W.E.B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk: A Critical Analysis

Introduction

W.E.B. Du Bois is one of the greatest African-American thinkers, orators, and writers in history. His works are often bold assessments of the development of the Black, formerly enslaved class in the United States, tracing periods in which they repeatedly faced overt and subtle racism while simultaneously being expected to succeed because the laws were, in the common refrain, "better than they used to be." Du Bois's work The Souls of Black Folk, though composed of several divergent essays, is for many the source and center of nearly all his messages regarding the truth-telling that must be done — in history — to properly place the plight of Black Americans into context.

According to the editor of The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois Reader, which republished the whole of The Souls of Black Folk within its pages, the work's purpose is "to transcend the pain and liabilities of the past while remembering and restoring the power of the African-American heritage," and this theme "runs throughout The Souls of Black Folk. No work before or since has met the challenge so well." (Sundquist 99)

Brief Summary of The Souls of Black Folk

The Souls of Black Folk consists of several thematic essays examining the position and reality of Black life throughout its history in the United States. Each essay addresses a theme of necessary report and honesty. According to Du Bois himself, in his forethought to the collection, he "sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand Americans live and strive." (Du Bois 100)

The first two essays discuss the meaning of emancipation for Black Americans and its aftermath. The third chapter deals with the relatively slow progress of personal leadership, heavily criticizing the president of the Tuskegee Institute for capitulating to the idea that trade skills, rather than intellectual development, represented the necessary next step in Black advancement. In two additional chapters, Du Bois juxtaposes the world of Black Americans inside and outside what he calls the "veil" — that is, the Black world versus Black men navigating the white world — and addresses specifically how such a color line could realistically train Black men to live productive lives. He then examines Black poverty across two chapters and closes with a chapter on what he calls the "present relations of the sons of master and man." (Du Bois 100)

It has been noted by many scholars that Du Bois's use of Black spirituals to open the themes of his essays was masterful in several respects. In part, this technique sets the tone for how the theme to be discussed realistically played a role in the lives of Black Americans, as such spirituals were often the only form of mass communication available to Black men and women during long stretches of their history in the United States. Additionally, Du Bois has been praised for this choice because the spirituals represent a tradition that cannot be found anywhere else — an oral tradition, shaped by the illegality or at best the unconventional tolerance of literacy among enslaved people.

Black Spirituals as Thematic Introductions

The Black spiritual loses its power as those who used it to communicate joy and sorrow begin to die off. As with all oral traditions, the death of people often marks the death of tradition, if that tradition is not effectively passed on to the next generation. This loss is substantial, and in some ways Du Bois's purpose is to stress the deeper meanings of these spirituals through intellectual and political discussion — something he, as an educated African-American man, was positioned to do. Most importantly, he was an educated African-American man who, unlike Washington, was willing to tell the truth rather than capitulate to the standards of white society in his beliefs, assertions, and expectations of his fellow Black Americans.

A foundational example — and a theme that pervades the work — can be seen in the spiritual he uses to introduce the theme of Chapter 2, "Of the Dawn of Freedom": "Careless seems the great Avenger; / History's lessons but record / One death-grapple in the darkness / 'Twixt old systems and the Word; / Truth forever on the scaffold, / Wrong forever on the throne." (Du Bois 107) The chapter stresses the extreme tension between legal emancipation — following his first chapter, which discusses the great hope that freedom would be real — and the absence of genuine systems enabling the development of Black men and women. Du Bois makes clear that this hope was met with constant disappointment, as the reality of Black life was perpetually stunted by tradition, fear, and racially motivated systems that still barred Black Americans from success and the full expression of free will.

There is no better chapter to examine with regard to truth-telling in Du Bois's work than the one that directly attacks Booker T. Washington. Washington, in the eyes of many white Americans — and even some Black Americans — had the most logical and rational response to the question of Black advancement in society. He argued that Black men and women needed to be trained for work, work that reflected their previously restricted options. Washington believed that the Black race would be most successful not by fighting for positions and vocations previously reserved for the white majority, but by working with their hands and training to make that labor more productive and efficient.

To Du Bois and other intellectuals, this stance was an assault on Black people, as it continued to imply that their abilities were inferior to those of whites and perpetuated the idea that most Black Americans would be incapable of holding positions of real vocational power — the kind achieved through traditional, previously "white only," higher education. Du Bois stresses that Washington's capitulation — offering one of the only advanced education options for Black Americans as a trade school that did not emphasize intellectual development — was tantamount to supporting white society, as Black Americans had always been compelled to do. The Tuskegee Institute did not train the first generation of Black attorneys, doctors, professors, or entrepreneurs; it continued to train Black Americans to provide services to whites, only more scientifically and efficiently.

Conclusion

Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk is a fundamental document that should be read and understood by all who have any interest in Black history and the way in which that history is portrayed. Du Bois, unlike many mainstream thinkers of his era, exemplifies the voice of a strong, educated Black man — one capable of intellectual engagement with the full reality of a people who were fundamentally silenced for most of their history in this nation. The use of the spiritual as the thematic foundation of the work is also an essential strength: even though much of Du Bois's writing is wholly secular in nature, the ideologies he champions deserve a firm place in the spiritual character of hope — hope for change, and hope for voice.