Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

“I have been in the world, but not of it,” W. E. B. Du Bois begins this book, a continuation of the project he began in his celebrated work The Souls of Black Folk, describing the devastation of segregation, slavery, and the global color line that veiled half the world’s people in shadow. First published in 1920, Darkwater gives voice to the rising power of “the darker races” around the world, and includes Africa’s blistering indictment of Europe, a study of the curious and twisted souls of white folk, and his landmark essay “The Damnation of Women,” in which he most seriously explores women’s oppression and the double burdens forced onto black women. Combining essays and analysis with poetry, allegory, and short fiction, Darkwater is an angry and eloquent argument that, as Du Bois writes, “a belief in humanity is a belief in colored men.” With a new introduction from award-winning poet and novelist Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, and a historical preface by Manning Marable.