•Why it earns a slot
Published in 1903, this book gave American intellectual life the concept of double-consciousness and the phrase 'the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,' while its direct challenge to Booker T. Washington's accommodationism helped define the terms of Black political thought for the next half-century.
Du Bois examines the inner and outer lives of Black Americans at the dawn of the twentieth century, weaving together history, sociology, personal memoir, and fiction. He introduces the concept of 'double-consciousness,' the sense of always seeing oneself through the eyes of a hostile white world, and argues that Black Americans must pursue freedom, political rights, and higher education simultaneously rather than accepting Booker T. Washington's program of industrial training and civic submission. The book moves from broad historical analysis of Reconstruction and the Freedmen's Bureau through intimate portraits of the Black Belt's poverty, the Black church, and individual lives, closing with a meditation on the Sorrow Songs as the deepest spiritual gift Black Americans have given the nation.
This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: gutenberg.org.