The Souls of Black Folk

Summary

The Souls of Black Folk is a book of fourteen chapters framed by a short Forethought and Afterthought, in which W. E. B. Du Bois sets out to show readers what it meant to be Black in the United States at the opening of the twentieth century. He announces his subject at once: the great problem of the new century is the color line. Each chapter begins with two epigraphs, a passage of poetry (from Byron, Whittier, Schiller, Swinburne, the Song of Songs and others) and a few bars of music from a spiritual, so that the book is scored, as it were, with the songs it praises at the end. The first chapter, Of Our Spiritual Strivings, introduces the images that have made the book famous: the Veil that separates Black from white America, and double consciousness, the experience of seeing oneself through the eyes of a contemptuous world while holding two ideals, American and Negro, in one person. The second chapter is a history of the Freedmen's Bureau under General Oliver O. Howard, praising its schools and judging its failures. The third, Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others, is a respectful but firm critique of the Tuskegee leader's Atlanta Compromise: Du Bois honors Washington's work for industrial training and thrift but argues that his program asks Black Americans to give up political power, insistence on civil rights and the higher education of their young men. The middle chapters move between memoir, sociology and argument. Of the Meaning of Progress recalls two summers Du Bois spent as a Fisk student teaching a country school in the hills of Tennessee, and his return ten years later to find his pupil Josie dead. Of the Wings of Atalanta and Of the Training of Black Men defend the university against a purely commercial ideal of education. Of the Black Belt and Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece take the reader by train through Dougherty County, Georgia, examining cotton tenancy, debt and the crop-lien system. Of the Sons of Master and Man surveys daily contact between the races, and Of the Faith of the Fathers describes the Black church, its preacher, music and frenzy. The last four chapters are the most personal. Of the Passing of the First-Born is a lament for Du Bois's infant son Burghardt, who died in Atlanta. Of Alexander Crummell is a portrait of the Episcopal priest who overcame the temptations of hate, despair and doubt. Of the Coming of John is a short story about a young man who returns educated to his Georgia town, with tragic results. Of the Sorrow Songs closes the book with a study of the spirituals, which Du Bois calls the nation's most beautiful music, and a prayer that the book not fall still-born into the world. Nine of the chapters had appeared as magazine essays, chiefly in the Atlantic Monthly and The Dial, before Du Bois revised them; A. C. McClurg of Chicago published the book in April 1903.

Plot or Argument

• The Forethought and the color line

  Du Bois asks the Gentle Reader to receive the book in charity and names its thesis: the problem of the twentieth century is the color line. He lays out his plan to sketch first the world outside the Veil and then the life within it.

• Chapter I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings

  Remembering a schoolgirl in New England who refused his visiting card, Du Bois introduces the Veil and double consciousness, then traces the hopes Black Americans placed in emancipation, the ballot and book-learning, and argues that work, culture and liberty must be sought together.

• Chapter II: Of the Dawn of Freedom

  A history of the Freedmen's Bureau from 1865 to 1872: Union generals and contrabands, General O. O. Howard's administration, the Bureau's schools and courts, its corruption and its achievement. Du Bois concludes that the Bureau's legacy was unfinished work.

• Chapter III: Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others

  Du Bois credits Washington with skill and sincerity but argues that his Atlanta Compromise accepts the surrender of voting rights, civil rights and higher education. He names three paradoxes in the program and calls for both praise of Washington's good work and open opposition where he errs.

• Chapters IV–VI: Progress, Atalanta and the training of men

  A memoir of teaching in rural Tennessee and of returning to find the community changed and Josie dead; a warning, through the Greek myth of Atalanta and the golden apples, that Atlanta and the South may chase wealth alone; and a defense of colleges such as Atlanta and Fisk as places that train teachers and leaders, ending in the vision of sitting with Shakespeare above the Veil.

• Chapters VII–IX: The Black Belt and the cotton South

  Du Bois rides the Jim Crow car into Dougherty County, Georgia, describing plantations, tenant farms and the burden of debt; uses the myth of Jason's quest as a frame for the cotton economy; and surveys the physical, economic, political, legal and social contacts between Black and white Southerners.

