whose economy depended on agricultural production (not the least of which was the cotton grown in the south by slaves) to an urban nation with the world's largest economy, built on industrial production. Throughout most of this transformation, DuBois was the loudest and clearest voice proclaiming the injustices suffered by the nation's Blacks.

DuBois voice took many forms. He was the nation's leading Black Sociologist, Political Scientist and Hstorian scholar for most of his life. He was among the giants, regardless of race, in each of these fields. This alone would have been remarkable, even had he not had to struggle against the burden of racism every step of the way. What makes DuBois' life truly amazing (an over used word, which is fully justified here) is that in addition to his academic leadership, DuBois was a newspaper columnist, speaker, and founded dozens of popular mass organizations (most famously, the NAACP). He was quite literally the mentor of virtually every leading Black scholar, lawyer, business man, politician, etc. that followed.

Surprisingly, given the transformation of the rest of society, DuBois retained his leadership role in the country as his many competitors and detractors faded--Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and Walter White, among others.

Lewis has produced a masterful biography of this complex, vastly under rated man. Lewis keeps his writing interesting, as he traces the twists and turns DuBois was forced to follow in his battle against racism. He began with a traditional middle class, elite (which DuBois dubbed "the talented tenth") analysis which urged the white power structure to recognize that elite blacks were as crucial to the nation's future as were the elite of the white population. He ended as a communist, victim of McCarthy, having given up all hope of democratic change, living in exile in Ghana, where he was finally accorded the unstinting respect he was denied during the first 90 years of his life in America.

Lewis gives DuBois final years short shrift. Lewis seems to agree with most of the contemporary civil rights leaders, who thought DuBois had simply lost his marbles in his dotage. Lewis therefore skims over the last two decades of DuBois life in a few all too brief pages.

I beg to differ. I believe that DuBois' thinking was an entirely accurate reflection of the frustrations he had encountered. As Lewis hints at, but fails to explore, DuBois tried every conceivable means of combating America's deep seated racism. He was rejected at every turn. Despite apparent victories, many would have said that the plight of Blacks at the end of DuBois' long life was not very much improved over their plight at the beginning of his life. The white controlled governments, universities, financial instutions, and political parties had not embraced the black elite, and the black masses had yet to see any benefit from the legal victories won by Thurgood Marshall and the Inc, Fund in the late 50's.

Lewis quotes DuBois aunt as chastizing DuBois for his attacks on Booker T. Washington as a quisling--DuBois may have grown up facing racism, but he did not have the whip marks of slavery on his back that Washington had suffered. Similarly, those who criticize DuBois for his emrace of communism had not suffered the frustrations of almost a century of struggle during which everything in America had changed--except its racism.

As DuBois lay dying, virtually his last words were to the President of Ghana, apologizing for not living long enough to "finish" his work.

I know of no one who was more reviled during his lifetime that better deserves the masterful biography Lewis has given us, and given to the ages.

Everyone should not only read Lewis, but should go back and re-read some of DuBois own works. DuBois could not be given a higher honor, and deserves no less.

Lewis' first volume of his biography of DuBois is spun gold, a beautifully written, thoroughly researched and keenly insightful recounting of the life of a towering figure in world history. The Pulitzer was richly deserved -- this was one of the best books I have ever read, period.

This second volume is, in itself, as invaluable as the second, and the two volumes are unlikely to be bested as the most authoritative and comprehensive sources on this life for several decades.

But it falls significantly short of the first one after the first half or so. One senses that Lewis was under pressure from the publisher to finish, and thus the last two decades of DuBois' life are presented with less narrative polish and editorial care.

Suddenly misspellings abound; an event is covered, then only for the next several pages to cover things that happened BEFORE it; instead of the consistent context-setting of the first volume, Lewis seems to largely content himself with serial descriptions of this speech, that organization, this trip. Most seriously, the coverage of DuBois as a person becomes so perfunctory that the death of his first wife, his second marriage, and the early death of his daughter are covered in a mere few sentences, and at one point his granddaughter is in love with a Czech, and then later we encounter her married to someone else and having had a child.

I am mystified that some reviewers of the first volume found the book boring, but I fear that people who don't happen to be moderately obsessed by this man might more justifiably have that judgment of this second volume after the first few hundred pages. Given how magisterially adept Lewis is, I sincerely wish that he and his editor had not, for whatever reason, had to sacrifice the second half of this book to, perhaps, trying to have it appear before the century ran out.

