The Souls of Black Folk - W E B Du Bois - Inglês (2025)

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<p>oxford world ’ s classics</p><p>THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK</p><p>W. E. B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on</p><p>23 February 1868. In 1885 he went to Fisk University where he</p><p>edited the Fisk Herald. After graduating in June 1888 he continued</p><p>his studies at Harvard College, gaining an MA degree in history in</p><p>1891. Following further study at the Friedrich Wilhelm University</p><p>in Berlin, he returned to the United States in 1894 to take a teaching</p><p>position in classics at Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio. Du</p><p>Bois became the first black to receive his Ph.D. from Harvard in</p><p>1895 and moved to Philadelphia the next year to pursue a socio-</p><p>logical study of black life there. After accepting a faculty position in</p><p>economics and history at Atlanta University, he gained renown as an</p><p>intellectual in the next decade with the publication of The Souls of</p><p>Black Folk (1903) and his participation in the Niagara Movement, a</p><p>group of black leaders assembled in 1905 to promote full civil and</p><p>economic rights for blacks. In 1910 Du Bois moved to New York,</p><p>where he accepted a position at the National Association for the</p><p>Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as the editor of the civil</p><p>rights organization’s monthly journal, The Crisis. In February 1919</p><p>in Paris, Du Bois organized the First Pan-African Congress, which</p><p>gathered delegates from the United States, the Caribbean, Europe,</p><p>and Africa. He continued to publish a steady stream of important</p><p>books, including Darkwater (1920), Dark Princess (1928), and Black</p><p>Reconstruction (1935). After a series of political conflicts, Du Bois</p><p>resigned from The Crisis in 1934 and returned to Atlanta University,</p><p>where he founded and edited another journal, Phylon. Increasingly</p><p>radical in his public criticism of US foreign policy and race relations</p><p>after the Second World War, Du Bois worked with pacifist organ-</p><p>izations and the Council on African Affairs. After celebrating his</p><p>ninetieth birthday in New York, Du Bois toured Europe, the Soviet</p><p>Union, and China in 1958 and 1959. In 1961 he accepted the</p><p>invitation of Kwame Nkrumah, the president of independent</p><p>Ghana, to move to Africa. Du Bois died in Ghana on 27 August</p><p>1963, on the eve of the monumental civil rights protest march in</p><p>Washington, DC.</p><p>Brent Hayes Edwards is an associate professor in the Depart-</p><p>ment of English at Rutgers University. He is the author of The</p><p>Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black</p><p>Internationalism (2003), the co-editor of the essay collection Uptown</p><p>Conversation: The New Jazz Studies (2004), and the editor of Joseph</p><p>Conrad’s Nostromo (2004) and Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage</p><p>and My Freedom (2005).</p><p>oxford world ’s classics</p><p>For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought</p><p>readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700</p><p>titles––from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the</p><p>twentieth century’s greatest novels––the series makes available</p><p>lesser-known as well as celebrated writing.</p><p>The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained</p><p>introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene,</p><p>and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading.</p><p>Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and</p><p>reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry,</p><p>religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive</p><p>commentary and essential background information to meet the</p><p>changing needs of readers.</p><p>OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS</p><p>W. E. B. DU BOIS</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk</p><p>Edited with an Introduction and Notes by</p><p>BRENT HAYES EDWARDS</p><p>1</p><p>3</p><p>Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp</p><p>Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.</p><p>It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,</p><p>and education by publishing worldwide in</p><p>Oxford New York</p><p>Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi</p><p>Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi</p><p>New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto</p><p>With offices in</p><p>Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece</p><p>Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore</p><p>South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam</p><p>Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press</p><p>in the UK and in certain other countries</p><p>Published in the United States</p><p>by Oxford University Press Inc., New York</p><p>Editorial material © Brent Hayes Edwards 2007</p><p>The moral rights of the author have been asserted</p><p>Database right Oxford University Press (maker)</p><p>First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2007</p><p>All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,</p><p>stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,</p><p>without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,</p><p>or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate</p><p>reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction</p><p>outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,</p><p>Oxford University Press, at the address above</p><p>You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover</p><p>and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer</p><p>British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data</p><p>Data available</p><p>Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data</p><p>Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868–1963.</p><p>The souls of Black folk / W. E. B. Du Bois ; edited with an</p><p>introduction and notes by Brent Hayes Edwards.</p><p>p. cm.––(Oxford world’s classics paperback)</p><p>Includes bibliographical references.</p><p>ISBN 978–0–19–280678–9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. African Americans.</p><p>I. Edwards, Brent Hayes. II. Title.</p><p>E185.6.D797 2007</p><p>973′.0496073––dc22</p><p>ISBN 978–0–19–280678–9</p><p>1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2</p><p>Typeset in Ehrhardt</p><p>by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk</p><p>Printed in Great Britain</p><p>on acid-free paper by</p><p>Clays Ltd., St Ives plc.</p><p>CONTENTS</p><p>Introduction vii</p><p>Note on the Text xxiv</p><p>Select Bibliography xxviii</p><p>A Chronology of W. E. B. Du Bois xxx</p><p>THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK 1</p><p>Appendix I: The Conservation of Races 179</p><p>Appendix II: The Talented Tenth 189</p><p>Appendix III: ‘Self-Review’ and</p><p>‘Fifty Years After’ 206</p><p>Explanatory Notes 209</p><p>This page intentionally left blank</p><p>INTRODUCTION</p><p>S ince its publication in April 1903, The Souls of Black Folk has</p><p>justifiably been celebrated as the definitive text of the African</p><p>American literary tradition. A seemingly modest collection of four-</p><p>teen pieces framed by a preface and afterword, the book made an</p><p>immediate impact on American political debate, erupting with the</p><p>sudden brilliance of ‘fireworks going off in a cemetery’.1 It launched</p><p>its author, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, an ambitious</p><p>35-year-old African American professor of sociology at Atlanta</p><p>University, into international prominence as an authoritative voice</p><p>on what was then termed the ‘Negro problem’. With its unusual</p><p>polyphony of genres––autobiography, history, political criticism,</p><p>sociology, ethnography, biography, eulogy, fiction––the book has had</p><p>a formative influence on the entire tradition of African American</p><p>writing that has followed in its wake. As literary critic Arnold Ram-</p><p>persad has written: ‘If all of a nation’s literature may stem from one</p><p>book, as Hemingway implied about The Adventures of Huckleberry</p><p>Finn, then it can as accurately be said that all of Afro-American</p><p>literature of a creative nature has proceeded from Du Bois’s com-</p><p>prehensive statement on the nature of the people in The Souls of</p><p>Black Folk.’2 One finds its formal strategies and rhetorical daring</p><p>echoed in novels from James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography</p><p>of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952)</p><p>and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) and beyond. Yet Du</p><p>Bois’s work has been equally central to African American non-fiction</p><p>and scholarship on race, history, and politics. Ten years after its</p><p>publication, the black intellectual William H. Ferris called The Souls</p><p>of Black Folk ‘the political Bible of the negro race’.3 It is one of the</p><p>very rare books that marks the threshold of its historical</p><p>in all charity, studying</p><p>my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the</p><p>faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth</p><p>hidden there.</p><p>I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the</p><p>spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and</p><p>strive. First, in two chapters I have tried to show what Emancipa-</p><p>tion meant to them, and what was its aftermath. In a third chapter</p><p>I have pointed out the slow rise of personal leadership, and criti-</p><p>cised candidly the leader who bears the chief burden of his race</p><p>to-day. Then, in two other chapters I have sketched in swift out-</p><p>line the two worlds within and without the Veil, and thus have</p><p>come to the central problem of training men for life. Venturing</p><p>now into deeper detail, I have in two chapters studied the strug-</p><p>gles of the massed millions of the black peasantry, and in another</p><p>have sought to make clear the present relations of the sons of</p><p>master and man.</p><p>Leaving, then, the world of the white man, I have stepped within</p><p>the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,––the</p><p>meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the</p><p>struggle of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice</p><p>told but seldom written.</p><p>Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in</p><p>other guise. For kindly consenting to their republication here, in</p><p>altered and extended form, I must thank the publishers of The</p><p>Atlantic Monthly, The World’s Work, The Dial, The New World,</p><p>and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social</p><p>Science.</p><p>Before each chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow</p><p>Songs,––some echo of haunting melody from the only American</p><p>music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And,</p><p>finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and</p><p>flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil?</p><p>W. E. B. Du B.</p><p>Atlanta, Ga., Feb. 1, 1903.</p><p>The Forethought4</p><p>HEREIN IS WRITTEN</p><p>The Forethought 3</p><p>i. Of Our Spiritual Strivings 7</p><p>ii. Of the Dawn of Freedom 15</p><p>ii i . Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 33</p><p>iv. Of the Meaning of Progress 45</p><p>v. Of the Wings of Atalanta 54</p><p>vi. Of the Training of Black Men 63</p><p>vii. Of the Black Belt 77</p><p>vii i . Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece 93</p><p>ix. Of the Sons of Master and Man 111</p><p>x. Of the Faith of the Fathers 128</p><p>xi. Of the Passing of the First-Born 140</p><p>xii. Of Alexander Crummell 145</p><p>xii i . Of the Coming of John 153</p><p>xiv. The Sorrow Songs 167</p><p>The Afterthought 178</p><p>This page intentionally left blank</p><p>i</p><p>Of Our Spiritual Strivings</p><p>O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,</p><p>All night long crying with a mournful cry,</p><p>As I lie and listen, and cannot understand</p><p>The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,</p><p>O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?</p><p>All night long the water is crying to me.</p><p>Unresting water, there shall never be rest</p><p>Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,</p><p>And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;</p><p>And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,</p><p>All life long crying without avail,</p><p>As the water all night long is crying to me.</p><p>Arthur Symons.*</p><p>Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question:</p><p>unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the</p><p>difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They</p><p>approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or com-</p><p>passionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to</p><p>be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town;</p><p>or, I fought at Mechanicsville;* or, Do not these Southern outrages</p><p>make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce</p><p>the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real</p><p>question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.</p><p>And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,––peculiar even</p><p>for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood</p><p>and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the</p><p>revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember</p><p>well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up</p><p>in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds</p><p>between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden school-</p><p>house, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy</p><p>gorgeous visiting-cards––ten cents a package––and exchange. The</p><p>exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my</p><p>card,––refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon</p><p>me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or</p><p>like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their</p><p>world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil,</p><p>to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and</p><p>lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.</p><p>That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-</p><p>time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads.</p><p>Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the</p><p>worlds I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs,</p><p>not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I</p><p>would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide:</p><p>by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that</p><p>swam in my head,––some way. With other black boys the strife was</p><p>not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy,</p><p>or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking</p><p>distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did</p><p>God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The</p><p>shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and</p><p>stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable</p><p>to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat</p><p>unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch</p><p>the streak of blue above.</p><p>After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton</p><p>and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil,</p><p>and gifted with second-sight* in this American world,––a world</p><p>which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see</p><p>himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar</p><p>sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at</p><p>one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the</p><p>tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever</p><p>feels his two-ness,––an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts,</p><p>two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body,</p><p>whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk8</p><p>The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,––</p><p>this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double</p><p>self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of</p><p>the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for</p><p>America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not</p><p>bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows</p><p>that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to</p><p>make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American,</p><p>without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having</p><p>the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.</p><p>This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the</p><p>kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband</p><p>and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body</p><p>and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or for-</p><p>gotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of</p><p>Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout his-</p><p>tory, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling</p><p>stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their</p><p>brightness. Here in America,</p><p>in the few days since Emancipation, the</p><p>black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striv-</p><p>ing has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem</p><p>like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness,––it</p><p>is the contradiction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of</p><p>the black artisan––on the one hand to escape white contempt for a</p><p>nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the</p><p>other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde––</p><p>could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half</p><p>a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people,</p><p>the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and</p><p>demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that</p><p>made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant</p><p>was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed</p><p>was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge</p><p>which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and</p><p>blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder</p><p>souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and</p><p>doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him</p><p>was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and</p><p>he could not articulate the message of another people. This waste of</p><p>Of Our Spiritual Strivings 9</p><p>double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has</p><p>wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten</p><p>thousand thousand people,––has sent them often wooing false gods</p><p>and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed</p><p>about to make them ashamed of themselves.</p><p>Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one</p><p>divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever</p><p>worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the</p><p>American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and</p><p>dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all</p><p>sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a</p><p>promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes</p><p>of wearied Israelites. In song and exhortation swelled one refrain––</p><p>Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in</p><p>his right hand. At last it came,––suddenly, fearfully, like a dream.</p><p>With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his</p><p>own plaintive cadences:––</p><p>“Shout, O children!</p><p>Shout, you’re free!</p><p>For God has bought your liberty!”*</p><p>Years have passed away since then,––ten, twenty, forty; forty years</p><p>of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the</p><p>swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast. In</p><p>vain do we cry to this our vastest social problem:––</p><p>“Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves</p><p>Shall never tremble!”*</p><p>The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has</p><p>not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may</p><p>have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disap-</p><p>pointment rests upon the Negro people,––a disappointment all the</p><p>more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the</p><p>simple ignorance of a lowly people.</p><p>The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for</p><p>freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,––</p><p>like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the</p><p>headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux</p><p>Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk10</p><p>the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf</p><p>with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time</p><p>flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty</p><p>demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth</p><p>Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon</p><p>as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of</p><p>gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially</p><p>endowed him. And why not? Had not votes made war and emanci-</p><p>pated millions? Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was any-</p><p>thing impossible to a power that had done all this? A million black</p><p>men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.</p><p>So the decade flew away, the revolution of 1876* came, and left the</p><p>half-free serf weary, wondering, but still inspired. Slowly but stead-</p><p>ily, in the following years, a new vision began gradually to replace the</p><p>dream of political power,––a powerful movement, the rise of another</p><p>ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a</p><p>clouded day. It was the ideal of “book-learning”; the curiosity, born</p><p>of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabal-</p><p>istic letters of the white man, the longing to know. Here at last</p><p>seemed to have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan; longer</p><p>than the highway of Emancipation and law, steep and rugged, but</p><p>straight, leading to heights high enough to overlook life.</p><p>Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly, heavily, dog-</p><p>gedly; only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet,</p><p>the misty minds, the dull understandings, of the dark pupils of these</p><p>schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to</p><p>learn. It was weary work. The cold statistician wrote down the</p><p>inches of progress here and there, noted also where here and there a</p><p>foot had slipped or some one had fallen. To the tired climbers, the</p><p>horizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was</p><p>always dim and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no</p><p>goal, no resting-place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at</p><p>least gave leisure for reflection and self-examination; it changed the</p><p>child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness,</p><p>self-realization, self-respect. In those sombre forests of his striving</p><p>his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,––darkly as</p><p>through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his</p><p>power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain</p><p>his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the</p><p>Of Our Spiritual Strivings 11</p><p>first time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back,</p><p>that dead-weight of social degradation partially masked behind a</p><p>half-named Negro problem. He felt his poverty; without a cent,</p><p>without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into</p><p>competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is</p><p>hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of</p><p>hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,––not simply of let-</p><p>ters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth</p><p>and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his</p><p>hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The</p><p>red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defile-</p><p>ment of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only</p><p>the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of</p><p>a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the</p><p>obliteration of the Negro home.</p><p>A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the</p><p>world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own</p><p>social problems. But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his</p><p>bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating</p><p>black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the</p><p>shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defence of</p><p>culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against</p><p>crime, the “higher” against the “lower” races. To which the Negro</p><p>cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is</p><p>founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and</p><p>progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before</p><p>that nameless prejudice that leaps</p><p>beyond all this he stands helpless,</p><p>dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect</p><p>and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion</p><p>of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better</p><p>and the boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire</p><p>to inculcate disdain for everything black, from Toussaint* to the</p><p>devil,––before this there rises a sickening despair that would dis-</p><p>arm and discourage any nation save that black host to whom</p><p>“discouragement” is an unwritten word.</p><p>But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the</p><p>inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of</p><p>ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere</p><p>of contempt and hate. Whisperings and portents came borne upon</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk12</p><p>the four winds: Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts;</p><p>we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we</p><p>must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced</p><p>this self-criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing</p><p>more; what need of higher culture for half-men? Away with the black</p><p>man’s ballot, by force or fraud,––and behold the suicide of a race!</p><p>Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of good,––the more</p><p>careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of</p><p>the Negroes’ social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of</p><p>the meaning of progress.</p><p>So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and stress to-day</p><p>rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the world-sea; there is</p><p>within and without the sound of conflict, the burning of body and</p><p>rending of soul; inspiration strives with doubt, and faith with vain</p><p>questionings. The bright ideals of the past,––physical freedom, pol-</p><p>itical power, the training of brains and the training of hands,––all</p><p>these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim</p><p>and overcast. Are they all wrong,––all false? No, not that, but each</p><p>alone was over-simple and incomplete,––the dreams of a credulous</p><p>race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world which</p><p>does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really</p><p>true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. The train-</p><p>ing of the schools we need to-day more than ever,––the training of</p><p>deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper,</p><p>higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the</p><p>ballot we need in sheer self-defence,––else what shall save us from a</p><p>second slavery? Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek,––the</p><p>freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom</p><p>to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty,––all these we need, not</p><p>singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and</p><p>aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims</p><p>before the Negro people, the ideal of human brotherhood, gained</p><p>through the unifying ideal of Race; the ideal of fostering and devel-</p><p>oping the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or</p><p>contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the</p><p>greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day on</p><p>American soil two world-races may give each to each those character-</p><p>istics both so sadly lack. We the darker ones come even now not</p><p>altogether empty-handed: there are to-day no truer exponents of the</p><p>Of Our Spiritual Strivings 13</p><p>pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the</p><p>American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild</p><p>sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folk-</p><p>lore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the</p><p>sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars</p><p>and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal</p><p>dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro</p><p>humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good-humor?</p><p>or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs?</p><p>Merely a concrete test of the underlying principles of the great</p><p>republic is the Negro Problem, and the spiritual striving of the</p><p>freedmen’s sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond</p><p>the measure of their strength, but who bear it in the name of an</p><p>historic race, in the name of this the land of their fathers’ fathers,</p><p>and in the name of human opportunity.</p><p>* * *</p><p>And now what I have briefly sketched in large outline let me on</p><p>coming pages tell again in many ways, with loving emphasis and</p><p>deeper detail, that men may listen to the striving in the souls of</p><p>black folk.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk14</p><p>i i</p><p>Of the Dawn of Freedom</p><p>Careless seems the great Avenger;</p><p>History’s lessons but record</p><p>One death-grapple in the darkness</p><p>’Twixt old systems and the Word;</p><p>Truth forever on the scaffold,</p><p>Wrong forever on the throne;</p><p>Yet that scaffold sways the future,</p><p>And behind the dim unknown</p><p>Standeth God within the shadow</p><p>Keeping watch above His own.</p><p>Lowell.*</p><p>The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-</p><p>line,*––the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia</p><p>and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of</p><p>this problem that caused the Civil War; and however much they who</p><p>marched South and North in 1861 may have fixed on the technical</p><p>points of union and local autonomy as a shibboleth, all nevertheless</p><p>knew, as we know, that the question of Negro slavery was the real</p><p>cause of the conflict. Curious it was, too, how this deeper question</p><p>ever forced itself to the surface despite effort and disclaimer. No</p><p>sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old</p><p>question, newly guised, sprang from the earth,––What shall be</p><p>done with Negroes? Peremptory military commands, this way and</p><p>that, could not answer the query; the Emancipation Proclamation</p><p>seemed but to broaden and intensify the difficulties; and the War</p><p>Amendments* made the Negro problems of to-day.</p><p>It is the aim of this essay to study the period of history from 1861</p><p>to 1872 so far as it relates to the American Negro. In effect, this tale</p><p>of the dawn of Freedom is an account of that government of men</p><p>called the Freedmen’s Bureau,*––one of the most singular and inter-</p><p>esting of the attempts made by a great nation to grapple with vast</p><p>problems of race and social condition.</p><p>The war has naught to do with slaves, cried Congress, the Presi-</p><p>dent, and the Nation; and yet no sooner had the armies, East</p><p>and West, penetrated Virginia and Tennessee than fugitive slaves</p><p>appeared within their lines. They came at night, when the flickering</p><p>camp-fires shone like vast unsteady stars along the black horizon: old</p><p>men and thin, with gray and tufted hair; women, with frightened</p><p>eyes, dragging whimpering hungry children; men and girls, stalwart</p><p>and gaunt,––a horde of starving vagabonds, homeless, helpless,</p><p>and pitiable, in their dark distress. Two methods of treating these</p><p>newcomers seemed equally logical to opposite sorts of minds. Ben</p><p>Butler,* in Virginia, quickly declared slave property contraband of</p><p>war, and put the fugitives to work; while Fremont,* in Missouri,</p><p>declared the slaves free under martial law. Butler’s action was</p><p>approved, but Fremont’s was hastily countermanded, and his suc-</p><p>cessor, Halleck,* saw things differently. “Hereafter,” he commanded,</p><p>“no slaves should be allowed to come into your lines at all; if any</p><p>come without your knowledge, when owners call for them deliver</p><p>them.” Such a policy was difficult to enforce; some of the black</p><p>refugees declared themselves freemen, others showed that their mas-</p><p>ters had deserted them, and still others were captured with forts and</p><p>plantations. Evidently, too, slaves were a source of strength to the</p><p>Confederacy, and were being used as laborers and producers. “They</p><p>constitute a military resource,” wrote Secretary Cameron,* late in</p><p>1861; “and being such, that they should not be turned over to the</p><p>enemy is too plain to discuss.” So gradually the tone of the army</p><p>chiefs changed; Congress forbade</p><p>the rendition of fugitives, and</p><p>Butler’s “contrabands” were welcomed as military laborers. This</p><p>complicated rather than solved the problem, for now the scattering</p><p>fugitives became a steady stream, which flowed faster as the armies</p><p>marched.</p><p>Then the long-headed man with care-chiselled face who sat in the</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk16</p><p>White House saw the inevitable, and emancipated the slaves of rebels</p><p>on New Year’s, 1863. A month later Congress called earnestly for the</p><p>Negro soldiers whom the act of July, 1862, had half grudgingly</p><p>allowed to enlist. Thus the barriers were levelled and the deed</p><p>was done. The stream of fugitives swelled to a flood, and anxious</p><p>army officers kept inquiring: “What must be done with slaves, arriv-</p><p>ing almost daily? Are we to find food and shelter for women and</p><p>children?”</p><p>It was a Pierce of Boston* who pointed out the way, and thus</p><p>became in a sense the founder of the Freedmen’s Bureau. He was a</p><p>firm friend of Secretary Chase; and when, in 1861, the care of slaves</p><p>and abandoned lands devolved upon the Treasury officials, Pierce</p><p>was specially detailed from the ranks to study the conditions. First,</p><p>he cared for the refugees at Fortress Monroe; and then, after</p><p>Sherman had captured Hilton Head, Pierce was sent there to found</p><p>his Port Royal experiment* of making free workingmen out of slaves.</p><p>Before his experiment was barely started, however, the problem of</p><p>the fugitives had assumed such proportions that it was taken from</p><p>the hands of the over-burdened Treasury Department and given</p><p>to the army officials. Already centres of massed freedmen were form-</p><p>ing at Fortress Monroe, Washington, New Orleans, Vicksburg and</p><p>Corinth, Columbus, Ky., and Cairo, Ill., as well as at Port Royal.</p><p>Army chaplains found here new and fruitful fields; “superintendents</p><p>of contrabands” multiplied, and some attempt at systematic work</p><p>was made by enlisting the able-bodied men and giving work to the</p><p>others.</p><p>Then came the Freedmen’s Aid societies, born of the touching</p><p>appeals from Pierce and from these other centres of distress. There</p><p>was the American Missionary Association, sprung from the Amistad,*</p><p>and now full-grown for work; the various church organizations, the</p><p>National Freedmen’s Relief Association, the American Freedmen’s</p><p>Union, the Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission,––in all fifty or</p><p>more active organizations, which sent clothes, money, school-books,</p><p>and teachers southward. All they did was needed, for the destitution</p><p>of the freedmen was often reported as “too appalling for belief,” and</p><p>the situation was daily growing worse rather than better.</p><p>And daily, too, it seemed more plain that this was no ordinary</p><p>matter of temporary relief, but a national crisis; for here loomed a</p><p>labor problem of vast dimensions. Masses of Negroes stood idle, or,</p><p>Of the Dawn of Freedom 17</p><p>if they worked spasmodically, were never sure of pay; and if per-</p><p>chance they received pay, squandered the new thing thoughtlessly. In</p><p>these and other ways were camp-life and the new liberty demoral-</p><p>izing the freedmen. The broader economic organization thus clearly</p><p>demanded sprang up here and there as accident and local conditions</p><p>determined. Here it was that Pierce’s Port Royal plan of leased</p><p>plantations and guided workmen pointed out the rough way. In</p><p>Washington the military governor, at the urgent appeal of the super-</p><p>intendent, opened confiscated estates to the cultivation of the fugi-</p><p>tives, and there in the shadow of the dome gathered black farm</p><p>villages. General Dix* gave over estates to the freedmen of Fortress</p><p>Monroe, and so on, South and West. The government and benevo-</p><p>lent societies furnished the means of cultivation, and the Negro</p><p>turned again slowly to work. The systems of control, thus started,</p><p>rapidly grew, here and there, into strange little governments, like</p><p>that of General Banks* in Louisiana, with its ninety thousand black</p><p>subjects, its fifty thousand guided laborers, and its annual budget of</p><p>one hundred thousand dollars and more. It made out four thousand</p><p>pay-rolls a year, registered all freedmen, inquired into grievances</p><p>and redressed them, laid and collected taxes, and established a sys-</p><p>tem of public schools. So, too, Colonel Eaton,* the superintendent of</p><p>Tennessee and Arkansas, ruled over one hundred thousand freed-</p><p>men, leased and cultivated seven thousand acres of cotton land, and</p><p>fed ten thousand paupers a year. In South Carolina was General</p><p>Saxton,* with his deep interest in black folk. He succeeded Pierce and</p><p>the Treasury officials, and sold forfeited estates, leased abandoned</p><p>plantations, encouraged schools, and received from Sherman, after</p><p>that terribly picturesque march to the sea, thousands of the wretched</p><p>camp followers.</p><p>Three characteristic things one might have seen in Sherman’s raid</p><p>through Georgia, which threw the new situation in shadowy relief:</p><p>the Conqueror, the Conquered, and the Negro. Some see all signifi-</p><p>cance in the grim front of the destroyer, and some in the bitter</p><p>sufferers of the Lost Cause. But to me neither soldier nor fugitive</p><p>speaks with so deep a meaning as that dark human cloud that clung</p><p>like remorse on the rear of those swift columns, swelling at times to</p><p>half their size, almost engulfing and choking them. In vain were</p><p>they ordered back, in vain were bridges hewn from beneath their</p><p>feet; on they trudged and writhed and surged, until they rolled</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk18</p><p>into Savannah, a starved and naked horde of tens of thousands.</p><p>There too came the characteristic military remedy: “The islands</p><p>from Charleston south, the abandoned rice-fields along the rivers</p><p>for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the</p><p>St. John’s River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement</p><p>of Negroes now made free by act of war.” So read the celebrated</p><p>“Field-order Number Fifteen.”*</p><p>All these experiments, orders, and systems were bound to attract</p><p>and perplex the government and the nation. Directly after the</p><p>Emancipation Proclamation, Representative Eliot had introduced a</p><p>bill creating a Bureau of Emancipation; but it was never reported.</p><p>The following June a committee of inquiry, appointed by the</p><p>Secretary of War, reported in favor of a temporary bureau for the</p><p>“improvement, protection, and employment of refugee freedmen,”</p><p>on much the same lines as were afterwards followed. Petitions came</p><p>in to President Lincoln from distinguished citizens and organiza-</p><p>tions, strongly urging a comprehensive and unified plan of dealing</p><p>with the freedmen, under a bureau which should be “charged with</p><p>the study of plans and execution of measures for easily guiding, and</p><p>in every way judiciously and humanely aiding, the passage of our</p><p>emancipated and yet to be emancipated blacks from the old condition</p><p>of forced labor to their new state of voluntary industry.”</p><p>Some half-hearted steps were taken to accomplish this, in part, by</p><p>putting the whole matter again in charge of the special Treasury</p><p>agents. Laws of 1863 and 1864 directed them to take charge of and</p><p>lease abandoned lands for periods not exceeding twelve months,</p><p>and to “provide in such leases, or otherwise, for the employment and</p><p>general welfare” of the freedmen. Most of the army officers greeted</p><p>this as a welcome relief from perplexing “Negro affairs,” and</p><p>Secretary Fessenden, July 29, 1864, issued an excellent system</p><p>of regulations, which were afterward closely followed by General</p><p>Howard.* Under Treasury agents, large quantities of land were</p><p>leased in the Mississippi Valley, and many Negroes were employed;</p><p>but in August, 1864, the new regulations were suspended for reasons</p><p>of “public policy,” and the army was again in control.