W.E.B. Du Bois's 1903 book of fourteen essays that named the wound of being Black in America — declaring that 'the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,' giving the world the idea of 'double consciousness' and the 'veil,' and openly challenging Booker T. Washington's accommodation with a demand for full civil rights, the vote, and higher education led by a 'Talented Tenth.'
W.E.B. Du Bois opened his 1903 book with a sentence that has never let go: 'the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.' He was the first Black American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, and he set out to explain, to white readers, 'the strange meaning of being black' in their country. To Black readers he offered something else: words for a feeling they already knew. He called it 'double consciousness,' the sense of always watching yourself through the eyes of a world that holds you in contempt. He gave that world a name too. He called it the veil.