The Souls of Black Folk

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and Progressive - an Important Book For All to Read
Review: "Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of beling black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century." -W.E.B. DuBois, in the Forethought

This book contains essays written by W.E.B. DuBois. Some of them are very historical and recount the African American events and progess, and some of them are very personal, in which DuBois tells about his own life. I learned a lot from reading this book. For instance, I had always thought of what an awful thing slavery was- a horrible part of America's history- and that is was such a good thing that it was finally stopped. However, I never thought about the implications of life for the ex-slave after it was ended. Here were many African Americans, free, yes, but with what? Nothing. How would they get anywhere without money, education, jobs, etc.? And after freeing them leaders imposed unfair segragation and Jim Crow laws upon African Americans, so they were not really free at all.

Another thing that interested me about this book was the evolution of the slave's religion. It is very interesting to me how DuBois discusses their original religion of magic/ancestor and earth worship,etc and their gradual progression to the Christian religion of their masters, and then back to the beginning in an almost cyclical pattern. I don't think the African-American culture would be the same at all today if it were not for this mix of religious belief, although some would argue about how good it was for a religion to be forced about them and I would tend to agree.

W.E.B. DuBois was a pioneer of African American literature and thought. This book of essays will make you rethink the progress and status of African Americans throughout America's history, and will help you understand and sympathesize much more. I do agree with a previous review's critique that this book has some disturbing anti-semitic passages in it; in fact, a friend of mine wrote her paper for our 20th Century American Literature Class on that subject, so that did point that problem out to me. I find it strange that DuBois can so effectively and reasonably argue for the equality of African-Americans while so irrationably spout such anti-semitic comments. Except for this problem (which should not be overlooked), the book is very important and powerful, and it did and continues to do a lot for the advancement of African-Americans in the US.

Rating:
Summary: Important read
Review: A bit of a slow read and disappointingly focused almost exclusively on black men (ignoring women), but it is a worthwhile portrait of the position of American blacks in the late 19th century. The second to the last chapter, The Coming of John, is a moving story of how racism can throttle achievement.

Rating:
Summary: As resonant and relevant now as it was when first published
Review: Along with Malcolm X's biography, this book should be a mandatory text in American high schools. If you got this far, please, engage yourself and read the sample pages that amazon has allowed to be shown here.

This work is not just an eloquent attempt of one man to make sense of himself and his history, it is also by far the most sensitive, interesting (and accessible) treatment of Hegel the world has yet to see (including Marx- even though Du Bois spent the later years of his life smitten with socialism and the USSR- a viewpoint that eventually led him to abandon the NAACP's ((which he helped found in 1910)) agenda of integration).

One could spend much time tracing Du Bois' intellectual movements and his confrontations (as with Booker T. Washington). I won't attempt that here. Instead I'll attempt a cursory revealing of his Hegelian sensibilities. I don't use the word debt, because Du Bois doesn't borrow from Hegel- he resurrects him.

Du Bois's understanding of himself as a 'problem,' is as illuminating now as it was in 1903. I think at least a cursory engagement with Hegel is needed to truly understand this book and Du Bois' thought in its entirety. For that reason I highly suggest you purchase the critical Norton version of this book (ISBN: 039397393X). It adds a great deal. The preface alone is worth the ten-note...

The master/slave dialectic, as well the unfolding and development of a consciousness of freedom: Du Bois breathes life into this system of 'necessary' rational progression. Hegel himself traced the development of 'World Spirit,' through six historical peoples: Chinese, Egyptians, Indians, Greeks, Romans and Germans. This forms the genesis of Du Bois' conception of black Americans as historically a, "...sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,- a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world... One ever feels his twoness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

And that's just page 3. If Hegel himself had been this eloquent... Ah well...

Du Bois once wrote of his heritage that it included "a flood of Negro blood, a strain of French, a bit of Dutch, but, Thank God! No 'Anglo-Saxon'..." There is much to be admired in that statement's forwardness, and there is much to be understood and reconciled in its anger. As a white American, I have a cultural debt to black Americans, one that I will never be able to pay back. But the impossibility of a task does not preclude one from not attempting it.

Today America is as divided by race as it ever was. Honest dialogue is the only solution. This book- I can think of few places better suited to initiate that dialogue.

Rating:
Summary: Du Bois effectively states his views on 20th cent. race rel.
Review: An excellent look into the possible problems of the 20th century race issue. Du Bois predicted that racial conflicts would continue to plague our society, and since 1903, his inferences seem to be true. The Souls of Black Folk is a wonderful attest to the struggle of the Black race then, and to some extent, now. While stressing the need for non-violent reform and mutual understanding, Du Bois also stresses to the Black race a need for self-disocvery and internal growth. Very interesting novel....a good read for everyone, and a must read for Black Americans.

