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The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois,

Donald B. Gibson (Introduction),

Monica W. Elbert (Annotations)

4.27 · Rating details · 37,698 ratings · 1,656 reviews

This landmark book is a founding work in the literature of black protest. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black protest in America. In this collection of essays, first published together in 1903, he eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those righ ...more

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Paperback, 288 pages

Published September 26th 1996 by Penguin Classics (first published April 18th 1903)

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Jan 26, 2016 Bill Kerwin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: black-studies

While reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, I asked myself whether any other book offered such penetrating insight into the black experience in equally impressive prose. The first name that came to me was The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois.

The Souls of Black Folk was published in 1903, and just as the two directions of black leadership in the tumultuous 60's and '70's were symbolized by Martin and Malcolm, the two directions at the turn of the last century—a period punctuat
While reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, I asked myself whether any other book offered such penetrating insight into the black experience in equally impressive prose. The first name that came to me was The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois.

The Souls of Black Folk was published in 1903, and just as the two directions of black leadership in the tumultuous 60's and '70's were symbolized by Martin and Malcolm, the two directions at the turn of the last century—a period punctuated by lynchings and race riots—were embodied in Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Washington, born a slave in the South, urged blacks, at least for the present, to accept Jim Crow and disenfranchisement in return for safety and peace, while they concentrated on attending trade schools and developing--and demonstrating to white society--their integrity and character. (White society praised Washington; Theodore Roosevelt invited him to dinner at the White House.) W.E.B. Du Bois, born free in the North, insisted on the vote and full civil rights, and encouraged the development of black intellectuals, the “talented tenth," urging them to complete not only four years of college, but post-graduate degrees as well. (Du Bois was the first black person to earn a doctorate from Harvard).

In this collection of fourteen essays, his first great influential work, Du Bois begins by anatomizing racism and analyzing its consequences, most notably how racism—particularly “the color line”—places every black person beneath the “veil,” creating a special way of seeing—painful, but also illuminating—which comes from being set apart. In “The Dawn of Freedom,” he offers a perceptive view of reconstruction, and in “Of Booker T. Washington and Others” he coldly, devastatingly, holds up Washington's ideas for critical examination. Throughout the first quarter of the work, he excels in conveying sociological insights in a magisterial--almost biblical—fashion.

Beginning with “The Meaning of Progress,” where Du Bois' reminiscences about his days teaching in a one-room school-house, his style becomes gentler, more sentimental. His portaits of individual scholars and community elders are sharp but also deeply moving. Du Bois continues with his portraits in individual essays, each about a different part of the south or a particularly notable person, and by the end of his tour we have gained much insight into the “souls of black folk” in his day. The book ends with “The Sorrow Songs,” an examination of the nature of the Negro Spiritual, which is not only a fine example of sociology but a groundbreaking work of musicology too.

If you have not read it, you should, for this book is not only a milestone of African-American thought but also a classic of American Literature. Its wisdom and rhetorical power have shown more brightly with the years, as it sits there, on the shelf of essentials, welcoming the advent of Ta-Nahisi Coates.

Here follow two samples of Du Bois' prose, the first of realistic description, and second of transcendent rhetoric. The first is about a man Du Bois met in “The Black Belt,” where Cotton once was King:

I remember one big red-eyed black whom we met by the roadside. Forty-five years he had labored on this farm, beginning with nothing, and still having nothing. To be sure, he had given four children a common-school training, and perhaps if the new fence-law had not allowed unfenced crops in West Dougherty he might have raised a little stock and kept ahead. As it is, he is hopelessly in debt, disappointed, and embittered. He stopped us to inquire after the black boy in Albany, whom it was said a policeman had shot and killed for loud talking on the sidewalk. And then he said slowly: "Let a white man touch me, and he dies; I don't boast this,—I don't say it around loud, or before the children,—but I mean it. I've seen them whip my father and my old mother in them cotton-rows till the blood ran; by—" and we passed on.

The second is a question--relevant for all of us--about of the Negro Sprituals:

Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins. Is such a hope justified? Do the Sorrow Songs sing true?

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Dec 08, 2010 B. P. Rinehart rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: All Americans, on both continents. Also former colonial powers and why not throw in Australia too.

Shelves: political-science-stuff, philosophy-stuff, non-fiction-stuff, favorites, un-decade-african-descent

"I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black,
Because the sun hath looked upon me:
My mother's children were angry with me;
They made me the keeper of the vineyards;
But mine own vineyard have I not kept." - Song of Solomon 1:5-6 KJV

Bright Sparkles in the Churchyard

These are the lyrical and musical epigraphs preceding chapter seven.

"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, -- ...more

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Dec 26, 2009 Eric rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, essays

Man, this guy can preach. I opened The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and found myself ten years old watching Ken Burns’s The Civil War with my dad, dumbstruck by Morgan Freeman’s readings of mighty polemical passages from Frederick Douglass.

