The Souls of Black Folk

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Cosimo, Inc., Sep 1, 2007 - Social Science - 176 pages
The Souls of Black Folk, originally published in 1903, contains a number of groundbreaking essays on race and race relations by scholar and activist W.E.B. DuBois. As an early work in the field of sociology, this book analyzes the interactions between the races and offers a solution for the strife and inequality that had come to characterize those interactions. DuBois believed that education was the route to a better life for all blacks, and his recommendation became the basis for the civil rights movement. Anyone interested in history, race relations, sociology, or the intellectual heritage of the United States will find this an essential read. American writer, civil rights activist, and scholar W.E.B. DUBOIS (1868-1963) was a free-born African American in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was the first black man to receive a PhD from Harvard University and was convinced that education was the means for African Americans to achieve equality. He wrote a number of important books, including The Philadelphia Negro (1899), Black Folk, Then and Now (1899), and The Negro (1915).

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Contents

Of Our Spiritual Strivings
1
Of the Dawn of Freedom
9
Of Mr Booker T Washington and Others
25
Of the Meaning of Progress
37
Of the Wings of Atalanta
47
Of the Training of Black Men
55
Of the Black Belt
69
Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece
83
Of the Sons of Master and Man
99
Of the Faith of the Fathers
115
Of the Passing of the FirstBorn
127
Of Alexander Crummell
133
Of the Coming of John
141
The Sorrow Songs
155
The Afterthought
165
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Page 26 - Hereditary bondsmen ! know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
Page 148 - Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law : and if I perish, I perish.
Page 68 - I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. 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.
Page 27 - In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
Page 56 - t not a Shame — were 't not a Shame for him In this clay carcase crippled to abide? XLV 'Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest; The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest.
Page 3 - 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 true self consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.
Page 3 - I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting cards — ten cents a package— and exchange.
Page 13 - The islands from Charleston south, the abandoned rice-fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. John's River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by act of war.
Page 5 - In song and exhortation swelled one refrain — Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At last it came, — suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences: — "Shout, O children! Shout, you're free! For God has bought your liberty!

About the author (2007)

Civil rights leader and author, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on February 23, 1868. He earned a B.A. from both Harvard and Fisk universities, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and studied at the University of Berlin. He taught briefly at Wilberforce University before he came professor of history and economics at Atlanta University in Ohio (1896-1910). There, he wrote The Souls of Black Folk (1903), in which he pointed out that it was up to whites and blacks jointly to solve the problems created by the denial of civil rights to blacks. In 1905, Du Bois became a major figure in the Niagara Movement, a crusading effort to end discrimination. The organization collapsed, but it prepared the way for the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in which Du Bois played a major role. In 1910, he became editor of the NAACP magazine, a position he held for more than 20 years. Du Bois returned to Atlanta University in 1932 and tried to implement a plan to make the Negro Land Grant Colleges centers of black power. Atlanta approved of his idea, but later retracted its support. When Du Bois tried to return to NAACP, it rejected him too. Active in several Pan-African Congresses, Du Bois came to know Fwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, and Jono Kenyatta the president of Kenya. In 1961, the same year Du Bois joined the Communist party, Nkrumah invited him to Ghana as a director of an Encyclopedia Africana project. He died there on August 27, 1963, after becoming a citizen of that country.

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