Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept

by W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Editor), Kwame Anthony Appiah (Introduction)

W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas, including the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Du Bois was also a prolific author of novels, autobiographical accounts, innumerable editorials and journalistic pieces, and several works of history.
Dusk of Dawn, published in 1940, is an explosive autobiography of the foremost African American scholar of his time. Du Bois writes movingly of his own life, using personal experience to elucidate the systemic problem of race. He reflects on his childhood, his education, and his intellectual life, including the formation of the NAACP. Though his views eventually got him expelled from the association, Du Bois continues to develop his thoughts on separate black economic and social institutions in Dusk of Dawn. Readers will find energetic essays within these pages, including insight into his developing Pan-African consciousness. With a series introduction by editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and an introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah, this edition is essential for anyone interested in African American history.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, Philosophy, Sociology, History, American History, Essays

220 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

In 1868, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced 'doo-boyz') was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk College in Nashville, then earned his BA in 1890 and his MS in 1891 from Harvard. Du Bois studied at the University of Berlin, then earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1894. He taught economics and history at Atlanta University from 1897-1910. The Souls of Black Folk (1903) made his name, in which he urged black Americans to stand up for their educational and economic rights. Du Bois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and edited the NAACP's official journal, "Crisis," from 1910 to 1934. Du Bois turned "Crisis" into the foremost black literary journal. The black nationalist expanded his interests to global concerns, and is called the "father of Pan-Africanism" for organizing international black congresses.

Although he used some religious metaphor and expressions in some of his books and writings, Du Bois called himself a freethinker. In "On Christianity," a posthumously published essay, Du Bois critiqued the black church: "The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer." Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party and officially repudiated his U.S. citizenship at the end of his life, dying in his adopted country of Ghana. D. 1963.

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Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This remarkable volume is a collection of autobiographical essays in which this eminent scholar and thinker writes about key moments and insights throughout his long life. Most of these deal with the earlier decades of the 20th century, although he has a couple of powerful ones written around 1940 as well. (Note: He also wrote an independent autobiography.)
Incredibly rich throughout, of necessity I am going to highlight just a few of the points in which I took greatest interest, even though each essay is truly a “teaching moment.”
By the latter part of the 19th century, Du Bois had already taken issue several times with aspects of the eminent Booker Washington, also a truly great man but with whom Du Bois differed strongly on attitude, education, and role that Black people should play in these difficult years of Jim Crow laws and segregated institutions.
In his earlier collection – The Souls of Black Folk – he wrote at some length about these earlier differences. In this volume, he goes into more detail about how the Tuskegee Institute – the organization founded by Washington but made viable through the financial support of wealthy white backers – pretty much controlled the scope of what was possible in both thought and action, at least until Mr. Washington’s death just before US entry into World War I.
Du Bois never accepted some of Mr. Washington’s core precepts – especially, that given the tenuous situation occupied by the former slaves following the collapse of Reconstruction, Blacks – then called Negroes – ought to basically keep their heads down, attain basic education aimed at the trades, be wary of behaving “uppity,” and prove their worth before asking for much more.
While Du Bois did early share Mr. Washington’s belief that proof of Black’s abilities would gradually soften white resistance, he quickly came to understand that there was much more behind segregation and white hatred and resentment than ignorance. He early understood that this was rooted in cultural and economic factors that were firmly in the control of white people. He also knew that the distortions of Darwin’s discoveries – namely, that there were definite, and different, “races” as was evident by skin-color and physiological differences, and that of these the whites were superior and all people of color – especially Blacks – inferior. He understood that clinging to this belief was all that poor and disrespected whites had, and that they would fight like hell to preserve this cultural bracketing.
In his essays on the early decades of the 20th century, Du Bois details the considerable efforts placed in organizing Black people and their white allies in order to educate, advance understanding of Black needs, and to push for changes desperately needed to give Blacks the chance to attain a better, if not exactly equal, status.
In a remarkable essay from 1940, Du Bois discusses how the inevitability of economic change – resulting from the havoc wrought by the Great Depression as well as from the war clouds gathering over Europe – would demand new responses from society, in industrial and business organization and methods, of course, but also in how citizens, very much including Blacks, would be able to advance and cooperate under these new circumstances.
He writes of how although he was never a Communist he did admire Karl Marx for his insight into how economic arrangements influenced – not “controlled” – every aspect of life and that, if people such as workers, women and Blacks were to have a chance at greater opportunities, then the time was now to begin anticipating those changes and to plan on how best to capitalize on them for the benefit of the greater good.
Du Bois was a remarkable man and is also a very gifted writer. I learned a great deal from this book, and I suspect other Americans (and citizens of other cultures) will too. He possesses the great gift of being able to unfold for us how the “things” and methods of our own country really work. The challenge is that after we have been given the gift of seeing will we have the gumption to do anything to change matters.
We will never have a more just and equal society until the majority of Americans take such a challenge seriously.

