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    The Souls of Black Folk: Original Classic Edition
    The Souls of Black Folk: Original Classic Edition
    The Souls of Black Folk: Original Classic Edition
    Ebook254 pages5 hours

    The Souls of Black Folk: Original Classic Edition

    By W.E.B. Du Bois

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    "EITHER AMERICA WILL DESTROY IGNORANCE OR IGNORANCE WILL DESTROY THE UNITED STATES." -W.E.B. Du Bois

    This classic groundbreaking work of American literature first published in 1903 is a cornerstone of African-American literary history and a seminal work in the field of sociology.

    W.E.B. Du Bois, who drew from his own experiences as an African-American living in American society, explores the concept of "double-consciousness"-a term he uses to describe living as an African-American and having a "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others."

    With Du Bois' examination of Black life in post-Civil War America, his explanation of the meaning of emancipation and its effect, and his views on the roles of the black leaders of his time, The Souls of Black Folk is one of the important early works in the field of sociology. His fourteen essays have had a lasting impact on civil rights and the discussion of race in the United States. The essays include these topics:
    • "OUR" SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS
    • THE DAWN OF FREEDOM
    • MEANING OF PROGRESS
    • TRAINING OF BLACK MEN
    • THE SONS OF MASTER AND MAN
    • FAITH OF THE FATHERS
    • SORROW SONGS
    • AND MORE
    WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DU BOIS (1868-1963) was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. Born in Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community, and after completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, (where he was the first African-American to earn a doctorate), he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherG&D Media
    Release dateNov 12, 2019
    ISBN9781722523947
    Author

    W.E.B. Du Bois

    William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963) was a sociologist, historian, novelist, activist, and one of the greatest African American intellectuals. His astounding career spanned the nation’s history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, he penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into black life at the turn of the century still ring true.

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    Reviews for The Souls of Black Folk

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    • 5/5
      A beautiful collection of essays about the Black experience in America. The topics cover reconstruction, Jim Crow, politics, the Black church, lynching, and spiritual singing. There is much to digest and meditate upon in this book. De Bois prose is perfection. I didn't want it to end.
    • 5/5
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    • 2/5
      Kind of hard to read. Some parts are quite good.
    • 4/5
      This book looks at everything, things I've never thought about when it comes to around the time of the end of slavery of blacks in the US. It talks about all the issues. Just because it was illegal, didn't mean everything fell into a good place for anyone involved. It talks about black/white problems and problems between blacks and other blacks. It's worth reading for sure.
    • 3/5
      I picked up this book since Dubois is being extensively covered by Peter Adamson’s and Chike Jeffers’ Africana Philosophy podcast. He is undoubtedly an important US thinker, and it is well worth being acquainted with both him and his ideas.

      I debated whether to give the book a 3 or 4 star. The description of the difficulties of African American life under “Jim Crow” is vivid and gives important insights into this period. It’s at its best when telling the stories of individuals. Unfortunately, those stories sometimes veer into over sentimentality. Dubois is no Toni Morrison (although apparently he was an influence on her and many other Black American writers).

      Dubois has many interesting ideas, which he doesn’t spend enough time elaborating on in this book. He also is a man of his times, and he is influenced by contemporaneous ideas on “race character”, which often makes his thoughts sound quaint, or worse, even racist.

      As for his bone to pick with Washington, which he spends a lot of time on in this book, listen to the podcast to get some alternative views and insights on these two men and their ideas (and a whole lot more besides).

      Despite my giving it 3 stars, I still would recommend reading it
    • 5/5
      Du Bois densely eloquent, compelling, and evocative essays deliver an education into the history of the most terrifying and hideous centuries
      in the United States of America. It will inspire action to change our professed Democracy! Even more after the horror of January 6, 2021.

      The collection would have rated 5 stars if Du Bois had not revealed his own racial prejudice by repeatedly singling out "Russian Jews"
      and their behavior from the rest of "Whites."
    • 5/5
      note: I read a different edition, but the app isn't letting me pick which edition.

      du Bois has been criticised for both elitism and sexism, and I can see why. But even for me, who does not forgive those flaws lightly, the work outshines it's failings.

      this book is rightly one of the foundational texts of Africans studies, but it should be an equally foundational text in AMERICAN studies. it lays out, beautifully and convincingly, the reality of two Americas, existing side-by-side and the duality of experience of black Americans.

