W. E. B. Du Bois

The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, analyzes race, democracy, education, and Black life after Reconstruction. It introduced influential ideas such as double consciousness and the color line.

Double consciousness describes the divided self-awareness of Black Americans living under a racist society that judges them from outside. Du Bois framed it as seeing oneself through both one's own eyes and the eyes of a hostile nation.

Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP in 1909. He also edited The Crisis, the organization's magazine, where he shaped debates on civil rights, politics, and culture.

Du Bois criticized Booker T. Washington's accommodationist approach in The Souls of Black Folk. He argued for political rights, higher education, and full civic equality rather than limiting Black advancement to industrial training.