Dark Princess. A Romance

1928 Du Bois, W[illiam] E[dward] Burghardt (1868-1963). Dark Princess. A Romance. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. Rpt. Millwood, NY: Kraus Thompson, 1974, with an “Introduction” by Herbert Aptheker (5-29); Jackson: Banner Books University Press of Mississippi, 1995; and as a volume in The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007 with an “Introduction” by Homi K. Bhabha (xxv-xxxi). PSt

The novel begins with an excellent African-American medical student being denied the right to continue because, as a black, he is not permitted to do the required section on obstetrics. He flees the country and meets other colored people who hope to create a united body to work for their betterment. For personal reasons, he rejects their overtures and returns to the U.S., where he becomes an up-and-coming politician married to a wealthy, well-connected woman. After numerous setbacks, he reconnects with the other colored peoples who have a plan for a better future that will be developed over the coming fifteen years. There is, though, a disagreement, which, not resolved with in novel, between those who believe in violence as a means and those who reject it. The  was the first African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard University and was one of the most prominent thinkers in the U. S. in the early twentieth century.