II. "Of the Dawn of Freedom"

The second essay in The Souls of Black Folk examines the period  of Civil War and Reconstruction in the American South (1861-1872) as it relates to the African American experience.  Du Bois focuses in particular on the history of the Freedmen's Bureau and that organization's work in the Deep South.
This essay is a reworking of the article "The Freedmen's Bureau" published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in March 1901.  Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/01mar/dubois.htm



The poem is an excerpt of James Russell Lowell's longer piece, "The Present Crisis" (1844)
James Russell Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1838. Two years later he was awarded the bachelor of laws degree by Harvard's Law School, but his energies were already dedicated to the profession of letters, and he soon abandoned a legal career. He wanted to be a poet.James Russell Lowell, poet, essayist, diplomatist, and scholar, was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on February 22, 1819, the son of a Unitarian minister. His poem on "The Present Crisis," written in 1844, was his first really notable production, and one that made a deep impression on the public mind. In the twenty years of troubled politics that followed, one finds it constantly quoted.


Du Bois uses the poem as his inspiration for the name of the official organ of the NAACP, The Crisis which Du Bois founded in 1910.

The musical notation is from the Negro spiritual "My Lord, What a Mourning!"

The Civil War Amendments


Listen to the late Ossie Davis read the 13th and 14th amendments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?

Listen to Ruby Dee read the 14th (Sections 4 & 5) and 15th amendments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsGuBq5uFtQ