      More than once this book moved me to tears, but more it opened my eyes to things I had heard of but never fully understood.
    • 5/5
      W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk takes an in-depth look at slavery in America in the 19th century. It is composed of a collection of articles that Du Bois wrote for various publications. These articles touched on the sociological, historical, psychological, and economic aspects of slavery. Du Bois explored the lives of slaves on the plantations, their daily work, abuses by their masters, and spiritual underpinnings.
      Much of the author’s attention was focused on the necessity of Blacks receiving a proper education. It was hoped that through such knowledge in black institutions Blacks would be able to raise themselves out of this malaise. But a great deal of Du Bois’ speculations depended on if the white slave holders would embrace these goals. He however criticized Booker T. Washington for some of his policies concerning the black people he led. Washington didn’t have blacks concerned about the role of a political life in America. He was committed to an industrial education and acting in a condescending manner in white society that Du Bois saw as negatives of his character.
      Du Bois introduced each chapter of this book with lyrics from a Negro spiritual. He explained that singing such spirituals gave black slaves hope concerning the abolition of slavery, and the dawn of freedom. The black churches scattered throughout the length and breadth of the America served as their community, the center of social activities, and institutions of hope. These religious institutions provided for a much needed spiritual education that was lacking in the black schools that were dilapidated. All in all, the book presented an appalling spectacle of the evils of slavery. And it was quite different in tone from Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery that had a more positive spin.
    • 4/5
      Rated: B
      Du Bois wrote 10 essays the bring to light the reality of black society primarily in the deep South at the turn of the 20th century. His revelation of "double consciousness" still rings true today.

      "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 History of the American Negro is the history of this strive-this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face."
    • 4/5
      “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”

      “America is not another word for opportunity to all her sons.”

      This is my introduction into W.E.B. Dubois and what a fine place to start. This essay collection was written in 1903 but still feels as fresh and relevant, (maybe, even more so) as it was then. He discusses the many indignities of slavery and the racial injustices that continued through his day. I think this is essential reading for anyone interested in learning more about slavery and the African-American struggle, which continues, unabated, in 2019.
    • 4/5
      This nonfiction, essay was written in 1903 by W.E.B DuBois, a black American author, sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist. This essay talks about the problems facing blacks in America after the civil war and freedom. It even looks at how Booker T. Washington was not completely helpful in his support of black efforts. Du Bois opposed the Atlanta compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington which provided that Southern blacks would work and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic educational and economic opportunities. The author was the first African American to earn a doctorate in the United States and was a cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

      Rating:
      This book is nonfiction, was received as part of the summer free audio books for young people. The author made significant contribution to rights of blacks and Asians in both the US and in other colonies. This is an essay that spells out what he thinks is needed to advance African Americans. I rate it 4 (nonfiction)
    • 4/5
      A fairly interesting look at life - predominantly in the south - following the Civil War: a period generally known as Reconstruction. I like Du Bois's factual, yet artistic description of the failings - of the North, of the South, and even of black people to secure proper liberty following the war.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful, enlightening book. I learned a lot!!
    • 5/5
      The author's attempt, through various narratives, to assist white America in 1903 to perhaps come to a better understanding of the situation and condition of America's black population.

      DuBois is a masterful author. In this book he does everything from defending the Freedmen's Bureau to describing the plight of black people in a particular county in Georgia. He speaks of his own experiences as a college student, as a teacher, and of the loss of his own child to illness. He preserves the tunes of many a song and ends his book with a chapter on such songs.

      Above all things DuBois proves prophetic, declaring that the 20th century would be overshadowed by the "Negro problem" and perceiving that Reconstruction would be looked upon poorly for many generations and could only be seen in a more positive light once black America was re-enfranchised. He provides an important perspective, writing just as a new and quite powerful wave of resentment overcame the South in the form of the Jim Crow laws and even greater restrictions than before, standing a generation removed from slavery and yet with the stories of slaves still ringing in their ears, looking forward to struggle which would take the better part of the century...and after more than a century has still not come to a complete end.

      Over 100 years later the book remains compelling and a valuable read for any who would still wish to explore the "souls of black folk."
    • 4/5
      W.E.B. Du Bois narrates his journeys of the South after the Emancipation of slavery. It tells of the systemic racism that was institutionalized during this time.

