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The Souls of Black Folk: with The Talented Tenth and The Souls of White Folks
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African American intellectuals--a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose 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, Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into life at the turn of the 20th century still ring true.
This is the 2018 updated Penguin Classics edition with a new introduction by Ibram Kendi and the essays The Talented Tenth and The Souls of White Folk included. The ISBN has been moved from the older Penguin Classics edition.
This is the 2018 updated Penguin Classics edition with a new introduction by Ibram Kendi and the essays The Talented Tenth and The Souls of White Folk included. The ISBN has been moved from the older Penguin Classics edition.
266 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2018
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About the author
W.E.B. Du Bois
604 books1,512 followersIn 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.
More: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stori...
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0his...
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/dub...
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.
More: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stori...
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0his...
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/dub...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
June 29, 2024
This is a classic for a reason, and it's more accessible than some of his longer works might be for a lot of people. The Souls of Black Folk is a collection of essays that range from on the ground portrayals of Black people in America circa 1903, to philosophical discussions of racism and "double-consciousness". It's a collection well worth reading and is both informative and incisive. There are a few pieces that don't entirely hold up to conversations today, but it gives a great indication of what conversations were happening at the time.
November 26, 2023
As nonfiction written in an older, formal style of language, this is more challenging to read than my usual fare of science fiction/fantasy but worth it. Reading things like this makes me wish that instead of graduating once I had enough credits, I could have gone to college for a couple of years and taken more classes, just for the education.
This is a collection of essays, but they’re not dry discussions of sociology; they are heartfelt and passionate. So much relates to things I've read or seen about slavery, Jim Crow, the South. There are so many connections to injustices happening in society still to this day.
It’s sometimes hard to believe this was written well over a hundred years ago, it is so pertinent to current events and problems. It is heartbreaking. (Note: This seminal work is the sort that …certain people and governors… want to keep young people from reading.)
If you don’t have time for the whole book, these two are impressive:
Of the Passing of the First-Born - the DuBois’ baby boy. Exquisite writing.
Of the Coming of John - a parable / short story about a white boy and a black boy from the same Southern town.
The Forethought
I. Of Our Spiritual Strivings
II. Of the Dawn of Freedom
III. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
IV. Of the Meaning of Progress
V. Of the Wings of Atalanta
VI. Of the Training of Black Men
VII. Of the Black Belt
VIII. Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece
IX. Of the Sons of Master and Man
X. Of the Faith of the Fathers
XI. Of the Passing of the First-Born
XII. Of Alexander Crummell
XIII. Of the Coming of John
XIV. The Sorrow Songs
The Afterthought
In my edition, also:
The Talented Tenth - proposal on how to educate more African American people
The Souls Of White Folk (1920) - reflection on the perception of skin color in history, colonialism, warfare, and “whiteness” in general.
This is a collection of essays, but they’re not dry discussions of sociology; they are heartfelt and passionate. So much relates to things I've read or seen about slavery, Jim Crow, the South. There are so many connections to injustices happening in society still to this day.
It’s sometimes hard to believe this was written well over a hundred years ago, it is so pertinent to current events and problems. It is heartbreaking. (Note: This seminal work is the sort that …certain people and governors… want to keep young people from reading.)
If you don’t have time for the whole book, these two are impressive:
Of the Passing of the First-Born - the DuBois’ baby boy. Exquisite writing.
Of the Coming of John - a parable / short story about a white boy and a black boy from the same Southern town.
The Forethought
I. Of Our Spiritual Strivings
II. Of the Dawn of Freedom
III. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
IV. Of the Meaning of Progress
V. Of the Wings of Atalanta
VI. Of the Training of Black Men
VII. Of the Black Belt
VIII. Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece
IX. Of the Sons of Master and Man
X. Of the Faith of the Fathers
XI. Of the Passing of the First-Born
XII. Of Alexander Crummell
XIII. Of the Coming of John
XIV. The Sorrow Songs
The Afterthought
In my edition, also:
The Talented Tenth - proposal on how to educate more African American people
The Souls Of White Folk (1920) - reflection on the perception of skin color in history, colonialism, warfare, and “whiteness” in general.
November 21, 2023
"The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. Du Bois is an essential book in the line of African-American writing. From Frederick Douglass to Malcolm X and beyond we can see the progression of thought as Black Americans slowly become empowered to change their situation. There is still a long way to go but it is interesting to see Du Bois take on Booker T. Washington in a battle of ideas about the place of Blacks in America after the failure of Reconstruction. I'm sure this book has been banned in Florida since it is a key component in critical race theory.
July 20, 2019
Every American should read this book, especially given today's renewed racial strife stirred by forces of white supremacy.
Although written in 1903, during the time of Jim Crow and in the ashes of Reconstruction, it resonates today. The language is powerful and not at all "old timey". The final essay, The Souls of White Folks, is a devastating critique of the colonial factors underlying the first World War.
Although written in 1903, during the time of Jim Crow and in the ashes of Reconstruction, it resonates today. The language is powerful and not at all "old timey". The final essay, The Souls of White Folks, is a devastating critique of the colonial factors underlying the first World War.
December 30, 2024
The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois [1903].
A seminal sociological text, imbued with elements of memoir, The Souls of Black Folk is a collection of 14 interrelated essays on various aspects of race. From Emancipation to Reconstruction to the era of Jim Crow segregation, Du Bois describes the lives of Black Americans. He argues that they need access to higher education (classical, rather than industrial education), political power and social equality. In the text, Du Bois famously describes the “double consciousness” of Black life, defined as “a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.”
