"[T]he problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line," wrote W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk, arguably the best, if not most famous, of all the works of this remarkable scholar, intellectual, journalist, activist, educator, historian, and novelist. Hard to pigeonhole, Du Bois spanned a century of American life which also saw the birth of the modern civil rights movement. His own development in part mirrored that movement: from believing in the integration of black people into American society Du Bois gradually adopted a separatist, Pan-African viewpoint that saw African Americans developing a separate culture and ethos within but also "outside" American society.

As the editor of Crisis, the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for a quarter of a century, Du Bois wielded immense political and social power with American...