• Chapter X: Of the Faith of the Fathers

  Beginning with a revival meeting he witnessed as a young man, Du Bois describes the preacher, the music and the frenzy of the Black church, traces its history from African religion through slavery, and reflects on the moral dilemmas of the present.

• Chapters XI–XII: The first-born and Alexander Crummell

  A lament for Du Bois's baby son Burghardt, who died in Atlanta and whom the father imagines spared the Veil, followed by a biography of the Episcopal priest Alexander Crummell, rejected by a seminary, educated at Cambridge, a missionary in Liberia, and faithful through hate, despair and doubt.

• Chapter XIII: Of the Coming of John

  A short story: John Jones of Altamaha, Georgia, returns from college to teach the town's Black school, where the white judge closes it; the judge's son, also named John, accosts John's sister Jennie, and the story ends as a mob rides toward John by the sea.

• Chapter XIV and the Afterthought: Of the Sorrow Songs

  Du Bois recalls the Fisk Jubilee Singers, analyzes ten master songs and their history, argues that the spirituals are the singular spiritual heritage of the nation, and asks whether their hope is justified. The Afterthought prays that the book may bear fruit.

Characters

• W. E. B. Du Bois, author and narrator

  Scholar who speaks in the first person as historian, teacher, father and witness to life within the Veil.

• Booker T. Washington, subject of critique

  Principal of Tuskegee Institute, whose Atlanta Compromise program Du Bois examines in Chapter III.

• Oliver Otis Howard, historical figure

  Union general and commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, described in Chapter II.

• Josie, pupil

  Eager young woman of the Tennessee hills who longs for schooling and whose death Du Bois learns of on his return.

• Burghardt Du Bois, the first-born

  Du Bois's infant son, whose birth and death are the subject of Chapter XI.

• Alexander Crummell, subject of biography

  Episcopal priest and missionary to Liberia whose patient life Du Bois holds up as a model in Chapter XII.

• John Jones, fictional protagonist

  Young man of Altamaha, Georgia, whose education estranges him from his town in Chapter XIII.

Lessons

• Seeing oneself through two sets of eyes

  Du Bois names double consciousness as the strain of being both American and Negro in a country that treated the two as opposed. His aim is not to escape either identity but to merge them into a truer self without losing the older one. The idea gave many later writers a vocabulary for divided belonging.

  • What experience in Chapter I first shows Du Bois the Veil?
  • Why does Du Bois insist that the Negro does not wish to Africanize America or bleach his soul in white Americanism?
  • Can double consciousness be a gift of second sight as well as a burden?

• Disagreeing with a leader in good faith

  Chapter III praises Booker T. Washington's achievements before contesting his program. Du Bois argues that honest criticism of a respected leader is a duty, not a betrayal, and he frames his objection as a matter of ends: votes, civil rights and higher learning.

  • Which parts of Washington's work does Du Bois commend?
  • What are the three paradoxes he finds in Washington's program?
  • How would Washington, in Up from Slavery, answer Du Bois's charge?

• What a university is for

  In the Atalanta and Training chapters Du Bois argues that education must form men and women, not only workers, and that a people needs teachers, ministers and scholars trained in the highest learning. His image of conversing with Shakespeare, Balzac and Aristotle makes the case that culture belongs to everyone who can receive it.

  • What danger does Du Bois see in the golden apples of the Atalanta myth?
  • Why does he defend Latin and Greek for students at Atlanta and Fisk?
  • Is his ideal of liberal education still persuasive?

• Sorrow that sings of hope

  The spirituals frame every chapter and receive the final one. Du Bois hears in them grief, faith and an expectation of justice, and he treats them as the nation's great artistic gift, which makes music a form of testimony.

  • Why does Du Bois place a bar of a spiritual at the head of each chapter?
  • Which songs does he single out in Chapter XIV, and what does each express?
  • What does he mean by asking whether the Sorrow Songs sing true?