Portions of this book originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly.
***
W.E.B. Du Bois [1868-1963] was a sociologist and Civil Rights activist, who was the first Black American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University. He was a leader of the Niagara Movement seeking racial equality and a founder of the NAACP. Du Bois’s books include: Black Reconstruction in America and John Brown. He died in Ghana in 1963.
A seminal sociological text, imbued with elements of memoir, The Souls of Black Folk is a collection of 14 interrelated essays on various aspects of race. From Emancipation to Reconstruction to the era of Jim Crow segregation, Du Bois describes the lives of Black Americans. He argues that they need access to higher education (classical, rather than industrial education), political power and social equality. In the text, Du Bois famously describes the “double consciousness” of Black life, defined as “a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.”
Portions of this book originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly.
***
W.E.B. Du Bois [1868-1963] was a sociologist and Civil Rights activist, who was the first Black American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University. He was a leader of the Niagara Movement seeking racial equality and a founder of the NAACP. Du Bois’s books include: Black Reconstruction in America and John Brown. He died in Ghana in 1963.
June 6, 2025
i read “the souls of white folk” from this collection for my class. some quotes that really hit me:
“Instead of standing as a great example of the success of democracy and the possibility of human brotherhood America has taken her place as an awful example of its pitfalls and failures…”
“A belief in humanity is a belief in colored men. If the uplift of mankind must be done by men then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of the darker nations.”
a very powerful analysis on white violence, morality, and the commodification of black bodies. truly was fantastic in making me reflect on the origins of whiteness, how the concept arose as a way to oppress others, and how that is viewed by much older countries and groups of people.
“Instead of standing as a great example of the success of democracy and the possibility of human brotherhood America has taken her place as an awful example of its pitfalls and failures…”
“A belief in humanity is a belief in colored men. If the uplift of mankind must be done by men then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of the darker nations.”
a very powerful analysis on white violence, morality, and the commodification of black bodies. truly was fantastic in making me reflect on the origins of whiteness, how the concept arose as a way to oppress others, and how that is viewed by much older countries and groups of people.
June 16, 2022
The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.
I'd been wanting to get into W.E.B. Du Bois' works for some time, and when I saw this beautiful "Penguin Vitae" edition of The Souls of Black Folk: With the Talented Tenth and the Souls of White Folk, I knew I just had to have it.
Onto the contents of the book, there's a very nice introduction written by Ibram X. Kendi (author of How to Be an Antiracist, among many other greats), followed by some suggestions for further reading. After this, we finally begin The Souls of Black Folk.
Throughout the book, Du Bois swings back and forth between an almost poetic prose and a more traditional textbook style. Some may find this to be disjointed and/or annoying, but I personally enjoyed it. Books from this era and before tend to lose me off and on, especially denser works, however, I found myself laser-focused on Du Bois' observations and findings.
Comparing all these pages, written over a century ago, to the world as it exists today, we as a society really haven't progressed much.
W.E.B. Du Bois was an incredibly brilliant man, and while he wasn't without his own blind-spots and shortcomings, I would say that The Souls of Black Folk: With the Talented Tenth and the Souls of White Folk is a timeless, invaluable work of sociology, as well as an essential piece of African-American writing. I hope more and more people read the works of Du Bois and other great Black minds.
February 18, 2022
4.5
An excellent voice on the state of Black American communities in the post-emancipation United States. Du Bois writes carefully and articulately but also spares no harsh criticism of the White Americans who contributed to the early-2oth century racism that continued through until his death. "Of the Dawn of Freedom" offers a valuable, emic recount of the failings of Reconstruction—despite the work of the laudable Freedmen's Bureau; "Of the Sons of Master and Man" places the reader in the center of Black American communities' struggling to rise above their stations; and "Of the Coming of John" details the tragic story of the lynching of one Black American teacher's efforts to confront Southern hatred.
My edition also included a forward by Dr. Ibram Kendi and Du Bois' additional pieces "The Talented Tenth" and "The Souls of White Folk" all of which greatly complemented the main work. As the Ohio Enterprise wrote of this book with its initial publication, it "should be read and studied by every person."
An excellent voice on the state of Black American communities in the post-emancipation United States. Du Bois writes carefully and articulately but also spares no harsh criticism of the White Americans who contributed to the early-2oth century racism that continued through until his death. "Of the Dawn of Freedom" offers a valuable, emic recount of the failings of Reconstruction—despite the work of the laudable Freedmen's Bureau; "Of the Sons of Master and Man" places the reader in the center of Black American communities' struggling to rise above their stations; and "Of the Coming of John" details the tragic story of the lynching of one Black American teacher's efforts to confront Southern hatred.
My edition also included a forward by Dr. Ibram Kendi and Du Bois' additional pieces "The Talented Tenth" and "The Souls of White Folk" all of which greatly complemented the main work. As the Ohio Enterprise wrote of this book with its initial publication, it "should be read and studied by every person."
May 23, 2023
A classic. Fascinating to read, on multiple levels, though my favorite essay of his, "The Souls of White Folk", while collected in this edition, was published twenty years later.
I'll be coming back to this as it's referenced elsewhere, especially as I dig in more to the Harlem Renaissance.
I'll be coming back to this as it's referenced elsewhere, especially as I dig in more to the Harlem Renaissance.
April 6, 2022
Go read “Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece,” and “The Souls of White Folk” right now.
