The souls of Black folk by W.E.B. Du Bois: twentieth century context and significance

Souls of Black Folk: a Call for Ultimate Liberation

Published in 1903, Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois remains to be one of the most important and a pioneering book on political, economic, social, and cultures lives of African-Americans in America. It is a collection of autobiographical and other essays by Du Bois that touch upon a variety of issues, including slavery, racism, liberation, history of African-Americans, and the questions of identity and consciousness. The main argument of Du Bois in this book is that African-Americans need to develop spiritually and through education to attain full political, economic, and social rights alongside Whites in America. Du Bois predicted that it would be a long struggle and therefore argued at the beginning of his book that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of color line" (Du Bois vii). Throughout the book, Du Bois discusses several issues to prove his thesis. He discusses the invisibility of Blacks in American history because of the "veil," failure of Reconstruction policies, lack of education, and the failures of previous African-American leaders and Churches in properly championing the rights of colored people after the Emancipation.

The question of the "veil" is a recurring theme in Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois argues that African-Americans have been left outside the realm of the world seen by Whites, i.e. behind a veil. The veil makes it hard Black souls to see the world. African-Americans thus are "invisible" in history and at present as human beings with true aspirations and rich souls. "After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world," Du Bois says, "a world which yields him no true sense of self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity" (Du Bois 3). Thus Blacks are trapped into a world where it is hard for them to liberate themselves. They are not simply chained in a literal sense, but their minds and souls are locked in a state of consciousness surrounded by the veil that prevents them from seeing their true selves and the real world. The veil is constructed by Whites who want to keep Blacks in perpetual chain.

The unwillingness of Whites to see Blacks liberated was the major reason the Reconstruction policies after the Civil War failed. Du Bois discusses in detail how the post-Emancipation south was little different from the era of slavery. African-Americans suffered from enduring poverty and the legacies of slavery in political, social, economic, and legal realms. The laws were still designed to favor a master-slave relationship between Whites and Blacks although politically Blacks were considered "free." Du Bois discusses how poverty destroyed the lives of African-Americans, leading to family breakdowns, despair, and hopelessness. As Du Bois points out, Whites deliberately used ingenious methods to keep Blacks in poverty. For instance, merchants granted African-Americans loans on the condition that only cotton crops would be accepted as security on those loans, essentially forcing African-Americans into growing cotton crops just like during the era of slavery. Because of the economic policies dictated by Whites, cotton harvesting did not yield any meaningful profit. The inability of African-Americans to yield better profits for their hard work discouraged them from working hard because many ended up seeing no point in tailoring. Thus the policies set by Whites confined African-Americans further into the perpetual cycle of poverty.

Du Bois argues that part of the reason African-Americans could not challenge these oppressive legal and economic policies set by Whites was the lack of education. In the forth and fifth sections of the book, Du Bois discusses the importance of education that is necessary for African-Americans to reach full potential. Du Bois criticizes policies set by Whites and agreed to by some local African-Americans that did not emphasize university education for Blacks. But university education, he says, is vital for African-Americans to raise their consciousness and have the knowledge to develop economically, politically, and socially. "Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push," Du Bois states, "a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground. Thus it was no accident that gave birth to universities centuries before the common schools, that made fair Harvard the first flower of our wilderness. So in the South: the mass of the freedmen at the end of the war lacked the intelligence so necessary to modern workingmen" (Du Bois 95). For Du Bois, this was a crucial problem. He urged the rare African-American leaders to champion the right of Blacks to pursue education.

When he looked at specific cases, however, Du Bois found past African-American leaders unwilling to defend the rights of Blacks to their full potential. Du Bois specifically criticizes Booker T. Washington for his "attitude of adjustment and submission." Booker T. Washington agreed to segregation policies and argued that economic wealth should the main goal of African-Americans, but not education and full political and social rights with Whites. Du Bois harshly criticizes Washington for accepting "the alleged inferiority of the Negro races," and says that Washington's program "naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently to almost completely overshadow the higher aims of life" (Du Bois 50). For Du Bois, higher aims included not only elimination of poverty among African-Americans, but also the attainment of full political and social rights, an acknowledgement of the true history of Blacks, and the state of consciousness that would allow Blacks to see themselves as liberated souls who were equal to Whites and other races. For him, Washington's compromises that further reinforced the racial divide between Whites and Blacks was totally unacceptable. For these reasons, Du Bois also criticizes Churches that perpetuated the segregation of the South. Du Bois argues that African-Americans should stop at nothing short of full political, economic, social, and mental liberation.