W.E.B Du Bois and the Place of African American Youth in Histories of Environmental Thought.

In this article I reflect upon the development of my research on African American environmental thought as it emerged through the coincidence of my PhD research with the COVID-19 pandemic and the international Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. I situate my research at the intersection of Environmental American Studies and literary studies to highlight the intersections between environmental thought and racial justice movements through a focus on the ways that childhood and race are intertwined in African American thought and literature. I finish by offering a case study of my research on the children’s magazine of W.E.B Du Bois, The Brownies’ Book and its representations of Black children’s relationships to the outdoors and nature.