</p><p>Meanwhile Congress had turned its attention to the subject; and</p><p>in March the House passed a bill by a majority of two establishing a</p><p>Bureau for Freedmen in the War Department. Charles Summer,</p><p>who had charge of the bill in the Senate, argued that freedmen and</p><p>Of the Dawn of Freedom 19</p><p>abandoned lands ought to be under the same department, and</p><p>reported a substitute for the House bill attaching the</p><p>Bureau to the</p><p>Treasury Department. This bill passed, but too late for action by the</p><p>House. The debates wandered over the whole policy of the adminis-</p><p>tration and the general question of slavery, without touching very</p><p>closely the specific merits of the measure in hand. Then the national</p><p>election took place; and the administration, with a vote of renewed</p><p>confidence from the country, addressed itself to the matter more</p><p>seriously. A conference between the two branches of Congress</p><p>agreed upon a carefully drawn measure which contained the chief</p><p>provisions of Sumner’s bill, but made the proposed organization a</p><p>department independent of both the War and the Treasury officials.</p><p>The bill was conservative, giving the new department “general</p><p>superintendence of all freedmen.” Its purpose was to “establish</p><p>regulations” for them, protect them, lease them lands, adjust their</p><p>wages, and appear in civil and military courts as their “next friend.”</p><p>There were many limitations attached to the powers thus granted,</p><p>and the organization was made permanent. Nevertheless, the Senate</p><p>defeated the bill, and a new conference committee was appointed.</p><p>This committee reported a new bill, February 28, which was whirled</p><p>through just as the session closed, and became the act of 1865 estab-</p><p>lishing in the War Department a “Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen,</p><p>and Abandoned Lands.”</p><p>This last compromise was a hasty bit of legislation, vague and</p><p>uncertain in outline. A Bureau was created, “to continue during the</p><p>present War of Rebellion, and for one year thereafter,” to which was</p><p>given “the supervision and management of all abandoned lands and</p><p>the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen,” under</p><p>“such rules and regulations as may be presented by the head of the</p><p>Bureau and approved by the President.” A Commissioner, appointed</p><p>by the President and Senate, was to control the Bureau, with an office</p><p>force not exceeding ten clerks. The President might also appoint</p><p>assistant commissioners in the seceded States, and to all these offices</p><p>military officials might be detailed at regular pay. The Secretary of</p><p>War could issue rations, clothing, and fuel to the destitute, and all</p><p>abandoned property was placed in the hands of the Bureau for</p><p>eventual lease and sale to ex-slaves in forty-acre parcels.</p><p>Thus did the United States government definitely assume charge</p><p>of the emancipated Negro as the ward of the nation. It was a</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk20</p><p>tremendous undertaking. Here at a stroke of the pen was erected a</p><p>government of millions of men,––and not ordinary men either, but</p><p>black men emasculated by a peculiarly complete system of slavery,</p><p>centuries old; and now, suddenly, violently, they come into a new</p><p>birthright, at a time of war and passion, in the midst of the stricken</p><p>and embittered population of their former masters. Any man might</p><p>well have hesitated to assume charge of such a work, with vast</p><p>responsibilities, indefinite powers, and limited resources. Probably</p><p>no one but a soldier would have answered such a call promptly; and,</p><p>indeed, no one but a soldier could be called, for Congress had</p><p>appropriated no money for salaries and expenses.</p><p>Less than a month after the weary Emancipator passed to his rest,</p><p>his successor assigned Major-Gen. Oliver O. Howard to duty as</p><p>Commissioner of the new Bureau. He was a Maine man, then only</p><p>thirty-five years of age. He had marched with Sherman to the sea,</p><p>had fought well at Gettysburg, and but the year before had been</p><p>assigned to the command of the Department of Tennessee. An hon-</p><p>est man, with too much faith in human nature, little aptitude for</p><p>business and intricate detail, he had had large opportunity of becom-</p><p>ing acquainted at first hand with much of the work before him. And</p><p>of that work it has been truly said that “no approximately correct</p><p>history of civilization can ever be written which does not throw out</p><p>in bold relief, as one of the great landmarks of political and social</p><p>progress, the organization and administration of the Freedmen’s</p><p>Bureau.”</p><p>On May 12, 1865, Howard was appointed; and he assumed the</p><p>duties of his office promptly on the 15th, and began examining the</p><p>field of work. A curious mess he looked upon: little despotisms,</p><p>communistic experiments, slavery, peonage, business speculations,</p><p>organized charity, unorganized almsgiving,––all reeling on under the</p><p>guise of helping the freedmen, and all enshrined in the smoke and</p><p>blood of war and the cursing and silence of angry men. On May 19</p><p>the new government––for a government it really was––issued its</p><p>constitution; commissioners were to be appointed in each of the</p><p>seceded States, who were to take charge of “all subjects relating to</p><p>refugees and freedmen,” and all relief and rations were to be given</p><p>by their consent alone. The Bureau invited continued coöperation</p><p>with benevolent societies, and declared: “It will be the object of</p><p>all commissioners to introduce practicable systems of compensated</p><p>Of the Dawn of Freedom 21</p><p>labor,” and to establish schools. Forthwith nine assistant commis-</p><p>sioners were appointed. They were to hasten to their fields of work;</p><p>seek gradually to close relief establishments, and make the destitute</p><p>self-supporting; act as courts of law where there were no courts, or</p><p>where Negroes were not recognized in them as free; establish the</p><p>institution of marriage among ex-slaves, and keep records; see that</p><p>freedmen were free to choose their employers, and help in making</p><p>fair contracts for them; and finally, the circular said: “Simple good</p><p>faith, for which we hope on all hands for those concerned in the</p><p>passing away of slavery, will especially relieve the assistant commis-</p><p>sioners in the discharge of their duties toward the freedmen, as well</p><p>as promote the general welfare.”</p><p>No sooner was the work thus started, and the general system and</p><p>local organization in some measure begun, than two grave difficulties</p><p>appeared which changed largely the theory and outcome of Bureau</p><p>work. First, there were the abandoned lands of the South. It had</p><p>long been the more or less definitely expressed theory of the North</p><p>that all the chief problems of Emancipation might be settled by</p><p>establishing the slaves on the forfeited lands of their masters,––a sort</p><p>of poetic justice, said some. But this poetry done into solemn prose</p><p>meant either wholesale confiscation of private property in the South,</p><p>or vast appropriations. Now Congress had not appropriated a cent,</p><p>and no sooner did the proclamations of general amnesty appear than</p><p>the eight hundred thousand acres of abandoned lands in the hands of</p><p>the Freedmen’s Bureau melted quickly away. The second difficulty</p><p>lay in perfecting the local organization of the Bureau throughout the</p><p>wide field of work. Making a new machine and sending out officials</p><p>of duly ascertained fitness for a great work of social reform is no</p><p>child’s task; but this task was even harder, for a new central organiza-</p><p>tion had to be fitted on a heterogeneous and confused but already</p><p>existing system of relief and control of ex-slaves; and the agents</p><p>available for this work must be sought for in an army still busy with</p><p>war operations,––men in the very nature of the case ill fitted for</p><p>delicate social work,––or among the questionable camp followers of</p><p>an invading host. Thus, after a year’s work, vigorously as it was</p><p>pushed, the problem looked even more difficult to grasp and solve</p><p>than at the beginning. Nevertheless, three things that year’s work</p><p>did, well worth the doing: it relieved a vast amount of physical</p><p>suffering; it transported seven thousand fugitives from congested</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk22</p><p>centres back to the farm; and, best of all, it inaugurated the crusade</p><p>of the New England school-ma’am.*</p><p>The annals of this Ninth Crusade are yet to be written,––the tale</p><p>of a mission that seemed to our age far more quixotic than the quest</p><p>of St. Louis seemed to his.* Behind the mists of ruin and rapine</p><p>waved the calico dresses of women who dared, and after the hoarse</p><p>mouthings of the field guns rang the rhythm of the alphabet. Rich</p><p>and poor they were, serious and curious. Bereaved now of a father,</p><p>now of a brother, now of more than these, they came seeking a life</p><p>work in planting New England schoolhouses among the white and</p><p>black of the South. They did their work well. In that first year they</p><p>taught one hundred thousand souls, and more.</p><p>Evidently, Congress must soon legislate again on the hastily</p><p>organized Bureau, which had so quickly grown into wide signifi-</p><p>cance and vast possibilities. An institution such as that was well-nigh</p><p>as difficult to end as to begin. Early in 1866 Congress took up the</p><p>matter, when Senator Trumbull, of Illinois, introduced a bill to</p><p>extend the Bureau and enlarge its powers. This measure received, at</p><p>the hands of Congress, far more thorough discussion and attention</p><p>than its predecessor. The war cloud had thinned enough to allow a</p><p>clearer conception of the work of Emancipation. The champions of</p><p>the bill argued that the strengthening of the Freedmen’s Bureau was</p><p>still a military necessity; that it was needed for the proper carrying</p><p>out of the Thirteenth Amendment, and was a work of sheer justice</p><p>to the ex-slave, at a trifling cost to the government. The opponents</p><p>of the measure declared that the war was over, and the necessity for</p><p>war measures past; that the Bureau, by reason of its extraordinary</p><p>powers, was clearly unconstitutional in time of peace, and was des-</p><p>tined to irritate the South and pauperize the freedmen, at a final</p><p>cost of possibly hundreds of millions. These two arguments were</p><p>unanswered, and indeed unanswerable: the one that the extraordin-</p><p>ary powers of the Bureau threatened the civil rights of all citizens;</p><p>and the other that the government must have power to do what</p><p>manifestly must be done, and that present abandonment of the</p><p>freedmen meant their practical re-enslavement. The bill which</p><p>finally passed enlarged and made permanent the Freedmen’s Bureau.</p><p>It was promptly vetoed by President Johnson as “unconstitutional,”</p><p>“unnecessary,” and “extrajudicial,” and failed of passage over the</p><p>veto. Meantime, however, the breach between Congress and the</p><p>Of the Dawn of Freedom 23</p><p>President began to broaden, and a modified form of the lost bill was</p><p>finally passed over the President’s second veto, July 16.</p><p>The act of 1866 gave the Freedmen’s Bureau its final form,––the</p><p>form by which it will be known to posterity and judged of men. It</p><p>extended the existence of the Bureau to July, 1868; it authorized</p><p>additional assistant commissioners, the retention of army officers</p><p>mustered out of regular service, the sale of certain forfeited lands to</p><p>freedmen on nominal terms, the sale of Confederate public property</p><p>for Negro schools, and a wider field of judicial interpretation and</p><p>cognizance. The government of the unreconstructed South was thus</p><p>put very largely in the hands of the Freedmen’s Bureau, especially as</p><p>in many cases the departmental military commander was now made</p><p>also assistant commissioner. It was thus that the Freedmen’s Bureau</p><p>became a full-fledged government of men. It made laws, executed</p><p>them and interpreted them; it laid and collected taxes, defined</p><p>and punished crime, maintained and used military force, and dic-</p><p>tated such measures as it thought necessary and proper for the</p><p>accomplishment of its varied ends. Naturally, all these powers were</p><p>not exercised continuously nor to their fullest extent; and yet, as</p><p>General Howard has said, “scarcely any subject that has to be legis-</p><p>lated upon in civil society failed, at one time or another, to demand</p><p>the action of this singular Bureau.”</p><p>To understand and criticise intelligently so vast a work, one</p><p>must not forget an instant the drift of things in the later sixties. Lee</p><p>had surrendered, Lincoln was dead, and Johnson and Congress</p><p>were at loggerheads; the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted, the</p><p>Fourteenth pending, and the Fifteenth declared in force in 1870.</p><p>Guerrilla raiding, the ever-present flickering after-flame of war, was</p><p>spending its force against the Negroes, and all the Southern land was</p><p>awakening as from some wild dream to poverty and social revolution.</p><p>In a time of perfect calm, amid willing neighbors and streaming</p><p>wealth, the social uplifting of four million slaves to an assured and</p><p>self-sustaining place in the body politic and economic would have</p><p>been a herculean task; but when to the inherent difficulties of so</p><p>delicate and nice a social operation were added the spite and hate of</p><p>conflict, the hell of war; when suspicion and cruelty were rife, and</p><p>gaunt Hunger wept beside Bereavement,––in such a case, the work</p><p>of any instrument of social regeneration was in large part fore-</p><p>doomed to failure. The very name of the Bureau stood for a thing in</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk24</p><p>the South which for two centuries and better men had refused even</p><p>to argue,––that life amid free Negroes was simply unthinkable, the</p><p>maddest of experiments.</p><p>The agents that the Bureau could command varied all the way</p><p>from unselfish philanthropists to narrow-minded busy-bodies and</p><p>thieves; and even though it be true that the average was far better</p><p>than the worst, it was the occasional fly that helped spoil the</p><p>ointment.</p><p>Then amid all crouched the freed slave, bewildered between</p><p>friend and foe. He had emerged from slavery,––not the worst slavery</p><p>in the world, not a slavery that made all life unbearable, rather a</p><p>slavery that had here and there something of kindliness, fidelity, and</p><p>happiness,––but withal slavery, which, so far as human aspiration</p><p>and desert were concerned, classed the black man and the ox</p><p>together. And the Negro knew full well that, whatever their deeper</p><p>convictions may have been, Southern men had fought with desperate</p><p>energy to perpetuate this slavery under which the black masses, with</p><p>half-articulate thought, had writhed and shivered. They welcomed</p><p>freedom with a cry. They shrank from the master who still strove for</p><p>their chains; they fled to the friends that had freed them, even</p><p>though those friends stood ready to use them as a club for driving the</p><p>recalcitrant South back into loyalty. So the cleft between the white</p><p>and black South grew. Idle to say it never should have been; it was as</p><p>inevitable as its results were pitiable. Curiously incongruous elem-</p><p>ents were left arrayed against each other,––the North, the govern-</p><p>ment, the carpet-bagger, and the slave, here; and there, all the South</p><p>that was white, whether gentleman or vagabond, honest man or</p><p>rascal, lawless murderer or martyr to duty.</p><p>Thus it is doubly difficult to write of this period calmly, so intense</p><p>was the feeling, so mighty the human passions that swayed and</p><p>blinded men. Amid it all, two figures ever stand to typify that day to</p><p>coming ages,––the one, a gray-haired gentleman, whose fathers had</p><p>quit themselves like men, whose sons lay in nameless graves; who</p><p>bowed to the evil of slavery because its abolition threatened untold ill</p><p>to all; who stood at last, in the evening of life, a blighted, ruined</p><p>form, with hate in his eyes;––and the other, a form hovering dark</p><p>and mother-like, her awful face black with the mists of centuries, had</p><p>aforetime quailed at that white master’s command, had bent in love</p><p>over the cradles of his sons and daughters, and closed in death the</p><p>Of the Dawn of Freedom 25</p><p>sunken eyes of his wife,––aye, too, at his behest had laid herself low</p><p>to his lust, and borne a tawny man-child to the world, only to see her</p><p>dark boy’s limbs scattered to the winds by midnight marauders rid-</p><p>ing after “cursed Niggers.” These were the saddest sights of that</p><p>woful day; and no man clasped the hands of these two passing figures</p><p>of the present-past; but, hating, they went to their long home, and,</p><p>hating, their children’s children live to-day.</p><p>Here, then, was the field of work for the Freedmen’s Bureau; and</p><p>since, with some hesitation, it was continued by the act of 1868 until</p><p>1869, let us look upon four years of its work as a whole. There were,</p><p>in 1868, nine hundred Bureau officials scattered from Washington to</p><p>Texas, ruling, directly and indirectly, many millions of men. The</p><p>deeds of these rulers fall mainly under seven heads: the relief of</p><p>physical suffering, the overseeing of the beginnings of free labor, the</p><p>buying and selling of land, the establishment of schools, the paying</p><p>of bounties, the administration of justice, and the financiering of all</p><p>these activities.</p><p>Up to June, 1869, over half a million patients had been treated by</p><p>Bureau physicians and surgeons, and sixty hospitals and asylums had</p><p>been in operation. In fifty months twenty-one million free rations</p><p>were distributed at a cost of over four million dollars. Next came the</p><p>difficult question of labor. First, thirty thousand black men were</p><p>transported from the refuges and relief stations back to the farms,</p><p>back to the critical trial of a new way of working. Plain instructions</p><p>went out from Washington: the laborers must be free to choose their</p><p>employers, no fixed rate of wages was prescribed, and there was to be</p><p>no peonage or forced labor. So far, so good; but where local agents</p><p>differed toto cælo* in capacity and character, where the personnel was</p><p>continually changing, the outcome was necessarily varied. The larg-</p><p>est element of success lay in the fact that the majority of the freedmen</p><p>were willing, even eager, to work. So labor contracts were written,––</p><p>fifty thousand in a single State,––laborers advised, wages guaranteed,</p><p>and employers supplied. In truth, the organization became a vast</p><p>labor bureau,––not perfect, indeed, notably defective here and there,</p><p>but on the whole successful beyond the dreams of thoughtful men.</p><p>The two great obstacles which confronted the officials were the tyr-</p><p>ant and the idler,––the slaveholder who was determined to perpetu-</p><p>ate slavery under another name; and the freedman who regarded</p><p>freedom as perpetual rest,––the Devil and the Deep Sea.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk26</p><p>In the work of establishing the Negroes as peasant proprietors, the</p><p>Bureau was from the first handicapped and at last absolutely checked.</p><p>Something was done, and larger things were planned; abandoned</p><p>lands were leased so long as they remained in the hands of the Bureau,</p><p>and a total revenue of nearly half a million dollars derived from black</p><p>tenants. Some other lands to which the nation had gained title were</p><p>sold on easy terms, and public lands were opened for settlement to the</p><p>very few freedmen who had tools and capital. But the vision of “forty</p><p>acres and a mule”––the righteous and reasonable ambition to become</p><p>a landholder, which the nation had all but categorically promised the</p><p>freedmen––was destined in most cases to bitter disappointment. And</p><p>those men of marvellous hindsight who are to-day seeking to preach</p><p>the Negro back to the present peonage of the soil know well, or ought</p><p>to know, that the opportunity of binding the Negro peasant willingly</p><p>to the soil was lost on that day when the Commissioner of the</p><p>Freedmen’s Bureau had to go to South Carolina and tell the weeping</p><p>freedmen, after their years of toil, that their land was not theirs, that</p><p>there was a mistake––somewhere. If by 1874 the Georgia Negro</p><p>alone owned three hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, it was by</p><p>grace of his thrift rather than by bounty of the government.</p><p>The greatest success of the Freedmen’s Bureau lay in the planting</p><p>of the free school among Negroes, and the idea of free elementary</p><p>education among all classes in the South. It not only called the</p><p>schoolmistresses through the benevolent agencies and built them</p><p>schoolhouses, but it helped discover and support such apostles of</p><p>human culture as Edmund Ware, Samuel Armstrong, and Erastus</p><p>Cravath.