The Negro Problem (book)

The Negro Problem
Title page for The Negro Problem (1903)
AuthorsBooker T. Washington
W. E. B. Du Bois
Charles W. Chestnutt
Wilford H. Smith
H.T. Kealing
Paul Laurence Dunbar
T. Thomas Fortune
LanguageEnglish
PublisherJ. Pott & Company
Publication date
1903
Publication placeUnited States

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.[1][2] 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.[citation needed][3] Washington and Du Bois were again reunited in the 1907 collection The Negro in the South.[4]

  1. ^ Johnson, Sherita L. Black women in new South literature and culture. Routledge, 2009. p57
  2. ^ Chesnutt, Helen M. Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the color line. UNC Press Books, 2017. p196-197
  3. ^ Lewis, David L. (2001). W.E.B. Dubois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963. New York, NY: MacMillan USA. p. 313.
  4. ^ Black American Writers: Bibliographical Essays, Volume 1: The Beginnings through the Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes. Springer, Dec 25, 2015, p77