Rating:
Summary: "An Element of Danger and Revolution"
Review: And so "education" should be, one of many great, though by no means unique, insights into the mind of mankind in W.E.B. Dubois's "Souls of Black Folk." I read this book after reading both the "Autobiography of Malcolm X" as well as Foner's "The Black Panther's Speak." Both of these books make allusion to Dubois, and in reading "Souls" I better understand the ideas and programs of Malcolm, Huey and Eldridge, their desire to be granted the same rights and privileges as all American citizens, and, where the white man continued to disallow it, their taking them "by any means necessary."

Admittedly, I have very little experience with African-American culture. "The Souls of Black Folk" I think helps bridge this gap by exploring the history - economic, social and political - and pyschology of the African-American. I came away with a much better understanding of organizations like the Freeman's Relief Association, men like Booker T. Washington, African-American Christianity and, to a small extent, the psyche of the black man in America, at least its historical antecedents, up until the early 1900s.

I have read reviews dismissing Dubois's work as outdated, especially after the '60s and the civil rights movement. Perhaps it is, though, again, I don't feel I know enough about African-American culture in our day to be able to say either way. Having said that, I am much better acquainted with other socially and economically constructed "niggers" of our world, both domestically and internationally, and in that regard I think Dubois's "Souls of Black Folk" is still very much applicable, in fact a complementary resource from which to glean insight into contemporary politics and economics. Perhaps, hopefully, there will one day be no more "niggers" on American soil. But, unfortunately, there will always be "niggers" in this world, and Dubois's lectures on removing "the great problem of the 20th century - the color line" are as important today as they were 100 years ago.

From "Of the Sons of Master and Man":
In any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand.

Perhaps basic, perhaps something one has heard numerous times, but the fact that this citation and many, many others like it to be found in "The Souls of Black Folk" were written 100 years before guys like Ralph Nader and Howard Zinn were selling hundreds of thousands of books based on a slightly different spin of the same argument is at least relevant, if not impressive.

Dubois was no racist, as any of the rest of the aforementioned group weren't either. If anything (and perhaps in this time this is a politically incorrect term) he was a classist, and merely argued for the assimilation of the black man into the society that did not understand their mutual dependence. Reading the book did not produce "white guilt" or anything the David Horwitzes of the world would like to convince me is happening to me. It provided me with a greater understanding and respect for people I daily ride the metro with, work with, am an American citizen WITH.

Rating:
Summary: Great book timeless message
Review: As an 18 year old African American in the year 2000 it is essential that I know not only black but American History. The Souls of Black Folk was a veiw of the truth hidden deeply within all African Americans, the love of God, a true heart and loyalty to those who we think have pure hearts. It help me to undersatnd more of who I really am and not what others want me to be. It was the orgin of the respect in a ebnoy skin complection and its beauty. A must read for all those wishing to understand the mind and hearts of African Americans.

Rating:
Summary: DuBois is one of the top five people of the century.
Review: At the end of the century, in a few months there will be much debate about the person of the century, the writer of the century, the actor of the century and so on. This book, this writing should put DuBois at the very least in the top five ranking of the most important writer and thinker of the twentieth century. He is as far as I am concerned the Black Nostradamus. He forsaw what has been happening in recent years with the increase of hate crimes and mass acts of violence and oppression against the colored masses of the United States and the world. DuBois like no other from his time captures the spirit of the America Black and he allows his reader to read and to understand what has caused the Black consciousness to be in the state of disaster that it was in and is in in some aspects. He is a great writer and this book should be required reading in every American Literature and Black Literature class in every high school and college in this country. This is an important work not only for Blacks to read but whites as well. Well written and well received is all that I can say about this book. GREAT!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: A fine if at times flowery exposition by the young Dubois
Review: Doubtless it was a frustrating experience back at the time this book was published to try to contemplate solutions to black oppression. Lynching (mostly, though far from completely confined to the South) was reaching its high point ever or since in taking the lives of black Americans. As Dubois notes a few times, the Western European nations (including the U.S. in the Philippines, Cuba, et.al.) were subjugating the colored races of the world.

As to what to do with the black lower class black majority Dubois agrees a lot with his rival Booker T. Washington. However he points out the absurdity of Washington's agreement with white supremacy that little attention should be given to higher education for blacks. Since Washington argued that blacks needed to accumulate wealth as industrial laborers, artisans,, and so on, who was going to give them the vocational education that they needed? White people weren't going to teach them, so they need black teachers trained at all black colleges, Dubois points out. Moreover, Dubois argues in another chapter blacks need education as a forum with which to stimulate their creativity and to articulate their own rich experiences wrought from the fact of being black. If blacks are restricted in developing their intellects or any of the other opportunities to live a constructive life, it will deepen their own resentment against white society and make them turn to anti-social pursuits. The black masses will turn to demagogues. There needs to be a strong professional class ("the talented tenth") that will lead the black community.