* The opposition to Negro education in the South was at</p><p>first bitter, and showed itself in ashes, insult, and blood; for the</p><p>South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the</p><p>South was not wholly wrong; for education among all kinds of men</p><p>always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and</p><p>revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive</p><p>to know. Perhaps some inkling of this paradox, even in the unquiet</p><p>days of the Bureau, helped the bayonets allay an opposition to</p><p>human training which still to-day lies smouldering in the South, but</p><p>not flaming. Fisk, Atlanta, Howard, and Hampton* were founded</p><p>in these days, and six million dollars were expended for educa-</p><p>tional work, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars of which the</p><p>freedmen themselves gave of their poverty.</p><p>Of the Dawn of Freedom 27</p><p>Such contributions, together with the buying of land and various</p><p>other enterprises, showed that the ex-slave was handling some free</p><p>capital already. The chief initial source of this was labor in the army,</p><p>and his pay and bounty as a soldier. Payments to Negro soldiers were</p><p>at first complicated by the ignorance of the recipients, and the fact</p><p>that the quotas of colored regiments from Northern States were</p><p>largely filled by recruits from the South, unknown to their fellow</p><p>soldiers. Consequently, payments were accompanied by such frauds</p><p>that Congress, by joint resolution in 1867, put the whole matter in</p><p>the hands of the Freedmen’s Bureau. In two years six million dollars</p><p>was thus distributed to five thousand claimants, and in the end</p><p>the sum exceeded eight million dollars. Even in this system fraud</p><p>was frequent; but still the work put needed capital in the hands of</p><p>practical paupers, and some, at least, was well spent.</p><p>The most perplexing and least successful part of the Bureau’s</p><p>work lay in the exercise of its judicial functions. The regular Bureau</p><p>court consisted of one representative of the employer, one of the</p><p>Negro, and one of the Bureau. If the Bureau could have maintained a</p><p>perfectly judicial attitude, this arrangement would have been ideal,</p><p>and must in time have gained confidence; but the nature of its other</p><p>activities and the character of its personnel prejudiced the Bureau in</p><p>favor of the black litigants, and led without doubt to much injustice</p><p>and annoyance. On the other hand, to leave the Negro in the hands</p><p>of Southern courts was impossible. In a distracted land where slav-</p><p>ery had hardly fallen, to keep the strong from wanton abuse of the</p><p>weak, and the weak from gloating insolently over the half-shorn</p><p>strength of the strong, was a thankless, hopeless task. The former</p><p>masters of the land were peremptorily ordered about, seized, and</p><p>imprisoned, and punished over and again, with scant courtesy from</p><p>army officers. The former slaves were intimidated, beaten, raped,</p><p>and butchered by angry and revengeful men. Bureau courts tended</p><p>to become centres simply for punishing whites, while the regular</p><p>civil courts tended to become solely institutions for perpetuating the</p><p>slavery of blacks. Almost every law and method ingenuity could</p><p>devise was employed by the legislatures to reduce the Negroes to</p><p>serfdom,––to make them the slaves of the State, if not of individual</p><p>owners; while the Bureau officials too often were found striving to</p><p>put the “bottom rail on top,” and give the freedmen a power and</p><p>independence which they could not yet use. It is all well enough for</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk28</p><p>us of another generation to wax wise with advice to those who bore</p><p>the burden in the heat of the day. It is full easy now to see that the</p><p>man who lost home, fortune, and family at a stroke, and saw his land</p><p>ruled by “mules and niggers,” was really benefited by the passing of</p><p>slavery. It is not difficult now to say to the young freedman, cheated</p><p>and cuffed about, who has seen his father’s head beaten to a jelly and</p><p>his own mother namelessly assaulted, that the meek shall inherit the</p><p>earth. Above all, nothing is more convenient than to heap on the</p><p>Freedmen’s Bureau all the evils of that evil day, and damn it utterly</p><p>for every mistake and blunder that was made.</p><p>All this is easy, but it is neither sensible nor just. Some one had</p><p>blundered, but that was long before Oliver Howard was born; there</p><p>was criminal aggression and heedless neglect, but without some</p><p>system of control there would have been far more than there was.</p><p>Had that control been from within, the Negro would have</p><p>been re-</p><p>enslaved, to all intents and purposes. Coming as the control did from</p><p>without, perfect men and methods would have bettered all things;</p><p>and even with imperfect agents and questionable methods, the work</p><p>accomplished was not undeserving of commendation.</p><p>Such was the dawn of Freedom; such was the work of the</p><p>Freedmen’s Bureau, which, summed up in brief, may be epitomized</p><p>thus: For some fifteen million dollars, beside the sums spent before</p><p>1865, and the dole of benevolent societies, this Bureau set going a</p><p>system of free labor, established a beginning of peasant proprietor-</p><p>ship, secured the recognition of black freedmen before courts of law,</p><p>and founded the free common school in the South. On the other</p><p>hand, it failed to begin the establishment of good-will between ex-</p><p>masters and freedmen, to guard its work wholly from paternalistic</p><p>methods which discouraged self-reliance, and to carry out to any</p><p>considerable extent its implied promises to furnish the freedmen</p><p>with land. Its successes were the result of hard work, supplemented</p><p>by the aid of philanthropists and the eager striving of black men. Its</p><p>failures were the result of bad local agents, the inherent difficulties of</p><p>the work, and national neglect.</p><p>Such an institution, from its wide powers, great responsibilities,</p><p>large control of moneys, and generally conspicuous position, was</p><p>naturally open to repeated and bitter attack. It sustained a searching</p><p>Congressional investigation at the instance of Fernando Wood in</p><p>1870. Its archives and few remaining functions were with blunt</p><p>Of the Dawn of Freedom 29</p><p>discourtesy transferred from Howard’s control, in his absence, to the</p><p>supervision of Secretary of War Belknap in 1872, on the Secretary’s</p><p>recommendation. Finally, in consequence of grave intimations of</p><p>wrong-doing made by the Secretary and his subordinates, General</p><p>Howard was court-martialed in 1874. In both of these trials the</p><p>Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau was officially exonerated</p><p>from any wilful misdoing, and his work commended. Nevertheless,</p><p>many unpleasant things were brought to light,––the methods of</p><p>transacting the business of the Bureau were faulty; several cases of</p><p>defalcation were proved, and other frauds strongly suspected; there</p><p>were some business transactions which savored of dangerous specu-</p><p>lation, if not dishonesty; and around it all lay the smirch of the</p><p>Freedmen’s Bank.</p><p>Morally and practically, the Freedmen’s Bank was part of the</p><p>Freedmen’s Bureau, although it had no legal connection with it.</p><p>With the prestige of the government back of it, and a directing board</p><p>of unusual respectability and national reputation, this banking insti-</p><p>tution had made a remarkable start in the development of that thrift</p><p>among black folk which slavery had kept them from knowing. Then</p><p>in one sad day came the crash,––all the hard-earned dollars of the</p><p>freedmen disappeared; but that was the least of the loss,––all the</p><p>faith in saving went too, and much of the faith in men; and that was a</p><p>loss that a Nation which to-day sneers at Negro shiftlessness has</p><p>never yet made good. Not even ten additional years of slavery could</p><p>have done so much to throttle the thrift of the freedmen as the</p><p>mismanagement and bankruptcy of the series of savings banks char-</p><p>tered by the Nation for their especial aid. Where all the blame should</p><p>rest, it is hard to say; whether the Bureau and the Bank died chiefly</p><p>by reason of the blows of its selfish friends or the dark machinations</p><p>of its foes, perhaps even time will never reveal, for here lies unwritten</p><p>history.</p><p>Of the foes without the Bureau, the bitterest were those who</p><p>attacked not so much its conduct or policy under the law as the</p><p>necessity for any such institution at all. Such attacks came primarily</p><p>from the Border States and the South; and they were summed up by</p><p>Senator Davis, of Kentucky, when he moved to entitle the act of</p><p>1866 a bill “to promote strife and conflict between the white and</p><p>black races . . . by a grant of unconstitutional power.” The argu-</p><p>ment gathered tremendous strength South and North; but its very</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk30</p><p>strength was its weakness. For, argued the plain common-sense of</p><p>the nation, if it is unconstitutional, unpractical, and futile for the</p><p>nation to stand guardian over its helpless wards, then there is left but</p><p>one alternative,––to make those wards their own guardians by arm-</p><p>ing them with the ballot. Moreover, the path of the practical polit-</p><p>ician pointed the same way; for, argued this opportunist, if we cannot</p><p>peacefully reconstruct the South with white votes, we certainly can</p><p>with black votes. So justice and force joined hands.</p><p>The alternative thus offered the nation was not between full and</p><p>restricted Negro suffrage; else every sensible man, black and white,</p><p>would easily have chosen the latter. It was rather a choice between</p><p>suffrage and slavery, after endless blood and gold had flowed to</p><p>sweep human bondage away. Not a single Southern legislature stood</p><p>ready to admit a Negro, under any conditions, to the polls; not a</p><p>single Southern legislature believed free Negro labor was possible</p><p>without a system of restrictions that took all its freedom away; there</p><p>was scarcely a white man in the South who did not honestly regard</p><p>Emancipation as a crime, and its practical nullification as a duty. In</p><p>such a situation, the granting of the ballot to the black man was a</p><p>necessity, the very least a guilty nation could grant a wronged race,</p><p>and the only method of compelling the South to accept the results of</p><p>the war. Thus Negro suffrage ended a civil war by beginning a race</p><p>feud. And some felt gratitude toward the race thus sacrificed in its</p><p>swaddling clothes on the altar of national integrity; and some felt</p><p>and feel only indifference and contempt.</p><p>Had political exigencies been less pressing, the opposition to gov-</p><p>ernment guardianship of Negroes less bitter, and the attachment to</p><p>the slave system less strong, the social seer can well imagine a far</p><p>better policy,––a permanent Freedmen’s Bureau, with a national sys-</p><p>tem of Negro schools; a carefully supervised employment and labor</p><p>office; a system of impartial protection before the regular courts; and</p><p>such institutions for social betterment as savings-banks, land and</p><p>building associations, and social settlements. All this vast expend-</p><p>iture of money and brains might have formed a great school of</p><p>prospective citizenship, and solved in a way we have not yet solved</p><p>the most perplexing and persistent of the Negro problems.</p><p>That such an institution was unthinkable in 1870 was due in part</p><p>to certain acts of the Freedmen’s Bureau itself. It came to regard its</p><p>work as merely temporary, and Negro suffrage as a final answer to all</p><p>Of the Dawn of Freedom 31</p><p>present perplexities. The political ambition of many of its agents and</p><p>protégés led it far afield into questionable activities, until the South,</p><p>nursing its own deep prejudices, came easily to ignore all the good</p><p>deeds of the Bureau and hate its very name with perfect hatred.</p><p>So the Freedmen’s Bureau died, and its child was the Fifteenth</p><p>Amendment.</p><p>The passing of a great human institution before its work is done,</p><p>like the untimely passing of a single soul, but leaves a legacy of</p><p>striving for other men. The legacy of the Freedmen’s Bureau is the</p><p>heavy heritage of this generation. To-day, when new and vaster prob-</p><p>lems are destined to strain every fibre of the national mind and soul,</p><p>would it not be well to count this legacy honestly and carefully? For</p><p>this much all men know: despite compromise, war, and struggle, the</p><p>Negro is not free. In the backwoods of the Gulf States, for miles and</p><p>miles, he may not leave the plantation of his birth; in well-nigh the</p><p>whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and</p><p>custom to an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death</p><p>or the penitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities of the</p><p>South the Negroes are a segregated servile caste, with restricted</p><p>rights and privileges. Before the courts, both in law and custom,</p><p>they</p><p>stand on a different and peculiar basis. Taxation without representa-</p><p>tion is the rule of their political life. And the result of all this is, and</p><p>in nature must have been, lawlessness and crime. That is the large</p><p>legacy of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the work it did not do because it</p><p>could not.</p><p>* * *</p><p>I have seen a land right merry with the sun, where children sing,</p><p>and rolling hills lie like passioned women wanton with harvest. And</p><p>there in the King’s Highway* sat and sits a figure veiled and bowed,</p><p>by which the traveller’s footsteps hasten as they go. On the tainted</p><p>air broods fear. Three centuries’ thought has been the raising and</p><p>unveiling of that bowed human heart, and now behold a century new</p><p>for the duty and the deed. The problem of the Twentieth Century is</p><p>the problem of the color-line.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk32</p><p>i i i</p><p>Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others</p><p>From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned!</p><p>. . . . . . . . .</p><p>Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not</p><p>Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?</p><p>Byron.*</p><p>Easily the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro</p><p>since 1876 is the ascendancy of Mr. Booker T. Washington.* It began</p><p>at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly passing; a</p><p>day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense</p><p>of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen’s sons,––then it was</p><p>that his leading began. Mr. Washington came, with a simple definite</p><p>programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a</p><p>little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes,</p><p>and was concentrating its energies on Dollars. His programme of</p><p>industrial education, conciliation of the South, and submission and</p><p>silence as to civil and political rights, was not wholly original; the</p><p>Free Negroes from 1830 up to wartime had striven to build industrial</p><p>schools, and the American Missionary Association had from the first</p><p>taught various trades; and Price and others had sought a way of hon-</p><p>orable alliance with the best of the Southerners. But Mr. Washington</p><p>first indissolubly linked these things; he put enthusiasm, unlimited</p><p>energy, and perfect faith into this programme, and changed it from a</p><p>by-path into a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of the methods by</p><p>which he did this is a fascinating study of human life.</p><p>It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a pro-</p><p>gramme after many decades of bitter complaint; it startled and won</p><p>the applause of the South, it interested and won the admiration of</p><p>the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced if it</p><p>did not convert the Negroes themselves.</p><p>To gain the sympathy and coöperation of the various elements</p><p>comprising the white South was Mr. Washington’s first task; and</p><p>this, at the time Tuskegee was founded, seemed, for a black man,</p><p>well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it was done in the word</p><p>spoken at Atlanta: “In all things purely social we can be as separate</p><p>as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all things essential to</p><p>mutual progress.” This “Atlanta Compromise”* is by all odds the</p><p>most notable thing in Mr. Washington’s career. The South inter-</p><p>preted it in different ways: the radicals received it as a complete</p><p>surrender of the demand for civil and political equality; the conserv-</p><p>atives, as a generously conceived working basis for mutual under-</p><p>standing. So both approved it, and to-day its author is certainly the</p><p>most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson Davis,* and the one</p><p>with the largest personal following.</p><p>Next to this achievement comes Mr. Washington’s work in gain-</p><p>ing place and consideration in the North. Others less shrewd and</p><p>tactful had formerly essayed to sit on these two stools and had fallen</p><p>between them; but as Mr. Washington knew the heart of the South</p><p>from birth and training, so by singular insight he intuitively grasped</p><p>the spirit of the age which was dominating the North. And so</p><p>thoroughly did he learn the speech and thought of triumphant</p><p>commercialism, and the ideals of material prosperity, that the picture</p><p>of a lone black boy poring over a French grammar* amid the weeds</p><p>and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to him the acme of absurd-</p><p>ities. One wonders what Socrates and St. Francis of Assisi would say</p><p>to this.</p><p>And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness</p><p>with his age is a mark of the successful man. It is as though Nature</p><p>must needs make men narrow in order to give them force. So</p><p>Mr. Washington’s cult has gained unquestioning followers, his work</p><p>has wonderfully prospered, his friends are legion, and his enemies</p><p>are confounded. To-day he stands as the one recognized spokesman</p><p>of his ten million fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a</p><p>nation of seventy millions. One hesitates, therefore, to criticise a life</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk34</p><p>which, beginning with so little, has done so much. And yet the time</p><p>is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of</p><p>the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington’s career, as well</p><p>as of his triumphs, without being thought captious or envious, and</p><p>without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in the world.</p><p>The criticism that has hitherto met Mr. Washington has not</p><p>always been of this broad character. In the South especially has he</p><p>had to walk warily to avoid the harshest judgments,––and naturally</p><p>so, for he is dealing with the one subject of deepest sensitiveness to</p><p>that section. Twice––once when at the Chicago celebration of the</p><p>Spanish-American War he alluded to the color-prejudice that is</p><p>“eating away the vitals of the South,” and once when he dined with</p><p>President Roosevelt––has the resulting Southern criticism been vio-</p><p>lent enough to threaten seriously his popularity. In the North the feel-</p><p>ing has several times forced itself into words, that Mr. Washington’s</p><p>counsels of submission overlooked certain elements of true man-</p><p>hood, and that his educational programme was unnecessarily narrow.</p><p>Usually, however, such criticism has not found open expression,</p><p>although, too, the spiritual sons of the Abolitionists have not been</p><p>prepared to acknowledge that the schools founded before Tuskegee,</p><p>by men of broad ideals and self-sacrificing spirit, were wholly</p><p>failures or worthy of ridicule. While, then, criticism has not failed to</p><p>follow Mr. Washington, yet the prevailing public opinion of the land</p><p>has been but too willing to deliver the solution of a wearisome</p><p>problem into his hands, and say, “If that is all you and your race ask,</p><p>take it.”</p><p>Among his own people, however, Mr. Washington has encountered</p><p>the strongest and most lasting opposition, amounting at times to</p><p>bitterness, and even to-day continuing strong and insistent even</p><p>though largely silenced in outward expression by the public opinion</p><p>of the nation. Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the</p><p>disappointment of displaced demagogues and the spite of narrow</p><p>minds. But aside from this, there is among educated and thoughtful</p><p>colored men in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret, sorrow,</p><p>and apprehension at the wide currency and ascendancy which some</p><p>of Mr. Washington’s theories have gained. These same men admire</p><p>his sincerity of purpose, and are willing to forgive much to honest</p><p>endeavor which is doing something worth the doing. They coöperate</p><p>with Mr. Washington as far as they conscientiously can; and, indeed,</p><p>Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 35</p><p>it is no ordinary tribute to this man’s tact and power that, steering</p><p>as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions, he so</p><p>largely retains the respect of all.</p><p>But the hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous</p><p>thing. It leads some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence</p><p>and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so passionately</p><p>and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and earnest criticism</p><p>from those whose interests are most nearly touched,––criticism of</p><p>writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by</p><p>those led,––this is the</p><p>soul of democracy and the safeguard of mod-</p><p>ern society. If the best of the American Negroes receive by outer</p><p>pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before, manifestly</p><p>there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable</p><p>loss,––a loss of that peculiarly valuable education which a group</p><p>receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions its</p><p>own leaders. The way in which this is done is at once the most</p><p>elementary and the nicest problem of social growth. History is but</p><p>the record of such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely change-</p><p>ful is its type and character! And of all types and kinds, what can be</p><p>more instructive than the leadership of a group within a group?––</p><p>that curious double movement where real progress may be negative</p><p>and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this is the social</p><p>student’s inspiration and despair.</p><p>Now in the past the American Negro has had instructive experi-</p><p>ence in the choosing of group leaders, founding thus a peculiar</p><p>dynasty which in the light of present conditions is worth while</p><p>studying. When sticks and stones and beasts form the sole environ-</p><p>ment of a people, their attitude is largely one of determined</p><p>opposition to and conquest of natural forces. But when to earth and</p><p>brute is added an environment of men and ideas, then the attitude</p><p>of the imprisoned group may take three main forms,––a feeling of</p><p>revolt and revenge; an attempt to adjust all thought and action to</p><p>the will of the greater group; or, finally, a determined effort at self-</p><p>realization and self-development despite environing opinion. The</p><p>influence of all of these attitudes at various times can be traced in the</p><p>history of the American Negro, and in the evolution of his successive</p><p>leaders.</p><p>Before 1750, while the fire of African freedom still burned in</p><p>the veins of the slaves, there was in all leadership or attempted</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk36</p><p>leadership but the one motive of revolt and revenge,––typified in</p><p>the terrible Maroons, the Danish blacks, and Cato of Stono,* and</p><p>veiling all the Americas in fear of insurrection. The liberalizing ten-</p><p>dencies of the latter half of the eighteenth century brought, along</p><p>with kindlier relations between black and white, thoughts of ultimate</p><p>adjustment and assimilation. Such aspiration was especially voiced</p><p>in the earnest songs of Phyllis, in the martyrdom of Attucks, the</p><p>fighting of Salem and Poor, the intellectual accomplishments of</p><p>Banneker and Derham, and the political demands of the Cuffes.*</p><p>Stern financial and social stress after the war cooled much of the</p><p>previous humanitarian ardor. The disappointment and impatience of</p><p>the Negroes at the persistence of slavery and serfdom voiced itself in</p><p>two movements. The slaves in the South, aroused undoubtedly by</p><p>vague rumors of the Haytian revolt, made three fierce attempts at</p><p>insurrection,––in 1800 under Gabriel in Virginia, in 1822 under</p><p>Vesey in Carolina, and in 1831 again in Virginia under the terrible</p><p>Nat Turner.* In the Free States, on the other hand, a new and curious</p><p>attempt at self-development was made. In Philadelphia and New York</p><p>color-prescription led to a withdrawal of Negro communicants</p><p>from white churches and the formation of a peculiar socio-religious</p><p>institution among the Negroes known as the African Church,*––an</p><p>organization still living and controlling in its various branches over</p><p>a million of men.</p><p>Walker’s wild appeal* against the trend of the times showed how</p><p>the world was changing after the coming of the cotton-gin. By 1830</p><p>slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves</p><p>thoroughly cowed into submission. The free Negroes of the North,</p><p>inspired by the mulatto immigrants from the West Indies, began to</p><p>change the basis of their demands; they recognized the slavery of</p><p>slaves, but insisted that they themselves were freemen, and sought</p><p>assimilation and amalgamation with the nation on the same terms</p><p>with other men. Thus, Forten and Purvis of Philadelphia, Shad of</p><p>Wilmington, Du Bois of New Haven, Barbadoes of Boston,* and</p><p>others, strove singly and together as men, they said, not as slaves; as</p><p>“people of color,” not as “Negroes.” The trend of the times, how-</p><p>ever, refused them recognition save in individual and exceptional</p><p>cases, considered them as one with all the despised blacks, and they</p><p>soon found themselves striving to keep even the rights they formerly</p><p>had of voting and working and moving as freemen. Schemes of</p><p>Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 37</p><p>migration and colonization arose among them; but these they refused</p><p>to entertain, and they eventually turned to the Abolition movement</p><p>as a final refuge.</p><p>Here, led by Remond, Nell, Wells-Brown, and Douglass,* a new</p><p>period of self-assertion and self-development dawned. To be sure,</p><p>ultimate freedom and assimilation was the ideal before the leaders,</p><p>but the assertion of the manhood rights of the Negro by himself</p><p>was the main reliance, and John Brown’s raid* was the extreme of its</p><p>logic. After the war and emancipation, the great form of Frederick</p><p>Douglass, the greatest of American Negro leaders, still led the host.</p><p>Self-assertion, especially in political lines, was the main programme,</p><p>and behind Douglass came Elliot, Bruce, and Langston, and the</p><p>Reconstruction politicians, and, less conspicuous but of greater social</p><p>significance Alexander Crummell and Bishop Daniel Payne.*</p><p>Then came the Revolution of 1876,* the suppression of the Negro</p><p>votes, the changing and shifting of ideals, and the seeking of new</p><p>lights in the great night. Douglass, in his old age, still bravely stood</p><p>for the ideals of his early manhood,––ultimate assimilation through</p><p>self-assertion, and on no other terms. For a time Price arose as a</p><p>new leader,* destined, it seemed, not to give up, but to re-state the old</p><p>ideals in a form less repugnant to the white South. But he passed</p><p>away in his prime. Then came the new leader. Nearly all the former</p><p>ones had become leaders by the silent suffrage of their fellows,</p><p>had sought to lead their own people alone, and were usually, save</p><p>Douglass, little known outside their race. But Booker T. Washington</p><p>arose as essentially the leader not of one race but of two,––a com-</p><p>promiser between the South, the North, and the Negro. Naturally</p><p>the Negroes resented, at first bitterly, signs of compromise which</p><p>surrendered their civil and political rights, even though this was to</p><p>be exchanged for larger chances of economic development. The rich</p><p>and dominating North, however, was not only weary of the race</p><p>problem, but was investing largely in Southern enterprises, and wel-</p><p>comed any method of peaceful coöperation. Thus, by national opin-</p><p>ion, the Negroes began to recognize Mr. Washington’s leadership;</p><p>and the voice of criticism was hushed.</p><p>Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of</p><p>adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time</p><p>as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual eco-</p><p>nomic development, and Mr. Washington’s programme naturally</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk38</p><p>takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to</p><p>such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the</p><p>higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced</p><p>races are coming in closer contact with the less developed races,</p><p>and the race-feeling is therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington’s</p><p>programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro</p><p>races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of</p><p>war time has given impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and</p><p>Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as</p><p>men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified prejudice</p><p>all the Negro’s tendency to self-assertion has been called forth; at</p><p>this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of</p><p>nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such</p><p>crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and</p><p>houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect,</p><p>era (the</p><p>‘dawning of the Twentieth Century’, to use Du Bois’s phrase), both</p><p>1 David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New</p><p>York: Henry Holt, 1993), 277.</p><p>2 Arnold Rampersad, The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois (Cambridge,</p><p>Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 89.</p><p>3 William H. Ferris, The African Abroad; or, His Evolution in Western Civilization,</p><p>vol. i (New Haven: Tuttle, Morhouse, and Taylor, 1913), 276.</p><p>by articulating the political demands, cultural accomplishments, and</p><p>‘spiritual strivings’ of an entire people, and at the same time by</p><p>setting the definitive terms of debate for a national dialogue about</p><p>the significance of race in the lingering aftermath of the slave trade.</p><p>William H. Ferris wrote that Du Bois was one of those uncom-</p><p>mon men who achieved prominence as an intellectual and political</p><p>leader by ‘impressing his personality upon men by means of a book’.4</p><p>Certainly, from the opening ‘Forethought’, in which Du Bois</p><p>masterfully ushers his reader into the first chapter with a powerful</p><p>allusion to the Book of Genesis (‘need I add that I who speak here am</p><p>bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the</p><p>Veil?’, p. 4), The Souls of Black Folk is animated and assembled by</p><p>the force of his singular perspective. Du Bois himself notes that</p><p>there is a ‘unity of purpose in the distinctively subjective note’ of</p><p>‘self-revelation’ in each of the pieces in the book.5 Nevertheless, it</p><p>would be inaccurate to describe the book as simply or predominantly</p><p>autobiographical in orientation. Throughout its pages, the book</p><p>enacts a subtle and shifting calibration of pronouns, alternating</p><p>among a variety of stances including individual testimony (‘between</p><p>me and the other world there is ever an unasked question’, p. 7);</p><p>collective struggle (‘storm and stress to-day rocks our little boat’,</p><p>p. 13); third-person observation (‘he simply wishes to make it pos-</p><p>sible for a man to be both a Negro and an American’, p. 9); and</p><p>second-person plea or accusation (‘receive my little book in all char-</p><p>ity’, p. 3). The effect of these changes is that the book’s object of</p><p>study––the ‘spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Ameri-</p><p>cans live and strive’––is rendered elusive, a ‘sketch, in vague,</p><p>uncertain outline’ (p. 3): a space continually transformed by the</p><p>impact of history, rather than some fixed, inert phenomenon to be</p><p>grasped and observed. The book implies that even the scholar, the</p><p>modern wielder of instrumental reason, cannot claim the pretence</p><p>of objectivity in the study of human affairs. On the contrary, the</p><p>avowal of one’s particular position and perspective in the world can</p><p>4 Ferris, The African Abroad . . ., i. 276.</p><p>5 W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘The Souls of Black Folk’, The Independent 57/2920 (17 Nov.</p><p>1904), 1152. This self-review is included in Appendix III to this edition.</p><p>Introductionviii</p><p>‘magnify’ history into a narrative of social significance, transforming</p><p>‘data into metaphor’.6</p><p>By the time The Souls of Black Folk was published, Du Bois had</p><p>already achieved recognition as one of the leading lights of the</p><p>African American intellectual elite at the turn of the century. Born in</p><p>1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, he had studied at Fisk, the</p><p>black college in Nashville, Tennessee, before pursuing a second BA</p><p>and an MA degree at Harvard, where he worked with some of the</p><p>most important scholars of the time, including Frank Taussig in</p><p>economics, Albert Bushnell Hart in history, and William James and</p><p>George Santayana in philosophy. Du Bois continued his graduate</p><p>work on fellowship at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin,</p><p>returning to the United States to become the first African American</p><p>to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895. During the next seven</p><p>years, Du Bois held three teaching positions (at Wilberforce</p><p>University in Ohio, the University of Pennsylvania, and Atlanta</p><p>University), and established himself as an energetic and gifted</p><p>scholar with the publication of his doctoral thesis, The Suppression of</p><p>the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870</p><p>(1896), and The Philadelphia Negro (1899). At Atlanta University, he</p><p>founded and directed a groundbreaking series of sociological studies</p><p>of black life, and organized a yearly series of conferences of black</p><p>social scientists. He had also gained a reputation for his many articles</p><p>and reviews in a wide variety of periodicals, of which the eight pieces</p><p>revised for inclusion in The Souls of Black Folk are only a small</p><p>sample. By 1903, his essays had appeared in many of the prominent</p><p>popular and academic American periodicals of the time, including</p><p>The Independent, The Nation, The Southern Workman, Harper’s</p><p>Weekly, The World’s Work, The Outlook, The Missionary Review, The</p><p>Literary Digest, the Annals of the American Academy of Political and</p><p>Social Sciences, The Dial, and The Brooklyn Eagle.</p><p>In his 1940 autobiography Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois describes the</p><p>genesis of The Souls of Black Folk as almost haphazard:</p><p>I had been asked . . . by A. C. McClurg and Company of Chicago if I did</p><p>6 See Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept</p><p>(1940), collected in Writings (New York: Library of America, 1986), 531. The phrase</p><p>‘data into metaphor’ is adopted from Robert Stepto, From Behind the Veil: A Study</p><p>of Afro-American Narrative (1979; 2nd edn., Urbana: University of Illinois Press,</p><p>1991), 53.</p><p>Introduction ix</p><p>not have some material for a book; I planned a social study which should</p><p>be perhaps a summing up of the work of the Atlanta Conferences, or at</p><p>any rate, a scientific investigation. They asked, however, if I did not have</p><p>some essays that they might put together and issue immediately, mention-</p><p>ing my articles in the Atlantic Monthly and other places. I demurred</p><p>because books of essays almost always fall so flat. Nevertheless, I got</p><p>together a number of my fugitive pieces.7</p><p>Even after the success of the book, Du Bois described with some</p><p>consternation the ‘considerable, perhaps too great, diversity’ of the</p><p>selections.8 In such statements, as the historian Herbert Aptheker</p><p>has pointed out, Du Bois was ‘excessively modest in terms of the</p><p>labors that went into his preparation of Souls’.9 First, he thoroughly</p><p>revised the previously published essays, in some cases to an extent</p><p>that there is little resemblance between their original form and the</p><p>shape of the chapters in The Souls of Black Folk. Second, he added a</p><p>great deal of new material, both in the process of revision and in the</p><p>inclusion of new individual pieces: Chapter V, ‘Of the Wings of</p><p>Atalanta’; Chapter XI, ‘Of the Passing of the First-Born’; Chapter</p><p>XII, ‘Of Alexander Crummell’; Chapter XIII, ‘Of the Coming of</p><p>John’; and Chapter XIV, ‘The Sorrow Songs’, were all composed</p><p>expressly for The Souls of Black Folk. If in the ‘Forethought’, Du</p><p>Bois pointedly if undramatically describes the sections of the book as</p><p>‘chapters’ rather than a gathering of individual ‘essays’, it is in rec-</p><p>ognition of the extensive labour that had gone into the preparation</p><p>of the volume, in which each section was ‘cut, polished, and</p><p>mounted with a jeweler’s precision’.10</p><p>Each chapter serves its purpose in a carefully constructed whole,</p><p>outlined by Du Bois in the ‘Forethought’. First, ‘Of Our Spiritual</p><p>Strivings’ sets the tone of the entire book, describing the ‘unrec-</p><p>onciled’ conflict that defines African American life after the Civil</p><p>War, when a collective desire for participation in the modern ‘king-</p><p>dom of culture’ has been repeatedly undermined by a relentless tide</p><p>of racism––blocked by what Du Bois terms a ‘Veil’ of prejudice. ‘Of</p><p>the Dawn of Freedom’ extends this theme with a history of the</p><p>Freedmen’s Bureau, the abandoned effort of the US government to</p><p>7 Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn, 612.</p><p>8 Du Bois, ‘The Souls of Black Folk’, The Independent, 1152.</p><p>9 Herbert Aptheker, ‘Introduction’ to Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Millwood,</p><p>NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization, Ltd., 1973), 7.</p><p>10 Lewis, Du Bois: Biography, 278.</p><p>Introductionx</p><p>or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.</p><p>In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive</p><p>only through submission. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black</p><p>people give up, at least for the present, three things,––</p><p>First, political power,</p><p>Second, insistence on civil rights,</p><p>Third, higher education of Negro youth,––</p><p>and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the</p><p>accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This</p><p>policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for over fif-</p><p>teen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a</p><p>result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return?</p><p>In these years there have occurred:</p><p>1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.</p><p>2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the</p><p>Negro.</p><p>3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher</p><p>training of the Negro.</p><p>These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr.</p><p>Washington’s teachings; but his propaganda has, without a shadow</p><p>of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. The question then</p><p>comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can</p><p>make effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived of</p><p>political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the most</p><p>Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 39</p><p>meagre chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and</p><p>reason give any distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic</p><p>No. And Mr. Washington thus faces the triple paradox of his career:</p><p>1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and</p><p>property-owners; but it is utterly impossible, under modern com-</p><p>petitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend</p><p>their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.</p><p>2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time coun-</p><p>sels a silent submission to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the</p><p>manhood of any race in the long run.</p><p>3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and</p><p>depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro</p><p>common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day</p><p>were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their</p><p>graduates.