William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He attended public schools there prior to attending Fisk University, where he received his BA degree in 1888. Thereafter he received a second BA degree, and an MA and PhD from Harvard. He studied at the University of Berlin as well. He taught at Wilberforce University and the University of Pennsylvania before going to Atlanta University in 1897, where he taught for many years. A sociologist, historian, poet, and writer of several novels, Du Bois was one of the main founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was a lifelong critic of American society and an advocate of black people against racial injustice. He spent his last years in Ghana, where he died in exile at the age of ninety-five.
Ibram X. Kendi (introduction) is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. A contributing writer at
The Atlantic and a CBS News correspondent, he is a coeditor, with Keisha N. Blain, of the #1
New York Times bestseller
Four Hundred Souls and the author of many other books, including
The Black Campus Movement, which won the W. E. B. Du Bois Book Prize;
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction; and three #1
New York Times bestsellers:
How to Be an Antiracist;
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, co-authored with Jason Reynolds; and
Antiracist Baby, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. A MacArthur Fellow and one of
Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, Kendi lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
