Social Science, Historical Fiction, and the American University in W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Flame Trilogy

This study turns to W.E.B. Du Bois’ late-career works of fiction for insights about the importance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), especially Black public Land-Grant universities in promoting racial justice in the United States. Commentators often argue that Du Bois’ early career endorsement of the emancipatory power of liberal education and social science research was later abandoned in favor of political activism. The present study challenges this assumption by demonstrating that an important, but generally underappreciated, source of continuity in Du Bois’ thoughts on education was his belief that German-inspired social science research could be a means to combat racial injustice in America. In his major work of fiction, the historical novels The Black Flame Trilogy, Du Bois expounded the positive role Black public universities, and their Presidents have historically played in what he called the “racial uplift” of African American people. Du Bois focuses on the impact of the Second Morrill Act of 1890, which established the legal framework for the system of Black Land-Grant universities and colleges, and which he believed provided the institutional foundations for social science research led primarily but not exclusively by Black scholars in projects that center Black experiences. I conclude with reflections on how Du Bois’ literary representation of the importance of historically Black public universities sheds light on current concerns about state coercion and systematic underfunding of Black Land-Grant Universities.