The Souls of Black Folk: by W. E. B. Du Bois

When it was first published in 1903, W. E. B Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk represented a seismic shift in the discussion of race in the United States. Earlier African-American authors had broken ground with memoirs and autobiographical novels-narrative works that portrayed the African-American experience through the stories of particular individuals. What Du Bois envisioned was a work that portrayed the experience of African Americans as a people.As a professor of sociology, Du Bois nat...