Learning About the Impact of WWI On African Americans

On October 26, the Sankofa Lecture Series hosted Dr. Chad Williams, Spector Professor of History and African American Studies at Brandeis University in his presentation, “The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois, African Americans and World War I.” 

Students, faculty and staff listened as Dr. Williams told of W.E.B. Du Bois’s effort to write the history of the black experience in the war and the lessons of the war for our present world. He described how Du Bois's credibility was in tatters at the end of the war and how an opportunity to write a book on the black experience and the war presented itself to him.

Dr. Williams is the author of the award-winning book, “Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I ERA.”