Dubois at one point seems to say that if the white capitalist class of the post civil war South would receive for themselves the fruits of higher education that was mostly neglected in the antebellum South, then they might not act so barbarously towards their black laborers. This seems pretty naive. Dubois at one point launches in to a violently flowery tribute to the place where he was teaching at the time, Atlanta University. It is interesting to observe the excessive slightly affected refinement Dubois exudes in this book. Obviously, as is on display in his ending paragraph in chapter six, Dubois took refuge from the barbarousness of American apartheid in the high planes of the European enlightenment.

Another chapter includes an account of Dubois's two years (1886-87) teaching school in a rural village in Western Tennessee. He portrays the struggles of the peasant inhabitants against severe poverty. In a sort of postscript, he comes back ten years later to the village to see what has become of everyone. To take one example. He had been impressed with a young girl named Josie who had an insatiable appetite to learn. Well ten years later Josie was dead from exhaustion at the fruitless debt ridden toil for her family. Her brother had grown angry at his inability to advance in life and taken to petty theft. Other inhabitants had been able to buy more land, though most that were still there were farming away, trapped by the inescapable debt imposed by the white financial elites of the area.

In another chapter he pays tribute to the black abolitionist preacher Alexander Crummel. He writes in a maudlin way about the latter's effort to be a true Christian in the midst of white supremacy in the North. In another, he produces a somewhat tedious sociological analysis of the Black Belt in Georgia. In another he produces a really excellent short story called "Of the Coming of John." The story is about how John, a black from a Georgia village goes away to college for about seven years. At a New York theater, the manager genially asks John to leave and fully refunds his ticket, on the ground of objection to having to sit near John, by a white man who turns out to be an old playmate from the Georgia village. John returns to his village after seven long years of educating himself and thinking about the world. He has grown very intellectual and cold and cynical. This does not please either the blacks or whites of the town, the whites because he has grown uppity as they feared when he left, the blacks because he is so emotionally remote from them.

In another chapter Dubois laments the death of his baby son though speculates that maybe it is good the little fellow didn't grow up to feel the pain of American racism that he himself feels and wishes for escape from.

There are two essays by Dubois attached to this edition of the book. One is "The Conservation of Races" a speech delivered by Dubois to the opening of the Negro Academy in 1897 and "The Development of a People" written in 1904. Dubois seems to exhibit in the first an excessive, though typically bourgeois concern for the allegedly poor morals and financial management of the black lower classes. I understand that he is here preaching self-help and betterment for his racial brethren. However I think he should have spent more time (here and in "Souls") elaborating on the economic oppression that made blacks, and has always made it frustrating for poor people to pursue their dreams. In the "Development of a People," he really cuts deep into white supremacy's claims to superior morality. He notes that the slavery t the Arabs introduced into Africa had the benefit for the slaves in that the latter could become members of the slave-owning household e.g. marrying into it. It was up to the Europeans to introduce slavery based on skin color with all its unspeakable brutalities.

One further notes the importance of this book in that it was written at a time when Booker T. Washington was exercising dictatorial control over black intellectual life...

Rating:
Summary: A fine if at times flowery exposition by the young Dubois
Review: Doubtless it was a frustrating experience back at the time this book was published to try to contemplate solutions to black oppression. Lynching (mostly, though far from completely confined to the South) was reaching its high point ever or since in taking the lives of black Americans. As Dubois notes a few times, the Western European nations (including the U.S. in the Philippines, Cuba, et.al.) were subjugating the colored races of the world.

As to what to do with the black lower class black majority Dubois agrees a lot with his rival Booker T. Washington. However he points out the absurdity of Washington's agreement with white supremacy that little attention should be given to higher education for blacks. Since Washington argued that blacks needed to accumulate wealth as industrial laborers, artisans,, and so on, who was going to give them the vocational education that they needed? White people weren't going to teach them, so they need black teachers trained at all black colleges, Dubois points out. Moreover, Dubois argues in another chapter blacks need education as a forum with which to stimulate their creativity and to articulate their own rich experiences wrought from the fact of being black. If blacks are restricted in developing their intellects or any of the other opportunities to live a constructive life, it will deepen their own resentment against white society and make them turn to anti-social pursuits. The black masses will turn to demagogues. There needs to be a strong professional class ("the talented tenth") that will lead the black community.