</p><p>This triple paradox in Mr. Washington’s position is the object of</p><p>criticism by two classes of colored Americans. One class is spiritually</p><p>descended from Toussaint the Savior, through Gabriel, Vesey, and</p><p>Turner, and they represent the attitude of revolt and revenge; they</p><p>hate the white South blindly and distrust the white race generally,</p><p>and so far as they agree on definite action, think that the Negro’s</p><p>only hope lies in emigration beyond the borders of the United</p><p>States. And yet, by the irony of fate, nothing has more effectually</p><p>made this programme seem hopeless than the recent course of the</p><p>United States toward weaker and darker peoples in the West Indies,</p><p>Hawaii, and the Philippines,––for where in the world may we go and</p><p>be safe from lying and brute force?</p><p>The other class of Negroes who cannot agree with Mr. Washington</p><p>has hitherto said little aloud. They deprecate the sight of scattered</p><p>counsels, of internal disagreement; and especially they dislike mak-</p><p>ing their just criticism of a useful and earnest man an excuse for a gen-</p><p>eral discharge of venom from small-minded opponents. Nevertheless,</p><p>the questions involved are so fundamental and serious that it is dif-</p><p>ficult to see how men like the Grimkes, Kelly Miller, J. W. E. Bowen,*</p><p>and other representatives of this group, can much longer be silent.</p><p>Such men feel in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:</p><p>1. The right to vote.</p><p>2. Civic equality.</p><p>3. The education of youth according to ability.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk40</p><p>They acknowledge Mr. Washington’s invaluable service in counsel-</p><p>ling patience and courtesy in such demands; they do not ask that</p><p>ignorant black men vote when ignorant whites are debarred, or that</p><p>any reasonable restrictions in the suffrage should not be applied;</p><p>they know that the low social level of the mass of the race is respon-</p><p>sible for much discrimination against it, but they also know, and the</p><p>nation knows, that relentless color-prejudice is more often a cause</p><p>than a result of the Negro’s degradation; they seek the abatement of</p><p>this relic of barbarism, and not its systematic encouragement and</p><p>pampering by all agencies of social power from the Associated Press to</p><p>the Church of Christ. They advocate, with Mr. Washington, a broad</p><p>system of Negro common schools supplemented by thorough indus-</p><p>trial training; but they are surprised that a man of Mr. Washington’s</p><p>insight cannot see that no such educational system ever has rested</p><p>or can rest on any other basis than that of the well-equipped college</p><p>and university, and they insist that there is a demand for a few such</p><p>institutions throughout the South to train the best of the Negro</p><p>youth as teachers, professional men, and leaders.</p><p>This group of men honor Mr. Washington for his attitude of</p><p>conciliation toward the white South; they accept the “Atlanta</p><p>Compromise” in its broadest interpretation; they recognize, with</p><p>him, many signs of promise, many men of high purpose and fair</p><p>judgment, in this section; they know that no easy task has been laid</p><p>upon a region already tottering under heavy burdens. But, neverthe-</p><p>less, they insist that the way to truth and right lies in straightforward</p><p>honesty, not in indiscriminate flattery; in praising those of the South</p><p>who do well and criticising uncompromisingly those who do ill; in</p><p>taking advantage of the opportunities at hand and urging their fel-</p><p>lows to do the same, but at the same time in remembering that only a</p><p>firm adherence to their higher ideals and aspirations will ever keep</p><p>those ideals within the realm of possibility. They do not expect that</p><p>the free right to vote, to enjoy civic rights, and to be educated, will</p><p>come in a moment; they do not expect to see the bias and prejudices</p><p>of years disappear at the blast of a trumpet; but they are absolutely</p><p>certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is</p><p>not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not</p><p>want them; that the way for a people to gain respect is not by con-</p><p>tinually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the contrary,</p><p>Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that</p><p>Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 41</p><p>voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is</p><p>barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.</p><p>In failing thus to state plainly and unequivocally the legitimate</p><p>demands of their people, even at the cost of opposing an honored</p><p>leader, the thinking classes of American Negroes would shirk a heavy</p><p>responsibility,––a responsibility to themselves, a responsibility to the</p><p>struggling masses, a responsibility to the darker races of men whose</p><p>future depends so largely on this American experiment, but espe-</p><p>cially a responsibility to this nation,––this common Fatherland. It is</p><p>wrong to encourage a man or a people in evil-doing; it is wrong to</p><p>aid and abet a national crime simply because it is unpopular not to do</p><p>so. The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between the</p><p>North and South after the frightful differences of a generation ago</p><p>ought to be a source of deep congratulation to all, and especially to</p><p>those whose mistreatment caused the war; but if that reconciliation</p><p>is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those</p><p>same black men, with permanent legislation into a position of infer-</p><p>iority, then those black men, if they are really men, are called upon</p><p>by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a</p><p>course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves</p><p>disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington. We have no right to</p><p>sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of</p><p>disaster to our children, black and white.</p><p>First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South</p><p>discriminat-</p><p>ingly. The present generation of Southerners are not responsible for</p><p>the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it.</p><p>Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the</p><p>recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating than</p><p>to the best thought of the South. The South is not “solid”; it is a</p><p>land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are</p><p>fighting for supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is to-day</p><p>perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good. Discriminating</p><p>and broad-minded criticism is what the South needs,––needs it for</p><p>the sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance</p><p>of robust, healthy mental and moral development.</p><p>To-day even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the</p><p>blacks is not, as so many assume, in all cases the same; the ignorant</p><p>Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his competition,</p><p>the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer, some of the educated</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk42</p><p>see a menace in his upward development, while others––usually the</p><p>sons of the masters––wish to help him to rise. National opinion has</p><p>enabled this last class to maintain the Negro common schools, and</p><p>to protect the Negro partially in property, life, and limb. Through</p><p>the pressure of the money-makers, the Negro is in danger of being</p><p>reduced to semi-slavery, especially in the country districts; the work-</p><p>ingmen, and those of the educated who fear the Negro, have united</p><p>to disfranchise him, and some have urged his deportation; while the</p><p>passions of the ignorant are easily aroused to lynch and abuse any</p><p>black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought and prejudice</p><p>is nonsense; to inveigh indiscriminately against “the South” is</p><p>unjust; but to use the same breath in praising Governor Aycock,</p><p>exposing Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas Nelson Page,</p><p>and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman,* is not only sane, but the</p><p>imperative duty of thinking black men.</p><p>It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in</p><p>several instances he has opposed movements in the South which</p><p>were unjust to the Negro; he sent memorials to the Louisiana and</p><p>Alabama constitutional conventions, he has spoken against lynching,</p><p>and in other ways has openly or silently set his influence against</p><p>sinister schemes and unfortunate happenings. Notwithstanding this,</p><p>it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression</p><p>left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is justi-</p><p>fied in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s</p><p>degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro’s failure</p><p>to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly,</p><p>that his future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of</p><p>these propositions is a dangerous half-truth. The supplementary</p><p>truths must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice</p><p>are potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro’s position; second,</p><p>industrial and common-school training were necessarily slow in</p><p>planting because they had to await the black teachers trained by</p><p>higher institutions,––it being extremely doubtful if any essentially</p><p>different development was possible, and certainly a Tuskegee was</p><p>unthinkable before 1880; and, third, while it is a great truth to say</p><p>that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is</p><p>equally true that unless his striving be not simply seconded, but</p><p>rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and</p><p>wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success.</p><p>Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 43</p><p>In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington</p><p>is especially to be criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the</p><p>whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to</p><p>the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessi-</p><p>mistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and</p><p>the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to</p><p>righting these great wrongs.</p><p>The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to</p><p>assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly</p><p>wronged and is still wronging. The North––her co-partner in</p><p>guilt––cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We</p><p>cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy”</p><p>alone. If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this country</p><p>survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?</p><p>The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern</p><p>and delicate,––a forward movement to oppose a part of the work</p><p>of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift,</p><p>Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up</p><p>his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying</p><p>in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the</p><p>headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice,</p><p>North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of</p><p>voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and</p><p>opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,––so</p><p>far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,––we must unceasingly</p><p>and firmly oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful method we</p><p>must strive for the rights which the world accords to men, clinging</p><p>unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers</p><p>would fain forget: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all</p><p>men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with</p><p>certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the</p><p>pursuit of happiness.”*</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk44</p><p>iv</p><p>Of the Meaning of Progress</p><p>Willst Du Deine Macht verkünden,</p><p>Wähle sie die frei von Sünden,</p><p>Steh’n in Deinem ew’gen Haus!</p><p>Deine Geister sende aus!</p><p>Die Unsterblichen, die Reinen,</p><p>Die nicht fühlen, die nicht weinen!</p><p>Nicht die zarte Jungfrau wähle,</p><p>Nicht der Hirtin weiche Seele!</p><p>Schiller.*</p><p>Once upon a time I taught school in the hills of Tennessee, where</p><p>the broad dark vale of the Mississippi begins to roll and crumple to</p><p>greet the Alleghanies. I was a Fisk student then, and all Fisk men</p><p>thought that Tennessee––beyond the Veil––was theirs alone, and in</p><p>vacation time they sallied forth in lusty bands to meet the county</p><p>school-commissioners. Young and happy, I too went, and I shall not</p><p>soon forget that summer, seventeen years ago.</p><p>First, there was a Teachers’ Institute at the county-seat; and there</p><p>distinguished guests of the superintendent taught the teachers frac-</p><p>tions and spelling and other mysteries,––white teachers in the morn-</p><p>ing, Negroes at night. A picnic now and then, and a supper, and</p><p>the rough world was softened by laughter and song. I remember</p><p>how––But I wander.</p><p>There came a day when all the teachers left the Institute and</p><p>began the hunt for schools. I learn from hearsay (for my mother was</p><p>mortally afraid of fire-arms) that the hunting of ducks and bears and</p><p>men is wonderfully interesting, but I am sure that the man who has</p><p>never hunted a country school has something to learn of the plea-</p><p>sures of the chase. I see now the white, hot roads lazily rise and fall</p><p>and wind before me under the burning July sun; I feel the deep</p><p>weariness of heart and limb as ten, eight, six miles stretch relent-</p><p>lessly ahead; I feel my heart sink heavily as I hear again and again,</p><p>“Got a teacher? Yes.” So I walked on and on––horses were too</p><p>expensive––until I had wandered beyond railways, beyond stage</p><p>lines, to a land of “varmints” and rattlesnakes, where the coming of a</p><p>stranger was an event, and men lived and died in the shadow of one</p><p>blue hill.</p><p>Sprinkled over hill and dale lay cabins and farmhouses, shut out</p><p>from the world by the forests and the rolling hills toward the east.</p><p>There I found at last a little school. Josie told me of it; she was a thin,</p><p>homely girl of twenty, with a dark-brown face and thick, hard hair. I</p><p>had crossed the stream at Watertown, and rested under</p><p>the great</p><p>willows; then I had gone to the little cabin in the lot where Josie was</p><p>resting on her way to town. The gaunt farmer made me welcome,</p><p>and Josie, hearing my errand, told me anxiously that they wanted a</p><p>school over the hill; that but once since the war had a teacher been</p><p>there; that she herself longed to learn,––and thus she ran on, talking</p><p>fast and loud, with much earnestness and energy.</p><p>Next morning I crossed the tall round hill, lingered to look at the</p><p>blue and yellow mountains stretching toward the Carolinas, then</p><p>plunged into the wood, and came out at Josie’s home. It was a dull</p><p>frame cottage with four rooms, perched just below the brow of the</p><p>hill, amid peach-trees. The father was a quiet, simple soul, calmly</p><p>ignorant, with no touch of vulgarity. The mother was different,––</p><p>strong, bustling, and energetic, with a quick, restless tongue, and an</p><p>ambition to live “like folks.” There was a crowd of children. Two</p><p>boys had gone away. There remained two growing girls; a shy midget</p><p>of eight; John, tall, awkward, and eighteen; Jim, younger, quicker,</p><p>and better looking; and two babies of indefinite age. Then there was</p><p>Josie herself. She seemed to be the centre of the family: always busy</p><p>at service, or at home, or berry-picking; a little nervous and inclined</p><p>to scold, like her mother, yet faithful, too, like her father. She</p><p>had about her a certain fineness, the shadow of an unconscious</p><p>moral heroism that would willingly give all of life to make life</p><p>broader, deeper, and fuller for her and hers. I saw much of this family</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk46</p><p>afterwards, and grew to love them for their honest efforts to be</p><p>decent and comfortable, and for their knowledge of their own ignor-</p><p>ance. There was with them no affectation. The mother would scold</p><p>the father for being so “easy”; Josie would roundly berate the boys</p><p>for carelessness; and all knew that it was a hard thing to dig a living</p><p>out of a rocky side-hill.</p><p>I secured the school. I remember the day I rode horseback out to</p><p>the commissioner’s house with a pleasant young white fellow who</p><p>wanted the white school. The road ran down the bed of a stream; the</p><p>sun laughed and the water jingled, and we rode on. “Come in,” said</p><p>the commissioner,––“come in. Have a seat. Yes, that certificate will</p><p>do. Stay to dinner. What do you want a month?” “Oh,” thought I,</p><p>“this is lucky”; but even then fell the awful shadow of the Veil, for</p><p>they ate first, then I––alone.</p><p>The schoolhouse was a log hut, where Colonel Wheeler used to</p><p>shelter his corn. It sat in a lot behind a rail fence and thorn bushes,</p><p>near the sweetest of springs. There was an entrance where a door</p><p>once was, and within, a massive rickety fireplace; great chinks</p><p>between the logs served as windows. Furniture was scarce. A pale</p><p>blackboard crouched in the corner. My desk was made of three</p><p>boards, reinforced at critical points, and my chair, borrowed from the</p><p>landlady, had to be returned every night. Seats for the children––</p><p>these puzzled me much. I was haunted by a New England vision of</p><p>neat little desks and chairs, but, alas! the reality was rough plank</p><p>benches without backs, and at times without legs. They had the one</p><p>virtue of making naps dangerous,––possibly fatal, for the floor was</p><p>not to be trusted.</p><p>It was a hot morning late in July when the school opened. I trem-</p><p>bled when I heard the patter of little feet down the dusty road, and</p><p>saw the growing row of dark solemn faces and bright eager eyes</p><p>facing me. First came Josie and her brothers and sisters. The longing</p><p>to know, to be a student in the great school at Nashville, hovered like</p><p>a star above this child-woman amid her work and worry, and she</p><p>studied doggedly. There were the Dowells from their farm over</p><p>toward Alexandria,––Fanny, with her smooth black face and wonder-</p><p>ing eyes; Martha, brown and dull; the pretty girl-wife of a brother,</p><p>and the younger brood.</p><p>There were the Burkes,––two brown and yellow lads, and a tiny</p><p>haughty-eyed girl. Fat Reuben’s little chubby girl came, with golden</p><p>Of the Meaning of Progress 47</p><p>face and old-gold hair, faithful and solemn. ’Thenie was on hand</p><p>early,––a jolly, ugly, good-hearted girl, who slyly dipped snuff and</p><p>looked after her little bow-legged brother. When her mother could</p><p>spare her, ’Tildy came,––a midnight beauty, with starry eyes and</p><p>tapering limbs; and her brother, correspondingly homely. And then</p><p>the big boys,––the hulking Lawrences; the lazy Neills, unfathered</p><p>sons of mother and daughter; Hickman, with a stoop in his shoulders;</p><p>and the rest.</p><p>There they sat, nearly thirty of them, on the rough benches, their</p><p>faces shading from a pale cream to a deep brown, the little feet bare</p><p>and swinging, the eyes full of expectation, with here and there a</p><p>twinkle of mischief, and the hands grasping Webster’s blue-back</p><p>spelling-book. I loved my school, and the fine faith the children had</p><p>in the wisdom of their teacher was truly marvellous. We read and</p><p>spelled together, wrote a little, picked flowers, sang, and listened to</p><p>stories of the world beyond the hill. At times the school would</p><p>dwindle away, and I would start out. I would visit Mun Eddings, who</p><p>lived in two very dirty rooms, and ask why little Lugene, whose</p><p>flaming face seemed ever ablaze with the dark-red hair uncombed,</p><p>was absent all last week, or why I missed so often the inimitable rags</p><p>of Mack and Ed. Then the father, who worked Colonel Wheeler’s</p><p>farm on shares,* would tell me how the crops needed the boys; and</p><p>the thin, slovenly mother, whose face was pretty when washed,</p><p>assured me that Lugene must mind the baby. “But we’ll start them</p><p>again next week.” When the Lawrences stopped, I knew that the</p><p>doubts of the old folks about book-learning had conquered again,</p><p>and so, toiling up the hill, and getting as far into the cabin as pos-</p><p>sible, I put Cicero “pro Archia Poeta”* into the simplest English with</p><p>local applications, and usually convinced them––for a week or so.