      My professor at the University of Texas at Austin told me to read this after discussion of Booker T Washington's book, Up From Slavery. He said this gave a more accurate picture of the time. It was very eye-opening for me since I never studied this literature in my high school or college courses. As an education historian I used this book to make many connections about how African Americans were unfairly treated during the Reconstruction Era and beyond leading to current achievement gaps. It was a very dense book and took a lot of time to get through the content. My copy is full of highlighting, notes, and underlined pieces. I'm a better person for having read it!
    • 5/5
      A wonderful and true book. It is written in a strange, Victorian manner, which was probably the only way it could be published. But the stories of blacks in America are terrific and there is no denying that DuBois was something of a genius. His analysis of what the blacks gave to this country jibes with other books that I have read: music, clearing the land, and the Spirit.
      He is kinder than I would be to the idiotic white people of the south.
    • 5/5
      The collection of essays by W E B Du Bois shows the injustices and misunderstandings that our prejudices develop. The negro bondage and the ideas it spread in american society are explained. The way black folk react and adjust to this human inequality is the main subject of this valuable work. The chapters about the black faith and church are written in a beautiful style. The book sucedes in demonstrate that our prejudices are often the cause of our problems and miseries.
    • 3/5
      See the Kindle edition for my review of the content. For this audiobook edition, I might give 2½ stars.

      Mirron Willis's narration may have played a role in my feelings for the book, as his deep slow voice was soporific. I had to speed up the narration to 2x to get what felt like normal speed to me. Even at that speed, I had difficulty focusing on the narration and frequently ended up reading along to force my attention to the text.
    • 3/5
      Everything one could ask out of older, classic Science Fiction - creative (trippy scifi), deep (makes you think), and intentional (story teaches a moral and/or asks us to look at our humanity). Another side note is if Faulker would have written science fiction, he would have written like Sturgeon. Sturgeon slices a mean literary tale of an exploration into the evolution of our ethics. He does this through the coming together of several people with extrasensory powers that eventually merge into the gestalt, a group consciousness. What's interesting is we are just now seeing and hearing such discussions among the scientific and mystic communities of our evolutionary movement toward a systemic consciousness. If you're willing to let literature take you places, then pick up More Than Human.
    • 3/5
      The black experience is well documented in this work of fiction. Recommend.
    • 3/5
      I appreciate DuBois’s classic study of race as an historical document, and at times even as a piece of literature. I particularly value his depiction of the political, social and material conditions in the South immediately following the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War. Nevertheless, I question some of his proposals and conclusions. Although his views may have been radical in 1903, many of them now sound paternalistic and outdated. Perhaps that, in and of itself, is a sign of progress.
      The Souls of Black Folk, of course, is didactic. It’s also a polemic, for DuBois’s stated aims are to both instruct and convince his audience. Many indications in his prose suggest that he conceived his audience to be “the best kind” of white people, and more Northern, I think, than Southern. I don’t think his arguments are directed toward “the best kind” of Negro. I use these terms because they are his, and because this sorting of people, both black and white, into categories of “best” and “worst,” is one of the things that most irritates me about DuBois’s thinking. He touts The Talented Tenth (although he may not have coined this phrase, it became intimately associated with his ideas) as worthy candidates for a classical liberal education and as the source of leadership for “their race.” He admits the need for a sort of benevolent guardianship (by the Talented Tenth and enlightened whites) over the masses of unschooled and largely impoverished black folks in the South. He says, “the paths of peace winding between honest toil and dignified manhood call for the guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the black lowly and the black men emancipated by training and culture.”
      Besides the Talented Tenth, two other concepts are integral to Du Bois’s thinking, that of The Veil, which is both a physical and social demarcation of difference, and double-consciousness, defined as “a peculiar sensation, . . . this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others . . . . one ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro.”
      Although he argues against Booker T. Washington’s preaching of abandonment of political and social goals in order to focus solely on material gains for blacks, Du Bois himself proposes that blacks not fit to benefit from the education he proposes for The Talented Tenth should indeed settle for training in a trade and much more limited aspirations.(Apparently, Du Bois modified these views somewhat later in his life.) On the other hand, Du Bois is often forceful in his defense of equal rights for all blacks, for example, when he states, “Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.”
      Although many of the social conditions that Du Bois references have been ameliorated over time, some of his observations sound uncomfortably current today, such as the following: “the white folk say it [the county prison:] is ever full of black criminals,--the black folks say that only colored boys are ever sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor.”
    • 5/5
      This was an Audible impulse buy, but I'm glad I got it. DuBois, an African-American university professor in the early 1900s, wrote this book as a response to Booker T. Washington's plan for the post-slavery black community, and as a documentation of the kind of demoralization, fragmentation, and hopelessness of black America post-Civil War.

