W E B DU BOIS 1896 1963 The
W. E. B. DU BOIS (1896 -1963) The first African American to earn a doctorate, Dubois focused his life work on combatting racism. His works’ most famous quotation is from the first line of Souls of Black Folk: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line. ” He blamed this “problem of the colorline” on capitalism and as a progressive spirit, touted socialist values. In addition, he was a lifelong peace activist who worked towards nuclear disarmament. One year after his death, the Civil Rights Act was passed; it contained much of the core principles advocated for in his writings. A r c h i v e s / C o l l e c t i o n s : W. E. B. Du Bois P aper s, 1803 -1999 ( bulk 1877 -1963)
In writing "Souls of Black Folk" (1903), Du. Bois set out to prove the soul—and thereby —humanity of black Some historical context: 1. "Racist Americans were making the case that black people did not have souls… and the beings that did not have souls were beasts. ” --Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped From The Beginning: The Definitive History Of Racist Ideas In America 2. A 1898 speech by Rebecca Felton, the nation’s first female senator (1922): “If it requires lynching to protect women’s dearest possession from ravening, drunken human beasts, ” she said, “then I say, lynch a thousand a week. ” “THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK”
“THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK”/JIM CROW LAWS The significance of the work’s title also helps explain the main purpose of W. E. B. Dubois writing this essay, to challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine. This website—on Jim Crow laws—gives abundant examples and illustrations of the day’s propaganda: What Was Jim Crow .
READER RESPONSES/QUOTATIONS FROM “OF SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS” “Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. ” “After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, —a world which yields him no selfconsciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. ”
THE POWER OF “THE VEIL” From the new introduction to the new edition of The Souls of Black Folk: "In many ways black people could see the opportunities through the veil that white people were privileged to have, " Kendi says. "White people could not see through the veil the opportunities that black people were denied. ” Through this powerful imagery, one centered on racist division, W. E. B. Dubois is making an urgent, radical call for black unity, equality with the white America.
READER RESPONSES/QUOTATIONS FROM “OF SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS”(CONTINUED) “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, 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. ” “The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife —this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. ”
CO MMENTARY FROM THE PARIS R EVIEW , “THE SOUL OF W. E. B. DU BOIS” “Du Bois met many black people where many of them were, and where many have remained—at the warring crossroads between assimilationist and antiracist ideas. ” “He believed in both the antiracist concept of cultural relativity, of everyone looking at one’s self through the eyes of one’s group, and the assimilationist idea of ‘looking at one’s self through the eyes’ of white people. In his mind, this double desire, this double consciousness, yielded an inner strife between pride in equal blackness and assimilation into superior whiteness, and an outer strife from the Veil of American racism denying both. --Ibram X. Kendi February 14, 2018
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