The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) π
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When it was first published in 1903, W. E. B Du Boisβs The Souls of Black Folk represented a seismic shift in the discussion of race in the United States. Earlier African-American authors had broken ground with memoirs and autobiographical novelsβnarrative works that portrayed the African-American experience through the stories of particular individuals. What Du Bois envisioned was a work that portrayed the experience of African Americans as a people.
As a professor of sociology, Du Bois naturally gravitated toward a scientific and scholarly approach. But he was also becoming, to his own surprise, a political activist, and found himself increasingly disenchanted with purely intellectual arguments when his fellow African Americans were being lynched, starved, and driven from their land. What emerged from this tension between scholarly rigor and righteous indignation was a book that became a seminal text for both sociology and for the civil rights movement.
The fourteen essays in this book weave together historical research, sociological analysis, first-hand reportage, political argument, and an enduring, aspirational belief in the possibility of America. Many of the ideas that Du Bois introduced in the book have become mainstays of modern discourse, including the βveil of raceβ and the concept of double consciousness. These insights, originally rooted in race, have proven resonant to a wide range of other marginalized groups and have provided a useful framework for understanding the nature of oppression and the path to liberation.
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- Author: W. E. B. Du Bois
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By W. E. B. Du Bois.
Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Dedication The Forethought The Souls of Black Folk I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings II: Of the Dawn of Freedom III: Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others IV: Of the Meaning of Progress V: Of the Wings of Atalanta VI: Of the Training of Black Men VII: Of the Black Belt VIII: Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece IX: Of the Sons of Master and Man X: Of the Faith of the Fathers XI: Of the Passing of the Firstborn XII: Of Alexander Crummell XIII: Of the Coming of John XIV: The Sorrow Songs The Afterthought Colophon Uncopyright ImprintThis ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.
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To
Burghardt and Yolande
the Lost and the Found
Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the twentieth century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.
I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there.
I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive. First, in two chapters I have tried to show what Emancipation meant to them, and what was its aftermath. In a third chapter I have pointed out the slow rise of personal leadership, and criticized candidly the leader who bears the chief burden of his race today. Then, in two other chapters I have sketched in swift outline the two worlds within and without the Veil, and thus have come to the central problem of training men for life. Venturing now into deeper detail, I have in two chapters studied the struggles of the massed millions of the black peasantry, and in another have sought to make clear the present relations of the sons of master and man. Leaving, then, the white world, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recessesβ βthe meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom written, and a chapter of song.
Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in other guise. For kindly consenting to their republication here, in altered and extended form, I must thank the publishers of The Atlantic Monthly, The Worldβs Work, The Dial, The New World, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Before each chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow Songsβ βsome echo of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil?
W. E. B. Du B.
Atlanta, GA, Feb. 1, 1903.
The Souls of Black Folk Essays and Sketches I Of Our Spiritual StrivingsO water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,
O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.
Unresting water, there shall never be rest
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;
And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,
All life long crying without avail,
As the water all night long is crying to me.
Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
And yet, being a problem is a strange experienceβ βpeculiar even
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