      Washington's approach was pragmatic. African-Americans should stop lobbying for political rights. (Perhaps he felt it would incite too much backlash?) They should not dream of going to college, but of attending technical schools and going into the trades. Black America will succeed by putting their heads down and working hard for economic prosperity, with healthy doses of thrift and sacrifice.

      DuBois' response was that a culture needs more than bread to live on. African-Americans needed to gain the ability to think about the world they live in, to articulate their experience and what they have to offer to our country. This could only come about through liberal education, not trade school alone. DuBois points out that the teachers at Washington's trade schools were not trained at trade schools, but at black colleges. These colleges also produced needed moral, spiritual, and intellectual leaders of the black community: professors, preachers, doctors, and other professionals.

      Besides, Du Bois points out, Washington's ethic of "buckle down, work hard" doesn't even work. Du Bois documents the very real economic plight of the supposedly freed men and women. Though they are legally free, they are trapped in a cycle of indebted tenant farming. The few who, through ingenuity and the luck of a few good harvests, save up the money to buy their own land, are often cheated by whites who take their money and run. This and other structural inequalities, such as poor education funding and unstable families due to the heritage of slavery, expose Washington's philosophy for the canard it is - so says Du Bois. This book has made me curious to read Washington and hear his side of the story.

      Formerly, said Du Bois, the 'best' blacks (the house slaves) and the 'best' whites were intimate, living together and having bonds of quasi-family ties; now they are segregated. How then can we understand one another? What's so sad is that most of this book can still apply today. In some ways, not much has changed for African-Americans living with the legacy of slavery and subsequent political and economic disenfranchisement. As a historical work, Du Bois' book is important to read 113 years later; his bristling literary style, full of high-brow literary allusions, only adds pleasure.
    • 5/5
      One of the toughest, most interesting non-fiction reads I've experienced.

      The Souls of Black Folk was required reading for me this year - although the class only dealt with five or so chapters, I was so intrigued by what I was reading that I had to finish the entire book.

      Each essay provided plenty of food for thought - but most interesting to me was the essay on the education of former slaves - what was appropriate and what was not. This is a part of history that really hasn't been part of my education, and not only did I find it enlightening, historically speaking, I also found it to be relevant today - for all types.

      With our focus on getting straight into college after high school (and my experience with some siblings that just doesn't work for), I think what Du Bois has to say is incredibly insightful. Not every person is cut out for a life of academia after high school, and specialized training is there for a reason. As I attend school, and each semester say goodbye to more and more friends who just, for whatever reason, are not coming back, I find myself thinking more about the ideas that Du Bois so eloquently writes down.

      I recommend this reading. I think everyone should read it - and I challenge you to do so.
    • 5/5
      I expected this book to be academic essays into the plight of southern Black citizens. Instead, I found flowing prose and descriptive narratives to recount his travels and share the struggles of "Black people." I especially found the story of his son touching. It is no wonder this has become a classic.
    • 5/5
      I'm not sure there is a way to praise this book higher than I would like to. Even its flaws only make it more of its time, more piercingly relevant, more obviously coming out of its context.I came in expecting a successor to Douglass, someone with one foot in prophetic mode and one foot in smackdown mode, and it's true that Du Bois does both of those things fantastically well. But what really gets to me is just how wide-ranging his skillset turns out to be, from long-form reportage to history and historiography, not to mention all this amateur art criticism around slave spirituals. Like a lot of great American writers of the period, he's insanely well-rounded: He can start with a hyper-detailed description of Atlanta, take you into what became the Historically Black Colleges, show you around dirt-poor sharecroppers and taxonomize them by relative levels of poverty and autonomy, tell funny and sad stories about the characters he's met in his travels, then turn around and use one of them to summarize Booker T. Washington and slice his whole program into little ribbons without losing his cool or his politeness. Two minutes later, you're getting a definition of "the veil" or "double consciousness," which people still have to debate the accuracy of as explanatory tools -- then suddenly some Old Testament-level high rhetoric and moral fury drops on you in great big paragraphs of furious dignity.You can tell he's staking out what he wants to call a moderate position here, acknowledging some things that we in the 21st century would call reactionary (the whole bit about the purported stunted moral character of ex-slaves, the Talented Tenth bit about "uplifting the race", and some very wide generalizing). But I don't know of very many people who ever worked in this short-essay form who ever did this better, or who appear to have had such a powerful effect on a debate by straight-up winning the argument.
    • 4/5
      It is impossible to rate The Souls of Black Folk too highly. It is a worthwhile read solely for the impact that it has had upon American society, both in its time and in the decades since its 1903 publication. The Souls of Black Folk was a major contribution to the African-American literary tradition, and it is also a cornerstone of the literature on sociology. Beyond its historical and educational value, though, I highly recommend this book to everyone for the piercing glimpses Du Bois offers into the souls of all men and women.