August 27, 2023
3.5, the essays in the middle of the collection are a slight slog, but the last essay in this edition, "the souls of white folk," is a standout
July 4, 2020
What was most remarkable was the prescience Du Bois wrote with, so much could be said exactly the same today, which is altogether more devastating. Published in 1903!
Plus, the introduction by Ibram X Kendi was excellent and very insightful as to the life of Du Bois and context about the time he lived in.
I am including some (many) passages which I want to remember and come back to.
III Of Mr Booker T Washington
Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington’s programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life...
...Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things,— First, political power, Second, insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro youth,—and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South.
...
And Mr. Washington thus faces the triple paradox of his career:
1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.
Such men feel in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:
The right to vote.
Civic equality.
The education of youth according to ability.
The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North—her copartner in guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy” alone. If worse comes to worst, can the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?
IV Of the Meaning of Progress
“So I hurried on, thinking of the Burkes. They used to have a certain magnificent barbarism about them that I liked. They were never vulgar, never immoral, but rather rough and primitive, with an unconventionality that spent itself in loud guffaws, slaps on the back, and naps in the corner.”
My journey was done, and behind me lay hill and dale, and Life and Death. How shall man measure Progress there where the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow shall balance a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real! And all this life and love and strife and failure,—is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?
V Of the Wings of Atalanta
If Atlanta be not named for Atalanta, she ought to have been. Atalanta is not the first or the last maiden whom greed of gold has led to defile the temple of Love; and not maids alone, but men in the race of life, sink from the high and generous ideals of youth to the gambler’s code of the Bourse; and in all our Nation’s striving is not the Gospel of Work befouled by the Gospel of Pay?...
...Work and wealth are the mighty levers to lift this old new land; thrift and toil and saving are the highways to new hopes and new possibilities; and yet the warning is needed lest the wily Hippomenes tempt Atalanta to thinking that golden apples are the goal of racing, and not mere incidents by the way...
...For every social ill the panacea of Wealth has been urged,—wealth to overthrow the remains of the slave feudalism; wealth to raise the “cracker” Third Estate; wealth to employ the black serfs, and the prospect of wealth to keep them working; wealth as the end and aim of politics, and as the legal tender for law and order; and, finally, instead of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, wealth as the ideal of the Public School.”
VI Of the Training of Black Men
If you deplore their presence here, they ask, Who brought us? When you cry, Deliver us from the vision of intermarriage, they answer that legal marriage is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution. And if in just fury you accuse their vagabonds of violating women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The wrong which your gentlemen have done against helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two millions of mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable blood. And finally, when you fasten crime upon this race as its peculiar trait, they answer that slavery was the arch-crime, and lynching and lawlessness its twin abortion; that color and race are not crimes, and yet they it is which in this land receives most unceasing condemnation, North, East, South, and West.
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?
VIII Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece
“Here in 1890 lived ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites. The country is rich, yet the people are poor. The key-note of the Black Belt is debt; not commercial credit, but debt in the sense of continued inability on the part of the mass of the population to make income cover expense. This is the direct heritage of the South from the wasteful economies of the slave régime;”
“America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.”
X Faith of the Fathers
Some day the Awakening will come, when the pent-up vigor of ten million souls shall sweep irresistibly toward the Goal, out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where all that makes life worth living—Liberty, Justice, and Right—is marked “For White People Only.”
XI Of the Passing of the Firstborn
Sleep, then, child,—sleep till I sleep and waken to a baby voice and the ceaseless patter of little feet—above the Veil.
XII Of Alexander Crummell
“He did his work,—he did it nobly and well; and yet I sorrow that here he worked alone, with so little human sympathy. His name to-day, in this broad land, means little, and comes to fifty million ears laden with no incense of memory or emulation. And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor,—all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked,—who is good? not that men are ignorant,—what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”
XIII Of the Sorrow Songs
“Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins. Is such a hope justified? Do the Sorrow Songs sing true?”
Would America have been America without her Negro people?
The Talented Tenth
there was that Voice crying in the Wilderness, David Walker, and saying: “I declare it does appear to me as though some nations think God is asleep, or that he made the Africans for nothing else but to dig their mines and work their farms, or they cannot believe history sacred or profane. I ask every man who has a heart, and is blessed with the privilege of believing—Is not God a God of justice to all his creatures? Do you say he is? Then if he gives peace and tranquility to tyrants and permits them to keep our fathers, our mothers, ourselves and our children in eternal ignorance and wretchedness to support them and their families, would he be to us a God of Justice? I ask, O, ye Christians, who hold us and our children in the most abject ignorance and degradation that ever a people were afflicted with since the world began—I say if God gives you peace and tranquility, and suffers you thus to go on afflicting us, and our children, who have never given you the least provocation—would He be to us a God of Justice? If you will allow that we are men, who feel for each other, does not the blood of our fathers and of us, their children, cry aloud to the Lord of Sabaoth against you for the cruelties and murders with which you have and do continue to afflict us?”
Because for three long centuries this people lynched Negroes who dared to be brave, raped black women who dared to be virtuous, crushed dark-hued youth who dared to be ambitious, and encouraged and made to flourish servility and lewdness and apathy. But not even this was able to crush all manhood and chastity and aspiration from black folk. A saving remnant continually survives and persists, continually aspires, continually shows itself in thrift and ability and character.
The Souls of White Folk
This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. They deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped,—ugly, human.