The whole land seems forlorn and forsaken. Here are the remnants of the vast plantations of the Sheldons, the Pellots, and the Rensons; but the souls of them are passed. The houses lie in half ruin, or have wholly disappeared; the fences have flown, and the fam Man, this guy can preach. I opened The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and found myself ten years old watching Ken Burns’s The Civil War with my dad, dumbstruck by Morgan Freeman’s readings of mighty polemical passages from Frederick Douglass.

The whole land seems forlorn and forsaken. Here are the remnants of the vast plantations of the Sheldons, the Pellots, and the Rensons; but the souls of them are passed. The houses lie in half ruin, or have wholly disappeared; the fences have flown, and the families are wandering in the world. Strange vicissitudes have met these whilom masters. Yonder stretch the wide acres of Bildad Reasor; he died in war-time, but the upstart overseer hastened to wed the widow. Then he went, and his neighbors too, and now only the black tenant remains; but the shadow-hand of the master's grand-nephew or cousin or creditor stretches out of the gray distance to collect the rack-rent remorselessly, and so the land is uncared-for and poor. Only black tenants can stand such a system, and they only because they must. Ten miles we have ridden to-day and have seen no white face.

You can also hear Emerson in the tough eloquence, in the tone of terse King James vigor that unites this portfolio freely mixed of sociological theory, short fiction, historical essay and, underlying all, personal reminiscence of the color line as it cut through the author’s life. The sojourning soul of the poet--the kind of phrase, at once flowery and utterly clear, that Du Bois favors--pervades and completes Du Bois the sociologist, the educator, the activist. The effect of the whole is pretty extraordinary. I can’t quite believe I've neglected this book until now, on the verge of thirty. Du Bois puts forth a comprehensive treatment of the “Negro Problem” circa 1900, with elegantly resonant historical vistas--

The war has naught to do with slaves, cried Congress, the President, and the Nation; and yet no sooner had the armies, East and West, penetrated Virginia and Tennessee than fugitive slaves appeared within their lines. They came at night, when the flickering camp fires shone like vast unsteady stars along the black horizon...

(the Federal government’s century of vacillating commitment to its black citizens is all compressed into those “unsteady stars”)--and suggestive speculations about the mechanics of mass uplift that will never go out of date. And I say that despite all the academic carping about the book’s outdated “paternalism”--people often invoke that supposed sin whenever they can’t duck the fact that peoples are led, for good or ill, by someone.

Given a widespread academic armchair Marxism, and Du Bois’ own later fellow traveling, I’m amazed that some critics choose to see his ideal of a college-bred “Talented Tenth” as narrow bourgeois smugly diffusing useless genteel airs over their struggling brethren, instead of the quasi-Leninist cadre of devoted race-men he actually intended them to be. And Du Bois’ “Social Darwinism” was actually Darwinian: unlike his white counterparts, who used the phrase to argue that social struggle had ended, with the European empires and empire-builders deservedly and permanently on top, Du Bois insists that the struggle among classes and races continues with unflagging intensity and unpredictability; he holds that the first priority of turn of the century American blacks, so often helplessly baffled by the forces arrayed against them, should be the creation of an intellectually penetrative, politically uncowed, economically savvy educated class to serve as the race’s champion and advocate in a complex modern industrial society over which rapacious empires and callous conglomerates rule a roiling brawl of ethnically contrasting, mutually antipathetic competing labor groups. The Progressive Era dream of the educated upper middle class joined with the government to halt the worst depredations of capitalism is no more vulnerable to irony than the ideal of a purely unassisted laboring class liberating itself.
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Jun 29, 2011 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018, nonfiction, american, history

"The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land."
- W.E.B. Du Bois

description

I seem to be reading backward in time, not universally, I've read slave narratives and I've read Frederick Douglass, but mostly I've read about race backwards. I immersed myself in Coates, King, and Baldwin, and now Du Bois. Certainly, Booker T must be next.

I loved the book and how Du Bois danced between a sociological and cold examination of slavery, share cropping economics, home life, racism, etc., and flipped into an almost lyrical hymn about being black at the end. The chapter on his dead son (Chapter 11) moved me to tears, but so too did the chapter on Alexander Crummell (Chapter 12) and the chapter on the two Johns (Chapter 13). These chapters rang for me like good poetry and lyrical storytelling always does. But Du Bois is also sharp. He delves into the issues of the Freedmen's Bureau (Chapter 2), critiques Booker T's limited vision for his people (Chapter 3), and addresses his thesis that the blacks of the South need (1) the right to vote, (2) the right to a good education, and (3) to be treated with equality and justice. Du Bois also introduced me to the idea of "double-consciousness" or "always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."

Other things I loved? I loved his focus on education, his critique of the economics of both slavery and the post slavery economy in the South, hell, his critique of capitalism to a degree. I also loved his imagry of the veil: "So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil."

