The Negro Problem (book)
The Negro Problem is a collection of seven essays by prominent Black American writers, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Booker T. Washington, and published in 1903. It covers law, education, disenfranchisement, and Black Americans' place in American society. Like much of Washington's own work, the tone of the book was that Black Americans' social status in the United States was a matter of personal responsibility, but it also confronted issues of legal and social racism. While this represented the point of view of the authors at the time, some—Du Bois, for example—would later revise their stance to consider the effects of systemic and institutional racism. Washington and Du Bois were again reunited in the 1907 collection The Negro in the South. Background The Negro Problem and its constituent essays were written in the post-Civil War, Jim Crow era, when African Americans struggled with oppressive laws and systems meant to curb their rights. As White leaders in both the South and the North worked to promote white supremacy, Black leaders sought to redefine and improve their image and identity, through racial uplift ideology. As such, the essays within The Negro Problem reflect this