Book Review

Derrick P. Alridge. The Educational Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois: An IntellectualHistory. New York: Teachers College Press, 2008. 208 pp. Cloth$58.00. Paper $24.95.

The recent centennial celebrations of the publication of The Souls ofBlack Folk (1903), the inaugural meeting of the Niagara Movement(1905), and the founding of the NAACP (1909) have witnessed aresurgence of research devoted to the life and work of W. E. B. DuBois, famed scholar, educator, and activist. David Levering Lewis wontwo Pulitzer Prizes in 1994 and 2001 for his two-volume biography ofDu Bois, and a host of other volumes have been published recently,including Edward J. Blum’s W.E.B. Du Bois, American Prophet (2007),Chester J. Fontenot and Mary Alice Morgan’s W.E.B. Du Bois and Race(2002), and Edward J. Blum and Jason R. Young’s The Souls of W.E.B. DuBois (2008). Much of the recent work focuses on smaller, more discreteaspects of Du Bois’s incredibly long and prolific career. One result of thisflurry of scholarship is that Du BoisFa man whose life straddled twocenturies and whose professional work crossed half a dozen disciplinesFhas come to represent many different things to many different people.As Derrick P. Alridge explains, Du Bois has been called ‘‘an Afrocentristand a Eurocentrist, a radical and an accommodationist, an integrationistand a separatist, and a capitalist and a socialist’’ (p. 6).

Despite the veritable explosion of recent research, the generalimage of Du Bois’s life and importance is still too often mired in facilereferences to a few, well-known aspects of the famed scholar’s work.Students of Du Bois readily recognize the prophetic lines in The Souls ofBlack Folk regarding race at the dawn of a new era: ‘‘the problem of thetwentieth century is the problem of the color line.’’ Many are familiarwith the idea of the talented tenth, Du Bois’s ideal of a small cadre ofblack leaders whose education, talents, and commitment to personalsacrifice promised a new era of racial uplift and progress. Scholars havemade great use of Du Bois’s notion of double-consciousness in exploringthe challenges of reconciling black identity in a modern age. And DuBois’s disputes with Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey havebecome the stuff of legend. While each of these aspects of Du Bois’s lifeare important, they failFwhen treated in isolationFto adequatelyaddress the great personal development that most marked the life of aman who lived ninety-five years.

Alridge provides the first comprehensive treatment of Du Bois’seducational philosophy in The Educational Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois.

History of Education Quarterly Vol. 49 No. 3 August 2009 Copyright r 2009 by the History of Education Society

In seeking to historicize and contextualize certain aspects of Du Bois’sthought, Alridge approaches his subject as a multifaceted thinker who‘‘revised, rethought, and updated his educational ideas throughout hislifetime’’ (p. 2). The result is a portrait of Du Bois as ‘‘a pragmaticeducational theorist who developed original ideas and adopted andadapted many ideas of his time to forge educational strategies aimed atimproving the social, economic, and political conditions of AfricanAmericans’’ (p. 1).

The work is divided into four parts. In Part I, ‘‘Development of aMind, 1868–1895,’’ Alridge finds in Du Bois’s childhood and earlyeducation the basis for much of the scholar’s subsequent thought oneducational philosophy and policy. Departing from the widely held ideathat Du Bois, in advocating for a classical education, represented a foilfor Booker T. Washington’s insistence on vocational training, Alridgecontends that Du Bois developed a broad-based liberal educationphilosophy that valued both classical and vocational training. Drawingfrom his experiences in Great Barrington, MA, Fisk, Harvard, and theUniversity of Berlin, Alridge argues that Du Bois developed aneducational philosophy based on service and racial uplift. Importantly,Alridge addresses Du Bois’s educational philosophy in light of theturbulent social world that was the late nineteenth century. Significanttechnological developments along with massive industrializationpromised an impending era of great progress and opportunity even asthe old social order raged on in Jim Crow segregation, sharecroppingand lynching. Du Bois’s own thinking was formed in a crucible thatcombined knowledge gained from the academy alongside real-lifeexperiences with racism.

