W.E.B Du Bois: A Biography 1868-1963 by David Levering Lewis

 

Hello my lovely readers! These biographies also languished on my shelves for a minute before I finally decided to pick them up. I partially read the first biography along with its new audiobook (heyyy Courtney B. Vance), but for the second biography, it was a 100 percent audiobook. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America—was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator.  In his magisterial prose, David Levering Lewis chronicles Du Bois’s long and storied career, detailing the momentous contributions to our national character that still echo today.

MY THOUGHTS
What a man. What a life! Both of these books took me a month to get through...EACH. They were dense, scholarly and filled with so much incredibly detailed research.

Anytime you read about Black American history, Du Bois always has some role in it, whether its via his books, his speeches, his articles, his magazine The Crisis, he has left an indelible mark on Black history.

I'm currently reading the biography of Frederick Douglass and what I find interesting about both Douglass and Du Bois is how much they neglected their family life in favor of pushing for the betterment of the Black race. I know family life is always going to take a backseat when the men are pushing for civil rights, but I was surprised the Du Bois and his first wife Nina regularly lived apart. I can understand why Yolande sometimes acted out. 

His misgivings with Booker T. Washington, Walter White, Marcus Garvey and William Monroe Trotter were incredibly compelling. All these men wanted to see the Black race succeed, but they all had different ideas on how that should happen, which of course led to disagreements and feuds. I'm glad I have all of their biographies on my shelves so I can get inside their brains!

Lewis put his WHOLE FOOT in this biography and I 100 percent agree with him winning the Pulitzer Prize for each biography. Well-deserved.