Tomorrow Foundation Professor of History and African American Studies and Black Diaspora Studies Chad Williams is an expert on W. E. B. Du Bois, African American history, and World War I.
He is currently working on two book projects, an exploration of the meaning and significance of Black Studies, and a history of the intellectual and political development of pan-Africanism and West African independence movements through the experiences of Nnamdi Azikiwe and Kwame Nkrumah.
Tell us about your work on The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War?
That project actually began when I was in graduate school at Princeton University. I was just starting research for my dissertation, which became my first book, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era. I came across an archive in the W. E. B. Du Bois papers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. It was an unfinished, unpublished manuscript by Du Bois on the Black experience in World War I that, I would later learn, he spent two decades working on. In addition to the manuscript, the archive contained all of Du Bois’s research materials related to this remarkable book which he titled “The Black Man and the Wounded World.” And no one had ever written about it before. I immediately knew that there was a story to tell, certainly about Du Bois and his relationship to World War I, about the meaning and significance of World War I for African Americans and Black people throughout the African diaspora, but also about the very meaning of democracy itself. I spent quite a while working on The Wounded World, which was published in 2023. It was a challenging experience to write, but also very rewarding. I think it’s made an important contribution to how we think about Du Bois, arguably the preeminent Black intellectual scholar activist in American history, as well as how we think about democracy and our world today—a world that is still very wounded.
What challenges did you face in this project?
Anytime your biographical subject is someone as prolific and as challenging as Du Bois, it is going to be a struggle. Du Bois lived a remarkable life. He was born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and died in 1963 in Accra, Ghana. There was not a subject or issue related to Black people that he did not write about or engage with in some way, shape or form. It’s fair to say that he’s the Mount Everest of Black intellectuals to write about. I had to make sense of his relationship to World War I and the enormity of his archive. The book manuscript that he ultimately never finished was over 800 pages long! He amassed two decades worth of research materials. It was a lot to go through and animated the question at the heart of my project: why did the great W. E. B. Du Bois fail to complete what would have been one of his most significant works of history? That was a mystery I had to try and solve, which took me from the beginning of World War I all the way to the aftermath of World War II. I certainly didn’t anticipate the project, when I first began working on it, stretching out in the way that it did. But it was the only way to tell the story and to fully grasp the journey and evolution that Du Bois experienced in reckoning with the history and legacy of the war, both on an intellectual level and on a personal level.
Can you tell us about your two current book projects?
My first two books, The Wounded World and Torchbearers of Democracy, focused on the First World War and the relationship of African Americans and other peoples of African descent to the war. My current work is moving in different directions. My most immediate project is exploring the history, but also the very personal meanings of Black Studies. I’ve always considered myself to be a Black Studies historian. I want to think about what Black Studies means for us, historically and contemporarily, but also what it has meant for me throughout my life and my academic and professional career. I’m approaching Black Studies as a living experience, one that is inextricably connected to the struggle for Black life and Black freedom in this country and beyond. This is a project that is somewhat experimental, but something that I’m excited to work on and complete much quicker than my last book because, considering our moment and the ongoing attacks on Black Studies, there’s definitely a sense of urgency.
A second project that I’m eager to start making progress on looks at two of the most remarkable individuals in modern African and African diasporic history, Kwame Nkrumah and Nnamdi Azikiwe, the presidents of Ghana and Nigeria, respectively, during the African independence period. I’m specifically interested in their years in the United States as students and activist intellectuals. I want to understand what was it about their experiences in the United States that shaped them—that shaped their destinies—as future African independence leaders. And through them, what can we also learn about Pan Africanism and Black diasporic intellectual, cultural and political life in early-mid twentieth century America and its connection to African liberation movements?
Readings on the syllabus for your class, History of Black Studies, includes Harriet Jacobs’ book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which was edited by another BU professor, Koritha Mitchell. What is it like teaching at a university where faculty, including yourself and your peers, have contributed to such prominent pieces in the discipline?
One of the main attractions of coming to Boston University was the quality of the faculty, and specifically the quality of faculty doing work in Black Diaspora Studies. There is a remarkable constellation of scholars spread out across the university in different fields, different disciplines, different departments and programs all connected to the core of what Black Studies and Black Diaspora Studies should be: a rigorous, interdisciplinary engagement with the varied experiences of people of African descent. Koritha Mitchell is someone who I’ve known for quite some time and I’m thrilled that she’s at Boston University. She’s, in fact, one of the faculty who are visiting my class this semester. In shaping a class on the history of Black Studies, I felt that it was very important to expose students to Black Studies at Boston University, not just historically, but also the work that’s being done by faculty in Black Studies from their various disciplinary perspectives. So there’s no better person to engage with Harriet Jacobs than Professor Mitchell. I think it will be an illuminating experience for students to see the type of faculty they have the opportunity to work with, as well as continue to highlight just how extraordinary the African American and Black Diaspora Studies community is at Boston University.
What do you hope your students will take away from the perspectives offered by your course?
This is a course that is designed to introduce students to Black Studies, even though it’s not framed as an introductory course. I like to think of it as a foundational course. I want students to come away with an understanding of key concepts, theories, methodologies that have shaped and that continue to shape Black Studies as a discipline and as a practice, as an intellectual and political practice. I want to expose them to some of the debates and arguments that have animated Black Studies throughout its history. More than anything else, I want them to have an appreciation of the ways in which Black Studies can shape their lives, to appreciate the ways in which Black Studies can shape their academic experience, whether they decide to major or minor in African American and Black Diaspora Studies or not. I certainly hope that they will! But even if they don’t, I want them to see the ways in which Black Studies can enhance their time at Boston University and what they can do to translate that into other aspects of their lives, whether that’s socially, whether that’s culturally, whether that’s professionally after they graduate, whether that’s politically. I want students to feel the capaciousness of Black Studies and how it has a certain type of urgent calling associated with it that is relevant to all students—regardless of their background—and is necessary for them to truly be students of the world.
Interview by Kelly Broder (COM’27)