Description
In a speech at Howard University, Du Bois gives his interpretation of the prior forty years of history (1917-1947). He casts World War I as an attempt by European powers to redistribute their colonies, and says that United States got involved only begrudgingly out of the interests of Big Business. The New Deal was a "distinct step toward socialism". World War II was an attempt by European empires to reassert control over their newly restive colonies. Incurring staggers human losses during the war, the Soviet Union "saved modern culture." The postwar period has been marked by widespread persecution of American communists, and communism has been used as a smokescreen by corporations interested in going to war in Korea. Du Bois wonders how African Americans will respond to the current historical moment, whether the elite will be bribed by high salaries to become docile and uncritical of the government, or whether by "developing the best parts of our own American Negro culture cleansed by blood and slavery, poverty and insult, we may save the world." This draft is a heavily marked-up copy that contains an extended conclusion.
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