This last year (actually the last couple years) has been hard. What seemed to be a jump forward on race for a couple decades, seems to have aggrivated and angered some deep, dark cyst in white America's soul. So, now I'm drawn to these narratives. They give me hope that the journey is not over for our too often divided nation. I hope that, given time, love, education, respect, and economic security, the wounds of slavery and discrimination, will continue to heal. Sometimes a fever doesn't break immediately. Sometimes an infection needs to burst to heal. Hopefully, things will calm the F down. Hopefully, like Du Bois suggests/sings:

"Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed - The End." ...more

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Feb 23, 2015 Trevor rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: race, social-theory

This is really not the book I thought it was going to be. I thought this would be a more-or-less dry book of sociology discussing the lives of black folk in the US – you know: a few statistics, a bit of outrage, a couple of quotes, some history, but all written in a detached academic style. It isn’t like that at all, although there are bits of it that are written exactly like that. Du Bois has been one of those people that I’ve been seeing about the place for some time now. There is an extensive This is really not the book I thought it was going to be. I thought this would be a more-or-less dry book of sociology discussing the lives of black folk in the US – you know: a few statistics, a bit of outrage, a couple of quotes, some history, but all written in a detached academic style. It isn’t like that at all, although there are bits of it that are written exactly like that. Du Bois has been one of those people that I’ve been seeing about the place for some time now. There is an extensive discussion of his work in WJT Mitchell’s Seeing Through Race and in a few of the books on racism in the US I’ve read. But again, I really thought what he did was straight sociology. This book, I suspect his most famous, is really anything but straight sociology. It is strikingly well written. It uses a variety of forms – there’s even a short story – and, given the book is so short, you should probably just read it rather than my review.

What I was most interested in this book for to see what he had to say about ‘double consciousness’. I’m utterly fascinated by this idea and it is, I believe, one of the key ideas that people like Goffman have taken from du Bois. So, the genealogy runs from du Bois, through Goffman to people like Claude Steele and their work on the presentation of self, stigma and stereotype threat. Double consciousness is the idea that being black means having to have more than one soul. There is seeing yourself as ‘yourself’ and then always also having to see yourself as you are seen by those around you, those who have power. As du Bois says, what black folk long for is to be both black and American – to arrive at a kind of self-consciousness that does not require the denial of one in attaining the other. Something that writers like bell hooks run with.

The short story in this book – a story about two first sons, one black and one white, and their parallel, though strikingly different journeys through life, present a stark vision of the constraints placed on one life and the soulless destitution of the other. I found this story moving, but also a fascinating way to make the point about the nature and consequences of racism in the US – the extremes people will go to so as to keep people in their place and how hard it is, once you have seen the ‘truth’ to convince those around you of that ‘truth’ - this is, again, a reworking of Plato's allegory of the cave and with similar consequences both for those able to 'escape' the cave, those left behind in the cave and those forced to return to the cave. Speaking from a position outside of ‘normal’ understanding always means sounding like a madman. It is the price of the getting of wisdom. Du Bois does not make the getting of this wisdom sound easy nor does he present the 'benefits' of such acquisition as terribly positive - but he does make clear that there is no other path, that all other ways lead to servitude.

This book is rightly famous, but I can’t help thinking it must have really surprised people when it first came out (if only because it really surprised me all this time later) and must have been an insanely brave book to write. Not because (or not only because) of the content (du Bois got to pay and pay for his opinions, as is made all too clear in the introduction and timeline of his life), but it really would have taken guts to break so many rules associated with the ‘genre’ of academic writing as is done here. It all makes for a fascinating read.
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Jun 03, 2013 Roy Lotz rated it it was amazing

Shelves: misanthropology, art-of-compromise, americana, person-of-letters, highly-recommended-favorites

W.E.B. Du Bois was many things: pioneering social scientist, historian, activist, social critic, writer—and, most of all, a heck of a lot smarter than me. I say this because, while reading these essays, I had the continuous, nagging feeling of mental strain, which I found hard to account for. There is nothing conceptually difficult about his arguments; in fact, most are quite straightforward. Although his sentences do twist and turn, they’re not nearly as syntactically knotty as other authors th W.E.B. Du Bois was many things: pioneering social scientist, historian, activist, social critic, writer—and, most of all, a heck of a lot smarter than me. I say this because, while reading these essays, I had the continuous, nagging feeling of mental strain, which I found hard to account for. There is nothing conceptually difficult about his arguments; in fact, most are quite straightforward. Although his sentences do twist and turn, they’re not nearly as syntactically knotty as other authors that I have waded through. So what was it?

I have decided that it is Du Bois’s broadness and versatility which made The Souls of Black Folk so exhausting for me. His writing style is poetic, in that every sentence carries with it multiple shades of meaning. His social advocacy is rendered in prose dense with Biblical echoes and classical allusions; his vignettes push forwards with the emotional weight of a sermon, but are couched in the learned style of a professor; his arguments are never dry, never sterile, but always proffered with full consciousness of their significance to the lives of real people.

What I find especially impressive about Du Bois is his self-assurance. In some older American authors—such as Melville, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and even the philosopher William James—I find a strange, self-conscious embarrassment of their Americanness. It is as if these authors were painfully aware that they were aping European art-forms, and struggling to find a native voice. There is none of this in Du Bois. His prose, his arguments, his concerns, and his manner are all firmly American, without a tinge of doubt, shame, or apology. Perhaps it is no coincidence that I feel the same way about another American author, Frederick Douglass, who speaks with the same eloquent self-assuredness.