Context

Du Bois wrote in the decade after Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), as Southern states passed laws that removed Black voters from the rolls and separated the races in public life. Booker T. Washington's 1895 Atlanta Exposition Address had made him the most influential Black American, and his emphasis on industrial training and economic progress was widely endorsed by white philanthropists. Du Bois, then a young sociologist at Atlanta University, offered a different program centered on the vote, civil rights and the higher education of a talented leadership.

Composition

Nine of the fourteen chapters revise essays first published between 1897 and 1903, chiefly in the Atlantic Monthly and The Dial; Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others, Of the Passing of the First-Born, Of Alexander Crummell, Of the Coming of John and parts of other chapters were new or largely new. A. C. McClurg & Co. of Chicago published the book in April 1903; the Forethought is dated Atlanta, February 1, 1903.

Reception

The book was widely reviewed and quickly reprinted, and its chapter on Washington helped mark the division that led to the Niagara Movement (1905) and the founding of the NAACP (1909). Writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including James Weldon Johnson, described its influence, and the phrases color line, the Veil and double consciousness entered American discussion of race, literature and identity.

Comparisons

• up-from-slavery

  Washington's autobiography presents the Tuskegee program in his own words; Chapter III of Du Bois's book replies to it directly, so the pair gives both sides of the debate over industrial and higher education.

• atlanta-exposition-address

  The 1895 speech is the Atlanta Compromise that Du Bois analyzes and contests in Chapter III; reading the speech first lets students judge whether his summary of it is fair.

• narrative-and-fourth-of-july

  Douglass, writing a half-century earlier, also links literacy to freedom and speaks to a white audience about the nation's ideals; Du Bois carries the argument into the era after emancipation.

• uncle-toms-cabin

  Stowe's novel used fiction to move white readers before the Civil War; Du Bois's Of the Coming of John uses a short story for a similar purpose inside a book of essays, and both lean on spirituals and Christian hope.

• sermons-and-letter-from-birmingham-jail

  King's letter, like Du Bois's chapter on Washington, argues against counsels of patience and appeals to the nation's founding ideals and to Scripture.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The paired epigraphs, a poem and a bar of a spiritual, at the head of each chapter.
• The Veil, introduced in Chapter I and returning in nearly every chapter, including the death of the first-born.
• How Chapter III balances praise of Booker T. Washington with three specific objections.
• The shift from history and sociology (Chapters II, VII–IX) to memoir, biography and fiction (Chapters IV, XI–XIII).
• The Greek myths of Atalanta and Jason's Golden Fleece used to judge the American South's pursuit of wealth.

Key terms and names

The Veil

Du Bois's image for the barrier that separates Black from white America and through which each sees the other only dimly.

Double consciousness

The sense of measuring oneself by the eyes of a contemptuous world while holding two ideals, American and Negro, in one person.

The color line

The division between the darker and lighter races that Du Bois names as the problem of the twentieth century.

Freedmen's Bureau

The federal agency (1865–1872) that ran schools, courts and relief for the freed people, examined in Chapter II.

Atlanta Compromise

Du Bois's name for Booker T. Washington's 1895 Atlanta address, which accepted social separation in exchange for economic opportunity.

Black Belt

The cotton region of the Deep South, named for its soil and its Black majority, which Du Bois tours in Dougherty County, Georgia.

Sorrow Songs

Du Bois's name for the spirituals, the songs of the enslaved, which he calls the nation's greatest gift.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What happens in the New England schoolhouse that first shows the young Du Bois he is shut out by the Veil?
2. Comprehension According to Chapter III, what three things does Du Bois say Washington's program asks Black Americans to give up?
3. Comprehension What does Du Bois find when he returns to the Tennessee community where he taught Josie and her brothers?
4. Interpretation Why does Du Bois end a book of essays with a chapter on music and include a short story, Of the Coming of John, just before it?
5. Interpretation How does the myth of Atalanta and the golden apples shape Du Bois's argument about Atlanta and the New South?
6. Interpretation In Of the Passing of the First-Born, why does Du Bois find a kind of consolation in his son's death, and how should a reader respond to that feeling?
7. Big Question Should a people seeking justice pursue economic progress first, as Washington urged, or political rights and higher learning together, as Du Bois urged?
8. Big Question Can great books and great music truly lift a person above the divisions of society, as Du Bois claims in the Shakespeare passage?

