Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

In a ground-breaking collaboration, and taking the great W. E. B. Du Bois as their model, two of our foremost African-American intellectuals address the dreams, fears, aspirations, and responsibilities of the black community - especially the black elite - on the eve of the twenty-first century. In 1903, the influential historian, editor, and co-founder of the NAACP, W. E. B. Du Bois, published his now famous essay "The Talented Tenth." "The Negro race," it began, "like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men." For the young post-Civil Rights era group of leaders, of which Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West have become such a significant part, "The Talented Tenth" was held up as a model for the social, political, and ethical roles of the new "crossover" generation. Du Bois's belief in an educated class dedicated to reform became their inspiration and their credo. Now, nearly a century after Du Bois set forth the role of the educated black American, Gates and West explore this pivotal aspect of his intellectual legacy - and, in so doing, they not only re-examine Du Bois's ideas on leadership but also respond to the challenges of the present. The problems are clear and urgent. Since the day Martin Luther King, Jr., died, the black middle class has quadrupled. Yet, simultaneously, the size of the black underclass has disproportionately and tragically skyrocketed.

Quarles presents Douglass's own words, the views of his contemporaries, and analyses in retrospect by leading historians and political scientists to create a three-fold perspective.

"In her perceptive introduction to this edition, Irene Diggs sets this classic autobiography against its broad historical context and critically analyzes its theoretical and methodological significance."--Provided by publisher.

In 1897 a young sociologist who was already marked as a scholar of the highest promise submitted to the American Association of Political and Social Sciences a "plan for the study of the Negro problem". The product of that plan was the first great empirical book on the Negro in American society. William Edward Burghardt DuBois (1868-1963), Ph.D. from Harvard (class of 1890), was given a temporary post as Assistant in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in order to conduct in-depth studies on the Negro community in Philadelphia. The provost of the university was interested and sympathetic, but DuBois knew early on that white interest and sympathy were far from enough. He knew that scholarship was itself a great weapon in the Negro's struggle for a decent life. The Philadelphia Negro was originally published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1899. One of the first works to combine the use of urban ethnography, social history, and descriptive statistics, it has become a classic work in the social science literature. Both the issues the book raises and the evolution of DuBois's own thinking about the problems of black integration into American society sound strikingly contemporary. Among the intriguing aspects of The Philadelphia Negro are what it says about the author, about race in urban America and about social science at the time, but even more important is the fact that many of DuBois's observations can be made - in fact are being made - by investigators today. In his introduction to this edition, Elijah Anderson traces DuBois's life before his move to Philadelphia. He then examines how the neighborhood studied by DuBois has changed over the years, and he compares thestatus of blacks today with their status when the book was initially published.

In 1773, the slave Phillis Wheatley literally wrote her way to freedom. The first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in English, she was emancipated by her owners in recognition of her literary achievement. For a time, Wheatley was the most famous black woman in the West. But Thomas Jefferson, unlike his contemporaries Ben Franklin and George Washington, refused to acknowledge her gifts as a writer—a repudiation that eventually inspired generations of black writers to build an extraordinary body of literature in their efforts to prove him wrong. In the Trials of Phillis Wheatley, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the pivotal roles that Wheatley and Jefferson played in shaping the black literary tradition. Writing with all the lyricism and critical skill that place him at the forefront of American letters, Gates brings to life the characters, debates, and controversy that surrounded Wheatley in her day and ours.

Explores African American history from the civil rights era to the present day.

x, 69 pages ; 24 cm