[Malik Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

my god. Du Bois is not only prophetic, but a prophet. his life is magnificent, spanning nearly a century, from just after the civil war to just before the passing of the civil rights act, reading his autobiography is to profoundly grasp the movement of History.

[kripsoo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some reviewers refer to DuBois as "the Black Emerson" and as a university instructor I heard similar references made 'the Black Dewey" or the Black Park referring to the Chicago School scholars Du Bois was brilliant indeed, these white men should be being called "the white Du Bois" Du Bois literally created the scientific method of observation and qualitative research. With the junk being put out today in the name of "dissertations," simply re-read Du Bois' work on the Suppression of the African Slave Trade and his work on the Philadelphia Negro and it is clear that he needs not be compared to any white man of his time or any other he was a renaissance man who cared about his people and unlike too many of the scholars of day he didn't just talk the talk or write the trite he walked the walk and organized the unorganizable
White racism suffered because Du Bois raised the consciousness of the black masses. But he did more than that; by renouncing his American citizenship and moving to Ghana, he proved that Pan Africanism is not just something to preach or write about (ala Molefi Asante, Tony Martin, Jeffries and other Africanists) it is a way of life both a means and an end Du Bois organized the first ever Pan African Congress and, in doing so, set the stage for Afrocentricity, Black Studies and the Bandung Conference which would be held in 1954 in Bandung Indonesia Du Bois not only affected people in this country he was a true internationalist

[Andre · Rating 4 out of 5]

This inquiry about the African Diaspora is a testament of Dubois’s exceptional scientific acuity and his powerful imagination. DuBois writes for us ‘an autobiography of a race.’ This general idea alone validates the book as a highly creative concept. Anyone with experience in writing can imagine this project being a daunting task. It is a great contribution to understanding the matters of racial exploitation. By the same token, the only thing I can mull over is the sheer amount of knowledge missing in the world about the African Diaspora. This book offers colorful depictions about my heritage, but it also makes me feel the void of all that is lost for the cause of western expansion. You envision a multitude of people devoid of their cultural identity. Whole-hearted liberties are bounded up due to a culture’s narrow economic focus. With renewed feeling, the reader abhors the cost it took to build in the US what seems like a gaudy monstrosity.
I’m not sure whether to see DuBois as an artistic intellectual or an intellectual artist. The ebb and flow in his descriptions of African beauty and a racial identity pours over your mind in the most cooling way. His words unearth treasures that have long been buried under the sands of hatred, exploitation and oppression. DuBois words are eternal. The words are gems that humanity will always have access to when perceiving life as a romance. The spirit of the book is summarized in the following words. "What was wrong was that I and people like many thousands of others who might have my ability and aspiration, were refused permission to be a part of this world. It was as though moving on a rushing express, my main thought was as to the relations I had to the other passengers on the express, and not to its rate of speed and its destination. In the day of my formal education, my interest was concentered upon the race struggle. The fight on the moving car had to do with my relations to the car and its folk; but on the whole, nothing to do with the car's own movement."
The Colored World Within
The root of the whole book is planted in the chapter “The Colored World Within.” In this chapter, DuBois speaks of the "double environment" that encompasses the black American experience. There is this white surrounding world and this closer all-encompassing black world that is formed. DuBois acknowledges that the outer white world is more intelligent, richer, and has better legal and governmental systems to sustain its community. Furthermore, he points out that the black American is not naturally stupid or criminal or unhealthy or impoverished. There are systemic restraints that place people against the odds. Again, in his words, “…the fact remains that there are among 12 million American Negroes, there are today poverty, ignorance, bad manners, disease, and crime………..Above all the Negro is poor: poor by heritage from two-hundred forty-four years of chattel slavery, by emancipation without land or capital and by seventy five years of additional wage exploitation and crime peonage.” These words destroy the lurking ignorance that strikes at the minds of millions of Americans in today’s media-sphere.

