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The Souls of Black Folk
This is one of the most widely available of W.E.B. Du Bois' texts on the Web -- perhaps because it is one of the most widely known of his works. It was published in 1903 by the Chicago company, A.C. McClurg (a listing of their books that are accessible at the Internet Archive).
On this web page you will find links to:
* Internet-available copies of Souls itself, as well as related material;
* book reviews and notices by various contemporaries of Du Bois;
* previously published essays by Du Bois that became part of Souls;
* commemorations of the centenary of its publication (including links to audio and visual presentations that discuss the historical importance of the book);and
* secondary sources which utilize Souls directly or indirectly as a point of reference.
I have written a profile of The Souls of Black Folk
it is available at
Robert W. Williams [Bio] LATEST LINK (As of 20 June 2009)
A Secondary Source on a Contemporary of Du Bois
Posted below are links to further information about Alfred Holt Stone, who is included on this page for his book review of Souls.
THE TEXT AND RELATED MATERIALS
The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. The full text is accessible at:
Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hillhttp://docsouth.unc.edu/church/duboissouls/menu.html
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Libraryhttp://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html
Dr. Larry Ridener's website, Dead Sociologists' Societyhttp://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/DuBois/sbftoc.htm
The Souls of Black Folk. Special full-text version is available online:
Dr. Richard Rath annotates the musical scores in Souls with lyrics, audio files, and comments on the significance of the music to the book's themes.http://way.net/SoulsOfBlackFolk/SoulsOfBlackFolk.html
[Rath's faculty page at the University of Hawaii, Manoa]
The Souls of Black Folk: Useful Text Editions
There are many editions of Souls in book form. The following are some of those helpful editions (they are arranged alphabetically by the editor's last name).
The editors of this Norton Critical Edition, Henry Louis Gates and Terri Hume Oliver, offer a detailed introduction to the book and its themes. Also included are various essays on Souls written by, among others, D. Bruce, R. Gooding-Williams, Wm. James, D.L. Lewis, N. McKay, S. Mizruchi, A. Rampersad, and S. Zamir. Please click here.
In this Simon & Schuster Enriched Classic version, Norman Harris provides interpretive notes, including a biographical sketch and timeline of Du Bois' life, materials on the historical context and the key themes of the book, excerpts and bibliography of contemporary and modern perspectives on Souls, questions for classroom discussion, and a list
of further readings. Please click here.
John Edgar Wideman introduces the book and provides notes for the text. An extensive chronology of Du Bois' life is also included.
Please
click here.
Buying a copy from *Amazon.com* via the links posted here will assist in the maintenance of webdubois.org. Thank you.
Robert Williams
"Contract for The Souls of Black Folk": The contract between W.E.B. At the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago Historical Society. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/3792.html
"Preface to the Jubilee Edition of The Souls of Black Folk." Monthly Review, 1953. DuBois' preface for the 50th Anniversary edition.
Reading Guides to Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk, Chs. 1-3. National Humanities Center, Online Professional Development Seminar Toolboxes. Seminar: The Making of African American Identity 1865-1917.
Reading Guide to Ch. 1, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings"http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/pds/africanamer/identity/text2/text2read.htm
Reading Guide to ch. 2: "Of the Dawn of Freedom"
http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/pds/africanamer/freedom/text3/text3read.htm
Reading Guide to ch. 3: "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" [relating questions also to Booker T. Washington's "The Atlanta Exposition Address" (1895), ch. 14 in Washington's Up from Slavery (1901)]http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/pds/africanamer/politics/text6/text6read.htm
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF SOULS
[ Arranged chronologically from earliest to latest ]
[ Arranged chronologically from earliest to latest ]
Book review of The Souls of Black Folk
New York Times anonymous review: "The Negro Question," 25 April 1903[Access to the NY Times web site may require free registration]
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/05/specials/dubois-souls.html
The Christian Work and the Evangelist printed a brief announcement of Souls (v.74, n.1891 (May 16, 1903): 723), presented here in its entirety and verbatim:
A book from which much may be expected is "The Souls of Black Folk," by Prof. W. S. [sic] Burghardt Du Bois, a colored professor in Atlanta University, graduate of Fiske, Harvard and Berlin. It will be published by A. C. McClure & Co. [sic: McClurg]
Page in the full text of the periodical (at the Google Books site)
http://books.google.com/books?id=bqspAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA723....
An anonymous review of Souls published by the Canadian periodical Methodist Magazine and Review (Vol. LVIII, No. 1 (July 1903): "The Souls of Black Folk." Essays and Sketches. by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co. Toronto: William Briggs.
Pp. viii-264. Price, $1.20 net.
This book is an important contribution to higher literature by a coloured writer. The author is a professor at Atlanta University. His work found its way into high-class magazines, as The Atlantic Monthly, World's Work, and other leading periodicals. His book is marked by fine literary grace. It is in some respects a cry de profundis. The iron of injustice has entered into his soul. He echoes the bitter cry of his coloured kinsmen: "Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shadows of the prison-house closed round about us all, walls relentlessly narrow and unscalable to sons of night who must beat unavailing palms against the stone."[*]
Pp. viii-264. Price, $1.20 net.
He discusses the great race problem which confronts the American people. Education, intellectual, but still more industrial, is the only solution of this problem. "They are rising, all arising, the black and white together."[**] There is a strange pathos in some of the chapters, as that on the Sorrow Songs of his race, some of which are given with the strange, fascinating music to which the are sung. The studies of the Black Belt, the Training of Black Men, the Quest of the Golden Fleece, the Faith of the Fathers, and the Passing of the First-born are a new voice of strange power in our ears. A fine poetical vein runs through these papers.
