The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

First published: 1903

Type of Philosophy: Ethics, social philosophy

Context

Written at the opening of the twentieth century, after the relative failure of federal Reconstruction efforts and during accelerating national tensions regarding race relations, The Souls of Black Folk is a complex work of philosophy, history, sociology, political theology, and literary creativity. Structurally linked by a few recurrent metaphors (soul, veil, double-consciousness), the book consists of fourteen distinct essays that together present W. E. B. Du Bois’s analysis of conditions in the United States. Du Bois pays special attention to the challenges facing black and white citizens in their interrelations but also poses a sharp critique of the spiritual and economic directions of the United States as a whole. Race figures as a central concern in the work, with particular attention to the perspectives and knowledge emerging from African American experience. The Souls of Black Folk is rhetorically directed on one level to white readers but is also positioned in the dialogue toward “self-definition” among black intellectuals at the opening of the twentieth century. It is also a central twentieth century text of American political philosophy and social criticism. The Souls of Black Folk has been included by philosophers in the tradition of American pragmatism, especially given Du Bois’s focus on ideas and meaning within historical or social contexts, as well as his advocacy of political action based on reason and social analysis.

Each essay in The Souls of Black Folk is introduced by a quotation from European literary tradition, with the author named, followed by an unlabeled musical notation, which readers later learn is a few bars from a song of the African American spiritual tradition. Most critics have assumed that this visual epigraphic pattern was meant by Du Bois to emphasize the close relationships between white and black culture. However, other commentators have suggested that the visual pairing suggests just the opposite: the separation between the two cultural traditions and the relative unknown status of African American cultural expression. This contrast in interpretations points to a strong internal philosophical tension in The Souls of Black Folk between Du Bois’s “rational optimism” about the possibility of human progress and his more pessimistic analysis of American culture and race relations.

Color Line, Veil, and Double-Consciousness

In “The Forethought,” Du Bois offers his now famous diagnosis: “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” In the opening essay, entitled “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” he challenges white perceptions that black experience itself is the “problem,” and he asserts that the path to transcending that perception (for whites and blacks) is through a fuller exploration of the spiritual depth of black experience and “the souls of black folk.” This spiritual metaphor functions as an explicit political theology: Du Bois asserts cross-racial spiritual identity and shared humanity during a period in which racial categories emphasized separation, and many white Americans were committed to an explicit ideology of white supremacy.

Du Bois introduces the two other central metaphors of the book in this opening chapter: he reveals “the veil” and describes African American “double-consciousness.” The veil, a visual and symbolic wall of separation, returns again and again in The Souls of Black Folk to emphasize racial boundaries (social and psychological) and black “invisibility” in U.S. history. Double-consciousness is a psychological, political, and philosophical category of black experience for Du Bois, and the following quotation illustrates the ontological and epistemological implications of this key concept:

The Negro is a sort of a 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. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness. . . . One ever feels his twoness,—an American, 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.

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. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

The philosophical stakes here are clear, in terms of a quality of “being” (ontology) and “knowing” (epistemology) unique to, and grounded in, African American experience. This contextual philosophy provides an undercurrent to the detailed account of African American history that follows. By exploring the sociological and political complexities of black history, Du Bois builds his argument that the “souls of black folk” are ultimately the souls of the nation, and the progress of the United States as a whole is inherently linked to the progress of African Americans. Du Bois, in essays such as “Of the Dawn of Freedom,” “Of the Meaning of Progress,” “Of the Black Belt,” and “Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece,” details federal efforts, largely failed, at national Reconstruction after the Civil War. He analyzes the Freedmen’s Bureau, educational reform in Southern black communities, and the dangers and seductiveness of purely “material” gains made at the expense of intellectual and spiritual progress. He argues simultaneously for the importance of university liberal arts education for qualified African American students and for the dignity inherent in manual labor. Even when his focus is to provide historical detail, his writings contain an ever-present challenge to all readers to confront racism, violence, and inhumanity wherever they are revealed in American life.

A Rejection of Accommodationism

In “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” Du Bois directly confronts what he considers “accommodationist” (to whites) politics in the black community and argues vehemently against the gradualist strategies advanced by African American Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In this essay, Du Bois is revealed as a social critic fully engaged with democratic political philosophy, working within the crosscurrents of political dialogue among African Americans as well as in relation to broader American debates over civil rights, race relations, suffrage, and public education. The essay examines the tension among the emerging black leadership of the post-Reconstruction period and deals with questions as to how African Americans should deal with the tensions between immediate and gradual change and how to achieve the goals of economic progress and civil rights. Du Bois examined how to effectively conduct black-defined political initiatives given the counterforces of white-defined social and political agendas. Du Bois was clearly at odds with Washington on all these issues, but the essay calls for open debate among African American intellectuals and advocates that action be based on careful analysis of specific social and historical conditions. In this essay, Du Bois’s philosophical confidence in the power of reason is apparent, as is an underlying optimism about the progressive potential of Enlightenment and U.S. political tradition. He closes the essay by invoking the Declaration of Independence, positioning The Souls of Black Folk within familiar frameworks of Western philosophy, as does Du Bois’s frequent use of classical quotations and reference to Roman and Greek antiquity. Chapter 4, “Of the Wings of Atlanta,” is especially revealing of this complex fusion of Western classical tradition and African American history, with Du Bois arguing against the “deification of Bread” by invoking the power of the university as a source of reasoned “truth.”