The most significant part of this chapter is DuBois accurate depiction of the structure of the Black American class. He likens it to a steeple with a strong base with a pointed top. The pointed top represents the small number of black people in the higher classes. He stays on track and depicts the white class structure as a tower that bulges in the middle before thinning at the top- this top, however, being much larger in circumference than the pointed steeple of the black American class. These are shapes that are still present in today’s sketch. Dusk of Dawn dispels myths that have been used as techniques to create confusion. Modern man questions why the African-American race has not come out of its obscurity. The author answers back with a scientific breakdown, which is today’s most acceptable methodology. He appraises the police tyranny in the black community, not to mention the poor housing, the insufficient hospitalization, the underfunded education system, the weak legal system, the high unemployment rate, and the meager earnings per household in order to silence the condescending voices. He takes into account society’s obsession with the ‘exceptions’ as means to justify a theory of non-existing racial barriers. He reminds people that it takes a lot more to sweep a whole race of people out of their unfavorable conditions. Another topic in ‘The Colored World Within’ is the isolation of the educated and higher wage- earning Negro. DuBois states that this particular individual is wedged between a race oppressing economic machine and an ‘ignorant, anti-social low cultural black American class’. The reader has to be cognizant of DuBois impartial observations. His descriptions can come off as too blunt. However, there is a duality between his cold hypothesis and poetic imagery that coexist throughout the whole book.

One last word
Altogether, this book is a treasure that is meant to last forever. I believe these scientific accounts on the race problem in America will be studied in a future post modern world. DuBois is a giant in our very young trial in understanding American society. He makes known that there are undeniable certainties that scream for settlement. These pressing needs have erupted here and there in the last 150 years. Bear in mind that this volcano will deface the American fantasy if we continue to ignore these issues.

[Cary Brecher · Rating 3 out of 5]

a little too all over the place for my tastes but i understand why

[Miranda Chen]

Read Chapter V The Concept of Race and Chapter VI The White World.

[Sara-Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘But why have you black and yellow men done nothing better or even as good in the history of the world?’
We have, often.
“I never heard of it.”
Lions have no historians.
“It is idiotic even to discuss it. Look around and see the pageantry of the world. It belongs to white men; it is the expression of white power; it is the product of white brains. Who can have the effrontery to stand for a moment and compare with this white triumph, yellow and brown anarchy and black savagery?”
You are obsessed by the swiftness of the gliding of the sled at the bottom of the hill. You say: what tremendous power must have caused its speed, and how wonderful is Speed. You think of the rider as the originator and inventor of that vast power. You admire his poise and sang-froid, his utter self-absorption. You say: surely here is the son of God and he shall reign forever and forever.
You are wrong, quite wrong. Away back on the level stretches of the mountain tops in the forests, amid drifts and driftwood, this sled was slowly and painfully pushed on its little hesitating start. It took power, but the power of sweating, courageous men, not of demigods. As the sled slowly started and gained momentum, it was the Law of Being that gave it speed, and the grace of God that steered its lone, scared passengers. Those passengers, white, black, red and yellow, deserve credit for their balance and pluck. But many times it was sheer luck that made the road not land the white man in the gutter, as it had others so many times before, and as it may him yet. He has gone farther than others because of others whose very falling made hard ways iced and smooth for him to traverse. His triumph is a triumph not of himself alone, but of humankind, from the pusher in the primeval forests to the last flier through the winds of the twentieth century.” (149-150)

