Toward the end of his now-famous 1897 Atlantic Monthly essay, “Strivings of the Negro People,” W.E.B. DuBois states that the post-Civil War years brought for African Americans “the ideal of book-learning, the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance.” Historians may note DuBois’ ultimate discontent with this ideal — the longing to achieve freedom through ‘book-learning” — [...]
