"After reading The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander's stunning work of scholarship, one gains the terrible realization that, for people of color, the American criminal justice system resembles the Soviet Union's gulag—the latter punished ideas, the former punishes a condition."
David Levering Lewis
Historian
David Levering Lewis is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian known for his biographies of W.E.B. Du Bois, exploring themes of race and identity in America.
- Born
- February 21, 1942
- Quotes
- 5
- Rank
- #4621
About David Levering Lewis
David Levering Lewis — Life and Legacy
David Levering Lewis is a distinguished historian whose work has profoundly shaped our understanding of African American history. His biography of W.E.B. Du Bois not only chronicles the life of one of the most influential figures in the fight for civil rights but also critiques the broader societal structures that have historically marginalized Black voices. Lewis's core thinking revolves around the idea that identity is intricately linked to historical narratives, as he asserts, 'The past is not dead; it is not even past.' This perspective challenges readers to confront the legacies of racism and to recognize the ongoing struggles for equality. Through his meticulous research and eloquent prose, Lewis reveals the complexities of race and identity, emphasizing that understanding history is essential for addressing contemporary issues. His work remains relevant today, as it continues to inspire discussions about race, identity, and the importance of historical context in shaping our present.
Quote collection
David Levering Lewis quotes
5 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Eric Walrond, handsome, cosmopolitan, and beguilingly enigmatic, may have been the most promising literary talent of the Harlem Renaissance.... James Davis's finely written, beautifully paced Eric Walrond is a major biography of a fascinating figure."
"In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism...scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity."
"Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns is an American masterpiece, a stupendous literary success that channels the social sciences as iconic biography in order to tell a vast story of a people's reinvention of itself and of a nation-the first complete history of the Great Black Migration from start to finish, north, east, west."
"Let This Voice Be Heard fulfills the mandate of biography at its best because Maurice Jackson has captured the history of a great moral movement's origins in a single, extraordinary life. An indispensable addition to the antislavery bibliography."