      W. E. B. Du Bois first came under the spotlight by opposing Booker T. Washington, a prominent member of the African-American community who emphasized the importance of accommodating the policies of race separation prevalent in a Jim Crow society.

      Du Bois believed that in order to attain suffrage, political representation, and civil rights, American society had to acknowledge the wrongs done to African-Americans and strive to integrate them fully into U.S. society. His book documented the conditions of post-slavery America while simultaneously arguing for improvements in the unequal black and white communities.

      Du Bois was an impassioned advocate for higher education. While Washington focused on educating blacks for the trades and manual labor, Du Bois insisted that blacks should have access to intellectual education rivaling that available to whites. As Manning Marable states in Living Black History,

      “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.” (96)

      However, more than simply a revealing microcosm of post–Civil War and Jim Crow society, The Souls of Black Folk offer brilliant glimpses into mankind as a whole, regardless of color. Du Bois discusses religion, politics, history, education, money, morality, music, and mortality. His chapter on death of his young son, his first child, is some of the most impressive, tender, and passionate prose I have ever read.

      It is easy—at least, it was for me—to pigeonhole Du Bois as a figure who did much for his race in the Jim Crow era, but whose work is outdated and useful only as a historical account. However, this view does Du Bois, and yourself for that matter, a disservice. I found his insight profound and his opinions valuable even after more than a century, and I learned a lot about the nature of people.

      The salience of The Souls of Black Folk attests to Du Bois’s insistence on the importance of an intellectual tradition, both among black thinkers and, on a grander scale, in the then-emerging field of sociology.

      Though at times the book seems to be a rather disparate collection of essays loosely centered on African-American (and cultural) identity, that connection serves, in fact,. to emphasize that topic’s importance by displaying the ways in which racism was affecting all areas of African-American life.

      I have one piece of advice for enjoying this book: I listened to it on audiobook, and I’ve discovered that I tend to pay better attention to stories than intellectual discourse in audiobook format. If you’re anything like me, you may want to read a paperback or e-book. You’ll want to highlight dozens of passages anyway!
    • 5/5
      I read this book for the first time when I was in my doctoral coursework taking a historical philosophy course. EXCELLENT book! Within two weeks of reading it I was visiting my hometown in the south. While there I reread the book and (WOW!)saw that although we think things have changed, they haven't. The dreams of Dubois in 1904 are still unrealized. I have recommended this book to many friends and colleagues. They have the same reactions to the book. It is a must read and should be studied by all post-secondary students.
    • 5/5
      You must experience this book by reading it for the first time. I don't know how I left college without ever reading essential DuBois. The book is basically a snap shot of the historical events he witnessed, his observation and relations with people and commentary. The writing style AWESOME, complicated, and balanced, all at the same time.

      What I can appreciate most is that the book is as much a guide on credit, debt, personal financial loss and charity, as it is on social and political science.

      Shortly after the war the freedmen contributed $750,000 to their educational betterment, purchased land, started various business enterprises, and saved with Freedmen's Bureau Bank. This showed incredible thrift on their part, a kind of thrift that can be admired even today.
    • 5/5
      Experience the last two centuries in the lives of Black Americans...feel their plight for more understanding.....to read this is to know why.!
    • 5/5
      One of the great enduring concepts: "double-consciousness."