* Note 1: This passage differs somewhat from Du Bois's actual words in With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
** Note 2: This brief sentence comes from a John Greenleaf Whittier poem that Du Bois prepended to the start of Chapter V, "Of the Wings of Atalanta." The poem is Whittier's "Howard at Atlanta" (viewable online) which spelled out the moral consequences of the end of slavery for both the enslaved and the enslavers: "The one curse of the races / Held both in tether; / They are rising
Note 3: In the original text of the review, note that (a) the subtitle of Souls was not included within the double quotation marks encompassing the main title; and (b) the periodical titles in the review were not italicized.
First page in the full text of the periodical (at the Google Books site)
http://books.google.com/books?id=7b8QAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA95&as_brr=1
An anonymous review of Souls published in The American Monthly Review of Reviews (Vol. XXVIII, No. 2 (August 1903): 249). The periodical was edited by Albert Shaw. The full text of the review is presented below in its entirety (along with the portrait sketch found in the original publication):
As related to the renewed discussion of the negro problem in this country, the little volume of essays and sketches entitled "The Souls of Black Folks," by Prof. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.), deserves a wide reading. Professor Du Bois has contributed to the REVIEW OF REVIEWS, and is known to many of our readers as a writer of scholarly and well-informed papers relating to the progress of his race. A graduate of Harvard and of the University of Berlin, Professor Du Bois has attained in a few years,
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with Booker T. Washington, the highest rank among American negro educationists. In his present book, Professor Du Bois emphasizes the need of spiritual and intellectual culture for the negro rather than the more practical and utilitarian ends kept so steadily in view by Mr. Washington in his work at Tuskegee. Professor Du Bois is a man of the highest culture, and he cannot overcome the sensitiveness natural to a man of fine feelings placed in the position that he occupies. There is a natural tendency on his part to interpret the aspirations of his people through his own individual strivings and emotions. The result is truly pathetic; but as a practical contribution to the solution of the educational problem for the black race his essays cannot be regarded as of equal value with the widely published lectures and addresses of Mr. Washington. Nevertheless, they well repay reading, representing, as they do, a phase of thought that has, perhaps, been too long neglected by some of those who would deal with the problem as a whole. Of the literary quality of the essays too much cannot be said. No book of similar character has been printed in recent years that equals this little volume in power or grace of expression.
Notes: "Negro" is not capitalized in the original text. Also, due to formatting differences between the original periodical and this html version, the sketch is not in its precise position. I was unable to find the artist's name. The portrait was obtained via screen capture software and, with the exception of slightly enlarging the image for easier viewing, is presented here "as-it-was." [RWW]
Page in the full text of the periodical (at the Google Books site)http://books.google.com/books?id=d8UCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PRA1-PA249
An anonymous, brief comment on The Souls of Black Folk was published in the "Contemporary Literature" section of the Westminister Review (Vol. CLX, No. 3 (September 1903) on p. 354). The comment is provided below in its entirety and verbatim (including the ellipsis and the various errors).
The Souls of Black Folk,1 by Mr. W. E. Burghardt du [sic] Bois, is an eloquent appeal to the American people to foster and develop "the traits and talents of the negro, in order that some day, on American soil, two world-races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack. . . . There is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the negro slave; the American fairy tales and folk-lore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusky desert of dollars and smartness." According to Mr. Burghardt, [sic] the indirect results of Mr. Booker T. Washington's teachings have been: (1) the disfranchisement of the negro; (2) the legal creation for him of a distinct status of civil inferiority;
[Footnote at the bottom of p. 354:]
1 The Souls of Black Folk : Essays and Sketches. By W. E. Burghardt
[Note: "Negro" is not capitalized in the original text -- RWW.]
Page in the full text of the periodical at Google Books
http://books.google.com/books?id=uT8PAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA354....
Review of The Souls of Black Folk. Written by Alfred Holt Stone, this review was published in the Publications of the Southern History Association, Vol. VII, No. 5 (September 1903): 395-397. The review is provided below in its entirety. (The word "Negro" is not capitalized in the original text).
The Souls of Black Folk. By W. E. B. DuBois. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 12 mo. pp. viii+265, cloth.
In point of literary excellence this collection of articles by Dr. DuBois is entitled to a place in the first rank of the varied and ever-increasing literature of the "race problem." To the student of the question, to him who is concerned with more than its superficial manifestations, this book is an interesting and valuable study; to him who is looking to the most highly educated, easily the most intellectual man identified with the negro race, for a deliverance containing something of helpfulness and hope, it is a distinct disappointment.
Throughout the book is tinctured with bitterness, a bitterness unfortunate even though pardonable and easily understood by those who are acquainted with something of the life of its author. It is at once a protest and a plea; a protest against the identification of the individual with the mass,--a plea for public and personal consideration unaffected by questions of color or race. This does not mean to my comprehension of the book an appeal for "social equality" between white and black, as the world understands that term, a braking down of social barriers between the races as races, but rather a plea for individual treatment based upon individual character and deserts.
This runs through the book and dominates its entire tone, and after one has finished it and put it down, let him turn back to its very beginning if he would reason for himself upon the question of the attitude of the white race toward those whom the author calls black. He may learn there something of the force of instinct and heredity which exhibits itself in childhood, and so often in maturer years stifles even the voice of sympathy and reason. These pages tell that it was not as a man seeking a school in the South that the author first learned to feel that he "was different from the others;" it was in far off New England, and even as a child, that he first awakened to the presence of "the shadow of the veil."