“My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. I know, too well, that the curse of God lies heavy on you. Why? That is not for me to say, but be brave! Do your work in your lowly sphere, praying the good Lord that into heaven above, where all is love, you may, one day, be born—white!”
A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons and lowers. Say to men, earnestly and repeatedly: “Honesty is best, knowledge is power; do unto others as you would be done by.” Say this and act it and the nation must move toward it, if not to it. But say to a people: “The one virtue is to be white,” and the people rush to the inevitable conclusion, “Kill the ‘nigger’!”
Consider our chiefest industry,—fighting. Laboriously the Middle Ages built its rules of fairness—equal armament, equal notice, equal conditions. What do we see today? Machine-guns against assegais; conquest sugared with religion; mutilation and rape masquerading as culture,—all this, with vast applause at the superiority of white over black soldiers! War is horrible! This the dark world knows to its awful cost. But has it just become horrible, in these last days, when under essentially equal conditions, equal armament, and equal waste of wealth white men are fighting white men, with surgeons and nurses hovering near?
Is it better because Europeans are better, nobler, greater, and more gifted than other folk? It is not. Europe has never produced and never will in our day bring forth a single human soul who cannot be matched and over-matched in every line of human endeavor by Asia and Africa. Run the gamut, if you will, and let us have the Europeans who in sober truth over-match Nefertari, Mohammed, Rameses and Askia, Confucius, Buddha, and Jesus Christ. If we could scan the calendar of thousands of lesser men, in like comparison, the result would be the same; but we cannot do this because of the deliberately educated ignorance of white schools by which they remember Napoleon and forget Sonni Ali.
Such degrading of men by men is as old as mankind and the invention of no one race or people. Ever have men striven to conceive of their victims as different from the victors, endlessly different, in soul and blood, strength and cunning, race and lineage. It has been left, however, to Europe and to modern days to discover the eternal world-wide mark of meanness,—color!
There’s the rub,—it pays. Rubber, ivory, and palm-oil; tea, coffee, and cocoa; bananas, oranges, and other fruit; cotton, gold, and copper—they, and a hundred other things which dark and sweating bodies hand up to the white world from pits of slime, pay and pay well, but of all that the world gets the black world gets only the pittance that the white world throws it disdainfully.
Back beyond the world and swept by these wild, white faces of the awful dead, why will this Soul of White Folk,—this modern Prometheus,—hang bound by his own binding, tethered by a fable of the past? I hear his mighty cry reverberating through the world, “I am white!” Well and good, O Prometheus, divine thief! Is not the world wide enough for two colors, for many little shinings of the sun? Why, then, devour your own vitals if I answer even as proudly, “I am black!”
Plus, the introduction by Ibram X Kendi was excellent and very insightful as to the life of Du Bois and context about the time he lived in.
I am including some (many) passages which I want to remember and come back to.
III Of Mr Booker T Washington
Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington’s programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life...
...Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things,— First, political power, Second, insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro youth,—and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South.
...
And Mr. Washington thus faces the triple paradox of his career:
1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.
Such men feel in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:
The right to vote.
Civic equality.
The education of youth according to ability.
The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North—her copartner in guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy” alone. If worse comes to worst, can the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?
IV Of the Meaning of Progress
“So I hurried on, thinking of the Burkes. They used to have a certain magnificent barbarism about them that I liked. They were never vulgar, never immoral, but rather rough and primitive, with an unconventionality that spent itself in loud guffaws, slaps on the back, and naps in the corner.”
My journey was done, and behind me lay hill and dale, and Life and Death. How shall man measure Progress there where the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow shall balance a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real! And all this life and love and strife and failure,—is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?
V Of the Wings of Atalanta
If Atlanta be not named for Atalanta, she ought to have been. Atalanta is not the first or the last maiden whom greed of gold has led to defile the temple of Love; and not maids alone, but men in the race of life, sink from the high and generous ideals of youth to the gambler’s code of the Bourse; and in all our Nation’s striving is not the Gospel of Work befouled by the Gospel of Pay?...
...Work and wealth are the mighty levers to lift this old new land; thrift and toil and saving are the highways to new hopes and new possibilities; and yet the warning is needed lest the wily Hippomenes tempt Atalanta to thinking that golden apples are the goal of racing, and not mere incidents by the way...
...For every social ill the panacea of Wealth has been urged,—wealth to overthrow the remains of the slave feudalism; wealth to raise the “cracker” Third Estate; wealth to employ the black serfs, and the prospect of wealth to keep them working; wealth as the end and aim of politics, and as the legal tender for law and order; and, finally, instead of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, wealth as the ideal of the Public School.”
VI Of the Training of Black Men
If you deplore their presence here, they ask, Who brought us? When you cry, Deliver us from the vision of intermarriage, they answer that legal marriage is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution. And if in just fury you accuse their vagabonds of violating women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The wrong which your gentlemen have done against helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two millions of mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable blood. And finally, when you fasten crime upon this race as its peculiar trait, they answer that slavery was the arch-crime, and lynching and lawlessness its twin abortion; that color and race are not crimes, and yet they it is which in this land receives most unceasing condemnation, North, East, South, and West.
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?
VIII Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece
“Here in 1890 lived ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites. The country is rich, yet the people are poor. The key-note of the Black Belt is debt; not commercial credit, but debt in the sense of continued inability on the part of the mass of the population to make income cover expense. This is the direct heritage of the South from the wasteful economies of the slave régime;”
“America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.”