It is a great irony, then, that Du Bois, who felt a “double consciousness”—a clash between his identity as an American and a “Negro”—somehow managed to escape that other double-consciousness that has plagued America’s great white authors: being a European and an American. The conflict between wishing to continue, and to claim as ours, the heritage of the Old World—the awkward knowledge that we have no Shakespeare, no Goethe, and no Dante—coupled with our desire to break off on a new path.

Meanwhile, Du Bois writes in a voice that is distinctly his own. And, more importantly, distinctly American. So let us relish the poetic justice that our most genuine voice emanated from a people who were systematically trampled underfoot. ...more

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Jul 26, 2020 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020-shelf, non-fiction

Twenty-odd years ago, I read a few of these essays in other collected works and I remembered them very fondly.

Reading them again now, in full, is something of a treat. I had not forgotten the quality of the writing. Indeed, the writing is gorgeous, erudite, and emotional.

The sequence on education, the narrative of self-exploration, even of self-transcendence is a thing to behold.

Of course, it is also heartbreaking. This was published in 1903, almost forty years after the Civil War, after the E ...more

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Jan 31, 2015 Melki rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, social-issues

There is such beautiful writing here.

Some of it is full of hope:

He arose silently, and passed out into the night. Down toward the sea he went, in the fitful starlight, half conscious of the girl who followed timidly after him. When at last he stood upon the bluff, he turned to his little sister and looked upon her sorrowfully, remembering with sudden pain how little thought he had given her. He put his arm about her and let her passion of tears spend itself on his shoulder.
Long they stood to There is such beautiful writing here.

Some of it is full of hope:

He arose silently, and passed out into the night. Down toward the sea he went, in the fitful starlight, half conscious of the girl who followed timidly after him. When at last he stood upon the bluff, he turned to his little sister and looked upon her sorrowfully, remembering with sudden pain how little thought he had given her. He put his arm about her and let her passion of tears spend itself on his shoulder.
Long they stood together, peering over the gray unresting water.
"John," she said, "does it make every one—unhappy when they study and learn lots of things?"
He paused and smiled. "I am afraid it does," he said.
"And, John, are you glad you studied?"
"Yes," came the answer, slowly but positively.
She watched the flickering lights upon the sea, and said thoughtfully, "I wish I was unhappy,—and—and," putting both arms about his neck, "I think I am, a little, John." *

Some is filled with despair:

It was several days later that John walked up to the Judge's house to ask for the privilege of teaching the Negro school. The Judge himself met him at the front door, stared a little hard at him, and said brusquely, "Go 'round to the kitchen door, John, and wait." Sitting on the kitchen steps, John stared at the corn, thoroughly perplexed. What on earth had come over him? Every step he made offended some one. He had come to save his people, and before he left the depot he had hurt them. He sought to teach them at the church, and had outraged their deepest feelings. He had schooled himself to be respectful to the Judge, and then blundered into his front door. And all the time he had meant right,—and yet, and yet, somehow he found it so hard and strange to fit his old surroundings again, to find his place in the world about him. He could not remember that he used to have any difficulty in the past, when life was glad and gay. The world seemed smooth and easy then. Perhaps,—but his sister came to the kitchen door just then and said the Judge awaited him.
The Judge sat in the dining–room amid his morning's mail, and he did not ask John to sit down. He plunged squarely into the business. "You've come for the school, I suppose. Well John, I want to speak to you plainly. You know I'm a friend to your people. I've helped you and your family, and would have done more if you hadn't got the notion of going off. Now I like the colored people, and sympathize with all their reasonable aspirations; but you and I both know, John, that in this country the Negro must remain subordinate, and can never expect to be the equal of white men. In their place, your people can be honest and respectful; and God knows, I'll do what I can to help them. But when they want to reverse nature, and rule white men, and marry white women, and sit in my parlor, then, by God! we'll hold them under if we have to lynch every Nigger in the land. Now, John, the question is, are you, with your education and Northern notions, going to accept the situation and teach the darkies to be faithful servants and laborers as your fathers were,—I knew your father, John, he belonged to my brother, and he was a good Nigger. Well—well, are you going to be like him, or are you going to try to put fool ideas of rising and equality into these folks' heads, and make them discontented and unhappy?" *

And then there was my horror at realizing that more than a century has passed since this book was first published, and there is so much that has not changed.

*Both selections are from Chapter 13 - Of the Coming of John. Please read it here: http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/203/the-sou...
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Jun 02, 2020 The Artisan Geek marked it as to-read · review of another edition

3/6/20
Reading this book at this time feels so incredibly necessary.

You can find me on
Youtube | Instagram | Twitter | Tumblr | Website ...more

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Feb 12, 2021 HBalikov rated it really liked it

In reading The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois, I learned more about the period termed the Reconstruction. The following quote is a good example.

