TO THE young lions of the civil rights era, he was the old man. And it fit. The life of W.E.B. DuBois bridged the defining events of the African-American experience. He was born only three years after the end of slavery and died hours before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

In the intervening years, the old man nursed a dream of his own, one that despite his 95 years and his prodigious output as sociologist, author, editor and activist, he could not fulfill. He called it the Encyclopedia Africana -- the first encyclopedia of African peoples -- and he envisioned it "covering the chief points in the history and condition of the Negro race" around the world. DuBois proposed the idea in 1909 and was still trying to get it off the ground when he died.

Thirty-six years after his death, his dream comes true. Encarta Africana is a recently released two-CD computer encyclopedia manufactured by Microsoft and created under the aegis of two black Harvard professors, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr. It's impressive. Sounds good, looks great and covers all things African, from the origins of humanity to the music of Tupac Shakur, with compelling authority.

In so doing, it fills a need that hasn't changed much since DuBois first articulated the idea for the encyclopedia 90 years ago.

I say that advisedly. I'm not one of those pessimistic folks who thinks black people have it worse now than they did generations ago. Though this ain't exactly the promised land we're living in, our lives are, by most measures, better now than they once were.

Yet that need has remained constant, as much a factor now as it was when DuBois lived. Call it a need for confirmation. Black people still require reminding that they have worth and their lives, meaning. They still need these things as a shield against a psychic battering that remains constant, an incessant drumbeat of opinion forever identifying them as a problem, an issue, or simply as something less.

Some people would doubtless find it surprising that such notions could survive into the era of Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby -- black successes embraced by the mainstream.

It's a surprise that lasts only until you hear someone praise those people for "transcending" race. In other words, the price of acceptance is that one becomes -- or at least, is perceived as -- not really "black."

Small wonder "nobodiness" persists. Or that many black kids -- and their elders -- gaze into mirrors and see no one special. You can argue about whether this represents true enmity toward blacks or simply the inevitable fallout of being a minority population in a pluralistic society.

I'd say the argument misses the point. I'd say that it's less important to argue the cause than to understand the effect. Meaning that black children in 1999, much as their forebears in 1909, grow to adulthood without learning that they, too, matter.

It's hard to imagine that a child could read the Encarta Africana and come away with his sense of nobodiness intact.

I like to think that somewhere, the old man is pleased.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald.

Pub Date: 3/10/99