The statement of the position of Booker T. Washington may be fair enough in its essentials, possibly, but when we read his criticism of it we are prone to ask, "What, then, would Dr. DuBois have done?" To appeal to reason and sympathy is well enough, but what of a propaganda based upon "demands?" It matters not how much of abstract "justice" or "right" may be behind the move, the history of a long series of "demands," enacted into laws and backed by force, is so recent that he who runs may read the fate of similar efforts in the South. Dr. DuBois is too thoughtful a man to countenance any such suggestion,--yet until one is prepared to go as far as may be necessary along the line of insistence it is difficult to understand the wisdom of taking issue with Principal Washington's course.
Much might be said by way of moralizing upon the frame of mind which leads to a casual reference to Sam Hose as having been "crucified,"--so also might we upon such a sketch as that entitled "Of the Coming of John,"--but the moralizing would be as barren of any possible good as was the incorporation of this story in the book.
Despite the cry of the "negrophobist" already raised in some quarters to anticipate the suggestion, the fact remains that to one reared among the negroes of the South--to one who is living a life of daily contact and association with the masses of these people--to one who has enjoyed their confidences and listened to their recitals of grievances and wrongs personal and peculiar to themselves,--to this man it is not "the souls of black folk" thus laid bare. Herein may the really thoughtful of those who consider America's "race problem" find food for sober reflection,--for here may they learn, perhaps for the first time, that possibly already this problem is become "the problem of the color line." Here also may they read of life that is tragedy in itself,--tragedy that needs not the setting of the stage to evoke the pity of the human heart. To such as these this book suggests a moral upon its every page; by the many to whom "the problem" they so knowingly discuss presents but a single hue, it will be used to bolster up time worn theories of "the negro question."
Alfred Holt Stone.
[Note: "Negro" is uncapitalized in the original -- RWW.]
Full text of Stone's review is available at Google Books [About-this-book]
http://books.google.com/books?...id=hBwLAAAAIAAJ...pg=PPA395,M1
R. Williams' Note 1: For a brief discussion of A.H. Stone and his scientific racism see James G. Hollandsworth Jr.'s "Alfred Holt Stone (1870-1955): His Unique Collection of Reading Material About People of African Descent", which was published online by Mississippi History Now (November 2007). R. Williams' Note 2: Alfred Holt Stone's Studies in the American Race Problem (1908), with additional essays by Walter F. Willcox, is available at the Internet Archive: search results page.
PRIMARY TEXTS COMPRISING SOULS
[ Arranged chronologically from earliest to latest ]
[ Arranged chronologically from earliest to latest ]
"Strivings of the Negro People." Du Bois wrote of "the veil" in this essay. Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 80, Issue 478 (August 1897): 194-198, this work was somewhat modified later as Ch. I, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings," in Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Libraryhttp://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubStri.html
Making of America, Cornell University Library (page images)http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0080-24
As part of the site for The American Idea: The Best of The Atlantic Monthly, an anthology edited by Robert Vare (2007) http://theamericanideabook.theatlantic.com/...strivings_of_the_negro_people.php
Download page for the entire issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 80http://www.archive.org/details/atlantic80bostuoft [Internet Archive: 30 MB DjVu]
"A Negro Schoolmaster in the New South." Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 83, Issue 495 (January 1899): 99-105, it was to become Ch. IV, "Of the Meaning of Progress", in Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Libraryhttp://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubNegr.html
Making of America, Cornell University Library (page images)http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0083-14
School Tales in 19th Cenury Literature [Annotated online version] http://www.schooltales.com/negroschoolmaster/title.html
Download page for the entire issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 83http://www.archive.org/details/atlantic83bostuoft [Internet Archive: 37 MB DjVu]
"The Freedman's Bureau." Here Du Bois penned "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line". Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 87, Issue 521 (March 1901): 354-365, the essay was reworked into Ch. II, "Of the Dawn of Freedom", in Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Libraryhttp://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubFree.html
Making of America, Cornell University Library (page images)http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0087-50
Download page for the entire issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 87http://www.archive.org/details/atlantic87bostuoft [Internet Archive: 43 MB DjVu]
"The Negro as He Really Is." Du Bois published this essay in the periodical The World's Work (Vol. 2, No. 2 (June 1901): 848-866). It provided the basis for Ch. VII ("Of the Black Belt") and Ch. VIII ("Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece") in Souls. The piece contains a table of population growth data and a map of the distribution of the Black population in the U.S. The photographs in the essay depict African Americans in daily situations; however, several photos have captions which suggest that Du Bois probably did not supply the wording. The full title and bylines of the essay are as follows:
the negro as he really is
a definite study of one locality in georgia show-
ing the exact conditions of every negro family –
their economic status – their ownership of land –
their morals – their family life – the houses they
live in and the results of the mortgage system
ing the exact conditions of every negro family –
their economic status – their ownership of land –
their morals – their family life – the houses they
live in and the results of the mortgage system
by
w. e. burghardt dubois
professor of economics and history in atlanta university
Photographically Illustrated by A. Radclyffe Dugmore
Full text is available online at Google Books [About this book]
http://books.google.com/books?id=IF6tNZnhO7wC. . . .&cad=0#PPA848,M1
"The Evolution of Negro Leadership." Review of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. An Autobiography. (NY: Doubleday. Page & Co.) [Online text]. Du Bois first published it in The Dial, 31 (July 16, 1901), pp.53-55. This book review was later transformed into Chapter III, "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others," in The Souls of Black Folk.