"Had political exigencies been less pressing, the opposition to government guardianship of Negroes less bitter, and the attachment to the slave system less strong, the social seer can well imagine a far better policy—a permanent Freedmen’s Bureau, with a national system of Negro schools; a carefully supervised employment and labor office; a syste ...more

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Mar 05, 2018 Paul rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: race, politics, history, classics, favorites

Perhaps your education was different, but I don't think it's a coincidence that when I look back at which prominent African Americans were taught in my elementary school history classes, Booker T. Washington featured prominently while W.E.B. Du Bois was never mentioned at all. Reading The Souls of Black Folk, it's easier to see why.

Washington was the advocate of conciliation, arguing that African Americans suffering in the ashes of failed Reconstruction should set aside their desire for equalit Perhaps your education was different, but I don't think it's a coincidence that when I look back at which prominent African Americans were taught in my elementary school history classes, Booker T. Washington featured prominently while W.E.B. Du Bois was never mentioned at all. Reading The Souls of Black Folk, it's easier to see why.

Washington was the advocate of conciliation, arguing that African Americans suffering in the ashes of failed Reconstruction should set aside their desire for equality in order to focus on "industrial education" – trade schools, in other words. Du Bois not only rejected this argument, he did so forcefully, and in The Souls of Black Folk, he indicts not only Washington for upholding an unjust and oppressive system of racism, but he indicts white American at large.

Published in 1903, Souls is less a focused treatise and more a collection of essays, many of them previously appearing in magazines throughout the country. As a result, Du Bois' tone ranges from clinical and academic, as in his sociological studies of Georgia's Black Belt written while he was on faculty at the University of Atlanta, to scathing and searing, as when he discusses "the Veil" – his overarching metaphor for living on the wrong side of America's color line – or describes the birth and untimely death of his firstborn son. But no matter what style he's using, Du Bois was an amazing writer. His lyricism flows naturally from his pen; he spins analogies and metaphors seemingly without effort. He weaves poetry and sarcasm into single sentences, all of it in service to his greater argument, which is that African Americans deserved freedom and 40 years after technical emancipation still hadn't gotten it.

As an example of how Du Bois' formidable talents in both historical analysis and beautiful prose work together to form a burning and memorable argument, here is a passage I've picked at random by opening the book and selecting the first bit of my highlighting I saw:

Free! The most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time, amid the broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted hopes of mothers and maidens, and the fall of an empire – the most piteous thing amid all this was the black freedman who threw down his hoe because the world called him free. What did such a mockery of freedom mean? Not a cent of money, not an inch of land, not a mouthful of victuals – not even ownership of the rags on his back. Free!

Or this amazing excerpt, which I read out loud to my wife, from his essay on the short life of his son:

Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live – a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head – ah, bitterly! – the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand – ah, wearily! – to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw the shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby, I saw the cold city towering above the blood-red land. I held my face beside his little cheek, showed him the star-children and the twinkling lights as they began to flash, and stilled with an evensong the unvoiced terror of my life.

It's no surprise that Du Bois – founding member of the NAACP, creator of sociology as we know it today, historian and activist and brilliant writer – has been overlooked in favor of Washington. Because Du Bois is not tame; he upends the careful fictions of white America that say slavery ended in 1865, that discrimination ended in 1965, that we should all be color blind and move forward. In The Souls of Black Folk, a book that should be required reading in every American high school, Du Bois anticipates and confronts those fictions and demolishes them. ...more

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Mar 03, 2015 Donna Ho Shing rated it it was amazing

Dr. DuBois is nothing short of genius. His in-depth analysis of the condition of people of African descent here in America is brilliant. The Souls of Black Folk is not one to be read and then shoved in a corner but should be reread time and again. I certainly will. Published in 1903 but is still just as relevant and important today.

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Jul 16, 2020 Hadrian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: essays, race, nonfiction, history

This was one of those older foundational books that I'd felt a little embarrassed for not having read, and now I'm happy to have finally approached it. I enjoyed both for the luxurious prose style as well as seeing this collection of writing for the first time.

Though many of these pieces were published separately at first, there are some common themes. It is easy to explore Du Bois' idea of "double consciousness", that series of competing thoughts and perspectives, or specifically "unreconciled ...more

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Apr 06, 2020 Michael added it

Shelves: 2016

A landmark text charting the arc of Black life in America from the time of slavery to the early 20th century. Having been released over a century ago, the collection’s obviously dated, but it’s hard not to admire the way in which Du Bois swiftly cycles between social, cultural, political, and personal history, weaving together many threads into a compelling narrative.

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Apr 08, 2015 Christina Marie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Read this in college a while ago... Loved it. Changed the way I think. It was the first time I was introduced to the concepts of "the veil" and "double consciousness". My mind was blown. ...more

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Aug 22, 2020 Murtaza rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2020, favorites

One of the compliments people often give to old books, to argue for their continued relevance, is to say that they could easily have been written in the present day. It's impossible to say that about this book however because I can scarcely conceive something so dignified, generous, unhurried and universalistic being published today. Dubois was one of those people whose exceptional talents and mastery of the tools of a conquering civilization could put to shame the conquerors. This book is a col One of the compliments people often give to old books, to argue for their continued relevance, is to say that they could easily have been written in the present day. It's impossible to say that about this book however because I can scarcely conceive something so dignified, generous, unhurried and universalistic being published today. Dubois was one of those people whose exceptional talents and mastery of the tools of a conquering civilization could put to shame the conquerors. This book is a collection of essays ranging widely over an array of subjects. Some of them are dated, in the sense that they deal with the minute details of social conditions that have long since passed. But all of them contain some invaluable gems of insight mixed in with the beautiful prose for which he was known.

