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“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, p. 2).

The Souls of Black Folk

Author: 

W.E.B. Du Bois

1868 CE – 1963 CE

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the son of Alfred Du Bois and Mary Silvina Burghardt Du Bois. From an early age, Du Bois excelled at school. After graduating valedictorian of his high school class, he enrolled at Fisk University in Tennessee. Du Bois graduated from Fisk in the spring of 1888.

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