Abstract
DuBois encouraged African Americans to enlist in the military, support the war effort, and, as he wrote in a controversial July 1918 editorial, "forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy." [...]in 1919, violence exploded taroughout the country, in major northern cities and southern rural counties alike. Reflecting on the horror of the war, its bloody aftermath, and his own sense of responsibility as a leader of the race, DuBois poured his heart, mind, and soul into Darkwflter. The savagery of the world war, roughly 37 million people dead and wounded, combined with the grotesque nature of combat-machine guns, artillery, poison gas-had exposed not just the destructive potential of modernity but also the fallacy of European civilization and the delusion of white supremacy.