TeachingAmericanHistory.org (Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University)http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=80
Download page for the entire issue of The Dial, V. 31, at the Internet Archivehttp://www.archive.org/details/dialliterarycrit31browrich [36 MB DjVu]
"The Relation of the Negroes to the Whites in the South." Humanities Text Initiative, University of Michigan (page images)["The United States and its Territories, 1870-1925: The Age of Imperialism"]
First page: p. 121 [Click the "next" button to advance through the essay]
Download page for the entire Vol. 18 of the Annals at the Internet Archivehttp://www.archive.org/details/annalsaa18ameruoft [Another digital copy]
The Annals volume, published as a separate book entitled America's Race Problems: Addresses at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia, April Twelfth and Thirteenth, MCMI (NY: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1901), available at Google Bookshttp://books.google.com/books?id=Yb6ddR9NbacC&pg=PPA121 [Start page]
[Another copy of the same volume]
"Of the Training of Black Men." Du Bois emphasized the vital importance of higher education. He also wrote: "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas.... From out the caves of Evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil."
Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 90 (September 1902): 289-297, this essay became Ch. VI, "Of the Training of Black Men", in DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk (1903).
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Libraryhttp://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubTrai.html
Download page for the entire issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 90http://www.archive.org/details/atlantic90bostuoft [Internet Archive: 32 MB DjVu]
Review: Anonymous. Brief review of Du Bois's "Of the Training of Black Men" in the American Monthly Review of Reviews, vol. XXVI, no. 3 (September 1902) on p. 371. The review is presented below verbatim and in its entirety:
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
In
the September number of the Atlantic Monthly, Mr. W. E. B. [About-this-book page for the American Monthly Review of Reviews, vol. 26]
Secondary Source: Robert Pinsky. "The American John Milton: The Poet and the Power of Extraordinary Speech." Slate Magazine (Posted Monday, 18 August 2008) [Accessible online]. In an essay on the English poet, essayist, and iconclast John Milton and his intellecutal reception in the United States, Pinsky relates DuBois to Milton in the following passage from the beginning of the essay:
Great art is great not because it enters an academic curriculum, and neither is greatness affirmed by the awarding of prizes or titles. But great is not necessarily a vague term. It can indicate work that penetrates the shapes, feelings, ideas, and sounds of a culture, as in the cadences of speech. Sometimes that kind of penetration is so deep, so transforming, that it is nearly invisible, or barely acknowledged.
W.E.B. Du Bois, the American essayist and political leader, begins the peroration of his great essay "On the Training of Black Men" with a sentence like a symphonic chord, fortissimo, compact, rousing:
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.
[. . . .]
The power of "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not" may be related in part to its form. Although it begins a prose paragraph, Du Bois' sentence is a perfect line of blank verse: the measure of Shakespeare's plays. The pattern of five iambs often appears in prose when the writer wants a certain intensity; for example, "We hold these truths to be self-evident" and "With malice toward none, with charity toward all." In the example from Du Bois, his topic sentence sets off a passage of high eloquence, all of it close to blank verse, to reach another pentameter: "So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil."
It's not just the rhythm that gives a special —- as if physical —- force to the words "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not." The unusual order of the words, placing the negative at the end, gives Du Bois' sentence a vocal emphasis. As in the slang habit of a few years ago, but with a different order of meaning, the delayed "not" has emotional color. The somewhat contorted syntax creates meaning: defying the idiomatic arrangements of English yet also refreshing them with a douse of Latin's relatively free word order.
The writer of blank verse in English who exploited that way of writing, influencing countless generations of poets and changing the language itself forever, is John Milton, born 400 years ago. His writing permanently saturated American culture and discourse. Du Bois in this passage refers to Shakespeare explicitly. Implicitly, he also echoes Milton, as have many American writers and public speakers.
[End of quoted material]
W.E.B. Du Bois, the American essayist and political leader, begins the peroration of his great essay "On the Training of Black Men" with a sentence like a symphonic chord, fortissimo, compact, rousing:
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.
[. . . .]
The power of "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not" may be related in part to its form. Although it begins a prose paragraph, Du Bois' sentence is a perfect line of blank verse: the measure of Shakespeare's plays. The pattern of five iambs often appears in prose when the writer wants a certain intensity; for example, "We hold these truths to be self-evident" and "With malice toward none, with charity toward all." In the example from Du Bois, his topic sentence sets off a passage of high eloquence, all of it close to blank verse, to reach another pentameter: "So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil."
It's not just the rhythm that gives a special —- as if physical —- force to the words "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not." The unusual order of the words, placing the negative at the end, gives Du Bois' sentence a vocal emphasis. As in the slang habit of a few years ago, but with a different order of meaning, the delayed "not" has emotional color. The somewhat contorted syntax creates meaning: defying the idiomatic arrangements of English yet also refreshing them with a douse of Latin's relatively free word order.
The writer of blank verse in English who exploited that way of writing, influencing countless generations of poets and changing the language itself forever, is John Milton, born 400 years ago. His writing permanently saturated American culture and discourse. Du Bois in this passage refers to Shakespeare explicitly. Implicitly, he also echoes Milton, as have many American writers and public speakers.
