Building upon his previous work and using Richard Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition as a model, Professor Moses has revised and brought together in this book essays that focus on the complexity of, and contradictions in, the thought of five major African-American intellectuals: Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus M. Garvey. In doing so, he challenges both popular and scholarly conceptions...

Du Bois sets out to disprove one of the most commonly cited "proofs" of the biological inferiority of black peoples: that before European influence, the continent of Africa lacked civilization, culture, and even history. Du Bois's decision to open his book on the history of Africa by destroying any biological understanding of race was thus both perfectly logical and absolutely revolutionary. Du Bois employs an incredible array of sources to prove...