About This Book

First published in 1909, the same year W. E. B. Du Bois helped found the NAACP, John Brown is a literary account of the fiery abolitionist’s life using documentation from those who knew and worked with Brown. In the preface, Du Bois writes that his biography “is at once a record of and a tribute to the man who of all Americans has perhaps come nearest to touching the real souls of black folk.” Du Bois alludes to this in Souls of Black Folk when he describes John Brown’s actions: “led by [Charles Lenox] Remond, [William Cooper] Nell, [William] Wells-Brown, and [Frederick] Douglass, a new period of self-assertion and self-development dawned. To be sure, ultimate freedom and assimilation was the ideal before the leaders, but the assertion of the manhood rights of the Negro by himself was the main reliance, and John Brown’s raid was the extreme of its logic.” John Brown’s life carries a message that still resonates in the twenty-first century, and Du Bois makes it his refrain throughout this book: “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
This edition is introduced by John Brown scholar William S. King, who provides the background to the writing of the biography which took place during a turbulent time of race relations and competing visions for the future of Black Americans from Booker T. Washington and Du Bois. “Du Bois,” King reminds us, “remains one of the best writers on this phase of American history, which is still at our core.”

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was an influential sociologist, historian, and social activist whose acclaimed writings include The Souls of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction, and Dusk of Dawn. He was one of the founders of the NAACP and his works and legacy remain cornerstones in social history.

William S. King is author of Timepiece from Gouldtown: An Initiation into American Mysteries and the award-winning To Raise Up a Nation: John Brown, Frederick Douglass, and the Making of a Free Country, named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title.