ABSTRACT
In the course of his long, turbulent career, then, W.E.B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of 20th-century racism-scholarship, propaganda, integration, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third-world solidarity. An extraordinary mind of color in a racialized century, Du Bois’s principled impatience with what he saw as the egregious failings of American democracy drove him, decade by decade, to the paradox of defending totalitarianism in the service of a global ideal of economic and social justice.
