When Du Bois wrote
The Souls of Black Folk, the African-American intellectual tradition was still in its infancy. The earliest African-American writers were freedmen who wrote books that were often autobiographical in nature and sought to persuade white readers to support the abolition of slavery. Examples include Frederick Douglass’
The Narrative of Frederick Douglass (1845), Solomon Northup’s
Twelve Years a Slave (1853), and Harriet Jacobs’
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Booker T. Washington extended this tradition into the post-Emancipation period by writing an autobiography called
Up from Slavery in 1901, which received a critical review from Du Bois. Du Bois’ doctoral dissertation was entitled
The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the United States of America,
1638-1871. Prior to writing
The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois had also published a text entitled
The Study of the Negro Problems (19898), a study of the black community in Philadelphia entitled
The Philadelphia Negro (1899), and another volume entitled
The Negro in Business (1899). A prolific writer, he published dozens more books over the course of his life, including an autobiography that was published posthumously. Du Bois was an enormously influential figure, significantly shaping both academic and popular writing on race into the present day. He is considered one of the “fathers” of the Harlem Renaissance, a period of stunning black cultural production that included the writers Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nella Larsen. He was also a significant influence in the political and literary education of black intellectuals and civil rights leaders such as James Weldon Johnson, A. Philip Randolph, and Arthur Schomburg.