X Faith of the Fathers
Some day the Awakening will come, when the pent-up vigor of ten million souls shall sweep irresistibly toward the Goal, out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where all that makes life worth living—Liberty, Justice, and Right—is marked “For White People Only.”
XI Of the Passing of the Firstborn
Sleep, then, child,—sleep till I sleep and waken to a baby voice and the ceaseless patter of little feet—above the Veil.
XII Of Alexander Crummell
“He did his work,—he did it nobly and well; and yet I sorrow that here he worked alone, with so little human sympathy. His name to-day, in this broad land, means little, and comes to fifty million ears laden with no incense of memory or emulation. And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor,—all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked,—who is good? not that men are ignorant,—what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”
XIII Of the Sorrow Songs
“Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins. Is such a hope justified? Do the Sorrow Songs sing true?”
Would America have been America without her Negro people?
The Talented Tenth
there was that Voice crying in the Wilderness, David Walker, and saying: “I declare it does appear to me as though some nations think God is asleep, or that he made the Africans for nothing else but to dig their mines and work their farms, or they cannot believe history sacred or profane. I ask every man who has a heart, and is blessed with the privilege of believing—Is not God a God of justice to all his creatures? Do you say he is? Then if he gives peace and tranquility to tyrants and permits them to keep our fathers, our mothers, ourselves and our children in eternal ignorance and wretchedness to support them and their families, would he be to us a God of Justice? I ask, O, ye Christians, who hold us and our children in the most abject ignorance and degradation that ever a people were afflicted with since the world began—I say if God gives you peace and tranquility, and suffers you thus to go on afflicting us, and our children, who have never given you the least provocation—would He be to us a God of Justice? If you will allow that we are men, who feel for each other, does not the blood of our fathers and of us, their children, cry aloud to the Lord of Sabaoth against you for the cruelties and murders with which you have and do continue to afflict us?”
Because for three long centuries this people lynched Negroes who dared to be brave, raped black women who dared to be virtuous, crushed dark-hued youth who dared to be ambitious, and encouraged and made to flourish servility and lewdness and apathy. But not even this was able to crush all manhood and chastity and aspiration from black folk. A saving remnant continually survives and persists, continually aspires, continually shows itself in thrift and ability and character.
The Souls of White Folk
This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. They deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped,—ugly, human.
“My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. I know, too well, that the curse of God lies heavy on you. Why? That is not for me to say, but be brave! Do your work in your lowly sphere, praying the good Lord that into heaven above, where all is love, you may, one day, be born—white!”
A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons and lowers. Say to men, earnestly and repeatedly: “Honesty is best, knowledge is power; do unto others as you would be done by.” Say this and act it and the nation must move toward it, if not to it. But say to a people: “The one virtue is to be white,” and the people rush to the inevitable conclusion, “Kill the ‘nigger’!”
Consider our chiefest industry,—fighting. Laboriously the Middle Ages built its rules of fairness—equal armament, equal notice, equal conditions. What do we see today? Machine-guns against assegais; conquest sugared with religion; mutilation and rape masquerading as culture,—all this, with vast applause at the superiority of white over black soldiers! War is horrible! This the dark world knows to its awful cost. But has it just become horrible, in these last days, when under essentially equal conditions, equal armament, and equal waste of wealth white men are fighting white men, with surgeons and nurses hovering near?
Is it better because Europeans are better, nobler, greater, and more gifted than other folk? It is not. Europe has never produced and never will in our day bring forth a single human soul who cannot be matched and over-matched in every line of human endeavor by Asia and Africa. Run the gamut, if you will, and let us have the Europeans who in sober truth over-match Nefertari, Mohammed, Rameses and Askia, Confucius, Buddha, and Jesus Christ. If we could scan the calendar of thousands of lesser men, in like comparison, the result would be the same; but we cannot do this because of the deliberately educated ignorance of white schools by which they remember Napoleon and forget Sonni Ali.
Such degrading of men by men is as old as mankind and the invention of no one race or people. Ever have men striven to conceive of their victims as different from the victors, endlessly different, in soul and blood, strength and cunning, race and lineage. It has been left, however, to Europe and to modern days to discover the eternal world-wide mark of meanness,—color!
There’s the rub,—it pays. Rubber, ivory, and palm-oil; tea, coffee, and cocoa; bananas, oranges, and other fruit; cotton, gold, and copper—they, and a hundred other things which dark and sweating bodies hand up to the white world from pits of slime, pay and pay well, but of all that the world gets the black world gets only the pittance that the white world throws it disdainfully.
Back beyond the world and swept by these wild, white faces of the awful dead, why will this Soul of White Folk,—this modern Prometheus,—hang bound by his own binding, tethered by a fable of the past? I hear his mighty cry reverberating through the world, “I am white!” Well and good, O Prometheus, divine thief! Is not the world wide enough for two colors, for many little shinings of the sun? Why, then, devour your own vitals if I answer even as proudly, “I am black!”
February 17, 2025
I find it very interesting how Du Bois explains the civil rights movement from a perspective that is different from what is taught in the american school system. his thoughts on the consequences of abolishing slavery offers insights I have never considered before. additionally, his notes on religion within black culture are particularly significant, not only because of the importance of spiritual beliefs but also because the ability to choose one's faith creates a sense of control in life when everything else feels out of place and he focuses on that very well. overall, I love that, while he discusses the well-known ongoing challenges faced by people of color, he emphasizes the damaging effects of hate, despair, and doubt in a unique and thought-provoking manner. its definitely a read that evokes a lot of feelings that i just don’t have the words to explain.
