WEB Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk, Personal Essays From Reconstruction Era

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WEB Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk, Personal Essays From
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Today we will study and reflect on the “The Souls of Black Folk” by WEB Dubois,
which contains his essays on the struggles and experiences of him and other black
folk during the Reconstruction Era.
What can we learn from this book?
In one essay WEB Dubois talks about his agreements and disagreements with the
leading black leader during Reconstruction, how he felt Booker T Washington was
too conciliatory, how blacks needed to more affirmatively stand up for their civil
rights.
In other essays, WEB Dubois also tells us his personal trials during Reconstruction
when he was a young man, what it was like to be a black man when black men
were scorned and neglected and sometimes lynched in the Deep South.

We always like to select quotes from the author himself. At the end of
our talk, we will discuss our source for this video, and my blogs that
also cover this topic. Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments, sometimes these will generate short videos of their own.
Let us learn together!

To find the source of any
direct quotes in this blog,
please type in the phrase to
the search box in my blog to
see the referenced footnote.

The key question blacks face when confronting racism is this:
Should blacks compromise, or should blacks protest when facing discrimination and
segregation? Should blacks follow the historical example of Booker T Washington
and compromise, working hard to prove themselves, or should blacks follow the
historical example of WEB Dubois, and protest, demanding their civil rights? This
question is a question each black person needs to answer for himself from the days
of Jim Crow up to the present day.
To explore this question, we first need to learn how the life experience differed
for these two black leaders of two very different generations.

Booker T Washington, born in 1856, was the last generation of black
leaders who were born into slavery and emancipated during the Civil
War, dying in 1915. After emancipation he learned to read and attended
a black college, Howard University, and was selected as the first leader of
Tuskegee Institute. After a year or so, a neighboring plantation was
purchased, and the students grew crops, raised livestock, and literally
built the school. The purpose of the school was not only to produce
farmers and tradesmen, but to also educate teachers of trade schools all
across the South.

Young blacks flocked to his school for an education that could lift them out of
destitution and poverty, but few could pay any tuition, Tuskegee depended on
generous local white donors. After a few years the financial needs of the college
outgrew what he could raise from local donors. Much of the rest of his life was
spent criss-crossing Northern cities, raising funds from Northern white
businessmen and philanthropists, for Tuskegee and other black colleges.
During these years the Ku Klux Klan ruled the night, terrorizing and lynching blacks
at will, blacks had no legal recourse, they were helpless when their houses and
churches and crops were put to the torch, there was no justice. Blacks could only
mind their own business, accepting what little pay they could earn, avoiding
attention, not becoming too prosperous.

Andrew Carnegie
with faculty of
Tuskegee Institute

WEB Dubois, born three decades later in 1868, was among the first
generation of black leaders born under Reconstruction, dying at the dawn
of the modern civil rights era in 1965. Unlike Booker T Washington, was
born in Massachusetts, one of the few blacks in his school.
Like Booker T Washington, WEB Dubois also attended a black college, Fisk
University in the Deep South, where he faced racial hostility for the first
time in his life. Later, he was the first black to earn a PhD at Harvard, and
became a professor at Atlanta University.

Booker T Washington is most famous for his speech at the
Atlanta Exposition in 1895, which he also helped to organize
and promoted during his many fund-raising trips through the
North. This was the very first time a black man addressed
such a large and influential body of white businessmen and
white national politicians. All the major newspapers in the
country promoted the Atlanta Exposition, which included a
large Negro exhibit which sought to encourage businessmen
to hire and work with the many blacks who sought greater
economic opportunity.

In his speech known as the Atlanta Compromise, BTW
rhetorically addressed both the black worker and the white
businessmen, but his real audience was the white
businessman. He wanted to reassure him that the black
workers were hard working and not too eager to rock the boat
with talk about civil rights and such, he also hoped they would
contribute to the black colleges and schools.
During this time employers in California were using Chinese
workers, perhaps black leaders feared that Southern whites
would also import Chinese laborers.

