She is currently finishing a book on the history of African American ideas about Thomas Jefferson. Wells and Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance, winner of the Bancroft Prize. Nichols Professor of American History at University of Pennsylvania. Her books include The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925 To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Du Bois' disillusionment with his country for its betrayal of Black American veterans of World War I.Ī scholar of American and African American intellectual, cultural and social history, Mia Bay is the Roy F. In The Wounded World, Williams draws from a deep pool of source material to recount the story of W. He is the co-editor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence, and has contributed articles and opinion pieces to a variety of publications, including The Washington Post, Time, and The Atlantic. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University, he has earned fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Ford Foundation, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Williams is the author of Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era, winner of the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians.

The Wounded World offers a fresh understanding of the life and mind of arguably the most significant scholar-activist in African American history.Chad L.

His book, however, remained unfinished.ĭrawing on a broad range of sources, most notably Du Bois’s unpublished manuscript and research materials, Williams tells the surprising story of this unpublished book, bringing new insight into Du Bois’s struggles to reckon with both the history and the troubling memory of the war. For more than two decades Du Bois attempted to write the definitive history of Black participation in World War I. Du Bois, believing in the possibility of full citizenship and democratic change, encouraged African Americans to “close ranks” and support the Allied cause in World War I, he made a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Du Bois's reckoning with the betrayal of Black soldiers during World War I- and a new understanding of that era and of one of the great twentieth-century writers. Presented in partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum Network Moderated by Kendra Field, Associate Professor, Tufts University Register for In-Person Event | Register for Virtual Event Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The Wounded World by Chad L. Williams