[End of quoted material]
COMMEMORATIONS OF SOULS
[ Arranged chronologically from earliest to latest ]
[ Arranged chronologically from earliest to latest ]
"W. E. B. Du Bois" -- a radio show originally broadcast in 2002 on the program "What's the Word", which is sponsored by the Modern Language Association. The moderator Sally Placksin talked with Cheryl T. Gilkes, David Levering Lewis, and Marlon B. Ross about DuBois and his life, with particular emphasis on The Souls of Black Folk. Dr. Lewis presented the background to Souls and summarized the work. Dr. Ross discussed the social and political issues to which DuBois was responding, including racial violence and the 1896 Plessy Supreme Court case. Dr. Gilkes related the idea of double consciousness to African American poetry and songs. Other related topics were addressed. The show lasts about 29 minutes. One can listen online or download the broadcast in mp3 format (about 6.8 mb). At the Modern Language Association website http://www.mla.org/radio_show_67 [Options page] [Alternate website]
"A Timeless Legacy: Celebrating 100 Years of W.E.B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk" by Kendra Hamilton. Originally published in Black Issues in Higher Education (13 February 2003).
Freely available at www.FindArticles.com (printly friendly format)http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_26_19/ai_98171169/print
"Newark Reads Du Bois." In February 2003 for Black History Month the City of Newark, NJ in conjunction with Rutgers University-Newark and other public and private organizations, distributed copies of The Souls of Black Folk to city residents as part of a centennial celebration of Du Bois's book. Various literary events were also conducted which focused on Du Bois's life, thought, and significance.
"Newark Reads Du Bois" (Entry page to web site)
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~iecme/DuBois/default.html
* Posted on the web site are "Scholars' Comments" by Dr. Sterling Lecater Bland, Jr., Dr. Belinda Edmondson, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Dr. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Dr. Paul Gilroy, Dr. Karla F.C. Holloway, Dr. Reiland Rabaka, Dr. George White, Jr., and Dr. Michelle Joan Wilkinson.
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~iecme/DuBois/scholars.html
* "Reading Guide/Discussion Questions for Adults"
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~iecme/DuBois/study_adults.html
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~iecme/DuBois/study_adults.html
* "Resources for Young People Learning about W.E.B. Du Bois"
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~iecme/DuBois/dubois_youth.html
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~iecme/DuBois/dubois_youth.html
* "Selected Bibliography" of works by and about DuBois
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~iecme/DuBois/bibliography.html
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~iecme/DuBois/bibliography.html
* Read an announcement for "Newark Reads Du Bois":
"Newark, New Jersey Celebrates Black History Month by Selecting W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk" (Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers-Newark; not dated).
"Newark, New Jersey Celebrates Black History Month by Selecting W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk" (Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers-Newark; not dated).
"The Souls of Black Folk, A Century Hence" by David Levering Lewis From The New Crisis, March/April 2003 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3812/is_200303/ai_n9229128/print
[Version for printing]
"The Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois." David Levering Lewis conducted a "Colloquy Live" on DuBois's Souls (with several other topics also being discussed) on "The Centennial of 'Souls'," by Scott McLemee, examines Souls in relation to The Negro Church, an Atlanta University Study edited by DuBois and published in 1903 (like Souls).
"A Challenge To White Supremacy, 100 Years Later." Felicia R. Lee highlights various commemorations of Souls. Originally published in The New York Times, 15 April 2003 (Late Edition - Final, Section E, p. 1, col. 4).
David Levering-Lewis interviewed about Souls.
As part of the "Talking History" series of the Organization of American Historians,
Brief synopsis located at the Organization of American Historians sitehttp://talkinghistory.oah.org/arch2003.html#Anchor-18701
[Link to mp3 file: http://talkinghistory.oah.org/shows/2003/dubois.mp3]
Commemoration of Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk held on 25 April 2003 at Memorial Church, Harvard University, and moderated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
In addition to comments on DuBois and the book, the multimedia presentation at WGBH.org offers readings of various chapers. This web page contains links to video and audio-only versions.http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=1212
"'The Souls of Black Folk': Du Bois Institute Commemorates Centenary of Namesake's Landmark Work with Readings, Songs," a news article from the Harvard University Gazette by Beth Potier (May 01, 2003).http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/05.01/09-souls.html
"'The Souls of Black Folk:' Why are we still caught up in century-old protest politics?" by Shelby Steele. This commemorative analysis considers that DuBoisian protest was double-edged: while useful, his "protest was to diminish and defame black responsibility in its rush to make black problems into white burdens. DuBois deserves much respect, but only if he is also accepted as a cautionary tale."
In the Opinion Journal (of the Wall Street Journal), 29 April 2003. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110003425
"The Souls of Black Folk: 100th anniversary of the book by W.E.B. DuBois." In commemoration of the publication of Souls, here are radio interviews with David Levering Lewis, Jeff Johnson, Diedre Badejo, and Andrew Hacker. There is also a brief clip of Du Bois himself talking about his life. [Radio interviews with Farrah Griffin, Gerald Horne, T. J. Anderson, and Carolyn Maun on Souls are also accessible as audio from this page.]
Audio of the original broadcast, 4 August 2003, on "All Things Considered" (National Public Radio) is accessible from this pagehttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1384569
"Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of W.E.B. Dubois's The Souls of Black Folk" by Eljeer Hawkins.