Washington’s famous speech starts,
“A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly
sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of
the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal,
“Water, water; we die of thirst!” The
answer from the friendly vessel at once
came back, “Cast down your bucket where
you are.” A second time the signal,
“Water, water, send us water!” ran up
from the distressed vessel, and was
answered, “Cast down your bucket where
you are.” And a third and fourth signal for
water was answered, “Cast down your
bucket where you are.”
Booker T Washington:
Atlanta Exposition

Continuing: “The captain of the distressed vessel, at last
heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it
came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of
the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on
bettering their condition in a foreign land or who
underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly
relations with the southern white man, who is their
next-door neighbor, I would say: ‘Cast down your bucket
where you are; cast it down in making friends in every
manly way of the people of all races by whom we are
surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in
commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions.
And in this connection, it is well to bear in mind that
whatever other sins the South may be called to bear,
when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the
South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the
commercial world.”
Booker T Washington:
Atlanta Exposition

At first WEB Dubois joined in with the Atlanta Compromise
movement, but he became restive and impatient, publicly
feuding with Booker T Washington, who asks black people, FOR
THE PRESENT, to give up political power, their civil rights, and
higher education for Negroes, and concentrate on the trades,
accumulating wealth, and conciliating the South. What did the
Negro receive in return? They lost their right to vote, the Jim
Crow laws ground them down, and the Negro colleges were
drained of their funding.

WEB Dubois tells us in his book, The Souls of Black
Folk, that Mr. Washington’s career is a triple
paradox:
“1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans
businessmen and property-owners; but it is utterly
impossible” for them to defend their rights and
exist when they do not have the right to vote.
“2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the
same time counsels a silent submission to civic
inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of
any race in the long run.”
“3. He advocates common-school and industrial
training, and depreciates institutions of higher
learning; but neither the Negro common-schools,
or Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it
not for teachers trained in Negro colleges or their
graduates.”

Is the Negro responsible for
his plight? WEB Dubois
criticizes Mr. Washington:
“His doctrine allows whites,
North and South, shift the
burden of the Negro
problem to the Negro’s
shoulders . . . when in fact the
burden belongs to the
nation, and the hands of
none of us are clean if we do
not strive to right these great
wrongs.”

What WEB Dubois does not tell us is Booker T Washington did
not really mind his opposition. Booker T Washington continued
to compromise his entire life so the donations would continue to
flow from his white philanthropist friends, who were genuine
friends seeking to help the black cause in a safe but genuine
manner. Many years later, some of these funds were secretly
diverted to WEB Dubois to help fund the agitation of the
NAACP. The next generation of black leaders would not need to
be as compromising.

Thomas Sowell in an essay wrote this: “Booker T
Washington privately not only supported efforts to
safeguard civil rights but also wrote anonymous
newspaper articles protesting the violation of those
rights, as did his trusted agents.” “He secretly
financed legal challenges to Jim Crow laws,”
sometimes secretly paying the legal fees for black
defendants.
“Booker T Washington also worked behind the scenes
to get federal appointments for blacks in Washington
and postmaster appointments in Alabama, as well as
lobbying Presidents to appoint federal judges who
would give blacks a fairer hearing.”
Thomas Sowell on
Booker T Washington

Now we will ponder WEB Dubois’ essay ON SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS.
WEB Dubois was raised in Massachusetts and never suffered mildly racist attitudes
until he attended public school. He innocently gave a valentine to a white girl and
the shocked response really astounded him. He first encountered the virulent
racism of the Deep South when he attended the black Fisk University in Tennessee
and the Jim Crows system of suppression of black voting, bigotry, and lynchings,
which peaks in the years of his schooling. WEB Dubois asks, Why does being black
mean being a problem to solve?
The crime of slavery in the Deep South is the slave was not considered a real person
deserving dignity but was more like talking livestock that could be shamelessly
broken by the lash. Slaves were forbidden to marry, often forced to breed like
horses, and often slave women were raped by their masters, which Frederick
Douglass recalls so forcefully in his slave autobiography. These attitudes persisted
stubbornly, and WEB Dubois in his writings exhorts to respect the dignity of blacks,
how blacks should not be emasculated, how blacks should not be humiliated but be
treated as the equal of whites.

WEB Dubois tells us, “The Negro felt the
weight of his ignorance, not simply of letters,
but of life, of business, of the humanities; the
accumulated sloth and shirking and
awkwardness of decades and centuries
shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his
burden all poverty and ignorance. The red
stain of bastardy, which two centuries of
systematic legal defilement of Negro women
had stamped upon his race, meant not only
the loss of ancient African chastity, but also
the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption
from white adulterers.”
Dining room at Tuskegee

You might ask, why did we select a photo of a dining room table at Booer
T Washington’s Tuskegee Institute to illustrate our point? The point is
that most Northern freedmen like WEB Dubois, and most Northern
whites, were incapable of grasping how far behind the freed black slaves
were during Reconstruction.
Slaves really were treated like draft animals, in addition to being refused
an education, many slaves never ate at a kitchen table with silverware or
slept in a bed their whole life, which meant they had no concept of
etiquette, with very poor hygiene, which caused them to be quite self-
conscious around whites.