Alridge firmly situates Du Bois at the center of Progressive eraconcerns about the role of education in reforming society in Part II,‘‘Educating and Uplifting the Race, 1895–1920.’’ Presented against thebackdrop of other well-known Progressive era thinkers includingThomas Jesse Jones and John Dewey, Alridge connects Du Bois’ssociological work to a more general Progressive era confidence thatassumed that the social sciences could solve social ills. Alridge comparesthe relationships, both personal and intellectual, that Du Bois forgedwith other African American thinkers of the time. Readers will bepleased to see extended biographical treatments of Alexander Crummel,Anna Julia Cooper, and Kelly Miller, among others. Alridge notes quiterightly that the first decades of the twentieth century presented a specialproblem to Du Bois and other African-American leaders. Even as newopportunities sprang up for a fortunate few, the social and politicaloptions for most African Americans remained very much circumscribed.Du Bois found himself in the midst of this dilemma and fashioned aversion of self-help and community service to address ‘‘the national

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discourse on solving the ‘Negro Problem’’’ (p. 33). Part III, ‘‘Educatingthe Black Masses in the Age of the New Negro, 1920–1940,’’ addressesthe nature of Du Bois’s educational philosophy during the inter-warperiod. Alridge argues that between 1920 and 1940, Du Bois’seducational thought became increasingly pragmatic. Influencedgreatly by advocates of social reconstruction, Du Bois adoptededucation as a way to advocate for democratic ideals. In addition, DuBois developed ideas about self and community pride that laid some ofthe groundwork for subsequent civil rights policies. In a manner notunlike his famed adversaries Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey,Du Bois also ‘‘sought to build greater community cohesion betweenblacks and develop a stronger sense of collective racial consciousness’’ inan effort to achieve equal rights (p. 108).

In Part IV, ‘‘The Freedom to Learn: Liberation and Education forthe World Community,’’ Alridge chronicles Du Bois’s educationalphilosophy in the age of the Cold War and the onset of the CivilRights Movement. In this period, Du Bois developed a pedagogyintended especially for African American uplift. Alridge suggests thatalthough Du Bois died on August 27, 1963, the eve of the historic Marchon Washington, his ideas, policies, and programs lived on in subsequentCivil Rights policies. Not only his insistence on fair and equitabletreatment, but also his particular brand of race, pride, and separatismhad a lasting effect on various civil rights organizations. While Alridgedoes not draw an explicit connection between Du Bois’s notion of racialseparatism and its subsequent articulation by Black Nationalists ofthe 1960s, such a relationship is certainly implied. In the concludingchapter, Alridge considers the legacy of Du Bois’s educationalphilosophy and policy. Crossing disciplinary boundariesFas did DuBois in his own lifetimeFAlridge sees in the teaching of modernEconomics, History, and Critical Race Theory, the stamp of Du Bois’sown thought and work. In particular, Alridge suggests that the rise ofAfrocentric and feminist scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s owes muchto the educational philosophy of W. E. B. Du Bois.

Throughout, Alridge writes engagingly not only about Du Bois’sprofessional life, but also about his own quest to understand the life ofsuch an important figure in American history. The reader will find, in theintroductory chapter, a very personal and poignant discussion about theimportance of Du Bois to contemporary scholars. The conclusion is alsospirited in its insistence on the centrality of Du Bois’s life and work tomodern-day academia. V. P. Franklin, distinguished professor of Historyand Education at the University of California, Riverside, provides aninsightful foreword.

In writing Educational Thought, Alridge has ‘‘both an academic and ageneral audience in mind’’ (p. 8). Those familiar with Du Bois’s life and

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work will not find much new material, especially as it relates to Du Bois’sbiography. Indeed, those interested in an exhaustive treatment of DuBois’s biography will likely reach for Levering-Lewis’s two-volumework. Still, Alridge has succeeded in his main task of providing greaterhistorical context in explaining the main contours and changes in DuBois’s dynamic intellectual development; and this in a much slimmer andwidely accessible monograph. Notably, Alridge reminds us that DuBois’s ideas were not formed out of whole cloth, but rather reflectedcertain developments in the larger society. As such, Alridge treats thesocial and cultural realties that shaped Du Bois’s thinking, though he iscareful not to reduce Du Bois’s educational philosophy to a mere by-product of the world in which he lived. Readers will find significanttreatment of reconstruction, lynching, the Progressive Era, both WorldWars, the Harlem Renaissance, the Red Scare, and the Civil RightsMovement, among other important developments.

Also, Alridge makes great use not only of Du Bois’s speeches,research studies, and correspondence, but also of his poems, novels, andother fiction writings, which is employed expertly throughout the bookin helping to explain Du Bois’s thinking about education, race, andsociety. This book promises to have an immediate impact in theundergraduate classroom, and teachers will likely see in it a gem foraddressing complicated matters in a readable and accessible volume.Graduate students will find it a handy tool for understandingeducational philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. Forthose interested in the intersections of education, race, and socialactivism, Educational Thought is a valuable resource.

JASON YOUNGSTATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, BUFFALO

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