Darkwater

Voices from Within the Veil

W. E. B. Du Bois 1920

Essays, poems, and personal memories examine Black life and racism in America. A story called The Comet imagines a Black man and a white woman surviving a disaster in New York.

257 pages 4h 59m reading time

One of Du Bois's major books, often read as a sharper, angrier follow-up to his classic The Souls of Black Folk.
Argues that World War I grew out of European nations competing to control land and people in Africa, and that racism and empire feed each other.
Argues that women, especially Black women, deserve the freedom to work, to vote, and to choose motherhood on their own terms.
Its essay "The Souls of White Folk" is often seen as an early root of whiteness studies, the study of how the idea of being "white" was created and used.
The Comet is now reprinted as an early ancestor of Afrofuturism, a kind of science fiction centered on Black lives and futures.

Answered a deadly riot

It describes the 1917 East St. Louis riot, when white mobs killed dozens of Black residents.
Built from earlier writings

Many pieces first appeared in magazines, including The Crisis, the civil rights magazine Du Bois edited.
A poem framed on walls

Its opening poem, "Credo," first printed in 1904, was so popular that readers hung copies at home.
Called bitter by critics

Some white reviewers called the book too bitter, while many Black readers praised its honesty.