The Souls of Black Folk

Few American books have shaped how a nation thinks about race as deeply as this one. In fourteen essays, Du Bois gave language to the inner life of Black Americans at the turn of the twentieth century, coining ‘double consciousness,’ the sense of always seeing yourself through the eyes of a hostile world, and ‘the veil’ that divides the races. He famously declared that the problem of the century is the problem of the color line. The book blends history, sociology, memoir, and grief, including a chapter on the death of his infant son, and each essay opens with a bar from a spiritual. It remains foundational reading. Free to download as a PDF or EPUB.