The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches is a 1903 work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology and a cornerstone of African-American literature.
The book contains several essays on race, some of which had been published earlier in The Atlantic Monthly. To develop this work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African American in American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology.
In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois used the term "double consciousness", perhaps taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson ("The Transcendentalist" and "Fate"), applying it to the idea that black people must have two fields of vision at all times. They must be conscious of how they view themselves, as well as being conscious of how the world views them.
Chapters Each chapter in The Souls of Black Folk begins with a pair of epigraphs: text from a poem, usually by a European poet, and the musical score of a spiritual, which Du Bois describes in his foreword ("The Forethought") as "some echo of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past". Columbia University English and comparative literature professor Brent Hayes Edwards writes: It is crucial to recognize that Du Bois ... chooses not to include the lyrics to the spirituals, which often serve to underline the arguments of the chapters: Booker T. Washington's idealism is echoed in the otherworldly salvation hoped for in "A Great Camp-Meeting in the Promised Land", for example; likewise the determined call for education in "Of the Training of Black Men" is matched by the strident words of "March On".
Edwards adds that Du Bois may have withheld the lyrics to mark a barrier for the reader, to suggest that black culture—life "within the veil"—remains inaccessible to white people.
In "The Forethought", Du Bois states: "Leaving, then, the world of the white man, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,—the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls." He concludes with the words: "...need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil?".
"Of Our Spiritual Strivings"
Chapter I, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings", lays out an overview of Du Bois's thesis. He says that the blacks of the South need the right to vote, the right to a good education, and to be treated with equality and justice. Here, he also coined the term "double-consciousness", defined as a "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903."Chap. I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings", at Bartleby.com
One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The History of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
The first chapter also introduces Du Bois's famous metaphor of the veil. According to Du Bois, this veil is worn by all African-Americans because their view of the world and its potential economic, political, and social opportunities is so vastly different from those of white people. The veil is a visual manifestation of the color line, a problem Du Bois worked his whole life to remedy. Du Bois sublimates the function of the veil when he refers to it as a gift of second sight for African Americans, thus simultaneously characterizing the veil as both a blessing and a curse.
In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,—darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission.
"Of the Dawn of Freedom"
The second chapter, "Of the Dawn of Freedom", covers the period of history from 1861 to 1872 and the Freedmen's Bureau. Du Bois also introduces the problem of the color-line: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.
Du Bois describes the Freedmen's Bureau as "one of the most singular and interesting of the attempts made by a great nation to grapple with vast problems of race and social condition." He quotes that the bureau was called "one of the great landmarks of political and social progress." After a year's work, Du Bois states that "it relieved a vast amount of physical suffering; it transported seven thousand fugitives from congested centres back to the farm; and, best of all, it inaugurated the crusade of the New England school-ma'am."
The greatest success of the Freedmen's Bureau lay in the planting of the free school among Negroes, and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the South.
He gives credit to the creation of Fisk University, Clark Atlanta University, Howard University, and Hampton University and acknowledges the "apostles of human culture" Edmund Asa Ware, Samuel C. Armstrong, and Erastus Cravath. He worried that the demise of the Freedman's Savings Bank, which resulted in huge losses for many freedmen of any savings, resulted in freedmen losing "all the faith in savings".
Finally, he argues that "if we cannot peacefully reconstruct the South with white votes, we certainly can with black votes." ...the granting of the ballot to the black man was a necessity, the very least a guilty nation could grant a wronged race, and the only method of compelling the South to accept the results of the war. Thus Negro suffrage ended a civil war by beginning a race feud.
"Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others"
Chapters III and IV deal with education and progress. Here Du Bois argues against Booker T. Washington's idea of focusing solely on industrial education for black men. He advocates the addition of a classical education to establish leaders and educators in the black community.
Du Bois refers to the Atlanta Compromise as the "most notable of Mr. Washington's career." Du Bois claims that Washington wants black people to give up three things: political power, insistence on civil rights, and higher education. He claims these policies "concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South," which has led to "1) The disenfranchisement of the Negro. 2) The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro. 3) The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro." By Washington focusing on "common-school and industrial training," he "depreciates institutions of higher learning," where "teachers, professional men, and leaders" are trained. In his concluding paragraph, he writes
So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,—so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,—we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them.
Note: By the time Du Bois published his book, most of the former Confederate states had completed disenfranchisement of blacks, led by Mississippi in 1890, by constitutional amendments and other laws raising barriers to voter registration, primarily through poll taxes, residency and recordkeeping requirements, subjective literacy tests and other devices. Virginia passed similar laws in 1908. By excluding blacks from political life, southern legislatures were able to pass Jim Crow laws and other discriminatory methods.
"Of the Meaning of Progress"
In the fourth chapter, "Of the Meaning of Progress", Du Bois explores his experiences first, when he was teaching in Tennessee.
I was a Fisk student then, and all Fisk men thought that Tennessee—beyond the Veil—was theirs alone, and in vacation time they sallied forth in lusty bands to meet the county school-commissioners.
Yet, he states, after meeting with the commissioner, "but even then fell the awful shadow of the Veil, for they ate first, then I—alone."
I have called my tiny community a world, and so its isolation made it; and yet there was among us but a half-awakened common consciousness, sprung from common joy and grief, at burial, birth, or wedding; from a common hardship in poverty, poor land, and low wages; and, above all, from the sight of the Veil that hung between us and Opportunity.He returned after 10 years and found the town where he had worked had suffered many unpleasant changes. He says: "My log schoolhouse was gone. In its place stood Progress; and Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly."
"Of the Wings of Atalanta" The fifth chapter is a meditation on the necessity of widespread higher education in the South.
Du Bois compares Atlanta, the City of a Hundred Hills, to the mythic Atalanta, and warns against the "greed of gold," or "interpreting the world in dollars." The "Black World beyond the Veil", should not sacrifice "Truth, Beauty, and Goodness" for the ideal of wealth attainment in public schools.
...beyond the Veil are smaller but like problems of ideals, of leaders and the led, of serfdom, of poverty, of order and subordination, and, through all, the Veil of Race.
He admonishes readers to "Teach workers to work," and "teach thinkers to think." "The need of the South is knowledge and culture," he says: "And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living,—not sordid money-getting, not apples of gold."
"Of the Training of Black Men" Du Bois discusses how "to solve the problem of training men for life," especially as it relates to the Negro, who "hang between them and a light a veil so thick, that they shall not even think of breaking through." Du Bois cites the progress of Southern education, consisting of army schools, mission schools, and schools of the Freedman's Bureau, from the end of the Civil War until 1876. Then complete school systems were established including Normal schools and colleges, followed by the industrial revolution in the South from 1885 to 1895, and its industrial schools. Yet, he asks, "Is not life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?".
Du Bois asserts: "...education that encourages aspiration, that sets the loftiest of ideals and seeks as an end culture and character rather than bread-winning," is the right of the black as well as the white. He goes on to state, "If the Negro was to learn, he must teach himself," and cites the 30,000 black teachers created in one generation who "wiped out the illiteracy of the majority of the black people of the land, and they made Tuskegee possible."