David Levering Lewis, who holds the Martin Luther King, Jr., chair in history at Rutgers University, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race. The much-praised work had already received the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians, the Ambassador Award from the English Speaking Union, and the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University. In addition, it was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Lewis was a 1956 Phi Beta Kappa graduate in history and philosophy from Fisk University. He earned his master's degree from Columbia University and, in 1962, his doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before he joined the faculty at Rutgers, Lewis taught at Harvard University, the University of Notre Dame, Morgan State University, the University of the District of Columbia, and the University of California at San Diego. He has received fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the National Humanities Center. In 1986 Lewis received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which helped support his work on the Du Bois biography. Lewis's other books include King: A Biography, Prisoners of Honor: The Dreyfus Affair, The Race to Fashoda, and When Harlem Was in Vogue.