Three years and 29 days prior to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, a man branded zealot, fanatic and traitor was hanged. John Brown and his band of 21 followers
seized the armory at Harper's Ferry to obtain weapons, arm the slaves, and through mass revolt end slavery.
Here is a profound picture of John Brown the man, father, religionist, and irrepressible crusader against the sacrilege of slavery. The author conveys to the reader the wrath and turbulence of John Brown yet depicts his care and deliberation in the anti-slavery battle, from Kansas to his final assault. With keen perception, there is revealed both the unity and conflict of John Brown's relation with Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and other Abolitionists. The book stands today as a classic work of history and literature. For this edition, Dr. Du Bois supplied a new preface, some additions to the text, and a few pages of new conclusions. Lithographed from the original edition, the old text has not been altered, any new material appears in italics.
Undoubtedly the most influential black intellectual of the twentieth century and one of America's finest historians, W.E.B. DuBois knew that the liberation of the African American people required liberal education and not vocational training. He saw education as a process of teaching certain timeless values: moderation, an avoidance of luxury, a concern for courtesy, a capacity to endure, a nurturing love for beauty. At the same time, DuBois saw education as fundamentally subversive. This was as much a function of the well-established role of educationfrom Plato forwardas the realities of the social order under which he lived. He insistently calls for great energy and initiative; for African Americans controlling their own lives and for continued experimentation and innovation, while keeping education's fundamentally radical nature in view.
Though containing speeches written nearly one-hundred years ago, and on a subject that has seen more stormy debate and demagoguery than almost any other in recent history, The Education of Black People approaches education with a timelessness and timeliness, at once rooted in classical thought that reflects a remarkably fresh and contemporary relevance.
Originally published in 1915 written by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963), an American sociologist, the book was acclaimed in its time, widely read, and deeply influential in both the white and black communities, yet this beautifully written history is virtually unknown today. The book is an overview of African-American history, tracing it as far back as the sub-Saharan cultures, including Great Zimbabwe, Ghana and Songhai, as well as covering the history of the slave trade and the history of Africans in the United States and the Caribbean. Important by any standard.--Kirkus