Final Thoughts on The Souls of Black Folk

Check out the celebration of centennial of the publication of The Souls of Black Folk led by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. at Du Bois' alma mater Harvard University.
http://forum-network.org/lecture/web-du-bois-souls-black-folk


Today we complete our formal discussion of The Souls of Black Folks, any final thoughts?

Dr. Du Bois originally published the essays that comprise The Souls of Black Folks from 1896-1901 and the completed book of essays was originally published in 1903, over 100 years ago.  This essays reflected his thinking at the dawning of the 20th Century.  Du Bois was not perfect, his essays reflect his elitism, paternalism, and sexism.  His essays also reflect that he was born to free mother in New England three years after the end of the Civil War.  They also reflect his education and erudition, he was educated at three of the best educational institutions in the world at that time:
Fisk University
Harvard University
University of Berlin
The essays also reflect his growing participation in the Niagara Movement and predate the founding of NAACP.  While I do not agree with all of Du Bois' arguments and I recognize that were other voices speaking out about African American issues during the early 20th Century, Du Bois was a public intellectual par excellence, whose commitment to scholarship, writing and activism have not been matched.  Our next author Carter Godwin Woodson was a superior public intellectual who raised the general public awareness of Africa and the Diaspora.

Du Bois is often criticized as not being an institution builder.  But I think he was an institution builder, he just built different types of institutions, he created or help create: the Niagara Movement, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, The Crisis, The Phylon and the academic discipline of sociology.

What are your thoughts?  Thank you for participating in our discussion of The Souls of Black Folk and spread the word about the blog as we begin our discussion of Mis-Education of the Negro.

XIV. "The Sorrow Songs"

Check out this clips of Sorrow Songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knQvjDgRZoM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGe-OB8wzXk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlLPu2Sr1ZU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn4o4QF-HWc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8NGQGIogys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EJSkJlh_fg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcPRfN8SMco

XIV. "The Sorrow Songs"

Jubilee Hall at Fisk University














Du Bois' graduation class at Fisk

X. Of Faith of The Fathers

Du Bois writes toward the end of this essay:
To-day the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent and wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many cases he sees postive personal advantage in deception and lying.  His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers; he must not criticise, he must not complain.  Patience, humility, adroitness must, in these growing black youth, replace impulse, manliness, and courage.


Paul Laurence Dunbar writes about this dilemma in his poem, "We Wear the Mask"

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
          We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
          We wear the mask!

X. Of Faith of The Fathers

My church, Farish Street Baptist Church, ca. 1930


The tenth essay in The Souls of Black Folk is "Of Faith of the Father".  The poem is from "Dim Face of Beauty" by Fiona MacLeod  and the musical notation is from the Negro spiritual, "Steal Away"
Check out link of Mahalia Jackson and Nat King Cole singing "Steal Away":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O5hz5KnSdc

This essay is a reworking of an article Du Bois wrote for The New World: A Quarterly Review of Religious Ethics and Theology (December 1900): 614-25 entitled "The Religion of the American Negro".

In this tenth essay Du Bois described the religion of the African American before emancipation.  Three things stood out for Du Bois in describing African American religion:
1. The Preacher
2. Music
3. Frenzy or Shouting

Du Bois plainly displays his New England high church bias when he describes African and African American religion.  Du Bois the stuffy, conservative, snob is front and center in this article.  He refers to West African religion as heathenism and probably only approves slightly more of rural Southern African American  and Northern storefront religious practices. 

Du Bois claims:
The Negro Churcb of to-day[1900] is the social centre of Negro life in the United States, and the most characteristic expression of African character.

In 2010, can the same claim be made about the African American church?

Uplifting the Race

Throughout  The Souls of Black Folk and especially in the ninth essay, "Of the Sons of Master and Man", Du Bois, writes about racial uplift.  Today we largely criticize "racial uplift" as elitism and it was elitism.  But the elitism in racial uplift was both a weakness and a strength.  People like Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, Booker T. Washington and others felt an obligation to help the masses of African Americans.
Kevin Gaines in his book,  Uplifting the Race, argues:

. . .in its emphasis on class distinctions and patriarchal authority, racial uplift ideology was tied to pejorative notions of racial pathology and thus was limited as a force against white prejudice.

I agree with Gaines that buying into the same racial stereotypes whites had against African Americans hindered the effectiveness of racial uplift, but I feel it was a start.  Racial uplift was better than folding hands and turning up noses and saying I got mine now you get yours the best way can.  Racial uplift built churches, schools, and other self-help organizations. 



Mary Church Terrell
And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long. With courage, born of success achieved in the past, with a keen sense of the responsibility which we shall continue to assume, we look forward to a future large with promise and hope. Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.

IX. "Of the Sons of Master and Man"

W.E.B Du Bois writes:

 Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon the law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression.  The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape.

Check out this link from Howard University School of Law on race and justice.

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/ID/221714


Check out this article by Charles Ogletree and  Johanna Wald, "After Shirley Sherrod, We All Need to Slow Down and Listen" Washington Post, Sunday, July 25, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072304583.html

Have attitudes changed in the 21st Century?  Let's talk about.