W.E.B. Dubois Archives - Public Seminar

History can’t save the world. It can’t even save democracy. But it can offer hope.

May 9, 2019 • by Jill Lepore

Jill Lepore's response was originally published on May 9 2019. The day I sat down to write this essay I got an email from a man in South Carolina. He’d been studying for his U.S. citizenship exam and he’d decided to read my book, These Truths: A History of The United States, ...

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Authoritarianism and Civilization

Du Bois, Davis, and Trump

November 17, 2016 • by Neil Roberts

In 1890 the young W.E.B. Du Bois delivered the Harvard University Commencement address “Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization.” Du Bois focused on a central figure of nineteenth-century America as he prophesied the meanings of freedom, democracy, and what American life -- or more accurately, civilization -- would look ...

W.E.B. Dubois

On These Truths

History can’t save the world. It can’t even save democracy. But it can offer hope.

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