Faith Connections

• Song of Solomon 1:5 (Scripture)

  Du Bois uses the verse I am black but comely as the epigraph to Of the Black Belt, claiming the Bible's own praise of dark beauty as he enters the cotton country.

• Exodus 3:7-10 (Scripture)

  The spirituals Du Bois studies often sing of Moses and the deliverance from Egypt, and his final hope that men will be judged by their souls echoes God's hearing of the cry of His people.

• 1 Samuel 16:7 (Scripture)

  The Lord looks on the heart rather than the outward appearance, the principle behind Du Bois's hope that sometime men will judge men by their souls and not their skins.

• Augustine, Confessions IX (Church Fathers)

  Augustine's account of his grief at his mother Monica's death sets beside Of the Passing of the First-Born a Christian father's struggle to grieve with hope; Du Bois's lament is more uncertain, which makes the comparison fruitful.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Black Americans possess real gifts of spirit, art and intellect; the color line denies them the vote, civil rights and higher education needed to develop those gifts; therefore the nation must open all three, and Black leaders must ask for them openly rather than accept a program of economic progress alone.

Rhetorical device: extended metaphor. The Veil, introduced in Chapter I as the barrier through which the seventh son sees the world, returns in the chapters on education, the Black Belt and the first-born, binding the essays into one argument.

Debate: Resolved: that Du Bois's call for higher education and political rights was a wiser program for 1903 than Booker T. Washington's emphasis on industrial training.

Memory Work

for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.

Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Using Chapters V and VI, explain Du Bois's idea of what education is for, and evaluate whether the Shakespeare passage proves or only illustrates his case.

Comparison with Up from Slavery: Compare Washington's account of his work at Tuskegee with Du Bois's criticism of it in Chapter III. Where do the two men agree, and where is their disagreement deepest?

Medical Lens

The book is not medical, but Of the Passing of the First-Born is one of the notable paternal laments in American prose: a father's account of an infant's illness and death, and of a grief shaped by the son's imagined future under the Veil. Chapter II also mentions the Freedmen's Bureau's physicians, surgeons and hospitals, a brief pointer for historians of Reconstruction-era public health.

• Chapter XI, Of the Passing of the First-Born

  The birth of Burghardt, his illness in Atlanta, the watch beside him as the physician comes and goes, his death and burial, and the father's mixed grief and consolation.

  Grief Death Dying
• Chapter II, Of the Dawn of Freedom

  A summary of the Freedmen's Bureau's work, including its physicians, surgeons, hospitals and asylums for the newly freed.

  Physicians Doctors Public Health Sanitation

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Explain double consciousness as Du Bois defines it in Chapter I, then show how the idea recurs in the story of John Jones in Chapter XIII.

• Dialogue

  Write a dialogue between Booker T. Washington and Du Bois in 1903 on whether a young person in the Black Belt should attend Tuskegee or Atlanta University, giving each man his strongest arguments.

• Classroom

  Listen to recordings of three spirituals Du Bois names in Chapter XIV, such as Steal Away or Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen, and discuss how each fits his account of hope within sorrow.

• Poetry

  Write a short poem to serve as an epigraph for a chapter of your own life, in imitation of the paired verse and music that open each of Du Bois's chapters.

Further Reading

• Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington

  The autobiography whose program Du Bois answers.

• The Philadelphia Negro, W. E. B. Du Bois

  Du Bois's 1899 sociological study of a Philadelphia ward.

• Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, W. E. B. Du Bois

  A 1920 companion volume of essays, poems and stories.

• W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919, David Levering Lewis

  Pulitzer Prize-winning first volume of the standard biography.

• The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, James Weldon Johnson

  A 1912 novel that takes up the theme of double consciousness.