Thursday Symposium Will Examine W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk

April 15, 2003

April 15, 2003, Greencastle, Ind. - "Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line," wrote W.E.B. DuBois a century ago, in his groundbreaking book, The Souls of Black Folk. This Thursday, April 17, DePauw University will mark the 100th anniversary of the book's publication with a symposium that is free and open to the public.

At 4 p.m. Thursday, a roundtable discussion on "Gendering Du Bois" will be held in Watson Forum of the Eugene S. Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media. A DuBois Exhibit will also be on display in the Media Center during the event, then will be moved to Roy O. West Library where it will remain on display through May.

At 7:30 Thursday night in Meharry Hall of historic East College, Dr. Arnold Rampersad, professor of English at Stanford University will give a talk on the significance of The Souls of Black Folk. Dr. Rampersad is the author of The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. DuBois.

Literary critic Saunders Redding wrote that The Souls of Black Folk "not only represented a profound change in its scholar-author's view of what was then called the 'Negro Problem,' but heralded a new approach to social reform on the part of the American Negro people -- an approach of patriotic, non-violent activism..." The first African American to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard, W.E.B. DuBois went on to become a professor at Atlanta University and the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1905 co-founded the National Associated for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

For more information on the symposium, call (765) 658-6579.

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