In the Socialist Alternative's online magazine, Justice (Issue # 36, September-October 2003)http://www.socialistalternative.org/justice36/23.html
Internet Searches for Centennial Commemorations of Souls.The following search engines find web pages based on some variant of this
SECONDARY SOURCES RELATED TO SOULS
[ Arranged alphabetically ]
[ Arranged alphabetically ]
"Contemporary Relevance of the Du Boisean Duality Construct" Du Bois was perceptive in identifying the two dominant and visible components of black identity -- the American and Negroid. The duality is real. It could be argued that almost all other components of the identity constructs today are either directly or indirectly connected to these two dominant components. Even more real and perceptive is the notion of the warring ideals. Both Afrocentrism and Americentrism reflect attempts to ditch one experience for the other. In their schizophrenic attempts to ditch one dimension for the other, both Afrocentrism and Americentrism reflect this tension between competing ideals. The fact is, as Du Bois perceptively argued, neither side would or should give up for the other. Both are intrinsic and relevant to understanding the true identity of the black American.
Published in the Journal of American Studies of Turkey [home page], http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~jast/Number16/jast16.pdf [Scroll through PDF file]
"W.E.B Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" by Edward A. Ako. Ako interprets the lasting legacy of Souls within a wide intellectual context, both in chronological and geographical senses. He writes: I submit that the area of intellectual inquiry today known as Postcolonial Studies which amongst other things, shows Euro-American scholarship especially, though not exclusively, of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a series of constructions of otherness, began neither with the publication of Edward Saïd's Orientalism in 1978 nor with Gareth Griffith's The Empire Writes Back (1989) but with Du Bois' scholarly research work. It was in The Souls of Black Folk that there was the first real attempt for the margin to write to the center. Du Bois had therefore laid the groundwork for the move from an activist to a textual culture that is a characteristic of most academies today, especially since the 1970s.
As for the legacy of Du Bois classic, I think it is to minority, black or Third World discourse, what Aristotle's poetics is to literary criticism. Everything else that has been said since this history-making text was published is something of a footnote. I agree with those who state that Du Bois' book served as a kind of harbinger of Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Stokely Carmichael, and Martin Luther King, Jr. etc. But to this list must be added Langston Hughes, (who acknowledged that The Souls was the first book that he read on his own) [,] Countee Cullen, Claude Mckay and Jean Toomer. Leopold Sedar Senghor, Leon Gontran Damas, Aimé Césaire and Peter Abrahams are also unforgettable contributors to the same cause. We cannot, I believe, properly understand Steve Biko and his Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa without an awareness of some of the issues first raised in The Souls.
In the Journal of American Studies of Turkey [home page], (Fall 2004):
http://ake.ege.edu.tr/en/jast/Number20/JAST%2020%20EAAS%20Issue.pdf
[ Converted by Google.com into an HTML file ]
"Du Boisian Double Consciousness: The Unsustainable Argument" Article available as an HTML file converted by Google.com http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:1UbvNpKQ0zcJ:www.umass.edu/
afroam/downloads/allen.double.pdf
"The Problem of the 21st Century: Du Bois and Cosmopolitanism" Columbia University's Contemporary Civilization Coursewide Lecture series (available in PDF format)http://www.college.columbia.edu/core/lectures/spring2005/
"Du Bois's Horizon: Documenting Movements of the Color Line" Du Bois's dedication to authenticating a wholly black voice by drawing upon literal and figurative evidence is worked out with great care in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), but it is in The Horizon we can see how, even in curt periodical form, the artful weaving of arguments so well articulated in The Souls of Black Folk offers a new way to think about periodical documentation and the very concept of reading the color line.
Article available at FindArticles.com (printly friendly format)http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2278/is_4_26/ai_86063225/print
"'Like a Violin for the Wind to Play': Lyrical Approaches to Lynching by Hughes, Du Bois, and Toomer" by Kimberly Banks [faculty page]. Banks examines three short stories, "Home" by Langston Hughes, "Blood-Burning Moon" by Jean Toomer, and "The Coming of John" (from Souls) by Du Bois, in terms of their portrayal of lynching. Banks writes: Interpretation is clearly a politically motivated act in each short story. Each protagonist's dream is spelled out in explicit detail. Upon each protagonist's return to his hometown, local men reinterpret their dreams in such a way that the local white and black communities feel threatened. Such reinterpretation denies the protagonists' attempts to achieve justice and equality. However the ending of each short story is unsettling, not only in its representation of lynching, but also in its charge to interpret lynching. The decision to represent lynching in lyrical terms prompts readers to see lynching as a loss of social power. Lynching is a desperate social act, instigated through fear of social equality.
Published in the African American Review, 38:3 (Fall 2004): 451-465
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_3_38/ai_n12938686/
"A Sociological Examination of W.E.B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk" by Sandra L. Barnes [faculty page]. Published online in The North Star: A Journal of African-American Religious History, Volume 6, Number 2 (Spring 2003).
[The North Star journal's new site.]
