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Article: Groundbreaking US civil rights book republished
- Article from:
- AP Worldstream
- Article date:
- February 25, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. (Hide copyright information)
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The Ku Klux Klan was rising again. Segregation was the law and Martin Luther King Jr. was not even born yet.
Amid the terror and oppression, civil rights pioneer W.E.B. DuBois published a groundbreaking book in 1924 that challenged the pervasive stereotypes of African Americans and documented their rarely recognized achievements.
His book, "The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America," detailed the role of African-Americans in exploration and in inventions related to everything from shoemaking to player pianos. He argued that blacks were crucial to conquering the wilderness, winning wars, expanding democracy and broadening the economy by ...