Soul-Stirring Scholarship: On Black Folks and Their Souls

Man... When I tell you reading continues to be FUNdamental...

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: Make a [man] black and bid him sing.
-Countee Cullen

When William Edward Burghardt DuBois was born in 1868 no one knew he would become the influential, world-shifting African American he would someday become. Look at the history of Albany State University if you need to see the tangible evidence of the impact of W.E.B. DuBois. #HeresAHint: The founder of Albany State University read The Souls of Black Folk and their motto is: Potential Realized. But I mean, WEB was a reader and readers do fundamental things. Commercial Break: Read a book, read a book, read a muhfuggin book

A little background: The Souls of Black Folk, which is available as an e-text is the first look into African American sociology. Commercial Break: Notice I posted a link to the e-text of the book, if you still don't read it, it's your own fault. WEB was a traveling scholar having been educated at Fisk and then becoming a sort of cultural anthropologist, similar to Zora Neale Hurston, who traveled around the country collecting African American folk stories, WEB was well-versed with the South. He was able to speak to the hearts and mind of the people and open their eyes to the possibilities available if only they would "manifest destiny" (169) and strive for the fulfillment of purpose. When WEB speaks, people listen. And each chapter of The Souls of Black Folk made my ears perk and my brain stand at attention.

From the outset, the reader sees that TSOBF was written in response to a problem. The Negro Problem. DuBois relays that white men have asked him:

How does it feel to be a problem? 


I needed to immediately know what his response was. You see, as a new-fangled Negro, I would have been taken aback by the question and rendered unable to formulate a scholarly answer. My answer would have gone something like this:

#ComeAgainSayWhat A problem? Como se dice? No lo siento. Who in the HeyYa you callin' a problem? Ya mammy is the problem... But I digress...

Anyway, WEB was diplomatic. His motivation for writing the fourteen chapters of this text was to answer that very question. Not only does he understand the question, he overstands it. He gives the reader more than they need, he gives the reader what they want (even if the reader didn't know he or she needed it).

And he has the nerve to be epigrammatic, or "quotable" as well. WEB says succinctly:

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor man in the land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships


And I know exactly where he is coming from. I know how it feels to not have money when all of your friends are going out to dinner. I know how to feels to go to someone else's house and hoping they cooked... Yeah, poverty is the bottom of hardships...

WEB is a teacher and he not only gives the origin of the Freedmen's Bureau but he evaluates the department without bias or slant. Only a true scholar is able to separate what he feels from what needs to be relayed to his audience. He treads the line with unmatched skill. Even in his popular "criticism" of Booker T. Washington, he is not angry or venomous, he is just honest, not even brutally. If you are unaware of the crux of the controversy between WEB DuBois and Booker T. Washington, read this poem by Dudley Randall:

Booker T and W.E.B.

(I thought about posting the poem but it's a little over four stanzas and this is my blog, not Dudley Randall's)

But this poem sums up their disagreement. W.E.B. wanted newly freed African Americans to fight for equality and Booker T wanted black Americans to "cast down their buckets." Essentially. And W.E.B. even prefaces his criticism by saying:

Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,--criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, or leaders by those led,--this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society.


So you see, he wasn't trying to be a problem, he was attempting to proffer a solution. I mean, if your enemy offers you exactly what you have demanded, you haven't demanded enough. Frederick Douglass said it best:

Power concedes nothing without a demand...


And white America was much too willing to concede what BTDubbs "demanded."

This is all W.E.B. asked of America:

1. The right to vote
2. Civic equality
3. The education of youth according to ability

Nothing spectacular, nothing impossible, solely improbable. And African Americans continue to struggle with all of the above... 

I found it striking that many of the issues black America struggles with today, were the struggles of 1903. Fathers walking out on marriages, low voter turnout, preoccupation with the appearance of wealth were all issues W.E.B. mentions. Interestingly, or disappointingly, you choose, these issues are still of import to African American people... #TheMoreThingsChange #TheMoreTheyStayTheSame

He speaks about religion, the promise of the Negro people, the educated Negro, and the miseducated Negro also. 

He closes the text with this statement:

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

And through the fourteen chapters, two introductions, one foreword, one backward, one bibliography, and one glossary, he safely proves it would not. 

*From the BlackGirlWhoReads: This blog was never intended to give a synopsis of any text, but rather a sweeping overview and scholarly insight*

In short, just read the book... I mean, dang, I posted the link... Oh and grab a highlighter or a pen and post-its or pieces of writing paper... You will take notes and mark pages...