W. E. B. Du Bois on Africa

W. E. B. Du Bois is arguably the most important Black intellectual of the twentieth century and among the most important intellectual figures in modern African social thought. One of the founders of Pan-Africanism and a key figure in the postwar African liberation movement, he was champion of Africa and its people throughout his life. Despite this fact, his work on Africa has been underemphasized in scholarly writing about him. This book brings together for the first time Du Bois’s writings on Africa from the beginning of the twentieth century to his death in the early 1960s. Including over 50 magazine and journal articles, poems and book chapters, the works included in this volume clearly show not only Du Bois’s genius as a writer, but his profound understanding of how the quest for racial equality involved all of the people of African origin who suffered under colonial rule in Africa and in the Black disapora. The editors include a historical introduction, headnotes and a bibliography of Du Bois’s work on Africa.

Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr. is a professor in the School of Education at the University of Miami. He is the author a wide-range of books on education, culture and society. He has had a lifelong interest in the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and has published a wide-range of books on him including:, W. E. B. Du Bois' Encyclopedia of the Negro (Left Coast, 2008); The Illustrated Souls of Black Folk (Paradigm, 2005); Du Bois on Education (AltaMira, 2002) and forthcoming The Exhibit of American Negro: Paris 1900 (AltaMira).Edmund Abaka is associate professor in the History Department at the University of Miami. He has published a number of articles and book chapters on kola (one of the original ingredients for Coca-Cola), the colonial period in African history, and African youth. His book "Kola is God's Gift": Agricultural Production, Export Initiatives and the Kola Industry of Asante and the Gold Coast, c. 1820-1950 was published in 2005 by James Currey & Ohio University Press. His current publication House of Slaves and ‘Door of No Return’: The Gold Coast/Ghana Slave Forts and Castles and the Atlantic Slave Trade, is being published by Africa World Press/Red Sea Press in December 2011.