Because if they hadn't, these two books together would be absolutely perfect. Even if now they aren't, however, the two of them should sit on every black person in America's shelf.

David Levering Lewis never disappoints his readers. As with the first half of the Dubois autobiography, this book is well-researched and well-written. I read many biographies and some authors get too bogged down in explaining the subject's motivations, etc. -- to the point that it becomes just plain boring and hard to read. The opposite is true of Lewis. This guy weaves a story that you can not put down, while giving readers a strong understanding of Dubois and the social milieus that he lived in at various points in time. Lewis also provides detailed documentation of sources. He is a fine historian and biographer.

I am impressed with the level of detail that the author went to, in order to paint a complete picture of Du Bois. Du Bois himself lived in a remarkable time in American history (being born a few years after slavery ended and dying months before Dr. Martin Luther King's march on Washington) Lewis captures the evolution of the time and the character of the day with his detailed portrayl of Du Bois' life, and the major events that captured the nations attention during that time.

I just finished rereading DL Lewis's first DuBois biography, and am thinking about purchasing the second bio. I own a copy of the first, and did read the second bio as a library book. Reading the current reviewer comments for this book refreshed my memory somewhat about the second bio. I would agree with reader praise for the first bio; it is a splendid book, as good as historical biography can be. The second bio starts out well but ends up reading as having been rushed, which is probably what happened, Lewis rushing to meet a publishing deadline. We would all be well served if Mr. Lewis would consider reissuing the second bio when he has time to flesh it out.

Mr. Lewis' second and final volume about Mr. Du Bois' life is a thorough undertaking which began with his outstanding first book, "Biography of a Race." The author takes the reader through Du Bois' struggles with the demagogue Marcus Garvey, the NAACP, the Depression, WWI and WWII, Southern lynchings, J. Edgar Hoover, Jim Crow and the Red Scare, to name just a few. Mr. Lewis gives ample time to place Du Bois in the social mind-sets of the respective eras in which the icon lived. You get to know this brilliant man, warts and all. Some aspects of his personality are to be greatly admired and other parts of him, such as his eventual near-blind devotion to communism and multiple philanderings, made me cringe. Though I agree that the book feels rushed in presenting the last years of his life, after reading these two large volumes, I had my fill of the subject matter. Du Bois was a complicated man who forced the world to face the illogical attitude about racism and the need to expand civil rights. A must read for anyone that wants to understand race in the United States.

I agree with Schmerguls, above, that David Levering Lewis' vol. II of DuBois has too many typographical errors; the endnotes are a nightmare; and that it needs a bibliography. But the book is more than a flawed book about a flawed man. It is readable, in general; Lewis could have skipped some of the big words in favor of words that ordinary readers could understand without a dictionary simultaneously open. Lewis uses colorful, precise verbs in many cases and succeeds in bringing characters to life in one word descriptions. He humanizes DuBois by discussing his friendships and by examples (through verbs and description ) of DuBois's autocratic manner. If this biography does not deserve a Pulitzer, I am curious what biography Schmerguls would consider worthy? The Oakland reviewer, above, is more on the mark in that this is a thoroughly researched and keenly insightful recounting of the life of a towering figure. I, too, sorely miss a bibliography. And the last quarter of the book is indeed full of typographical errors which a careful copy editor should have caught. One hopes that there will be a revision someday with all corrections made. Still, this is a wonderful history of the times and of an amazing (though "flawed," like the rest of us) figure in American history. DuBois certainly provoked solid thought at a time when mainstream America was unsure that Negroes could think. I have heard David Levering Lewis speak on C-Span. He writes better than he speaks because he says "Uh-uh" too much as he searches for those big words. But I'm so grateful that his work on DuBois came to fruition in my lifetime so that I could read it.

It seems odd that Lewis's biography of W. E. B. DuBois should be felt to be entitled to two Pulitzer prizes. The author disapproves at least on the surface of some of DuBois's more outrageous positions, but yet Lewis's biases show thru, and one gets the idea that in general if Lewis had not had the benefit of what has happened in regard to Communism in the past 15 years Lewis would be even more approving of DuBois's opinions than he now indicates. As others have mentioned, it is disconcerting to have a book from a major publisher have so many typographical errors. One would think they could have been easily avoided. And the endnotes are a nightmare. Instead of footnotes there are page notes in the back, with no discernible system: some indicate sources, but I found them very user-unfriendly. There is no bibliography as such, and overall I thought the book poorly edited. But the book tells a story of interest, especially during the period from 1945 to 1963.