Available at the journal's previous websitehttp://northstar.vassar.edu/volume6/barnes.html
[PDF: http://northstar.vassar.edu/volume6/barnes.pdf]
"The Souls of Black Men" by Hazel V. Carby [dept. page]. Carby examines the aspects of masculinity which underpin Du Bois' Souls. This work is Chapter 1 of her As of my first online encounter with this book in 2005, the entire text of Race Men is available to educators on an examination-copy basis. The book is accessed as a PDF file. To access the book (at least the way I used):
1. go to the Harvard University Press Educators webpage;
2. select "Sociology" from the drop-down menu on the page; then click the "Go" button;
3. the next page will be a form in which you fill out the usual info requested when asking for examination copies; the email address you provide seems to become the "I.D." used when returning to the page; click the "Submit" button;
4. the next page to appear will be the "Educators Course Book Program" page; click the link "View additional course books online";
5. a page will display Carby's Race Men (among other HUP books) and a link to view the PDF file; and
6. next to appear is the "HUP PDF Usage Agreement": acceptance of this agreement indicates that one will only access the content of the book online and will not distribute it via any means; upon accepting the Usage Agreement, a file dialog box then pops up in which you can then click "Open" to read the book online, or click "Save" to download it.
Note: I have experienced mixed success when trying to read the text online (the page often hangs with no discernible progress). Perhaps others will fare better.
"W.E.B. DuBois and the Identity of Africa" by Simon Gikandi ...involves the interplay of three forces: The first concerns the role of Africa as an aesthetic (rather than material) category in DuBois's struggle to institute the black as a modern subject. The second is his validation of the aesthetic ideology as the only way in which the modernity of the black could be accessed since other forms of cognition -- the moral and the rational, for example -- had been foreclosed. The third is the haunting of DuBois's desired modern subject by the figure of Africa, for even when the African American sought identity with Africa as the fatherland..., there was always the nagging suspicion that this association also called into question his or her Americanness, thus reinforcing the tragic split subjectivity that DuBois was to describe as double-consciousness in Souls.
In GEFAME: Journal of African Studies (vol. 2, no. 1, 2005)http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/.../...;idno=4761563.0002.101 [Permanent link]
"African-American Philosophy, Race, and the Geography of Reason" An added feature of a phenomenological turn is not only its foundations in an intentional theory of consciousness but also the phenomenological injunction against notions of disembodied consciousness. Du Bois's reflections [on double consciousness in Souls] bring to the fore the lived reality of a problematic consciousness. Such a consciousness finds itself embroiled in a dialectic of constantly encountering an alien reflection of the self in the social world. Fanon, in Black Skin White Masks, presents a powerful portrait of what it means to live ensnared by the search for the self in an antipathetic other's eyes or the dialectics of recognition.
From a seminar, "African-American Thinkers: A Philosophical Portrait", organized by Fábrica de Idéias (Factory of Ideas) and sponsored by the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais (CEAO) at UFBa (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)http://www.ceao.ufba.br/fabrica/txts/gordon/2-Gordon-L-NOMT.pdf [PDF]
[An HTML version converted by Google.com]
"Tearing down the Veil" by Stuart Hall. Referring to Souls, Hall wrote:"Remembered for his single-minded commitment to racial justice and his capacity to shape black consciousness, Du Bois used language and ideas to hammer out a strategy for political equality and to sound the depths of the black experience in the aftermath of slavery."
Published in The Guardian (22 February 2003)http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/.../0,6000,900405,00.html
"W.E.B. DuBois and the Question of Black Women Intellectuals." Reneá Henry responds to the essay of Bartley McSwine [q.v.] by highlighting the significance of Anna Julia Cooper to the intellectual milieu in which Du Bois worked. Cooper, Henry argues, anticipated arguments on the role of African Americans in general and Black women in particular, in advancing civilization. Cooper made such arguments in her A Voice from the South (published in 1892 and available online).
In the online Philosophy of Education Yearbook 1998http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-yearbook/1998/henry.html
"Du Bois and the Minstrels" by Scott Herring. Published in MELUS, vol. 22 (Summer 1997): 3-17.
Article available at FindArticles.com (printly friendly format)http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2278/is_n2_v22/ai_20175890/print
"Double Consciousness, Modernism, and Womanist Themes in Gwendolyn Brooks's 'The Anniad'" by A. Yemisi Jimoh [faculty page]. Published in MELUS, 23:3 (Fall 1998).
Article found at FindArticles.com (printly friendly format)http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2278/is_3_23/ai_54925299/print
"White Supremacy, Class Struggle and Social Transformation: Reflections on The Souls of Black Folk 100 Years Later" by Walda Katz-Fishman, Jerome Scott, and Ralph C. Gomes (August 2003).
Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide (Atlanta, GA)http://www.projectsouth.org/fl2003/souls.html
"Parody and Double Consciousness in the Language of Early Black Musical Theatre" by David Krasner [faculty page] (African American Review, Summer 1995).
Article available at FindArticles.com (in printly friendly format)http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_n2_v29/ai_17534807/print
"The Whiteness of Wi-Fi" by Roberto Lovato. In this brief essay, Lovato extends Du Bois' idea of the color line through examining how race and class intersect in high-tech communications, the consequences of which are constraints placed on the life chances of those in technologically deprived areas. He writes: Like those turn of the century railroads, the Internet has connected the entire country and transformed many industries. Were he alive today, DuBois might similarly conclude that the digital divide has a color line running through it.
As was the case with ownership of and access to railroads in the industrial era, control over and access to broadband connectivity is defining global, regional and individual success. In turn, it is shaping whether African Americans, Latinos and the poor will continue to live in economically strip-mined neighborhoods like Philadelphia's Kensington.
At In These Times (posted on 23 August 2005)
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2293/
"Teaching Du Bois at the Right Moment" by Caroline Maun [faculty page] (Black Issues in Higher Education, 19 June 2003).