Booker T Washington tells us, “we wanted to
teach the students how to bathe; how to care
for their teeth and clothing. We wanted to
teach them what to eat, and how to eat it
properly, and how to care for their
rooms. Aside from this, we wanted to give
them such a practical knowledge of some one
industry, together with the spirit of industry,
thrift, and economy, that they would know
how to make a living after they left us.”
Booker T Washington, on practical education
Dining room at Tuskegee

Unlike WEB Dubois, Booker T Washington himself described how he, as a
former slave, had to humbly learn table manners and etiquette at
Howard University, since slaves were not permitted to live with dignity.
Regarding their attitudes towards education, we cannot say that either
Booker T Washington or WEB Dubois were mistaken, but we can say they
inherited their attitudes from different times, different experiences, and
differing life situations. A trade education makes you more employable,
but an academic gives you human dignity and deepens your soul, so
perhaps both are necessary.

WEB Dubois coined the term double-
consciousness that has been used by American
sociologists ever since. “It is a peculiar
sensation, this double-consciousness (of blacks),
this sense of 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. One ever feels his two-ness,
one American, another a Negro, two souls, two
thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two
warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged
strength alone keeps it from being torn
asunder.”

WEB DUBOIS wrote an essay about HIS FIRST TEACHING JOB.
When he graduated from Fisk University, he worked two years at a small
schoolhouse earning a pittance for his pay. He could not afford a horse,
so after he graduated, he started walking through village after village
asking if they needed teacher, and kept getting the answer, We don’t
need a teacher here. Then he came to a ramshackle house where a black
girl named Josie Dowell excitedly told him the village was looking for a
teacher for a new school. He visited the commissioner’s house, showing
his teaching certificate, and not only was he hired on the spot, he was
sort-of invited to dinner. The whites ate first, then he was served, he ate
alone.

WEB Dubois describes his one-room schoolhouse:
“The schoolhouse was a log hut, where Colonel
Wheeler used to shelter his corn. It sat in a lot
behind a rail fence where a door once was, and
within, a massive rickety fireplace; great chinks
between the logs served as windows. Furniture was
scarce. A pale blackboard crouched in the
corner. My desk was made of three boards,
reinforced at critical points, and my chair, borrowed
from the landlady, had to be returned each night.”
Tolson's Chapel and Freedmen’s
School, Sharpsburg, Maryland,
built in 1866.
“Seats for the children, these puzzled me much. I was haunted by a New England
version of neat little desks and chairs, but alas! The reality was rough plank
benches without backs, and at times without legs. The had the one virtue of
making naps dangerous, possibly fatal, for the floor was not to be trusted.”

He taught there for two summers,
but many students were not able to
attend regularly, they had to help
out with the harvest or at home. He
liked to stay at the Dowell’s house,
“and sit on the porch, eating
peaches, while the mother bustled
and talked: how Josie had bought
the sewing-machine; how Josie
worked at service in the winter, but
that four dollars a month was
‘mighty little’ wages; how Josie
longed to go away to school, but
that it ‘looked like’ they never could
get far enough ahead to let her; how
the crops failed and the well was yet
unfinished; and finally, how ‘mean’
some of the white folks were.”
Freedmen's School, James Plantation, North Carolina, 1866

WEB also wrote several essays on higher education for blacks.

WEB Dubois reviewed the four decades of
black education during Reconstruction.
1. Thru 1876, the Freedmen’s Bureau
oversaw a frenzied effort to start up
schools and train black teachers.
2. Another decade of building public school
systems in the South.
3. The years 1885 – 1895 were an industrial
revolution in the South, and there was
more demand for trade schools.
4. Maturing of the trade schools and
teacher’s colleges.
WEB Dubois noted that by the 1900’s,
over 400 Negroes earned their
bachelor’s degrees from leading colleges,
and many more from black colleges.
BLACK EDUCATION
Class in Tuskegee Institute, Alabama

Fisk 1888 University Class, alma mater of WEB Dubois
WEB Dubois was a proponent of the
talented tenth of Negroes who should
receive advanced education so they could
enter the ranks of black leaders to
advance the cause of their race. The
Negroes must improve themselves, for
one day the South will no longer be “an
armed camp for intimidating black folk.”
WEB Dubois writes, “The function of the
university is not simply to teach
breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for
public schools, or to be a center of polite
society.” Above all it should connect the
“real life and the growing knowledge of
life, which is the secret of civilization.”
BLACK EDUCATION

Ten years after his teaching years, he visited the Dowells
when he traveled to Fisk. The family had gone through many
troubles in that decade. One of the sons was accused of
stealing wheat from Farmer Durham and was thrown in jail,
so he and another son fled the county. They could no longer
work their tiny farm, they built a house in town, Josie worked
in Nashville to help furnish the house.

