 His example was quick to be seized and claimed by other prospective black leaders and spokespersons. The most significant example of this was the conflicting claim between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) over the meaning of Douglass’s legacy. Indeed both men competed for the opportunity to publish a biography of Douglass with the publishers George W. Jacobs &amp; Company in their series The American Crisis Biographies (Sundstrom 2008: 11–35). Du Bois’s bid for this task was rejected in favor of Washington’s (Washington 1907). Du Bois was, instead, given the project of writing a biography of John Brown, which includes large sections on Douglass (Du Bois 1909).