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W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the most renowned intellectuals of the last millennium, spent decades meticulously researching and chronicling the Black experience during World War I. This intellectual journey transformed him into a peace activist. To fully comprehend Du Bois's evolution as a scholar-activist, we must explore his three transformative months in France, where he witnessed firsthand the devastating aftermath and horrors of war. The conversations and friendships he formed during this period significantly influenced his stance on war and peace. By integrating this crucial aspect, we can trace the contours of his scholarship and shift towards pragmatic peace activism. Thus, through this comprehensive examination, we illuminate how World War I shaped not only this historical imagination of Du Bois but also his vision for a more just and peaceful world.

Speaker Bio: Le'Trice Donaldson is Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Dr. Donaldson specializes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century African American military history, the Gilded Age, WWI, and Gender History. She works at the intersection of race, gender, military service, and the long civil rights movement. She is the author of Duty Beyond the Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight for Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870-1920 and A Voyage Through the African American Experience. She is also an editor for a new book series, The Black Soldier in War and Society: New Narratives and Critical Perspectives, with the University of Virginia Press.

Her current book project is entitled Race Prophets: A History of the Army’s Black Chaplains. 

Professor Donaldson currently serves on the executive board of the Association of Black Women Historians and is W. E. B. Du Bois Fellow with the University of Mass-Amherst Du Bois Center, and the coordinator for the Black Studies Minor program. Dr. Donaldson earned her Ph.D. in African American History from the University of Memphis and B.A. and M.A. from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Location: Online