</p><p>On Friday nights I often went home with some of the children,––</p><p>sometimes to Doc Burke’s farm. He was a great, loud, thin Black,</p><p>ever working, and trying to buy the seventy-five acres of hill and</p><p>dale where he lived; but people said that he would surely fail, and</p><p>the “white folks would get it all.” His wife was a magnificent</p><p>Amazon, with saffron face and shining hair, uncorseted and bare-</p><p>footed, and the children were strong and beautiful. They lived in a</p><p>one-and-a-half-room cabin in the hollow of the farm, near the spring.</p><p>The front room was full of great fat white beds, scrupulously neat;</p><p>and there were bad chromos on the walls, and a tired centre-table. In</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk48</p><p>the tiny back kitchen I was often invited to “take out and help”</p><p>myself to fried chicken and wheat biscuit, “meat” and corn pone,</p><p>string-beans and berries. At first I used to be a little alarmed at the</p><p>approach of bedtime in the one lone bedroom, but embarrassment</p><p>was very deftly avoided. First, all the children nodded and slept, and</p><p>were stowed away in one great pile of goose feathers; next, the</p><p>mother and the father discreetly slipped away to the kitchen while I</p><p>went to bed; then, blowing out the dim light, they retired in the dark.</p><p>In the morning all were up and away before I thought of awaking.</p><p>Across the road, where fat Reuben lived, they all went outdoors</p><p>while the teacher retired, because they did not boast the luxury of a</p><p>kitchen.</p><p>I liked to stay with the Dowells, for they had four rooms and</p><p>plenty of good country fare. Uncle Bird had a small, rough farm, all</p><p>woods and hills, miles from the big road; but he was full of tales,––he</p><p>preached now and then,––and with his children, berries, horses, and</p><p>wheat he was happy and prosperous. Often, to keep the peace, I must</p><p>go where life was less lovely; for instance, ’Tildy’s mother was incor-</p><p>rigibly dirty, Reuben’s larder was limited seriously, and herds of</p><p>untamed insects wandered over the Eddingses’ beds. Best of all I</p><p>loved to go to Josie’s, and sit on the porch, eating peaches, while the</p><p>mother bustled and talked: how Josie had bought the sewing-</p><p>machine; how Josie worked at service in winter, but that four dollars</p><p>a month was “mighty little” wages; how Josie longed to go away to</p><p>school, but that it “looked like” they never could get far enough</p><p>ahead to let her; how the crops failed and the well was yet unfinished;</p><p>and, finally, how “mean” some of the white folks were.</p><p>For two summers I lived in this little world; it was dull and hum-</p><p>drum. The girls looked at the hill in wistful longing, and the boys</p><p>fretted and haunted Alexandria. Alexandria was “town,”––a strag-</p><p>gling, lazy village of houses, churches, and shops, and an aristocracy</p><p>of Toms, Dicks, and Captains. Cuddled on the hill to the north was</p><p>the village of the colored folks, who lived in three- or four-room</p><p>unpainted cottages, some neat and homelike, and some dirty. The</p><p>dwellings were scattered rather aimlessly, but they centred about</p><p>the twin temples of the hamlet, the Methodist, and the Hard-Shell</p><p>Baptist churches. These, in turn, leaned gingerly on a sad-colored</p><p>schoolhouse. Hither my little world wended its crooked way on</p><p>Sunday to meet other worlds, and gossip, and wonder, and make the</p><p>Of the Meaning of Progress 49</p><p>weekly sacrifice with frenzied priest at the altar of the “old-time</p><p>religion.” Then the soft melody and mighty cadences of Negro song</p><p>fluttered and thundered.</p><p>I have called my tiny community a world, and so its isolation made</p><p>it; and yet there was among us but a half-awakened common con-</p><p>sciousness, sprung from common joy and grief, at burial, birth, or</p><p>wedding; from a common hardship in poverty, poor land, and low</p><p>wages; and, above all, from the sight of the Veil that hung between us</p><p>and Opportunity. All this caused us to think some thoughts together;</p><p>but these, when ripe for speech, were spoken in various languages.</p><p>Those whose eyes twenty-five and more years before had seen “the</p><p>glory of the coming of the Lord,” saw in every present hindrance or</p><p>help a dark fatalism bound to bring all things right in His own good</p><p>time. The mass of those to whom slavery was a dim recollection of</p><p>childhood found the world a puzzling thing: it asked little of them,</p><p>and they answered with little, and yet it ridiculed their offering.</p><p>Such a paradox they could not understand, and therefore sank into</p><p>listless indifference, or shiftlessness, or reckless bravado. There</p><p>were, however, some––such as Josie, Jim, and Ben––to whom War,</p><p>Hell, and Slavery were but childhood tales, whose young appetites</p><p>had been whetted to an edge by school and story and half-awakened</p><p>thought. Ill could they be content, born without and beyond the</p><p>World. And their weak wings beat against their barriers,––barriers</p><p>of caste, of youth, of life; at last, in dangerous moments, against</p><p>everything that opposed even a whim.</p><p>The ten years that follow youth, the years when first the realiz-</p><p>ation comes that life is leading somewhere,––these were the years</p><p>that passed after I left my little school. When they were past, I came</p><p>by chance once more to the walls of Fisk University, to the halls of</p><p>the chapel of melody. As I lingered there in the joy and pain of</p><p>meeting old school-friends, there swept over me a sudden longing</p><p>to pass again beyond the blue hill, and to see the homes and</p><p>the school of other days, and to learn how life had gone with my</p><p>school-children; and I went.</p><p>Josie was dead, and the gray-haired mother said simply, “We’ve</p><p>had a heap of trouble since you’ve been away.” I had feared for Jim.</p><p>With a cultured parentage and a social caste to uphold him, he might</p><p>have made a venturesome merchant or a West Point cadet. But here</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk50</p><p>he was, angry with life and reckless; and when Farmer Durham</p><p>charged him with stealing wheat, the old man had to ride fast to</p><p>escape the stones which the furious fool hurled after him. They told</p><p>Jim to run away; but he would not run, and the constable came that</p><p>afternoon. It grieved Josie, and great awkward John walked nine</p><p>miles every day to see his little brother through the bars of Lebanon</p><p>jail. At last the two came back together in the dark night. The mother</p><p>cooked supper, and Josie emptied her purse, and the boys stole away.</p><p>Josie grew thin and silent, yet worked the more. The hill became</p><p>steep for the quiet old father, and with the boys away there was little</p><p>to do in the valley. Josie helped them to sell the old farm, and they</p><p>moved nearer town. Brother Dennis, the carpenter, built a new house</p><p>with six rooms; Josie toiled a year in Nashville, and brought back</p><p>ninety dollars to furnish the house and change it to a home.</p><p>When the spring came, and the birds twittered, and the stream ran</p><p>proud and full, little sister Lizzie, bold and thoughtless, flushed with</p><p>the passion of youth, bestowed herself on the tempter, and brought</p><p>home a nameless child. Josie shivered and worked on, with the vision</p><p>of schooldays all fled, with a face wan and tired,––worked until, on a</p><p>summer’s day, some one married another; then Josie crept to her</p><p>mother like a hurt child, and slept––and sleeps.</p><p>I paused to scent the breeze as I entered the valley. The Lawrences</p><p>have gone,––father and son forever,––and the other son lazily digs in</p><p>the earth to live. A new young widow rents out their cabin to fat</p><p>Reuben. Reuben is a Baptist preacher now, but I fear as lazy as ever,</p><p>though his cabin has three rooms; and little Ella has grown into a</p><p>bouncing woman, and is ploughing corn on the hot hillside. There</p><p>are babies a-plenty, and one half-witted girl. Across the valley is a</p><p>house I did not know before, and there I found, rocking one baby and</p><p>expecting another, one of my schoolgirls, a daughter of Uncle Bird</p><p>Dowell. She looked somewhat worried with her new duties, but soon</p><p>bristled into pride over her neat cabin and the tale of her thrifty</p><p>husband, the horse and cow, and the farm they were planning to buy.</p><p>My log schoolhouse was gone. In its place stood Progress; and</p><p>Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly. The crazy foundation</p><p>stones still marked the former site of my poor little cabin, and not far</p><p>away, on six weary boulders, perched a jaunty board house, perhaps</p><p>twenty by thirty feet, with three windows and a door that locked.</p><p>Some of the window-glass was broken, and part of an old iron stove</p><p>Of the Meaning of Progress 51</p><p>lay mournfully under the house. I peeped through the window half</p><p>reverently, and found things that were more familiar. The blackboard</p><p>had grown by about two feet, and the seats were still without backs.</p><p>The county owns the lot now, I hear, and every year there is a session</p><p>of school. As I sat by the spring and looked on the Old and the New I</p><p>felt glad, very glad, and yet––</p><p>After two long drinks I started on. There was the great double</p><p>log-house on the corner. I remembered the broken, blighted family</p><p>that used to live there. The strong, hard face of the mother, with its</p><p>wilderness of hair, rose before me. She had driven her husband away,</p><p>and while I taught school a strange man lived there, big and jovial,</p><p>and people talked. I felt sure that Ben and ’Tildy would come to</p><p>naught from such a home. But this is an odd world; for Ben is a busy</p><p>farmer in Smith County, “doing well, too,” they say, and he had</p><p>cared for little ’Tildy until last spring, when a lover married her. A</p><p>hard life the lad had led, toiling for meat, and laughed at because he</p><p>was homely and crooked. There was Sam Carlon, an impudent old</p><p>skinflint, who had definite notions about “niggers,” and hired Ben a</p><p>summer and would not pay him. Then the hungry boy gathered his</p><p>sacks together, and in broad daylight went into Carlon’s corn; and</p><p>when the hard-fisted farmer set upon him, the angry boy flew at him</p><p>like a beast. Doc Burke saved a murder and a lynching that day.</p><p>The story reminded me again of the Burkes, and an impatience</p><p>seized me to know who won in the battle, Doc or the seventy-five</p><p>acres. For it is a hard thing to make a farm out of nothing, even in</p><p>fifteen years. So I hurried on, thinking of the Burkes. They used to</p><p>have a certain magnificent barbarism about them that I liked. They</p><p>were</p><p>never vulgar, never immoral, but rather rough and primitive,</p><p>with an unconventionality that spent itself in loud guffaws, slaps on</p><p>the back, and naps in the corner. I hurried by the cottage of the</p><p>misborn Neill boys. It was empty, and they were grown into fat, lazy</p><p>farm-hands. I saw the home of the Hickmans, but Albert, with his</p><p>stooping shoulders, had passed from the world. Then I came to the</p><p>Burkes’ gate and peered through; the inclosure looked rough and</p><p>untrimmed, and yet there were the same fences around the old farm</p><p>save to the left, where lay twenty-five other acres. And lo! the cabin</p><p>in the hollow had climbed the hill and swollen to a half-finished</p><p>six-room cottage.</p><p>The Burkes held a hundred acres, but they were still in debt.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk52</p><p>Indeed, the gaunt father who toiled night and day would scarcely be</p><p>happy out of debt, being so used to it. Some day he must stop, for his</p><p>massive frame is showing decline. The mother wore shoes, but the</p><p>lion-like physique of other days was broken. The children had</p><p>grown up. Rob, the image of his father, was loud and rough with</p><p>laughter. Birdie, my school baby of six, had grown to a picture of</p><p>maiden beauty, tall and tawny. “Edgar is gone,” said the mother, with</p><p>head half bowed,––“gone to work in Nashville; he and his father</p><p>couldn’t agree.”</p><p>Little Doc, the boy born since the time of my school, took me</p><p>horseback down the creek next morning toward Farmer Dowell’s.</p><p>The road and the stream were battling for mastery, and the stream</p><p>had the better of it. We splashed and waded, and the merry boy,</p><p>perched behind me, chattered and laughed. He showed me where</p><p>Simon Thompson had bought a bit of ground and a home; but his</p><p>daughter Lana, a plump, brown, slow girl, was not there. She had</p><p>married a man and a farm twenty miles away. We wound on down</p><p>the stream till we came to a gate that I did not recognize, but the boy</p><p>insisted that it was “Uncle Bird’s.” The farm was fat with the grow-</p><p>ing crop. In that little valley was a strange stillness as I rode up; for</p><p>death and marriage had stolen youth and left age and childhood</p><p>there. We sat and talked that night after the chores were done. Uncle</p><p>Bird was grayer, and his eyes did not see so well, but he was still</p><p>jovial. We talked of the acres bought,––one hundred and twenty-</p><p>five,––of the new guest-chamber added, of Martha’s marrying.</p><p>Then we talked of death: Fanny and Fred were gone; a shadow hung</p><p>over the other daughter, and when it lifted she was to go to Nashville</p><p>to school. At last we spoke of the neighbors, and as night fell, Uncle</p><p>Bird told me how, on a night like that, ’Thenie came wandering back</p><p>to her home over yonder, to escape the blows of her husband. And</p><p>next morning she died in the home that her little bow-legged</p><p>brother, working and saving, had bought for their widowed mother.</p><p>My journey was done, and behind me lay hill and dale, and Life</p><p>and Death. How shall man measure Progress there where the dark-</p><p>faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow shall balance a bushel</p><p>of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human</p><p>and real! And all this life and love and strife and failure,––is it the</p><p>twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?</p><p>Thus sadly musing, I rode to Nashville in the Jim Crow car.*</p><p>Of the Meaning of Progress 53</p><p>v</p><p>Of the Wings of Atalanta</p><p>O black boy of Atlanta!</p><p>But half was spoken;</p><p>The slave’s chains and the master’s</p><p>Alike are broken;</p><p>The one curse of the races</p><p>Held both in tether;</p><p>They are rising––all are rising––</p><p>The black and white together.</p><p>Whittier.*</p><p>South of the North, yet north of the South, lies the City of a</p><p>Hundred Hills, peering out from the shadows of the past into the</p><p>promise of the future. I have seen her in the morning, when the first</p><p>flush of day had half-roused her; she lay gray and still on the crimson</p><p>soil of Georgia; then the blue smoke began to curl from her chim-</p><p>neys, the tinkle of bell and scream of whistle broke the silence, the</p><p>rattle and roar of busy life slowly gathered and swelled, until the</p><p>seething whirl of the city seemed a strange thing in a sleepy land.</p><p>Once, they say, even Atlanta slept dull and drowsy at the foot-hills</p><p>of the Alleghanies, until the iron baptism of war awakened her with</p><p>its sullen waters, aroused and maddened her, and left her listening to</p><p>the sea. And the sea cried to the hills and the hills answered the sea,</p><p>till the city rose like a widow and cast away her weeds, and toiled for</p><p>her daily bread; toiled steadily, toiled cunningly,––perhaps with some</p><p>bitterness, with a touch of réclame,*––and yet with real earnestness,</p><p>and real sweat.</p><p>It is a hard thing to live haunted by the ghost of an untrue dream;</p><p>to see the wide vision of empire fade into real ashes and dirt; to feel</p><p>the pang of the conquered, and yet know that with all the Bad that</p><p>fell on one black day, something was vanquished that deserved to</p><p>live, something killed that in justice had not dared to die; to know</p><p>that with the Right that triumphed, triumphed something of Wrong,</p><p>something sordid and mean, something less than the broadest and</p><p>best. All this is bitter hard; and many a man and city and people have</p><p>found in it excuse for sulking, and brooding, and listless waiting.</p><p>Such are not men of the sturdier make; they of Atlanta turned</p><p>resolutely toward the future; and that future held aloft vistas of</p><p>purple and gold:––Atlanta, Queen of the cotton kingdom; Atlanta,</p><p>Gateway to the Land of the Sun; Atlanta, the new Lachesis, spinner</p><p>of web and woof for the world. So the city crowned her hundred hills</p><p>with factories, and stored her shops with cunning handiwork, and</p><p>stretched long iron ways to greet the busy Mercury in his coming.</p><p>And the Nation talked of her striving.</p><p>Perhaps Atlanta was not christened for the winged maiden of</p><p>dull Bœotia,* you know the tale,––how swarthy Atalanta,* tall and</p><p>wild, would marry only him who out-raced her; and how the wily</p><p>Hippomenes laid three apples of gold in the way. She fled like a</p><p>shadow, paused, startled over the first apple, but even as he stretched</p><p>his hand, fled again; hovered over the second, then, slipping from his</p><p>hot grasp, flew over river, vale, and hill; but as she lingered over the</p><p>third, his arms fell round her, and looking on each other, the blazing</p><p>passion of their love profaned the sanctuary of Love, and they were</p><p>cursed. If Atlanta be not named for Atalanta, she ought to have been.</p><p>Atalanta is not the first or the last maiden whom greed of gold has</p><p>led to defile the temple of Love; and not maids alone, but men in the</p><p>race of life, sink from the high and generous ideals of youth to the</p><p>gambler’s code of the Bourse;* and in all our Nation’s striving is not</p><p>the Gospel of Work befouled by the Gospel of Pay? So common is</p><p>this that one-half think it normal; so unquestioned, that we almost</p><p>fear to question if the end of racing is not gold, if the aim of man is</p><p>not rightly to be rich. And if this is the fault of America, how dire a</p><p>danger lies before a new land and a new city, lest Atlanta, stooping</p><p>for mere gold, shall find that gold accursed!</p><p>It was no maiden’s idle whim that started this hard racing; a fearful</p><p>wilderness lay about the feet of that city after the War,––feudalism,</p><p>poverty, the rise of the Third Estate,* serfdom, the re-birth of Law</p><p>and Order, and above and between all, the Veil of Race. How heavy a</p><p>Of the Wings of Atalanta 55</p><p>journey for weary feet! what wings must Atalanta have to flit over all</p><p>this hollow and hill, through sour wood and sullen water, and by the</p><p>red waste of sun-baked clay! How fleet must Atalanta be if she will</p><p>not be tempted by gold to profane the Sanctuary!</p><p>The Sanctuary of our fathers has, to be sure, few Gods,––some</p><p>sneer, “all too few.” There is the thrifty Mercury of New England,</p><p>Pluto of the North, and Ceres of the West; and there, too, is the half-</p><p>forgotten Apollo of the South, under whose ægis the maiden ran,––</p><p>and as she ran she forgot him, even as there in Bœotia Venus was</p><p>forgot. She forgot the old ideal of the Southern</p><p>gentleman,––that</p><p>new-world heir of the grace and courtliness of patrician, knight,</p><p>and noble; forgot his honor with his foibles, his kindliness with his</p><p>carelessness, and stooped to apples of gold,––to men busier and</p><p>sharper, thriftier and more unscrupulous. Golden apples are beauti-</p><p>ful––I remember the lawless days of boyhood, when orchards in</p><p>crimson and gold tempted me over fence and field––and, too, the</p><p>merchant who has dethroned the planter is no despicable parvenu.*</p><p>Work and wealth are the mighty levers to lift this old new land; thrift</p><p>and toil and saving are the highways to new hopes and new possi-</p><p>bilities; and yet the warning is needed lest the wily Hippomenes</p><p>tempt Atalanta to thinking that golden apples are the goal of racing,</p><p>and not mere incidents by the way.</p><p>Atlanta must not lead the South to dream of material prosperity as</p><p>the touchstone of all success; already the fatal might of this idea is</p><p>beginning to spread; it is replacing the finer type of Southerner with</p><p>vulgar money-getters; it is burying the sweeter beauties of Southern</p><p>life beneath pretence and ostentation. For every social ill the panacea</p><p>of Wealth has been urged,––wealth to overthrow the remains of the</p><p>slave feudalism; wealth to raise the “cracker” Third Estate; wealth to</p><p>employ the black serfs, and the prospect of wealth to keep them work-</p><p>ing; wealth as the end and aim of politics, and as the legal tender for</p><p>law and order; and, finally, instead of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness,</p><p>wealth as the ideal of the Public School.