Nature and Culture in The Souls of Black Folk and The Quest of the Silver Fleece

By giving his book Dusk o f Dawn the subtitle, “autobiography of a race concept,” W. E. B. Du Bois late in life reaffirmed that a theoretical and practi­ cal understanding of the race concept was his life work. Throughout his writ­ ings, he grapples time and time again with its definition, deploying all his powers as philosopher, scientist, and poet to fasten the elusive notion.