Du Bois in Transnational Perspective: The Loud Silencing of Black South Africa

Abstract

This article explores the 1920s thought of African-American intellectual and activist WEB Du Bois in regard to South Africa. It focuses on an influential 1924 article by WEB Du Bois, ‘The Negro Mind Reaches Out’, reprinted in Alain Locke’s New Negro 1925 anthology. Despite Du Bois’s Pan-Africanist ideology, and despite his personal friendship with Africa National Congress founder Sol Plaatje, Du Bois did not textually acknowledge black South African nationalist agency. The article considers the reasons and implications for this omission and compares it with Du Bois’s textual support for West African and West Indian political struggles.