[Christian Schwoerke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Born just three years after the end of the Civil War, William Edward Burghardt DuBois, grew up in race-tolerant Great Barrington, Massachusetts, attaining academic honors at his high school, Fisk University in Nashville, TN, Harvard University, and at the University of Berlin. DuBois was foremost a scholar and intellectual, even somewhat a dandy, but he made his life’s work the elevation of his race. There are glimmers of a passion in Dusk of Dawn, but DuBois has chosen to describe his life in terms of his work, which transforms his autobiography into a chronicle of post-Emancipation Black cultural, political, and social evolution in American society, from 1865 - 1940.

Throughout this historical account of Blacks rising out of slavery-bred ignorance/illiteracy, WEB DuBois makes clear his own belief in the necessity of education to bridge the gap between the races. After many years with the NAACP and as an editor/writer for The Crisis magazine, DuBois observes that reason and rationality are insufficient to stifle prejudice, that no matter how clearly articulated the rationale(s) for integration and peaceful/cooperative existence, a majority of the American white populace harbors emotions they cannot or will not abrogate to a common good.

DuBois’ early career was in opposition to George Washington Carver’s policies of appeasement and accommodation, which he felt trapped Blacks in the role of dependents. DuBois’ long-held vision was to coordinate/develop a parallel society, where Black educational, social, and financial success would compel from white Americans a willingness to work together as equals. Ironically, this is the idealist’s vision of the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which instead led to segregation and Jim Crow laws that never conceded the “equal” in separate but equal. At this book’s publication in 1940, DuBois and his readers can acknowledge and celebrate the vast elevation of the Black race from slavery and universal ignorance; at the same time, he and his readers have to acknowledge that white America’s grudging benevolence is galling, especially when white political/financial/social institutions continue to thwart fair dealing/practices no less than lynch mobs.

This is a fascinating book, which well illuminates the post-Emancipation predicament facing Blacks who’d known no independent existence, who were given little direction and little help in becoming full-fledged American citizens. The shameful ignominy of white persecution and obstructionism is detailed without ostentation, and it’s in this almost academic way that it becomes all the more chilling to realize just how readily white Americans resisted Black advancement, its apotheosis the resurrection of the Klan, Jim Crow laws, and decades of lynchings. DuBois’ slow realization that more than reason is needed to solve the Black-white divide rings even more true today. Disconcertingly, even after more than 80 years since the book’s publication, it seems that little has changed in the American white psyche, and institutional white America remains ambivalently, contradictorily racist, with all promised legal, political, social, and educational guarantees calculatedly undermined/diluted/withheld by fearful, irrational impulses.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It had always been my ambition to write; to seek through the written word the expression of my relation to the world and of the world to me.” W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois’s biggest claim to fame was his status as an intellectual. The fact that he was such a prolific writer means we’re fortunate enough to have his many works and important words at our disposal today.

And good thing… because much of what Du Bois writes about is still so very relevant today.

Du Bois wrote the Dusk of Dawn at age 72. Largely autobiographical, it clearly outlines Du Bois’ evolution of thought concerning economics, poverty and the biggest problems facing Black Americans. His earliest world views were greatly influenced by his upbringing in a small New England community. Years spent living in the South and traveling the globe altered many of those views.