Dubois at one point seems to say that if the white capitalist class of the post civil war South would receive for themselves the fruits of higher education that was mostly neglected in the antebellum South, then they might not act so barbarously towards their black laborers. This seems pretty naive. Dubois at one point launches in to a violently flowery tribute to the place where he was teaching at the time, Atlanta University. It is interesting to observe the excessive slightly affected refinement Dubois exudes in this book. Obviously, as is on display in his ending paragraph in chapter six, Dubois took refuge from the barbarousness of American apartheid in the high planes of the European enlightenment.

Another chapter includes an account of Dubois's two years (1886-87) teaching school in a rural village in Western Tennessee. He portrays the struggles of the peasant inhabitants against severe poverty. In a sort of postscript, he comes back ten years later to the village to see what has become of everyone. To take one example. He had been impressed with a young girl named Josie who had an insatiable appetite to learn. Well ten years later Josie was dead from exhaustion at the fruitless debt ridden toil for her family. Her brother had grown angry at his inability to advance in life and taken to petty theft. Other inhabitants had been able to buy more land, though most that were still there were farming away, trapped by the inescapable debt imposed by the white financial elites of the area.

In another chapter he pays tribute to the black abolitionist preacher Alexander Crummel. He writes in a maudlin way about the latter's effort to be a true Christian in the midst of white supremacy in the North. In another, he produces a somewhat tedious sociological analysis of the Black Belt in Georgia. In another he produces a really excellent short story called "Of the Coming of John." The story is about how John, a black from a Georgia village goes away to college for about seven years. At a New York theater, the manager genially asks John to leave and fully refunds his ticket, on the ground of objection to having to sit near John, by a white man who turns out to be an old playmate from the Georgia village. John returns to his village after seven long years of educating himself and thinking about the world. He has grown very intellectual and cold and cynical. This does not please either the blacks or whites of the town, the whites because he has grown uppity as they feared when he left, the blacks because he is so emotionally remote from them.

In another chapter Dubois laments the death of his baby son though speculates that maybe it is good the little fellow didn't grow up to feel the pain of American racism that he himself feels and wishes for escape from.

There are two essays by Dubois attached to this edition of the book. One is "The Conservation of Races" a speech delivered by Dubois to the opening of the Negro Academy in 1897 and "The Development of a People" written in 1904. Dubois seems to exhibit in the first an excessive, though typically bourgeois concern for the allegedly poor morals and financial management of the black lower classes. I understand that he is here preaching self-help and betterment for his racial brethren. However I think he should have spent more time (here and in "Souls") elaborating on the economic oppression that made blacks, and has always made it frustrating for poor people to pursue their dreams. In the "Development of a People," he really cuts deep into white supremacy's claims to superior morality. He notes that the slavery t the Arabs introduced into Africa had the benefit for the slaves in that the latter could become members of the slave-owning household e.g. marrying into it. It was up to the Europeans to introduce slavery based on skin color with all its unspeakable brutalities.

One further notes the importance of this book in that it was written at a time when Booker T. Washington was exercising dictatorial control over black intellectual life...

Rating:
Summary: DuBois' enduring "Souls"
Review: First published in 1903, "The Souls of Black Folk," by W.E.B. DuBois, is a book that still shines with power and relevance. A collection of essays and narrative pieces on the African-American experience, "Souls" is a brilliant blend of history, political science, and memoir, all written in a compelling literary style.

DuBois is intensely concerned with the situation of African-Americans, but "Souls" also shows flashes of the global vision that would develop throughout his intellectual career. In this book he introduces such key concepts as "the Veil" and "double-consciousness"; although these terms are explored within the African-American context, I believe they are relevant with regard to other groups that are marginalized on the basis of difference.

DuBois incisively criticizes the racism that plagued America after the end of slavery. Particularly fascinating is his iconoclastic critique of controversial Black leader Booker T. Washington, whom DuBois saw as too willing to compromise with a white racist establishment. There is a strong concern with economic issues in "Souls"; DuBois condemns a heartless capitalism which turns human beings into mere commodities, and considers how the "slavery of debt" replaced literal slavery for many Blacks. One of the best sections of the book is his apparently autobiographical account of teaching in a rural Black school in Tennessee.

Dubois' literary style is worthy of note: elegant and learned, direct and passionate. He makes many classical and literary references. DuBois' ideas make him, in my opinion, a figure who links the radical United States essayists of the 19th century (David Walker, Henry David Thoreau, etc.) with those of the mid- and late 20th century (James Baldwin, Thomas Merton, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, etc.). "The Souls of Black Folk" is an essential classic, and a great read.