Airs Sunday, February 15 at 7 p.m. Many consider W.E.B. Du Bois the most important African American leader in the first half of the twentieth century. A sociologist, historian, author, teacher, activist, and co- founder of the NAACP and its magazine The Crisis, his influence was profound. His ground-breaking book, The Souls of Black Folk, has been called the foundational text of African American studies. On this program, Pulitzer prize winner David Levering Lewis tells us about W.E.B. Du Bois’s early life and the years that led up to the publication of The Souls of Black Folk; Marlon B. Ross explores some of the social and political factors that Du Bois responded to in the book; and Sheryl Townsend Gilkes discusses the book’s continuing influence.