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Published in 1920, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil comes at a middle period in W.E.B. Du Bois’ lifetime and work. This places it between the two periods that tend to predominate in Du Bois scholarship: the period from the 1890’s into the early nineteen-aughts, with Du Bois’ existential and philosophical reflections on black oppression as well as burgeoning innovation in the social sciences at the fore, and the period in the 1930’s and 1940’s where Du Bois’ Marxism and anti-colonial political commitments take center stage.

Introduction

In a statement before the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) in 1954, Dr. Howard Selsam, head of the New York Jefferson School of Social Science, quoted Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois as saying that he did not lecture in his own classroom without referring to Marxism. He argued that Marxism was absent in his own education, and therefore he did not want to similarly deprive his own students. Selsam’s statement came after the Jefferson School of Social Science, an affiliate of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), endured years of formal harassment by the SACB.

Introduction

W.E.B. Du Bois recognized that the advocacy of economic cooperation for black Americans was one of the most important projects of his life. His research, conditioned by his concern for social advancement, led him to pursue the proposition that economic self-sufficiency through cooperation is an important avenue for economic and social progress for blacks, as well as for all Americans.

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Phillip Luke Sinitiere: When did you first encounter the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, and in what context did you begin writing and studying his thought and historical impact?

The 150th anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois’s birth in 2018 offers an opportunity to reflect on his remarkable life and legacy in light of his specific commitments to socialism and democracy.

White ignorance...It’s a big subject. How much time do you have? It’s not enough. Ignorance is usually thought of as a passive obverse to knowledge, the darkness retreating before the spread of Enlightenment. But... Imagine an ignorance that resists. Imagine an ignorance that fights back.

Imagine an ignorance militant, aggressive, that refuses to go quietly--not at all confined to the illiterate and uneducated but propagated at the highest levels of the land, indeed presenting itself unblushingly as knowledge.

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If the people of the world and particularly of the United States really understood the facts of the case and knew what was in dispute, there is no doubt but what peaceful progress could be made toward the solution of problems of poverty, of health, of education, of enjoyment of the gifts of the world.

Phillip Luke Sinitiere: When did you initially encounter the work and ideas of W. E. B. Du Bois? What of his books or writings first influenced your thinking? How has your own work and scholarship on Du Bois changed over time?