W. E. B. Du Bois Souls of Black Folk: A Graphic Interpretation

＂The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.＂ These were the prescient words of W. E. B. Du Bois’s influential 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk. The preeminent Black intellectual of his generation, Du Bois wrote about the trauma of seeing the Reconstruction era’s promise of racial equality cruelly dashed by the rise of white supremacist terror and Jim Crow laws. Yet he also argued for the value of African American cultural traditions and provided inspiration for countless civil rights leaders who followed him. Now artist Paul Peart-Smith offers the first graphic adaptation of Du Bois’s seminal work.

Peart-Smith’s graphic adaptation provides historical and cultural contexts that bring to life the world behind Du Bois’s words. Readers will get a deeper understanding of the cultural debates The Souls of Black Folk engaged in, with more background on figures like Booker T. Washington, the advocate of black economic uplift, and the Pan-Africanist minister Alexander Crummell. This beautifully illustrated book vividly conveys the continuing legacy of The Souls of Black Folk, effectively updating it for the era of the 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter.

PAUL BUHLE, retired Senior Lecturer at Brown University, is the authorized biographer of Pan African giant, C.L.R. James and has written or edited many books on the Left in the US and the Caribbean. He has, in recent years, devoted himself to nonfiction graphic novels, including those on Emma Goldman, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eugene V. Debs.

PAUL PEART-SMITH, an artist of Afro-Caribbean and British background, now living in Tasmania, has been a published comics artist since the 1990s in many venues, including 2000ad, Judge Dredd, Horrible Histories, and his webcomic One Plus One. He has also worked as a graphic designer and game developer. This is his first work of graphic novel adaptation. He’s currently working on other projects in the fantasy genre, as well as further socio-political projects. He lives with his wife and son who are very forgiving of his many obsessions.

HERB BOYD is a journalist, activist, teacher, and author or editor of twenty-three books, including his latest, The Diary of Malcolm X, edited with Ilyasah Al-Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter. His articles have been published in the Black Scholar, Final Call, the Amsterdam News, Cineaste, Downbeat, the Network Journal, and the Daily Beast. A scholar for more than forty years, he teaches African American history and culture at the City College of New York in Harlem, where he lives.

JONATHAN SCOTT HOLLOWAY is the 21st president of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He is the author of The Cause of Freedom: A Concise History of African Americans.