people like w.e.b. dubois, and william montague cobb, an anatomy professor at howard university and the first black physical anthropologist. he uses a lot of medical and anthropological knowledge to make arguments about what racial difference really does and does not do and how things like eugenics can be used to mobilize those for a greater good. susan: tell me about w.e.b dubois. ms. nurridin: he is interested in thinking about how the collective race can be improved on a social level through education and on a biological level. it is usually framed as a kind of respectability politics in terms of education and religion and moral improvement. there is a biological underpinning about who is actually fit enough to constitute this talent population. i have a number of interesting little nuggets from his work. one was an article from margaret sanger's birth-control review where he published in a special issue thousand titled "a negro number" about black people in -- and birth-control. the concluding sentence of

she's stealing in ancient history even before w.e.b. dubois. so it's the effort and the ground that is being covered, not that someone would want to look at this today and say this is the bible for ain't in history. no, it breaks the ground. sets at pay for others to look at and for others to begin the work on. that's most of the work that we do. >> paul coates, w.e.b. dubois lighting or by the turn of the last century, does he hold up? >> own in the same light that mrs. houston holds up. i think it's the same for most writers, and that is to say that people write almost any book that has been written, you'll find flaws or errors in that book that we would say do not hold up. at the same time you'll find other things in the book that might, you might say let's build something on this, let's work out from this, let's see what we have. he was onto something or she was onto something here. she was an early investigator, an early finder of this. in that sense dubois deathly holds up and dubois was a prolific writer. so there were more things that h

w.e.b. dubois in world war i. i can think of no better historians to guide us through a conversation on the relationship of citizenship and protest in the american past. please give a warm welcome to our panel. [no audio] -- [applause] thank you all for coming out. gavin, forclaire and getting the ball rolling and coming up with this idea, and to john, crystal, and chad for agreeing to be part of it. forre going to each talk seven-10 minutes, no more than that, and then we will talk to each other. then you will talk to us and we will talk to each other. protests tonight is and citizenship, and i want to start us off almost 200 years ago, when free african-americans in boston began calling themselves colored citizens. that self-description was an act of protest and an act of invention. to explain what i mean by that, i need to say a few conditions about the conditions of black freedom in the time before the civil war. simply, there was much to protest. the massachusetts constitution said all men are

w.e.b. dubois, who is -- who is a profound leftist, right? you've got folks like docsy wilkerson who is a communist. she is the founder of cookman college in florida. she's a member of fdr's black cabinet, right? she's about as mainstream/conservative as you can get. then you've got folks like gordon blaine hancock, who is a professor and preacher in virginia, who is also a racial conservative, right? who is also somebody who says in the 1930s, yes, we need to conform ourselves to the reality of segregation, right? so we see in the article couch expects there to be a lot of difference between the folks on the far-left and the folks in the middle and the right. that's not what happens. everybody says segregation has to go. and we see white racial moderates not quite understand how this can happen, and we see couch articulate this in so many words where he says, look, if that's what the negro wants, the negro should want something else. they need to put that back in the box and pick something else out. right? so that's a little -- so that's a l

there are many, many books, like if i mentioned books by w.e.b. dubois, you know, people would -- african slave trade, black reconstruction, we know those. but the books we focus on tend to be by authors who have been lost in history. and at the same time when they were alive, people like drucilla houston who in 1926 wrote one of the more important pieces as far as i'm concerned of history, and that is covering ancient history for black folks. so she wrote a book called "the wonderful ethiopians." that book was published in 1926, and until we republished it in 1986 it had basically fallen out of memory. and the importance of that and the importance of books like drusilla houston, books that we publish by people like george wells parker, those books were done at a time that these people fought very hard to establish a history for black folks when black folks were constantly told they had no history. so her contribution at that time, which was one of earliest contributions of any person writing on the history of black people in ancient history, her contrib

there were notable exceptions to this, the most famous and certainly one of the most important was w.e.b. dubois, who challenged lost cause mythology. it is only at the midpoint of the 20th century, when new generations of scholars influenced by world war ii, and in some cases their experiences in the conflict, the cold war, and the civil rights movement, start to question the dominant arguments of the lost cause and start to dismantle them. it is not an overnight process. it takes decades. these national, international events certainly have an impact on the way that new generations iewscholars you -- scholars v the civil war, and of course you also see in the 1960's, 1970's, a more diverse representation of people going to graduate schools. outside of academia, though, lost cause symbols and mythology persisted, arguably into the 21st century. i don't think though, and this is personal opinion, impressionistic, i don't get a sense that the lost cause mythology is as pervasive as it used to be a few decades ago. i think there are various reasons for this. one is the growing diversity of the popu

w.e.b. dubois, the fight for equality and the american century. drum voices, the mission of afro-american poetry. in the spirit: lessons in living. the underground railroad. these names represent the titles of some of the books of our honorees. they embody the conference theme, gathering at the waters: healing, legacy and activism in black literature. this year's conference continues our tradition of insuring that the text produced by black writers in the americas, in europe, asia and africa are known and read by the general public and that they are represented in our schools and in our libraries. one of our participating writers who is not here, michael -- poet and writer -- remind us in a book he recently wrote, no one can be at peace until they have freedom. and that history is made through forward motion. this conference is a testament to the importance of freedom and the value of forward motion. it centers on the way in which black writers use their writing to heal and restore their individual severals and the collective -- selves and the col