Most criticism considers W.E.B. Du Bois mainly as a historian and a sociologist, and Langston Hughes essentially as a poet, yet some aspects of their multifaceted output require closer scrutiny. This book examines these seemingly marginal features - Du Bois's short fiction and poetry, foreshadowing contemporary phenomena such as Afrofuturism and hip hop, and Hughes's interdisciplinary approach and passionate interest in blues and jazz. Still relevant today, the literary contribution of these two remarkable men has had a crucial impact on the development of civil rights activism from the 1960s up until today's Black Lives Matter movement.