[The Souls of Black Folk is] the foundation on which Du Bois built a lifetime of ideas, and on which the black and antiracist intelligentsia continues to build today. . . . In 1903 . . . black newspapers . . . typically shouted in unison, 'SHOULD BE READ AND STUDIED BY EVERY PERSON, WHITE AND BLACK.' . . . And today it still SHOULD BE READ AND STUDIED BY EVERY PERSON. --Ibram X. Kendi, from the Introduction