Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life by Marcus Anthony Hunter & Zandria F. Robinson

Author:Marcus Anthony Hunter & Zandria F. Robinson [Hunter, Marcus Anthony & Robinson, Zandria F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, African American Studies, Sociology, General, History, Historical Geography, Discrimination & Race Relations
ISBN: 9780520966178
Google: wYY9DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B0778J5NYV
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2017-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DU BOIS

A child of Up South, Du Bois “was born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, which began the freeing of American Negro slaves.” On February 23, 1868, a little brown baby boy took his first breath in his hometown of Great Barrington, “which lay between these mountains in Berkshire County, Western Massachusetts, [and] had a broad Main Street, lined with maples and elms, with white picket fences before the homes.”3

A gifted student and skilled researcher, Du Bois would go on to become the first Black person to receive a PhD from Harvard University. Over his seventy-plus-year career Du Bois passed through many campuses across the United States, including appointments at Wilberforce University, the University of Pennsylvania, Fisk University, and (Clark) Atlanta University. The author of more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction, he was a poet at heart.

His exceptional wordsmithing abilities and leadership carried him beyond the ivory tower. As one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Du Bois was the founding editor of its monthly magazine, which he dubbed The Crisis, from 1910 to 1934. Over the next four decades he also built a significant international reputation, traveling across Europe, Asia, and Africa, speaking and teaching on issues of race, labor, class, and politics. As time progressed, he came to be supportive of socialist principles to combat the savage poverty and racism due to American capitalism and its devastating effects abroad.

As his socialist leanings became more pronounced, Du Bois’s mission and that of the NAACP were increasingly out of synch. While Du Bois wanted to focus internationally and on the dark side of capitalism, the organization was more invested in domestic racial matters. The aggressive World War II–era suspicion and fear of socialism and communism, especially as embodied by the Soviet Union, intensified these differences. Eventually dismissed from his post as director of Special Research at the NAACP, Du Bois was offered and accepted a nominal, unpaid position, vice chair of the Council on African Affairs, which afforded him work space and secretarial services, but little else. Undeterred, he continued with his pursuit of international issues, turning toward Africa “by sort of a logical deduction,” and began to focus exclusively on the continent (343).

Du Bois’s mission now was to uncover and solidify Black knowledge and legacies over time and across space and place. He had grown “tired of finding in newspapers, textbooks and history, fulsome lauding of white folk, and either no mention of dark peoples, or mention in disparaging and apologetic phrase.” To help find himself and help his people and the world, he made up his mind “that it must be true that Africa had a history and destiny, and that one of [his] jobs was to disinter this unknown past, and help make certain a splendid future.” After more than fifty years of focus on

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