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W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (A.C. McClurg & Co., 1903) Reissued by the Modern Library, 2003 One of America's first true public intellectuals, Du Bois was the first black student to receive a PhD from Harvard, helped found the Niagara Movement (which became the NAACP), and was in no small way responsible for the very creation of the field of sociology. The Souls of Black Folk was published in 1903, a year of deep reactionary sentiment in the South; lynchings had reached their apex and the failure of reconstruction had become manifest. At the time, the leading black voice in America belonged to Booker T. Washington, whose policy of accommodation Du Bois felt unfairly burdened blacks. While Washington asked that blacks postpone the quest for political power to focus on material equality through technical vocations, Du Bois recast the debate in terms of constitutional rights and social equality, to which education was central. In the "Forethought" to The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois describes his aim in the book thus: "I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive." The sketch, of course, has much to do with race; the first chapter opens with a bold line: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." The book is series of essays, which as a whole form a study of the period from 1861 to 1872, detailing the rise and fall of the Freedman's Bureau, describing the state of education for blacks in America, and analyzing the spiritual state of black Americans. In trying to explicate this period, Du Bois develops two central concepts: the Veil, which hides blacks from whites and from themselves; and double consciousness, by which he means a "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." MORE: Listen to NPR programming from the 100th anniversary of the book’s publication A biographical sketch of DuBois by Gerald C. Hynes “WEB DuBois, An Interpretation,” by Cornel West |
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