    Book preview

    The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. Du Bois

    I

    Of Our Spiritual Strivings

    O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,

    All night long crying with a mournful cry,

    As I lie and listen, and cannot understand

    The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,

    O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?

    All night long the water is crying to me.

    Unresting water, there shall never be rest

    Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,

    And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;

    And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,

    All life long crying without avail,

    As the water all night long is crying to me.

    ARTHUR SYMONS.

    Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

    And yet, being a problem is a strange experience—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden school-house, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards—ten cents a package—and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card—refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head—some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

    After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. 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 history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

    This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness—it is the contradiction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan—on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde—could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.

    Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites. In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At last it came—suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences:

    "Shout, O children!

    Shout, you’re free!

    For God has bought your liberty!"

    Years have passed away since then—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast. In vain do we cry to this our vastest social problem:

    "Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves

    Shall never tremble!"

    The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.

    The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him. And why not? Had not votes made war and emancipated millions? Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything impossible to a power that had done all this? A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom. So the decade flew away, the revolution of 1876 came, and left the half-free serf weary, wondering, but still inspired. Slowly but steadily, in the following years, a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power—a powerful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. It was the ideal of book-learning; the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know. Here at last seemed to have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan; longer than the highway of Emancipation and law, steep and rugged, but straight, leading to heights high enough to overlook life.

    Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly, heavily, doggedly; only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull understandings, of the dark pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn. It was weary work. The cold statistician wrote down the inches of progress here and there, noted also where here and there a foot had slipped or some one had fallen. To the tired climbers, the horizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no resting-place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and self-examination; it changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect. In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself—darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the first time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead-weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem. He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance—not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.

    A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the higher against the lower races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil—before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm and discourage any nation save that black host to whom discouragement is an unwritten word.

    But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate. Whisperings and portents came home upon the four winds: Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men? Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud—and behold the suicide of a race! Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of good—the more careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes’ social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of progress.

    So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and stress to-day rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the world-sea; there is within and without the sound of conflict, the burning of body and rending of soul; inspiration strives with doubt, and faith with vain questionings. The bright ideals of the past—physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands—all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong—all false? No, not that, but each alone was over-simple and incomplete—the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. The training of the schools we need to-day more than ever—the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defence—else what shall save us from a second slavery? Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek—the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty—all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race; the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day on American soil two world-races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack. We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are today no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good-humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs?

    Merely a concrete test of the underlying principles of the great republic is the Negro Problem, and the spiritual striving of the freedmen’s sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their strength, but who bear it in the name of an historic race, in the name of this the land of their fathers’ fathers, and in the name of human opportunity.

    And now what I have briefly sketched in large outline let me on coming pages tell again in many ways, with loving emphasis and deeper detail, that men may listen to the striving in the souls of black folk.

    II

    Of the Dawn of Freedom

    Careless seems the great Avenger;

    History’s lessons but record

    One death-grapple in the darkness

    ’Twixt old systems and the Word;

    Truth forever on the scaffold,

    Wrong forever on the throne;

    Yet that scaffold sways the future,

    And behind the dim unknown

    Standeth God within the shadow

    Keeping watch above His own.

    LOWELL.

    The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War; and however much they who marched South and North in 1861 may have fixed on the technical points, of union and local autonomy as a shibboleth, all nevertheless knew, as we know, that the question of Negro slavery was the real cause of the conflict. Curious it was, too, how this deeper question ever forced itself to the surface despite effort and disclaimer. No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth—What shall be done with Negroes? Peremptory military commands this way and that, could not answer the query; the Emancipation Proclamation seemed but to broaden and intensify the difficulties; and the War Amendments made the Negro problems of to-day.

    It is the aim of this essay to study the period of history from 1861 to 1872 so far as it relates to the American Negro. In effect, this tale of the dawn of Freedom is an account of that government of men called the Freedmen’s Bureau—one of the most singular and interesting of the attempts made by a great nation to grapple with vast problems of race and social condition.

    The war has naught to do with slaves, cried Congress, the President, and the Nation; and yet no sooner had the armies, East and West, penetrated Virginia and Tennessee than fugitive slaves appeared within their lines. They came at night, when the flickering camp-fires shone like vast unsteady

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