As far back as the 19th century Dubois noted the dilemma that faced African-Americans, being subject to the goodwill of the "good whites" as a tool in the endless civil war they are locked in with the presumed "bad whites." This conflict more or less continues to this day in strange forms. Faced with the predicament of being a minority, minorities have the choice of either embracing an identity based on anger and revenge, totally comporting themselves to the preferences of the majority, or attempting some form of genuine self-realization. Even today so many people trap themselves in the first two options, instead of choosing the more laborious yet rewarding road offered by the third.

Dubois was a bit of what we would call an elitist. In his view, racial tensions were often the result of the lower classes of respective races rubbing up against each other, or from mixing relations between the lower of one with the higher of another. Education was the most important tool for the elevation of the masses as a whole, but not everyone was suited to every sort of education. He was truly a universalist however, staking ownership of the high traditions of the West while never compromising in the face of the towering injustices that educated Westerners had committed in violation of their own civilizational values.

There are many personal travelogues here of Dubois in the south, as well as a painfully beautifully reflection on the death of an infant son. In a few short pages he could condemn with unflinching dignity the mass rape of slaves in America by masters, then move on to lay claim for himself Shakespeare, Balzac and Marcus Aurelius, none of whom "winces when I sit near" as being his by way of universal cultural inheritance. He was absolutely right. If America was unable to accommodate him by the end of his life, it was due to its own shortcomings. ...more

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May 27, 2013 Eddie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: african-american

Speaks The Truth To Power

In 1903, two years after Booker T. Washington's autobiography, "Up from Slavery: An Autobiography", W.E.B. Du Bois published "The Souls of Black Folk", a series of essays which today most consider a seminal work in African-American Sociology literature. Du Bois view of race relations in American at the dawn of the 20th century was clear, critical and deeply profound.

Throughout the fourteen chapters Du Bois uses a metaphor, the veil, with considerable deftness:
"...the Neg ...more

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May 01, 2020 Francesca Calarco rated it it was amazing

Influential, ground-breaking, and timeless—W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk is an amazing social analysis/piece of literature that took the world by storm. I knew Du Bois was a force of nature, but I had no idea of just how truly influential he was (and is) until I read this work.

A century before Ta-Nehisi Coates penned Between the World and Me as a letter to his son on racial injustice in America, W. E. B. Du Bois asked of his fellow man, ”Between me and the other world there is ever a ...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Becky rated it liked it

Shelves: 2014, politicalish, reviewed, black-lives-matter, classics, non-fiction, owned, social-justice

FINALLY finished! This book has been my 'errand book' book for ages now. I'd read a page or two while waiting in the car while running errands, or in line at the post office or the grocery store, etc, and... I'm not sure that is the best way to read this book. I can appreciate it for its role in literature and history, but reading this way made it feel like this slim little book would never end. It got rather tedious towards the end, I'll be honest.

That being said, there is some really good stu ...more

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Jul 15, 2012 Alex rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2012, rth-lifetime, reading-through-history, harlem-renaissance

Larsen describes him as "peppery," and I like that. He's civil, but he's quietly laying haymakers. It's an important book. To a depressing extent, when we talk about racial injustice these days, we're still repeating DuBois.

It is nonfiction - essays on the challenges Blacks face in the wake of the Civil War - so be aware, it's not like it's going to have a plot. I'm reading it one chapter at a time between other things; going straight through was making me miss some stuff.

The prologue, with the ...more

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Feb 19, 2016 Mehrsa rated it it was amazing

Dubois is probably one of the best writers/thinkers of his generation. This book is not only relevant today, but the prose is timeless. It's also a great historical artifact explaining reconstruction america. ...more

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Nov 15, 2016 Aubrey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Aubrey by: Trevor

Shelves: person-of-everything, non-fiction, 4-star, think-think-think, 1-read-on-hand, antidote-think-twice-read, shorty-short, antidote-think-twice-all, r-goodreads, reviewed

Much that the white boy imbibes from his earliest social atmosphere forms the puzzling problems of the black boy's mature years.

On Feb 1st, 1903, a century ago and counting, W.E.B. Du Bois introduced this work with the statement that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." It is the Twenty-First century. I regularly teach students who have known no other century than this. All of them have aspirations to go to college. Very few of them are white, and as someone who's neither straight nor neurotypical, I'd imagine a fair amount of them are the same. There's no guarantee that pursuing higher education in California will protect them, or that limiting the search to "liberal" states will offer a buffer between them and those who follow in the footsteps of their forebears and enact their violence outside the realm of video games. All that these "liberal" states have are in preponderance are brown nosing equivocators who think social justice and property destruction are incompatible, as if the Boston Tea Party, the Bastille, Stonewall, the Berlin Wall, etc, etc, etc, meant nothing. The fact that I haven't seen a single black student or employee at my center makes sense in the state with what has been called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world."

