"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," W.E.B. DuBois wrote prophetically in 1903. Virginia Hamilton's excellent biography, W.E.B. DuBois …, is a tribute to the lifetime he spent trying to solve that problem.

Her book follows him through his years with the NAACP, which he helped found. It outlines the great struggles which threatened the civil rights movement from without—whites vs. black—and from within—DuBois vs. Booker T. Washington, for example. It also attempts to set the record straight on Dr. DuBois' later years—to show how and why he was maligned, misunderstood, and ignored because of alleged pro-Communist sympathies.

Mrs. Hamilton's work is meticulously annotated, comprehensive, and generally objective—too detailed for pre-teens, perhaps, but extremely good for slightly older readers.

Marilyn Gardner, "Rebels Black and White," in The Christian Science Monitor (reprinted by permission from The...