The Souls of Black Folk

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A collection of fourteen prose pieces by W. E. B.Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk had a powerful impact on African American intellectual life when it appeared in 1903. Thirty years later, James Weldon Johnson declared that it “had a greater effect upon and within the Negro race in America” than any book since Harriet Beecher Stowe's epochal Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).

The collection included nine pieces previously published in some form in magazines, notably the prestigious Atlantic Monthly. Five new pieces rounded out this racial portrait, which reflects the remarkable breadth of Du Bois's interests, training, and temperament. Schooled in history and sociology, he also had an abiding personal interest in fiction, poetry, and the essay.

One major concern of the book is the history of blacks from slavery down to the present time of legal segregation. Another is a loosely sociological accounting of their lives, especially in the South, where the vast majority still lived in 1903. Closing the book are Du Bois's elegy for his son, an emblematic short story, and essays on the spirituals and on religion. Here Du Bois concentrates on the psychological and expressive aspects of black culture, but the entire work attempts to probe the black American mind, in keeping with the title of the volume.

The meaning of the title is spelled out early. Blacks, who are prevented by the repressive white culture from ever possessing “true self-consciousness,” can see themselves only as whites see them:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this 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 twoness,—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.

The book is also memorable for Du Bois's prophecy, first enunciated in the “Forethought,” that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.”

In “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” Du Bois challenged the leadership of the most powerful black American of the age. The head of Tuskegee Institute, Washington emphasized industrial training for blacks, rather than the liberal arts. He also urged blacks to surrender to southern whites on the issues of voting rights and racial integration in return for peace and prosperity. Attacking these positions, Du Bois's book split the black intelligentsia into two opposing camps.

Perhaps the most powerful single unifying element in this diverse collection, with its multiplicity of vignettes and approaches, is its portrait of Du Bois himself, so much so that the book is sometimes taken as an autobiography. The record of his personal feelings, rendered in often brilliant language, is made central to his purpose—most notably in his elegy “Of the Passing of the First-Born.” The final impression is of a highly intelligent, learned, generous, but deeply wounded individual, unusual and yet profoundly representative of African Americans in his inability, despite his gifts, to find peace in a nation hostile to its blacks.

Bibliography

• Herbert Aptheker, ed., Annotated Bibliography of the Published Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, 1973.
• Arnold Rampersad, The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois, 1976. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919, 1993

—Arnold Rampersad

Published originally in 1903, The Souls of Black Folk is W. E. B. Du Bois's classic collection of thirteen essays and one short story. Assembled from pieces the young Du Bois wrote between 1897 and 1903 (age twenty-nine to thirty-five), the book as a whole is rich and multifaceted. It is a moving evocation of black American folk culture, a poetic rendering of African American history since emancipation, a critical response to the racism and economic subjugation afflicting black Americans at the turn of the twentieth century, and an analysis of political leadership (it contains Du Bois's famous critique of Booker T. Washington's doctrine of accommodation).

Souls can be conveniently divided into three parts: chapters 1–3 have a distinctively historical character; chapters 4–9 display a sociological perspective; and chapters 10–14 demonstrate Du Bois's attempt to capture the spiritual meanings of African American culture. Insisting that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line," Du Bois wrote Souls to explore the "strange meaning of being black" in a society that viewed blacks with contempt. To that end, he detailed a sweeping tableau of African American life, emphasizing the struggle for civil rights, the economic and social legacies of slavery, and the contributions of blacks to America's identity as a nation. By expounding on key concepts, such as the notion of "double consciousness" (being black and American), Du Bois described African American efforts to cope with forms of neo-slavery. Most significantly, Souls is an original and tragic vision of American history, a gripping revelation of the triumphs, betrayals, and legacies that, in the wake of emancipation, shaped the "souls of black folk" two generations after freedom. The book remains in print in many editions and is widely taught in American colleges.

Bibliography

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. Reprint, edited by David W. Blight and Robert Gooding-Williams. Boston: Bedford and St. Martin's Press, 1997.

The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches
The title page of the second edition
Author	W.E.Burghardt Du Bois
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	A.C. McClurg & Co., Chicago
Publication date	1903

The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary history.

The book, published in 1903, contains several essays on race, some of which had been previously published in Atlantic Monthly magazine. Du Bois drew from his own experiences to develop this groundbreaking work on being African American in American society. Outside of its notable place in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works to deal with sociology.

Contents 1 Chapters 2 Critical Reception 3 References 4 Additional reading 5 External links

Chapters

Chapter X: Of the Faith of the Fathers

In this essay, Du Bois argues that the Black Church is deeply connected to black political movements. Instead of seeing this as a positive, he sees this as a weakness that needs to be overcome. He sees the Church as the last remnants of tribal life that needs to be overthrown for Black Civilization to thrive. He says by the middle of the Eighteenth Century the black slave was sunk to the bottom of the economic ladder. Through this, he lost all joy in the world. The Church then offered him salvation in the next world, which he gripped to. Du Bois says the slave then, and the Black Man now must look to salvation in this life in order to build a culture of economic prosperity.

However, he said it was much better than the Christian Church in that it never excluded. He offered a future program for the Church of buying real estate for its members and increasing their economic status in society.

Critical Reception

In Living Black History, Du Bois biographer Manning Marable observes:

Few books make history and fewer still become foundational texts for the movements and struggles of an entire people. The Souls of Black Folk occupies this rare position. It helped to create the intellectual argument for the black freedom struggle in the twentieth century. Souls justified the pursuit of higher education for Negroes and thus contributed to the rise of the black middle class. By describing a global color-line, Du Bois anticipated pan-Africanism and colonial revolutions in the Third World. Moreover, this stunning critique of how 'race' is lived through the normal aspects of daily life is central to what would become known as 'whiteness studies' a century later.^[1]

References

1. ^ Manning Marable, Living Black History, p.96

Additional reading

• Stanley Crouch and Playthell Benjamin, Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk, Philadelphia: Running Press, 2003

• Judy Boss, ed., ed (September 1996) [1903]. The Souls of Black Folk (Modified from 1989 Bantam Classic text ed.). Charlottesville: UVA Electronic Text Center. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html. Retrieved 2006-03-22. 
• Writings [The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays and Articles] ((Hardcover) ed.). New York: Library of America. January 1987. ISBN 0-940450-33-X.  No commentary, just a brief "Note on the Texts."
• The Souls of Black Folk (100th Anniversary Edition? (Paperback) ed.). New York: Signet Classic. August 1995. ISBN 0-451-52603-1.  Introduction by Randall Kenan.
• The Souls of Black Folk (Penguin Classics reprint (paperback) ed.). New York: Penguin Books. April 1996. ISBN 0-14-018998-X.  Introduction by Donald B. Gibson.
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Terri Hume Oliver, eds., ed (April 1999). The Souls of Black Folk: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism (Norton Critical Edition (1st ed. paperback) ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-97393-X.  Includes photos from 1901 article, several contemporary essays, a chronology of Du Bois's life, annotations, and historical texts relating to the work.

External links

•   The Souls of Black Folk on Wikisource
• The Souls of Black Folk at Project Gutenberg
• Study resource for The Souls of Black Folk
• "W. E. B. Du Bois: Writings". Library of America. http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=39&section=notes. Retrieved 2006-03-22.  Copy of the brief "Note on the Texts" from ISBN 0-940450-33-X.
• Essays and sketches

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