Du Bois's 1903 examination of the plight of African Americans is widely recognized as among the most important ever written on race and identity. Exposing the ways in which the Jim Crow Laws kept blacks in conditions they thought they had escaped when slavery was abolished, Du Bois explains how interaction with a white world caused them psychological anguish. He concluded that blacks should demand total equality—a view in opposition to that of other black intellectuals, who accepted inequality in exchange for basic education and legal rights. The Souls of Black Folk profoundly influenced the American civil rights movement and inspired postcolonial thinkers worldwide.