The National Constitution Center celebrated Juneteenth this year with a superb town hall discussion about W.E.B. Du Bois.

Hello, friends. I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and welcome to We the People, a weekly show of constitutional debate.

The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit, chartered by Congress, to increase

awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.

In this episode, I'm joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis.

He's the author of the definitive two-volume biography of

Du Bois. And together, we unpack De Bois's life, legacy, and enduring impact, and we explore

Lewis's new memoir, The Stained Glass Window. Enjoy the show. Thank you so much for joining us,

Professor Lewis.

I've been eager to share your light and wisdom with NCC audiences for a long time.

I've a tremendous admirer of your definitive biography of Du Bois and of Du Bois himself,

who, as you show, is really the central African-American intellectual of the 20th century who wrote in the soul of black

votes that the color line is the central problem of the 20th century and whose towering thinking

evolved from a focus on leadership by what he called the talented 10th to at the end of his life

embracing socialism as the only solution to what he viewed as the encrined racism of American

society. Why don't we start, you've recently written a belated obituary of Du Bois, to tell us the story of that,

and perhaps sure, with the audience, to introduce him, to introduce them to his towering life and thought.

Yes, this is an opportunity to read this obituary, a belated obituary, because the American Historical Association

did not acknowledge the passing of Du Bois when he did. And so belatedly, I was asked to amend that

oversight. It was a American historical review obituary that appeared in December of

2022. In the late evening of August 27, 1963, our profession lost William Edward Burkhard Du Bois, a major innovator and prolific contributor.

He died at home in Accra, Ghana, at 95, where he had resided since October 1, 1961, as a guest of the Republic of Ghana and in self-imposed exile after the American Embassy

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