Name: The Souls of Black Folk
Rating: 4.5 (18 reviews)
ISBN: 9780140189988

W. E. B. Du Bois

Monica M. Elbert

Personal recollections are included in the controversial 1903 work depicting the spirit, status, and problems of African Americans since emancipation.

The Souls of Black Folk

Macy HB

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,-a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people. 

In such a situation, the granting of the ballot to the black man was a necessity, the very least a guilty nation could grant a wronged race, and the only method of compelling the South to accept the results of the war. Thus Negro suffrage ended a civil war by beginning a race feud. And some felt gratitude toward the race thus sacrificed in its swaddling clothes on the altar of national integrity; and some felt and feel only indifference and contempt.

Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land? 

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

The distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. Du Bois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually nearly 80 years ago in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. This volume has long inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reforms for black Americans.

Voices from Within the Veil

Darkwater

Winona 

Du Bois had some sound ideas, but he undermined them with his elitism towards his own Black people.

W.E.B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868 – 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community, and after completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois was a prolific author. His collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, is a seminal work in African-American literature; and his 1935 magnum opus, Black Reconstruction in America, challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction Era. Borrowing a phrase from Frederick Douglass, he popularized the use of the term color line to represent the injustice of the separate but equal doctrine prevalent in American social and political life. He opens The Souls of Black Folk with the central thesis of much of his life's work: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line."

Neil Chin

Zack Dihel

Jared Adams

Apurva Shah

Joshua Line

Haley Murray

Deyana

Stephanie Ridiculous

One of the most widely read and influential works in African American literature, "The Souls of Black Folk" is W.E.B. Du Bois's classic collection of essays in which he details the state of racism and black culture at the beginning of the 20th century. Often autobiographical, "The Souls of Black Folk" takes the reader on a history lesson of race relations and the state of the African American from the emancipation proclamation to the early part of the 20th century. A founding member of the NAACP, Du Bois, through his writings, laid the foundation for the debate that would become the civil rights movement.

Rob Erekson

A collection of essays presenting the plight of the Black man in America, first published in 1903.

Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism

Madeline Hulburt

Ezra Alie

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 rights that belong inherently to all mankind. He also charges that the strategy of accommodation to white supremacy advanced by Booker T. Washington, then the most influential black leader in America, would only serve to perpetuate black oppression. Publication of The Souls of Black Folk was a dramatic event that helped to polarize black leaders into two groups: the more conservative followers of Washington and the more radical supporters of aggressive protest. Its influence cannot be overstated. It is essential reading for everyone interested in African-American history and the struggle for civil rights in America.

The Souls of Black Folk

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