WEB Dubois tells
us, “Josie shivered
and worked on,
with the vision of
school days all
fled, with a face
wan and tired,
worked until, on a
summer’s day,
Josie crept to her
mother like a hurt
child, and slept,
and sleeps still.”
Tens of thousands of newly freed slaves received food,
clothing and medical care through the War Department’s
Freedmen’s Bureau between 1865 and 1872.

WEB Dubois also writes a very personal essay on
his first-born son.

WEB Dubois’ son was born
underweight. Dad asks, “what is this
tiny formless thing, this new-born wail
from an unknown world, all head and
voice? I handle it curiously, and watch
perplexed its winking, breathing, and
sneezing.” “How beautiful he was,
with his olive-tinted flesh and dark gold
ringlets, his eyes of mingled blue and
brown, his perfect little limbs, and the
soft voluptuous roll which the blood of
Africa had molded into his figures!”
His son grew quickly, “So sturdy and
masterful he grew, so filled with
bubbling life so tremulous with the
unspoken wisdom of a life of but
eighteen months.”
Anonymous Black Family

WEB Dubois remembers, “Then one
night the little feet pattered wearily to
the wee white bed, and the tiny hands
trembled, and a warm flushed face
tossed on the pillow, and we knew
baby was sick.” For ten days, a week
and three days, he wasted away.
WEB DuBois with his wife Nina and daughter
Yolande, 1901, born after the death of his son.
Then, “He died at eventide, when the sun lay like a brooding sorrow above the
western hills, veiling its face; when the winds spoke not, and the trees, the great
green trees he loved, stood motionless. I saw his breath beat quicker and quicker,
pause, and then his little soul leapt like a star that travels in the night and left a
world of darkness in its train.” Now his wife was a childless mother.

His toddler’s burial was remembered
with bitterness. “Blithe was the
morning of his burial, with bird and
song and sweet-smelling flowers. The
trees whispered to the grass, but the
children sat with hushed faces.” “The
busy city dinned about us. They did not
say much, those pale-faced hurrying
men and women; they did not say
much, they only glanced and said,
‘Niggers!’”
WEB Dubois as an infant.

WEB Dubois never tells us the name of his first-born son, perhaps the pain
was too great when the memory of his son was so recent when he wrote
this essay.
Where were the doctors? Where was the hospital? His son died of
diphtheria, he was born at home, he died at home, the hospitals in Atlanta
only treated white patients, this was the Deep South.
Stories like this repeat themselves up to the current day. When
Republican states refuse to integrate Medicaid with Obamacare, rural
hospitals close, and when rural hospitals close, people die. When
Republican states try to force the poor off Medicaid because they can’t
prove they have been looking for a job, many of whom are too sick to work
or even fight for their rights, they lose their Medicaid, and people die.

We will close with the verse he quotes in his chapter, On the Wings of
Atalanta, which reminds us that slavery harmed the souls of the enslavers
as much as it harmed the enslaved.

.
Of the Wings of Atalanta
O black boy of Atlanta!
But half was spoken.
The slave’s chains and the master’s
Alike are broken;
The one cure of the races
Held both in tether;
They are rising, all are rising,
The black and white together.
WEB Dubois credits Whittier

SOURCES: We read the Souls of Black Folk, Dover edition,
from Amazon. You can probably find this complete work on the
internet for free. His language can be quite flowery at times,
like he is trying to coin a black Iliad.
We also quote from this book of essays from Thomas Sowell on
Booker T Washington and WEB Dubois.
The Soul of Black Folks also includes many essays on life on the
plantations employing black laborers, on how sharecroppers
fall into cruel debt-bondage, on ramshackle shacks and black
churches and spirituals and many other topics, which we plan to
cover in a future video.

PLEASE click on the link for our blog on this topic in the description
below.
And please click on the links for interesting videos on other topics
that will broaden your knowledge and improve your soul.
Our videos on WEB Dubois are viewed twenty times more than our
video on Booker T Washington, but we encourage you to view Booker
too, his efforts help fund the black college and school system in the
South during the dark days of KKK Redemption era.

WEB Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk, Personal Essays From Reconstruction Era

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WEB Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk, Personal Essays From Reconstruction Era