For me, this book was the perfect introduction to Du Bois. His accomplishments early in life were nothing short of amazing, and the influence he had on race relations in America and the world remains unequaled (in my opinion). Even the NAACP—at a time when it and Du Bois were parting ways—spoke glowingly of his unprecedented achievements:

“…the ideas which he propounded in [the Crisis, the official publication of NAACP since 1910, first created by Du Bois] and in his books and essays transformed the Negro world as well as a large portion of the liberal white world, so that the whole problem of the relation of black and white races has ever since had a completely new orientation. He created, what never existed before, a Negro intelligentsia, and many who have never read a word of his writings are his spiritual disciples and descendants.”

Delving into Du Bois (by way of this book and a number of podcast episodes I've stumbled upon) has created a new super-fan. This won’t be the last Du Bois book I read, not by a longshot.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

W.E.B. Du Bois, (pronounced (du-Boyz) the greatest Black public intellectual of the twentieth century, was of mixed African-English-Dutch-French ancestry. This qualified him to use his own life as a metaphor for the black experience in America, from slavery to Jim Crow, and in the case of Du Bois, defying segregation to enter Harvard. Du Bois was not a man of small ego. When someone congratulated him on being the first black Ph.D. from Harvard, in history, Du Bois replied, "The honor, I assure you, was Harvard's". His own remarkable life provided Du Bois with the concept that black intellectuals, "the talented tenth", should be at the forefront of civil rights, from stopping lynching to filing suits to end American apartheid. Historian, editor (THE CRISIS newspaper), and celebrated polemicist (THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK) Du Bois was a giant of a man whose life we are not likely to see again soon. Read him.

[Slagle Rock · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book after three other titles by the author. I found the first half made for compelling reading but the second part felt a few times like required reading that I had to push a bit to get through. There was some overlap with other work, most notably The Sould of Black Folk and the Orderal of Mansart. At times I appreciated the clarification and reinforcement of ideas I'd been exposed to in the earlier reads but, in comparison, I think the organization of ideas in this title was not as tight. At other times, the discussion of the author's accomplishments went a bit farther than I found necessary, but I think the detail is probably useful to scholars of Du Bois' life. Overall, I'd say the other titles are 5 star reading; this one is perhaps less essential to readers just starting out with this author.

[Ivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

FIRST LINE REVIEW: "From 1868 to 1940 stretch seventy-two mighty years, which are incidentally the years of my own life but more especially years of cosmic significance, when one remembers that they rush from the American Civil War to the reign of the second Roosevelt; from Victoria to the Sixth George; from the Franco-Prussian to the two World Wars." And this amazing span of a life is captured through the lens of one of African Americans greatest champions. Sadly, though this "autobiography of a Race Concept" was written in 1940, it strongly echoes the same challenges being fought today. Disheartening, at best...

[lalo🌸 lover of books · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Love is God and Work is His prophet; His ministers are Age and Death."

"Life has its pain and evil-its bitter disappointments; but I like a good novel and in healthful length of days, there is infinite joy in seeing the word, the most interesting of continued stories, unfold, even though one misses THE END."

(all on page 366)

I read this book for class. The closing line was beautiful.

[Jeremiah Khaldun]

It was great

[Jae Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

DuBois autobiography. He contextualizes his work and ideas up until the late 1930s. Particularly poignant are his reflections on the mental toll of racial discrimination on black people and his reflection on his long life doing work that he loved. I loved his summary of his contribution to the black intellectual and political traditions. The complexity of his ideas and leadership is once again on display as he discusses his early involvement in the development of pan African and black power philosophies. Modern activists and thinkers can continue to benefit from the nuance and clarity of his vision. DuBois shows how pan African and black power approaches can be strategically deployed to eliminate race caste and the economic subordination of all people throughout the world.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can my friends tell that I am taking a class on W.E.B. Du Bois this semester? It seems that he is all that I read. This is written in an autobiogrpahy style. He applies his life to the rest of the African-American population.

[Mandla Nyindodo]

A glimpse of Black History through the eyes of an enlightened human being. Stay woke!