May 17, 2025
A powerful message from Du Bois regarding race and society. This is a must read for anyone interested in African American history, and the heritage of the black America's vigilance against the tyranny of racism. Much of what Du Bois writes is still, in some sense, relevant to modern America. Apply these allegories and theories to hatred against Asian and Mexican Americans coming from White America today. This book is a fantastic piece of the American historical record.
August 31, 2025
Read today, many of these essays feel drier than Death Valley, but every so often Du Bois' passion and rhetorical flashes set off a spark that sets the whole thing alight. "The Souls of White Folks" and "Of the Coming of John" are both terrific and feel as relevant today as ever.
February 22, 2024
evergreen.
and on living in the talented tenth? say it again for those of us who tuned you out
and on living in the talented tenth? say it again for those of us who tuned you out
August 18, 2024
4.25 stars
March 6, 2025
this is just for the souls of white folk essay - incredible, will read the rest soon iA
April 2, 2025
soooo good - give me a week to write a more coherent review :,(
February 12, 2026
This…was a bit of a dry read in the beginning for me. It picked up for me around chapter 10. It’s a challenging read, but an important one and definitely progressive for its time.
June 7, 2023
In my last year of college I was part of an capstone class for my concentration in archival studies. It was a great class, mostly for the passion of my peers, and it was here that I was introduced more fully to W.E.B. Du Bois. A girl was interested in making a digital project around Mr. Du Bois' letters and the music in this book, and it was just kind of amazing to watch. My college was pretty stereotypically "left" in all the cringey, performative ways white upper-middle class young women tend to be, and becoming acquainted with this book through a random band nerd's love of it was just... amazing. There was no ulterior motive. She just loved Du Bois and his writing.
It took me over a read to get to but I'm really glad I did. The Souls of Black Folk is a collection of essays on the current state of Black America. It struck me as a sort of "State of the Union", recounting both the accomplishments of Black Americans but also the great challenges that lay ahead. I have a thing for hundred-year-old books that are eerily prescient, and this book was (unfortunately, in this case) that. Du Bois charts the history and failure of Reconstruction, takes some jabs at Booker T. Washington, reminisces of his days teaching Black youth in the South and the later loss of his son--and my personal favorite--an ethnography-of-sorts of the Black Belt. DuBois tells the reader:
It's been nearly three weeks since I finished this, and yeah. I just can't stop thinking about that paragraph. There are a lot of parts that fill that uncomfortable prophetic space, none more so than
One last point: Du Bois' prose is particularly impressive. His grasp of Classical culture and literature are apparent, and his vocabulary, figures of speech, and general artistry of writing are really bar none. It made reading it definitely a bit more laborious (I just wanted a beach read!), but it will stick with me, if not for the craft for the meta-irony of it all. We are slowly coming to realize (I hope) the fabrication of the classical canon as a sort of test of intelligence, and it's... so apparent in how DuBois comports himself in his work. I think he is very aware of the contrived quality of his writing as a sort of advertisement for educated whites to his Talented Tenth theory.
Here's her project by the way. I miss that class a lot.
It took me over a read to get to but I'm really glad I did. The Souls of Black Folk is a collection of essays on the current state of Black America. It struck me as a sort of "State of the Union", recounting both the accomplishments of Black Americans but also the great challenges that lay ahead. I have a thing for hundred-year-old books that are eerily prescient, and this book was (unfortunately, in this case) that. Du Bois charts the history and failure of Reconstruction, takes some jabs at Booker T. Washington, reminisces of his days teaching Black youth in the South and the later loss of his son--and my personal favorite--an ethnography-of-sorts of the Black Belt. DuBois tells the reader:
If you wish to ride with me you must come into the “Jim Crow Car.” There will be no objection,—already four other white men, and a little white girl with her nurse, are in there. Usually the races are mixed in there; but the white coach is all white. Of course this car is not so good as the other, but it is fairly clean and comfortable. The discomfort lies chiefly in the hearts of those four black men yonder—and in mine.
It's been nearly three weeks since I finished this, and yeah. I just can't stop thinking about that paragraph. There are a lot of parts that fill that uncomfortable prophetic space, none more so than
Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape. [...] Thus grew up a double system of justice, which erred on the white side by undue leniency and the practical immunity of red-handed criminals, and erred on the black side by undue severity, injustice, and lack of discrimination.
One last point: Du Bois' prose is particularly impressive. His grasp of Classical culture and literature are apparent, and his vocabulary, figures of speech, and general artistry of writing are really bar none. It made reading it definitely a bit more laborious (I just wanted a beach read!), but it will stick with me, if not for the craft for the meta-irony of it all. We are slowly coming to realize (I hope) the fabrication of the classical canon as a sort of test of intelligence, and it's... so apparent in how DuBois comports himself in his work. I think he is very aware of the contrived quality of his writing as a sort of advertisement for educated whites to his Talented Tenth theory.
Here's her project by the way. I miss that class a lot.
February 23, 2022
Du Bois' collection of essays is perhaps (but certainly one of) the most insightful books I have read about race I have ever read. Though it was published at the dawn of the previous century in 1903, "The Souls of Black Folk" contains works that are still (and perhaps rather unfortunately) relevant and powerful today ranging on topics from race in general to education and the aftermath of Reconstruction as well as criticism of other black leaders of the time like Booker T. Washington.
