Dr. Phillip Luke Sinitiere speaks on “Living In Those Boxes”

On July 30, Dr. Phillip Luke Sinitiere gave a presentation to a standing room-only crowd at the Du Bois Center. He offered an engaging reflection on his work “living in those boxes” of the W. E. B. Du Bois archives — echoing historian David Levering Lewis’s evocative description of early research journeys into Du Bois’s papers at UMass Amherst and Fisk University during the 1980s. As the Du Bois Center’s Senior Research Fellow, Dr. Sinitiere discussed working not only with Du Bois’s papers in Amherst and Nashville, but also with related archival materials from Du Bois family members, close friends, professors, colleagues, and political allies. He shared vivid archival stories and unexpected finds that help connect the threads of Du Bois’s life and illuminate his intellectual world through moments of archival serendipity. Sinitiere also reflected on recent “archival dead ends,” noting that the absence of documents does not necessarily halt historical inquiry, but rather opens up new avenues for asking deeper, more imaginative questions.

Phillip Luke Sinitiere earned his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Houston in 2009. He is currently a professor of history and humanities at the College of Biblical Studies — a predominantly African American institution located in Houston’s Mahatma Gandhi District. Sinitiere also serves as Senior Research Fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst and sits on the editorial board of Global Black Thought, a new peer-reviewed journal launched by the African American Intellectual History Society. A scholar of American religious history and African American Studies, his most recent book is Forging Freedom in W. E. B. Du Bois’s Twilight Years: No Deed but Memory (University Press of Mississippi, 2023). He is currently completing a book on the history of Du Bois’s archives (under contract with UMass Press), as well as co-editing a scholarly volume on the work of Shirley Graham Du Bois (forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press).