On the one hand, everything has changed since Du Bois penned this peace. On the other, nothing has, as the politics that went into trying and failing to make the Reconstruction the best that it could be was same shit, different day. I've spent a good portion of my time on the Internet learning about the history of the South, capitalism, the sapping of the black creation by the white overlords, education, respectability politics, despair and self-annihilation brought on by racism, the global search for Black Lives Matter, and lynching that these pages cover, and the fact that I had to turn to unorthodox connection when education failed to deliver means the Internet can't solve what the Powers That Be choose to ignore. On a minor note is the prose, which is dense and distanced from modern conventions enough that I am extremely thankful that this work made its way into my headlights before Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 drew me into its long slog of a grasp. On a major note is how Du Bois completely sidelines women and the working class in the favor of guidance by a genteel philosopher kingdom (it's okay if they're white by the way. we can't blame them for all that racism has caused). Considering how often he and Wells-Barnett worked together, he has no excuse, although it does give a preamble to him shafting her when it came to giving credit for the foundation of the NAACP. As a result, guess who's autobiography I'm willing to spend time on.

I guarantee you that there are people who are reading certain books on this website and in the US and crying because they know what the stakes are. I can also guarantee you that there are people who aren't reading certain books on this website and think that those crying people deserve to be culled so that they, the non-criers, can keep their precious cars and handbags and military industrial complex. I'd hope that I'd culled the last of those from my literary contact list, but they just keep on popping up every time they think they can use people as metaphors without normalizing said people's murders. If you don't think now is the time to start taking a serious look at yourself and your habits of conforming, have fun ranking your friends and family in terms of whom you'd give up first when the police came knocking and whom you'd give up last. Contrary to popular belief, survival of the fittest does not have a steep learning curve. You just lie low and hope that they kill enough people around you to get bored and move on.

The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving. Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men. A thousand years ago such an assumption, easily possible, would have made it difficult for the Teuton to prove his right to life. Two thousand years ago such dogmatism, readily welcome, would have scouted the idea of blond races ever leading civilization.

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Feb 03, 2009 Paula Koneazny rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

I appreciate DuBois’s classic study of race as an historical document, and at times even as a piece of literature. I particularly value his depiction of the political, social and material conditions in the South immediately following the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War. Nevertheless, I question some of his proposals and conclusions. Although his views may have been radical in 1903, many of them now sound paternalistic and outdated. Perhaps that, in and of itself, is a sign I appreciate DuBois’s classic study of race as an historical document, and at times even as a piece of literature. I particularly value his depiction of the political, social and material conditions in the South immediately following the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War. Nevertheless, I question some of his proposals and conclusions. Although his views may have been radical in 1903, many of them now sound paternalistic and outdated. Perhaps that, in and of itself, is a sign of progress.
The Souls of Black Folk, of course, is didactic. It’s also a polemic, for DuBois’s stated aims are to both instruct and convince his audience. Many indications in his prose suggest that he conceived his audience to be “the best kind” of white people, and more Northern, I think, than Southern. I don’t think his arguments are directed toward “the best kind” of Negro. I use these terms because they are his, and because this sorting of people, both black and white, into categories of “best” and “worst,” is one of the things that most irritates me about DuBois’s thinking. He touts The Talented Tenth (although he may not have coined this phrase, it became intimately associated with his ideas) as worthy candidates for a classical liberal education and as the source of leadership for “their race.” He admits the need for a sort of benevolent guardianship (by the Talented Tenth and enlightened whites) over the masses of unschooled and largely impoverished black folks in the South. He says, “the paths of peace winding between honest toil and dignified manhood call for the guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the black lowly and the black men emancipated by training and culture.”
Besides the Talented Tenth, two other concepts are integral to Du Bois’s thinking, that of The Veil, which is both a physical and social demarcation of difference, and double-consciousness, defined as “a peculiar sensation, . . . this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others . . . . one ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro.”
Although he argues against Booker T. Washington’s preaching of abandonment of political and social goals in order to focus solely on material gains for blacks, Du Bois himself proposes that blacks not fit to benefit from the education he proposes for The Talented Tenth should indeed settle for training in a trade and much more limited aspirations.(Apparently, Du Bois modified these views somewhat later in his life.) On the other hand, Du Bois is often forceful in his defense of equal rights for all blacks, for example, when he states, “Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.”
Although many of the social conditions that Du Bois references have been ameliorated over time, some of his observations sound uncomfortably current today, such as the following: “the white folk say it [the county prison:] is ever full of black criminals,--the black folks say that only colored boys are ever sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor.”
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Jul 04, 2007 Andrew rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: those interested in blackness in America

So far, so good.

This collection of short essays was written in 1903 and basically changed the way people thought and talked about race in America. DuBois broke down the notion of a scientific explanation for racism and racial bigotry. He essentially went to the University of Atlanta to do just the opposite, to accomplish by scientific means some understanding of race relations and what was called at the time "the Negro problem." After only a few years, he realized that you can't solve a social ...more

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Nov 07, 2014 Jan Priddy rated it liked it · review of another edition

It is an important book and I am glad to have read it.