Du Bois' thesis is primarily that the central issue of the day (both his and our modern day) surrounding race is the color line and that the only way to even begin to solve it is for blacks and whites to come together, recognize their history, and move forward as one. As he wrote in "Of the Sons of Master and Man:"
It is not enough for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is the sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white South to reply that their social condition is the main cause of prejudice. They both act as reciprocal cause and effect, and a change in neither alone will bring the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can improve to any great extent. The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color-line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the excuse for further discrimination. Only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this critical period of the Republic shall justice and right triumph
I can also appreciate his critical thinking on the South and its population as a whole. Du Boi's states in "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others:"
First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the South. The South is not "solid"; it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is today perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good. Discriminating and broad–minded criticism is what the South needs,—needs it for the sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral development.
The emphasis here for me is the idea that discriminating, focused criticism of the South and its people is what is needed for progress to take hold. The South, and indeed the world entire, is in flux and in order for Southerners (in this context specifically) to ensure that society improves, there must be a more robust look at the relations of the races. It was this spirit of cooperation, insight, and ultimately union that I find most inspiring about Du Bois' writings.
If you have not read this book, I would put it at the top of your (I'm sure) ever growing TBR list because, I think, it is a work of great significance in our world today.
Du Bois' thesis is primarily that the central issue of the day (both his and our modern day) surrounding race is the color line and that the only way to even begin to solve it is for blacks and whites to come together, recognize their history, and move forward as one. As he wrote in "Of the Sons of Master and Man:"
It is not enough for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is the sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white South to reply that their social condition is the main cause of prejudice. They both act as reciprocal cause and effect, and a change in neither alone will bring the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can improve to any great extent. The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color-line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the excuse for further discrimination. Only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this critical period of the Republic shall justice and right triumph
I can also appreciate his critical thinking on the South and its population as a whole. Du Boi's states in "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others:"
First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the South. The South is not "solid"; it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is today perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good. Discriminating and broad–minded criticism is what the South needs,—needs it for the sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral development.
The emphasis here for me is the idea that discriminating, focused criticism of the South and its people is what is needed for progress to take hold. The South, and indeed the world entire, is in flux and in order for Southerners (in this context specifically) to ensure that society improves, there must be a more robust look at the relations of the races. It was this spirit of cooperation, insight, and ultimately union that I find most inspiring about Du Bois' writings.
If you have not read this book, I would put it at the top of your (I'm sure) ever growing TBR list because, I think, it is a work of great significance in our world today.
March 29, 2021
Today - across the pond, anyway, the trial of one Derek Chauvin begun. With, I hope, both the world's eyes open, I think it's no better time, then, to look at what one of America's strongest minds considered just the symptom of a historic cancer within it.
From "The Souls of White Folk":
"Conceive this nation, of all human peoples, engaged in a crusade to make the "World Safe for Democracy"! [...] In short, what is the black man but America's Belguim, and how could America condemn in Germany that which she commits, just as brutally, within her own borders!"
From "The Talented Tenth":
"Here is a race transplanted through the criminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by the right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply teach work - it must teach Life.".
Remember, too, that du Bois warned against complacency, and a fundamental vanity in our simply just searching for freedom. As his thoughts on education (and no doubt the meritocratic exceptionalism that's still with us today) demonstrate, everyone has a right to explore their unique excellence, with no exceptions. Therefore, everyone must stand on free ground. That freedom - and the material ground it rests on - has to be made, and drawn, and shared, and most vitally, recognised in another, as it is the key to the double consciousness that du Bois saw rooted in the American world. Du Bois ended "The Souls of Black Folk" with this vision:
"If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free".
From "The Souls of White Folk":
"Conceive this nation, of all human peoples, engaged in a crusade to make the "World Safe for Democracy"! [...] In short, what is the black man but America's Belguim, and how could America condemn in Germany that which she commits, just as brutally, within her own borders!"
From "The Talented Tenth":
"Here is a race transplanted through the criminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education and work are the levers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by the right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply teach work - it must teach Life.".
Remember, too, that du Bois warned against complacency, and a fundamental vanity in our simply just searching for freedom. As his thoughts on education (and no doubt the meritocratic exceptionalism that's still with us today) demonstrate, everyone has a right to explore their unique excellence, with no exceptions. Therefore, everyone must stand on free ground. That freedom - and the material ground it rests on - has to be made, and drawn, and shared, and most vitally, recognised in another, as it is the key to the double consciousness that du Bois saw rooted in the American world. Du Bois ended "The Souls of Black Folk" with this vision:
"If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free".
October 3, 2021
This is one of the most important books in US history, with one of the earliest thorough, rationally grounded analyses of the context and challenges experiences by African Americans. Du Bois is definitely dedicated to the advancement of African Americans, especially through education, but he is also sophisticated in his approach to this question. For instance, Du Bois is deeply critical of Booker T. Washington and his approach to Black education, which Du Bois characterizes as focused on creating an African American laboring class through industrial and agricultural education, rather than training African Americans to co-exist with whites as educated, intellectual subjects through something like a liberal arts education.