Freely accessible at www.FindArticles.com
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_9_20/ai_104521310
"'What a Piece of Work is a Man!' Double Consciousness of a Sports Hero and a Tragic Hero." Allison P. McCowan creates two 12th-grade lesson plans based on the DuBoisian concept of double consciousness. She applies it to the athlete Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and to Shakespeare's Hamlet.
The Houston Teachers Institute [HTI's Curriculum Units page]http://www.uh.edu/hti/cu/2002/v07/03.htm
"The Educational Philosophy of W.E.B. DuBois." Bartley L. McSwine In the online Philosophy of Education Yearbook 1998http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-yearbook/1998/mcswine.html
"Double Consciousness in Black America" by John H. McWhorter [Bio] was published in the Cato Policy Report, Vol. XXV, No. 2 (March/April 2003:
As they so often do, DuBois's teachings apply as well to black Americans over a century later. In that vein, the double consciousness he referred to is often claimed to describe modern black Americans, but with an implication that this is because of whites' resistance to blacks' true inclusion in the American fabric.
But analysts who make such claims resist acknowledging that race relations in America have undergone seismic changes since 1903. DuBois's conception remains relevant, but only in a reflex evolved from the one that he described.
Black America today is permeated by new double consciousness. A tacit sense reigns among a great many black Americans today that the "authentic" black person stresses personal initiative and strength in private but dutifully takes on the mantle of victimhood in public.
[. . . .]
Where does this new double consciousness come from? It is vital to understand that, at heart, it is a symptom of a deep pain among black Americans. The Civil Rights Act freed blacks from legalized segregation, but once freed, blacks met a new intellectual and cultural climate that taught that the Establishment was an agent of repression and that its norms must be suspect to any humane and sophisticated American. This brand of thought tends strongly to exonerate the individual from responsibility for failings and weaknesses, and encourages blaming the powers that be as an urgent, and even enlightened, activity.
Black Americans were especially susceptible to this canard. For one thing, centuries of abuse left the race with an inevitable inferiority complex, well documented by black academics and psychologists and readily acknowledged even at black barbecues. For a people with this handicap, focusing on the evil of the system was a fatal attraction, an ever-ready balm for a bruised self-conception. I firmly believe that any ethnic group would have fallen into a similar trap, given equivalent socio-historical variables.
[. . . .]
[. . . .] Our modern race problem is less intractable than often supposed. Modern black Americans are well poised to embrace the opportunities now available to them, and most have already done so. The problem that remains is a particular cognitive dissonance -- since the 1960s, black Americans have been taught that our successes are mere statistical static because our fates are ultimately in the hands of others. This distracting notion stems from a perversion of sociological analysis that came to reign in the 1960s, and its counterintuitive, anti-empirical, and spiritually destructive nature is increasingly clear to more and more black Americans.
Available at the Cato Institute [T.O.C.s for the Cato Policy Report]http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v25n2/mcwhorter.pdf [99K PDF]
"W.E.B. Du Bois and the Call of the Sorrow Songs" by Kim Pearson [faculty page]. Pearson writes:
"Du Bois argues that the American experience cannot be fully understood
without reference to black experience, of which artistic expression is the
purest distillation...."
"DuBois' Souls: Thoughts on 'Veiled' Bodies and the Study of Black Religion" by Anthony B. Pinn What DuBois promotes is a concern with the significance of the physical body
Available at The North Star journal's previous websitehttp://northstar.vassar.edu/volume6/pinn.html
[PDF: http://northstar.vassar.edu/volume6/pinn.pdf]
[The North Star journal's new website.]
"Du Bois's Double Consciousness versus Latin American Exceptionalism: Joe Arroyo, Salsa, and Negritude" by Mark Q. Sawyer [faculty page].
Sawyer addresses a common argument that those of African heritage in Latin America have faced more inclusion in their societies, and thereby, one would not need to apply concepts like "double consciousness" in order to analyze their experiences. Sawyer disagrees; he writes: By emphasizing the day to day struggle over representation we can draw critical similarities and differences between US and Latin American racial politics. DuBois offers a bridge to understand the challenge to achieve recognition of humanity and overcome oppression that face sub-alterns. While the above "elite" expressions of "double consciousness["] are clear, it is important that we turn to everyday expressions. I argue that the struggle envisioned by DuBois manifests itself in the contested terrain of popular culture and more specifically popular music. It is in the genre of salsa music that we see that in the case of Latin American and the US inclusion vs. exclusion is not the central point of struggle but the struggle is over defining the terms of inclusion. Thus, Afro-Latinos have strategically asserted black identity and the specificity of the black experience to critique racial and other forms of inequality in Latin American societies.
Paper prepared for the 2004 Western Political Science Association Annual Conference (Sawyer's article of the same name was published in Souls, 7:3-4 (Summer-Fall 2005): 85-95 [article's citation]).
http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/sawyer/DuBois.pdf
[Converted by Google.com into an HTML file]
"W.E.B. Du Bois vs. "The Sons of the Fathers": A Reading of The Souls of Black Folk in the Context of American Nationalism" by Roumiana Velikova. Published in the African American Review, 34:3 (Fall 2000).
Article accessible via www.FindArticles.com (in a printly friendly format)http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_3_34/ai_67413398/print
DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk -- A profile by Robert W. Williams.Please note: to read more than the first 600 words of this article will require a daily, monthly, or yearly membership at
At The Literary Encyclopedia (originally posted on 17 June 2005)
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7786
"Reading The Souls of Black Folks (Draft Chapters)" [PDF file] At the Conference web site[An HTML version is available via <Google.com>]
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