Apparently I am the first reviewer to notice that Du Bois has done precisely what Sojourner Truth warned against. I had to hunt for it, but here it is: "...if colored men get their rights, and colored women not theirs, the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before."—Sojourner Truth, 1867

There is discomforting harping on classes of black people, those who have pursued "advancement" and those who h ...more

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Aug 12, 2018 Jim Townsend rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: jim-t-s-coffee-and-books-challenge

Wow. These fourteen essays on race and race relations by writer, civil rights activist and scholar William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B) Du Bois (1868-1963), originally published in 1903; should be required reading in Donald Trump's USA, where ignorance is king--in a recent You Tube video, an unschooled man in a park berates a woman proudly wearing a Puerto Rico shirt, as a foreigner, even though that island has been a U.S. territory for over a century, and its citizens are United States citizens--an ...more

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Mar 13, 2007 david shin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

This is one of the books that every human being should read in their lifetime. No other book is more profound or searing as DuBois' evaluation of the problem between the color line. It is both challenging and heart-breaking. Though we have made progress since the dawn of the twentieth century, we still have a long way to go.

I would recommend this book not only to those interested in issues of race, but also anyone interested in American culture and society as a whole. It is a telling book that s ...more

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Jan 09, 2015 Brittany rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015-challenge

This is my first time ever reading any of DuBois's literature and I am BLOWN away. I'm just going to list what I loved about the book, and try not to give too much. THIS BOOK WILL MAKE YOU DIG DEEPER.

1. Climate Change of his writing. DuBois starts the book off with very a fact driven, political, and sociological nature that leaves no doubt of the racial injustice and inequality of the 19th Century. For a reader who isn't quite history driven, the first few chapters may be hard to follow. (Maybe This is my first time ever reading any of DuBois's literature and I am BLOWN away. I'm just going to list what I loved about the book, and try not to give too much. THIS BOOK WILL MAKE YOU DIG DEEPER.

1. Climate Change of his writing. DuBois starts the book off with very a fact driven, political, and sociological nature that leaves no doubt of the racial injustice and inequality of the 19th Century. For a reader who isn't quite history driven, the first few chapters may be hard to follow. (Maybe it was just me) Also DuBois uses intricate, "dual meaning" wordplay yet will recapture the reader with rhetoric. He asks many thought provoking questions. As you move towards the middle of the book, his writing becomes less sophisticated, yet still intelligible. He captures the reader through personal experience upon his travels to the South and time teaching. By the end of the book, Dubois will capture you with spirit, emotion, and poetic like prose.

2. Timeless. This book is the very meat and bone of the racial injustice of America today. The progression of our People will arguably cause some to say, "no. things have changed. Blacks have rights, power, and money." But do we ? "The Veil" of Black consciousness that DuBois writes of in several angles, will either be a completely new concept to you, or speak directly to you as a Black American.

3. DuBois's Diplomacy. I found it to be very interesting, that through Dubois's journey of self awareness and the discovery of his state of being -that he wasn't aware of before his migration to the South- he never seemed to exude hatred for Whites, yet he presumably despised their ways. This may be due to the fact that Dubois' was partially White himself and grew around Whites. But its amazing to see how he never played on a Good Whites vs Bad Whites dichotomy. Even in his essay about Booker. T, he classily spoke highly of him, his work, and integrity.

This book has introduced me to Dubois as not just a Black historical figure, but an AMERICAN historical figure. Dubois clearly was far more intelligent, educated, culturally diverse, and brilliant than most if not every Black AND White literary, educator, sociologist, activist, etc, in America, during his time.

This book is a classic. It is an American masterpiece. ...more

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Jan 16, 2015 Linda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, black-author, 2015-classics-challenge, non-fiction, favorites, 5-star

The classics challenge offered the perfect opportunity for me to read Du Bois’ classic The Souls of Black Folks. It is an assortment of essay, some of which were published in the Atlantic Monthly Magazine, before being assembled and published as a book in 1903.

Each chapter in The Souls of Black Folks begins with a poetic epigraph including a musical score. The poetry was not written by Du Bois. Some are traditional spirituals. Others are poems written by African-Americans as well as white Ameri ...more

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Apr 28, 2019 Morgan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: own

This sounds like something linked with every book on this site, but this book is a must read, especially with Americans. Du Bois is a great writer and this book helped start the civil rights movement. The book is non-fiction and a collection of essays, but at times he writes them as short stories. His prose are well crafted.

One section I liked the best was Du Bois talking about religion, he's not a fan. He brings up how people have stereotype backs into religious folks. Not all blacks are Christ ...more

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About W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois

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In 1868, W.E.B. Du Bois (William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, pronounced 'doo-boyz') was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk College in Nashville, then earned his BA in 1890 and his MS in 1891 from Harvard. Du Bois studied at the University of Berlin, then earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1894. He taught economics and history at Atlanta University from 1897-1910. The Souls of Black ...more

Books by W.E.B. Du Bois

Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880

Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays and Articles

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“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.” — 180 likes

“One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” — 86 likes

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