Du Bois' other major contribution--which has shaped not only critical race studies in the US but postcolonial theory, including by thinkers like Aime Cesaire and Franz Fanon--is the idea of double consciousness, which is essentially the idea that African Americans are always internally divided subjects within a hegemonic white America because Black people experience themselves as American and as Black. Du Bois argues that these are two contradictory subjectivities, and that the gap between them is psychologically detrimental because it prevents subjective wholeness or a sense of belonging in America. African American--in Du Bois' argument--signals two different identities, the African and the American, trying uneasily to co-exist.
https://youtu.be/W-2376uyTbQ
Du Bois' other major contribution--which has shaped not only critical race studies in the US but postcolonial theory, including by thinkers like Aime Cesaire and Franz Fanon--is the idea of double consciousness, which is essentially the idea that African Americans are always internally divided subjects within a hegemonic white America because Black people experience themselves as American and as Black. Du Bois argues that these are two contradictory subjectivities, and that the gap between them is psychologically detrimental because it prevents subjective wholeness or a sense of belonging in America. African American--in Du Bois' argument--signals two different identities, the African and the American, trying uneasily to co-exist.
https://youtu.be/W-2376uyTbQ
August 29, 2019
This collection of essays presents a side of Black Culture that is given short shrift in High School American History classes. As a student in the middle 60s, I remember using a text that highlighted the accomplishments Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute. It is hard to accept that these "accomplishments" were pushed by the compromise that put the Southern Black into a position of submission to the Southern White in exchange for an educational system for Blacks. Du Bois challenged that position and pushed for complete civil rights and equality for Blacks. Du Bois had a beautiful command of the English language and the essays are a treat to read as well as providing a realistic description of the South at the turn of the 19th into the 20th Century.
The Souls of White Folk is a searing indictment of colonialism and an explicit linkage to the causes of World War I. Many of the issues raised in that essay are still being faced today. The reader gets caught up in the language and the subject. Definitely a required reading for any teacher.
The Souls of White Folk is a searing indictment of colonialism and an explicit linkage to the causes of World War I. Many of the issues raised in that essay are still being faced today. The reader gets caught up in the language and the subject. Definitely a required reading for any teacher.
December 10, 2024
When "The Souls of Black Folk" was first published in 1903, it sparked significant discussion about race in America. The book remains a key work in American literature and a guiding light in the struggle for civil rights. W. E. B. Du Bois believed that one could understand a race's "soul" by examining the souls of individuals. He skillfully combines history with compelling autobiography to highlight the severity of American racism and to propose a path forward in the fight against oppression. Additionally, he introduces the now-famous concepts of the color line, the veil, and double consciousness.
It's somewhat challenging to review this book because it discusses various topics. While it provides valuable insights into the lives of African Americans after Emancipation, the author's writing style can be challenging to follow. He alternates between using metaphors to describe the black experience and adopting a more textbook, sociological approach.
It's somewhat challenging to review this book because it discusses various topics. While it provides valuable insights into the lives of African Americans after Emancipation, the author's writing style can be challenging to follow. He alternates between using metaphors to describe the black experience and adopting a more textbook, sociological approach.
May 22, 2020
Dubois isn't just an outstanding sociologist. He is a writer, a poet who marked an era, and many of his ideas still resonate in today's society delivered in eloquent yet accessible English. The Soul Of A Black Folk is a mirror and analysis of "the veil", that invisible and yet divisive fabric of American society, inviting us to share for a moment some stories from his life and those of other exceptional men, shouting the truth about the tragedy of slavery in America and its construction on human relationships of his sons. Finally, more than anything else, this is the work of a humanist whose faith in the ability of men to rise above their differences in order to forge an ideal of society based on equality and justice remains unalterable. Perhaps more than anything else today, we need some of his guidance.
October 5, 2020
More about the oppression of the black race and to some extent persons of color tho not antiracist nor certainly antisexist not surprisingly considering the timeframe.
The writing style is somewhat stilted and overblown as some of that timeframe were wont to employ. No surprise it has taken me months to weigh through the rants and lyrics that quilt these essays together.
I must admit this thought to be classic is just such owing to the thoughtful & thorough discussion that must surely have taken such courage to write and publish during the dark, ugly racism that haunts America & the world to this day.
The writing style is somewhat stilted and overblown as some of that timeframe were wont to employ. No surprise it has taken me months to weigh through the rants and lyrics that quilt these essays together.
I must admit this thought to be classic is just such owing to the thoughtful & thorough discussion that must surely have taken such courage to write and publish during the dark, ugly racism that haunts America & the world to this day.
October 4, 2020
Since it’s an anthology of essays, it varied in quality—there were some essays I wasn’t super interested in, but most of them were good, and a few of them were reeeeeally good (“Of the Coming of John” is my favorite—a beautifully written and predictably tragic short story). DuBois begins every essay with a phrase from a slave “Sorrow Song,” and it was a really cool effect. This 150 Year Anniversary edition from Penguin Classics also includes “The Talented Tenth” and “The Souls of White Folk,” both of which I found really interesting and complemented the original collection nicely.
January 2, 2021
This book is a masterful collection of essays written by a brilliant man from a different time, but it still rings true in this day.
I recently read the book White Fragility which does a good job of explaining why it’s so hard for white people to have conversations about race today. While I thought that this recent book does a good job of exposing the system of racism, W. E. B. Du Bois describes the foundations of the system and its impact on both black and white people.
If you want to understand the souls of black folks in America (whether you are black or white), then read this book.
I recently read the book White Fragility which does a good job of explaining why it’s so hard for white people to have conversations about race today. While I thought that this recent book does a good job of exposing the system of racism, W. E. B. Du Bois describes the foundations of the system and its impact on both black and white people.
If you want to understand the souls of black folks in America (whether you are black or white), then read this book.
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