A More Somber Tone

Toward the end of the book, the essays in The Souls of Black Folk shift in form and focus. In two of the later essays, Du Bois tempers his earlier philosophical optimism: In “Of the Passing of the First Born,” an account of the tragic death of his young son, Du Bois, the grieving father, asks if it is not, on some profoundly troubling level, better that his son died early rather than bear the racial injustice of the country into which he had been born. In “Of the Coming of John,” Du Bois clearly questions the reformative power of education and seems to imply, through complex themes dealing with religion, sexuality, and political power, that psychological and historical patterns of American racism will lead the country to spiritual death and physical destruction.

The tragic and pessimistic tone of these two chapters is eased, but only partially, by the final chapter, “The Sorrow Songs.” Here, Du Bois somberly celebrates the strength of slave song and African American spirituals. He calls this tradition “the sole American music” and “the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.” Although much of the music he draws upon here originates in the tradition of the black church, Du Bois’s focus is more broadly metaphoric, pointing again toward spirituality as a philosophical category of shared humanity rather than a specifically Christian concept. The political theology and philosophy of The Souls of Black Folk is especially striking in the humanistic emphasis of Du Bois’s “prophetic” call in “The Afterthought.” His closing political challenge is addressed to the nation as he reasserts the power of reason as the starting point for social action: “Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed.” The God to whom these lines is directed is, tellingly, “the Reader”: Du Bois to the end keeps his eyes on history and the thought and actions of human beings.

Initial Moves Toward Civil Rights

Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk soon before initiating the Niagara Movement (1905), a gathering in which African American intellectuals challenged accommodationist politics in the African American community and argued for their receiving immediate and full civil rights. Du Bois believed, and stated in The Souls of Black Folk, that the Talented Tenth, the best-educated African Americans, should lead the black community in pursuit of a better life. In 1909, Du Bois helped start the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a multiracial civil rights organization. In these projects, Du Bois tested the ideas of The Souls of Black Folk within the realities of U.S. racial and economic politics. The book established him as a philosopher and social critic, just as his earlier books had established him as a scholar. The Souls of Black Folk provoked animated debate among African Americans and challenged white readers to abandon the mental and political habits of white supremacy.

Subsequent influence of The Souls of Black Folk has been profound, both as a cornerstone text of black studies and African American literature, and as an exemplary work of early twentieth century American pragmatism. Du Bois can be read along with William James and John Dewey, important figures of American pragmatism. A wide range of writers continue to apply Du Bois’s “problem of the color-line” as an analytical framework, albeit a historically shifting one, as they grapple with American race relations. Psychological and philosophical categories from The Souls of Black Folk, such as the “veil” and “double-consciousness,” have proved of continued interest to literary artists, social critics, and philosophers. The book set a precedent for philosophical focus on the “subjectivity” of the African American experience and for contextual analysis of African American history.

Du Bois’s philosophical shift from “blackness as problem” to “blackness as source of knowledge” is a shift in epistemology that was politically provocative in the United States of 1903 and has continued to challenge American and pan-African thinkers ever since.

Principal Ideas Advanced

•The biggest problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.

•“Soul” functions as a philosophical category, signaling a shared humanity that transcends racial boundaries.

•African American “double-consciousness” is a result of black people’s historical experience in the United States, which gives African Americans a dual African and American heritage that places their identities in dynamic tension.

•The political, economic, and spiritual well-being of the post-Reconstruction United States depends on the nation’s ability to incorporate, value, and advance the knowledge generated through African American experience.

•African Americans must develop effective, community-originated, and self-defined leadership (the “Talented Tenth”).

•Political power (via voting rights), civil rights (via full civic/legal equality), and education of youth according to ability (via access by black students to all levels of education) are nonnegotiable and immediately necessary conditions for African American freedom.

Bibliography

De Marco, Joseph P. The Social Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983. A useful overview of Du Bois’s philosophy.

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century. New York: International Publishing, 1968. Du Bois’s classic life story, covering the many events of his long career. Essential reading for Du Bois scholars.

Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois: Writings. Edited by Nathan Huggins. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1986. A useful compilation of Du Bois materials from 1890 to 1958. Contains The Souls of Black Folk.

Essien-Udom, E. U. Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America. New York: Dell Books, 1964. Focuses on Du Bois as a major advocate of pan-Africanism. Notes that he differed from other black activists of his time by calling for full political participation and racial unity as a response to racism.

Green, Dan S., and Edwin D. Driver, eds. W. E. B. Du Bois: On Sociology and the Black Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Discusses Du Bois’s sociological contributions. Contains a brief biographical sketch and excerpts from his writings.

Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor. A Gift of the Spirit: Reading “The Souls of Black Folk.” Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007. Psychological examination of The Souls of Black Folk, focusing on Du Bois’s personal and political struggles to achieve authentic recognition for himself and his fellow African Americans.

Young, Alford A., Jr., et al. The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois. Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm, 2006. Collection of essays by five Du Bois scholars evaluating both his work and his legacy.