He was truly unique and legendary. I have to confess I feel guilty not yet having read Black Reconstruction, though I’ve bought and read some other works by him recently with a couple more to go. I did first read him back in college decades ago. I also “bumped into” The Crisis from 1917 three years ago now. I didn’t know at the time it was the NAACP magazine of black journalism. His name appeared as editor as I recall. That edition had a top notch article on the East St. Louis Massacre I wrote two articles about and analyzing last year. It is a great work of journalism that white newspapers on the topic did not produce, with evidence and photographs detailing how this was a white organized attack deliberately meant to destroy the black area of town and kill black Americans.
I also just bought another book from 1951 his name appeared in, one of the hundred signatories of black intellectuals who submitted this as a report to the UN, “We Charge Genocide.” Black Americans make a highly reasoned and detailed case about how genocide is committed against them the US government from 1946-1951, based on the new UN definition of genocide they print, with a hundred pages of dense evidence. So his impact was deep and wide. I personally like the detail how he went to college up North, then went to Germany university in Berlin for two years to get a degree before returning to get another degree from Harvard. He must have been one the few German-speaking African-Americans in America at the time.

Thanks much for this review and the new names to research.