</p><p>Not only is this true in the world which Atlanta typifies, but it is</p><p>threatening to be true of a world beneath and beyond that world,––</p><p>the Black World beyond the Veil. To-day it makes little difference to</p><p>Atlanta, to the South, what the Negro thinks or dreams or wills. In</p><p>the soul-life of the land he is to-day, and naturally will long remain,</p><p>unthought of, half forgotten; and yet when he does come to think</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk56</p><p>and will and do for himself,––and let no man dream that day will never</p><p>come,––then the part he plays will not be one of sudden learning,</p><p>but words and thoughts he has been taught to lisp in his race-</p><p>childhood. To-day the ferment of his striving toward self-realization</p><p>is to the strife of the white world like a wheel within a wheel: beyond</p><p>the Veil are smaller but like problems of ideals, of leaders and the led,</p><p>of serfdom, of poverty, of order and subordination, and, through all,</p><p>the Veil of Race. Few know of these problems, few who know notice</p><p>them; and yet there they are, awaiting student, artist, and seer,––a</p><p>field for somebody sometime to discover. Hither has the temptation</p><p>of Hippomenes penetrated; already in this smaller world, which now</p><p>indirectly and anon directly must influence the larger for good or ill,</p><p>the habit is forming of interpreting the world in dollars. The old</p><p>leaders of Negro opinion, in the little groups where there is a Negro</p><p>social consciousness, are being replaced by new; neither the black</p><p>preacher nor the black teacher leads as he did two decades ago. Into</p><p>their places are pushing the farmers and gardeners, the well-paid</p><p>porters and artisans, the businessmen,––all those with property and</p><p>money. And with all this change, so curiously parallel to that of</p><p>the Other-world, goes too the same inevitable change in ideals. The</p><p>South laments to-day the slow, steady disappearance of a certain type</p><p>of Negro,––the faithful, courteous slave of other days, with his</p><p>incorruptible honesty and dignified humility. He is passing away</p><p>just as surely as the old type of Southern gentleman is passing, and</p><p>from not dissimilar causes,––the sudden transformation of a fair</p><p>far-off ideal of Freedom into the hard reality of bread-winning and</p><p>the consequent deification of Bread.</p><p>In the Black World, the Preacher and Teacher embodied once the</p><p>ideals of this people,––the strife for another and a juster world, the</p><p>vague dream of righteousness, the mystery of knowing; but to-day</p><p>the danger is that these ideals, with their simple beauty and weird</p><p>inspiration, will suddenly sink to a question of cash and a lust for</p><p>gold. Here stands this black young Atalanta, girding herself for the</p><p>race that must be run; and if her eyes be still toward the hills and</p><p>sky as in the days of old, then we may look for noble running; but</p><p>what if some ruthless or wily or even thoughtless Hippomenes</p><p>lay golden apples before her? What if the Negro people be wooed</p><p>from a strife for righteousness, from a love of knowing, to regard</p><p>dollars as the be-all and end-all of life? What if to the Mammonism</p><p>Of the Wings of Atalanta 57</p><p>of America be added the rising Mammonism of the re-born South,</p><p>and the Mammonism* of this South be reinforced by the budding</p><p>Mammonism of its half-awakened black millions? Whither, then,</p><p>is the new-world quest of Goodness and Beauty and Truth gone</p><p>glimmering? Must this, and that fair flower of Freedom which,</p><p>despite the jeers of latter-day striplings, sprung from our fathers’</p><p>blood, must that too degenerate into a dusty quest of gold,––into</p><p>lawless lust with Hippomenes?</p><p>The hundred hills of Atlanta are not all crowned with factories.</p><p>On one, toward the west, the setting sun throws three buildings in</p><p>bold relief against the sky. The beauty of the group lies in its simple</p><p>unity:––a broad lawn of green rising from the red street with</p><p>mingled roses and peaches; north and south, two plain and stately</p><p>halls; and in the midst, half hidden in ivy, a larger building, boldly</p><p>graceful, sparingly decorated, and with one low spire. It is a rest-</p><p>ful group,––one never looks for more; it is all here, all intelligible.</p><p>There I live, and there I hear from day to day the low hum of restful</p><p>life. In winter’s twilight, when the red sun glows, I can see the dark</p><p>figures pass between the halls to the music of the night-bell. In the</p><p>morning, when the sun is golden, the clang of the day-bell brings</p><p>the hurry and laughter of three hundred young hearts from hall</p><p>and street, and from the busy city below,––children all dark and</p><p>heavy-haired,––to join their clear young voices in the music of the</p><p>morning sacrifice. In a half-dozen class-rooms they gather then,––</p><p>here to follow the love-song of Dido, here to listen to the tale of Troy</p><p>divine; there to wander among the stars, there to wander among men</p><p>and nations,––and elsewhere other well-worn ways of knowing this</p><p>queer world. Nothing new, no time-saving devices,––simply old</p><p>time-glorified methods of delving for Truth, and searching out the</p><p>hidden beauties of life, and learning the good of living. The riddle of</p><p>existence is the college curriculum that was laid before the Pharaohs,</p><p>that was taught in the groves by Plato, that formed the trivium and</p><p>quadrivium,* and is to-day laid before the freedmen’s sons by Atlanta</p><p>University. And this course of study will not change; its methods</p><p>will grow more deft and effectual, its content richer by toil of scholar</p><p>and sight of seer; but the true college will ever have one goal,––not to</p><p>earn meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat</p><p>nourishes.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk58</p><p>The vision of life that rises before these dark eyes has in it nothing</p><p>mean or selfish. Not at Oxford or at Leipsic, not at Yale or Columbia,</p><p>is there an air of higher resolve or more unfettered striving; the</p><p>determination to realize for men, both black and white, the broadest</p><p>possibilities of life, to seek the better and the best, to spread with</p><p>their own hands the Gospel of Sacrifice,––all this is the burden</p><p>of their talk and dream. Here, amid a wide desert of caste and pro-</p><p>scription, amid the heart-hurting slights and jars and vagaries of a</p><p>deep race-dislike, lies this green oasis, where hot anger cools, and the</p><p>bitterness of disappointment is sweetened by the springs and breezes</p><p>of Parnassus; and here men may lie and listen, and learn of a future</p><p>fuller than the past, and hear the voice of Time:</p><p>“Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren.”*</p><p>They made their mistakes, those who planted Fisk and Howard</p><p>and Atlanta before the smoke of</p><p>battle had lifted; they made their</p><p>mistakes, but those mistakes were not the things at which we lately</p><p>laughed somewhat uproariously. They were right when they sought</p><p>to found a new educational system upon the University: where,</p><p>forsooth, shall we ground knowledge save on the broadest and</p><p>deepest knowledge? The roots of the tree, rather than the leaves,</p><p>are the sources of its life; and from the dawn of history, from</p><p>Academus to Cambridge,* the culture of the University has been</p><p>the broad foundation-stone on which is built the kindergarten’s</p><p>A B C.</p><p>But these builders did make a mistake in minimizing the grav-</p><p>ity of the problem before them; in thinking it a matter of years</p><p>and decades; in therefore building quickly and laying their founda-</p><p>tion carelessly, and lowering the standard of knowing, until they</p><p>had scattered haphazard through the South some dozen poorly</p><p>equipped high schools and miscalled them universities. They for-</p><p>got, too, just as their successors are forgetting, the rule of inequal-</p><p>ity:––that of the million black youth, some were fitted to know and</p><p>some to dig; that some had the talent and capacity of university</p><p>men, and some the talent and capacity of blacksmiths; and that</p><p>true training meant neither that all should be college men nor all</p><p>artisans, but that the one should be made a missionary of culture to</p><p>an untaught people, and the other a free workman among serfs. And</p><p>to seek to make the blacksmith a scholar is almost as silly as the</p><p>Of the Wings of Atalanta 59</p><p>more modern scheme of making the scholar a blacksmith; almost,</p><p>but not quite.</p><p>The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-</p><p>winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a</p><p>centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine</p><p>adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life,</p><p>an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization. Such an insti-</p><p>tution the South of to-day sorely needs. She has religion, earnest,</p><p>bigoted:––religion that on both sides the Veil often omits the sixth,</p><p>seventh, and eighth commandments, but substitutes a dozen sup-</p><p>plementary ones. She has, as Atlanta shows, growing thrift and love</p><p>of toil; but she lacks that broad knowledge of what the world knows</p><p>and knew of human living and doing, which she may apply to the</p><p>thousand problems of real life to-day confronting her. The need of</p><p>the South is knowledge and culture,––not in dainty limited quantity,</p><p>as before the war, but in broad busy abundance in the world of work;</p><p>and until she has this, not all the Apples of Hesperides, be they</p><p>golden and bejewelled, can save her from the curse of the Bœotian</p><p>lovers.</p><p>The Wings of Atalanta are the coming universities of the South.</p><p>They alone can bear the maiden past the temptation of golden fruit.</p><p>They will not guide her flying feet away from the cotton and gold;</p><p>for––ah, thoughtful Hippomenes!––do not the apples lie in the very</p><p>Way of Life? But they will guide her over and beyond them, and</p><p>leave her kneeling in the Sanctuary of Truth and Freedom and broad</p><p>Humanity, virgin and undefiled. Sadly did the Old South err in</p><p>human education, despising the education of the masses, and nig-</p><p>gardly in the support of colleges. Her ancient university foundations</p><p>dwindled and withered under the foul breath of slavery; and even</p><p>since the war they have fought a failing fight for life in the tainted air</p><p>of social unrest and commercial selfishness, stunted by the death of</p><p>criticism, and starving for lack of broadly cultured men. And if this</p><p>is the white South’s need and danger, how much heavier the danger</p><p>and need of the freedmen’s sons! how pressing here the need of</p><p>broad ideals and true culture, the conservation of soul from sordid</p><p>aims and petty passions! Let us build the Southern university––</p><p>William and Mary, Trinity, Georgia, Texas, Tulane, Vanderbilt, and</p><p>the others––fit to live: let us build, too, the Negro universities:––</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk60</p><p>Fisk, whose foundation was ever broad; Howard, at the heart of</p><p>the Nation; Atlanta at Atlanta, whose ideal of scholarship has been</p><p>held above the temptation of numbers. Why not here, and perhaps</p><p>elsewhere, plant deeply and for all time centres of learning and liv-</p><p>ing, colleges that yearly would send into the life of the South a few</p><p>white men and a few black men of broad culture, catholic tolerance,</p><p>and trained ability, joining their hands to other hands, and giving to</p><p>this squabble of the Races a decent and dignified peace?</p><p>Patience, Humility, Manners, and Taste, common schools and</p><p>kindergartens, industrial and technical schools, literature and toler-</p><p>ance,––all these spring from knowledge and culture, the children of</p><p>the university. So must men and nations build, not otherwise, not</p><p>upside down.</p><p>Teach workers to work,––a wise saying; wise when applied to</p><p>German boys and American girls; wiser when said of Negro boys,</p><p>for they have less knowledge of working and none to teach them.</p><p>Teach thinkers to think,––a needed knowledge in a day of loose and</p><p>careless logic; and they whose lot is gravest must have the carefulest</p><p>training to think aright. If these things are so, how foolish to ask</p><p>what is the best education for one or seven or sixty million souls!</p><p>shall we teach them trades, or train them in liberal arts? Neither and</p><p>both: teach the workers to work and the thinkers to think; make</p><p>carpenters of carpenters, and philosophers of philosophers, and fops</p><p>of fools. Nor can we pause here. We are training not isolated men but</p><p>a living group of men,––nay, a group within a group. And the final</p><p>product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brick-</p><p>mason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad,</p><p>pure, and inspiring ends of living,––not sordid money-getting, not</p><p>apples of gold. The worker must work for the glory of his handi-</p><p>work, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for</p><p>fame. And all this is gained only by human strife and longing; by</p><p>ceaseless training and education; by founding Right on righteous-</p><p>ness and Truth on the unhampered search for Truth; by founding</p><p>the common school on the university, and the industrial school on</p><p>the common school; and weaving thus a system, not a distortion, and</p><p>bringing a birth, not an abortion.</p><p>When night falls on the City of a Hundred Hills, a wind gathers</p><p>Of the Wings of Atalanta 61</p><p>itself from the seas and comes murmuring westward. And at its</p><p>bidding, the smoke of the drowsy factories sweeps down upon the</p><p>mighty city and covers it like a pall, while yonder at the University</p><p>the stars twinkle above Stone Hall. And they say that yon gray mist</p><p>is the tunic of Atalanta pausing over her golden apples. Fly, my</p><p>maiden, fly, for yonder comes Hippomenes!</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk62</p><p>vi</p><p>Of the Training of Black Men</p><p>Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,</p><p>And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,</p><p>Were’t not a Shame––were’t not a Shame for him</p><p>In this clay carcase crippled to abide?</p><p>Omar Khayyám (F itzgerald).*</p><p>From the shimmering swirl of waters where many, many thoughts</p><p>ago the slave-ship first saw the square tower of Jamestown, have</p><p>flowed down to our day three streams of thinking: one swollen from</p><p>the larger world here and overseas, saying, the multiplying of human</p><p>wants in culture-lands calls for the world-wide coöperation of men</p><p>in satisfying them. Hence arises a new human unity, pulling the ends</p><p>of earth nearer, and all men, black, yellow, and white. The larger</p><p>humanity strives to feel in this contact of living Nations and sleeping</p><p>hordes a thrill of new life in the world, crying, “If the contact of Life</p><p>and Sleep be Death, shame on such Life.” To be sure, behind this</p><p>thought lurks the afterthought of force and dominion,––the making</p><p>of brown men to delve when the temptation of beads and red calico</p><p>cloys.</p><p>The second thought streaming from the death-ship and the</p><p>curving river is the thought of the older South,––the sincere and</p><p>passionate belief that somewhere between men and cattle, God</p><p>created a tertium quid,* and called it</p><p>a Negro,––a clownish, simple</p><p>creature, at times even lovable within its limitations, but straitly</p><p>foreordained to walk within the Veil. To be sure, behind the thought</p><p>lurks the afterthought,––some of them with favoring chance might</p><p>become men, but in sheer self-defence we dare not let them, and we</p><p>build about them walls so high, and hang between them and the light</p><p>a veil so thick, that they shall not even think of breaking through.</p><p>And last of all there trickles down that third and darker thought,––</p><p>the thought of the things themselves, the confused, half-conscious</p><p>mutter of men who are black and whitened, crying “Liberty,</p><p>Freedom, Opportunity––vouchsafe to us, O boastful World, the</p><p>chance of living men!” To be sure, behind the thought lurks the</p><p>afterthought,––suppose, after all, the World is right and we are less</p><p>than men? Suppose this mad impulse within is all wrong, some mock</p><p>mirage from the untrue?</p><p>So here we stand among thoughts of human unity, even through</p><p>conquest and slavery; the inferiority of black men, even if forced by</p><p>fraud; a shriek in the night for the freedom of men who themselves</p><p>are not yet sure of their right to demand it. This is the tangle of</p><p>thought and afterthought wherein we are called to solve the problem</p><p>of training men for life.</p><p>Behind all its curiousness, so attractive alike to sage and dilettante,</p><p>lie its dim dangers, throwing across us shadows at once grotesque</p><p>and awful. Plain it is to us that what the world seeks through desert</p><p>and wild we have within our threshold,––a stalwart laboring force,</p><p>suited to the semi-tropics; if, deaf to the voice of the Zeitgeist, we</p><p>refuse to use and develop these men, we risk poverty and loss. If, on</p><p>the other hand, seized by the brutal afterthought, we debauch the</p><p>race thus caught in our talons, selfishly sucking their blood and</p><p>brains in the future as in the past, what shall save us from national</p><p>decadence? Only that saner selfishness, which Education teaches</p><p>men, can find the rights of all in the whirl of work.</p><p>Again, we may decry the color-prejudice of the South, yet it</p><p>remains a heavy fact. Such curious kinks of the human mind exist</p><p>and must be reckoned with soberly. They cannot be laughed away,</p><p>nor always successfully stormed at, nor easily abolished by act of</p><p>legislature. And yet they must not be encouraged by being let alone.</p><p>They must be recognized as facts, but unpleasant facts; things that</p><p>stand in the way of civilization and religion and common decency.</p><p>They can be met in but one way,––by the breadth and broadening</p><p>of human reason, by catholicity of taste and culture. And so, too,</p><p>the native ambition and aspiration of men, even though they be</p><p>black, backward, and ungraceful, must not lightly be dealt with. To</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk64</p><p>stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty</p><p>fires; to flout their striving idly is to welcome a harvest of brutish</p><p>crime and shameless lethargy in our very laps. The guiding of</p><p>thought and the deft coordination of deed is at once the path of</p><p>honor and humanity.</p><p>And so, in this great question of reconciling three vast and</p><p>partially contradictory streams of thought, the one panacea of</p><p>Education leaps to the lips of all:––such human training as will best</p><p>use the labor of all men without enslaving or brutalizing; such train-</p><p>ing as will give us poise to encourage the prejudices that bulwark</p><p>society, and to stamp out those that in sheer barbarity deafen us to</p><p>the wail of prisoned souls within the Veil, and the mounting fury of</p><p>shackled men.</p><p>But when we have vaguely said that Education will set this tangle</p><p>straight, what have we uttered but a truism? Training for life teaches</p><p>living; but what training for the profitable living together of black</p><p>men and white? A hundred and fifty years ago our task would have</p><p>seemed easier. Then Dr. Johnson* blandly assured us that education</p><p>was needful solely for the embellishments of life, and was useless</p><p>for ordinary vermin. To-day we have climbed to heights where we</p><p>would open at least the outer courts of knowledge to all, display its</p><p>treasures to many, and select the few to whom its mystery of Truth is</p><p>revealed, not wholly by birth or the accidents of the stock market,</p><p>but at least in part according to deftness and aim, talent and char-</p><p>acter. This programme, however, we are sorely puzzled in carrying</p><p>out through that part of the land where the blight of slavery fell</p><p>hardest, and where we are dealing with two backward peoples. To</p><p>make here in human education that ever necessary combination of</p><p>the permanent and the contingent––of the ideal and the practical in</p><p>workable equilibrium––has been there, as it ever must be in every</p><p>age and place, a matter of infinite experiment and frequent mistakes.</p><p>In rough approximation we may point out four varying decades of</p><p>work in Southern education since the Civil War. From the close of</p><p>the war until 1876, was the period of uncertain groping and tempor-</p><p>ary relief. There were army schools, mission schools, and schools of</p><p>the Freedman’s Bureau in chaotic disarrangement seeking system</p><p>and coöperation. Then followed ten years of constructive definite</p><p>effort toward the building of complete school systems in the South.</p><p>Normal schools and colleges were founded for the freedmen, and</p><p>Of the Training of Black Men 65</p><p>teachers trained there to man the public schools. There was the</p><p>inevitable tendency of war to underestimate the prejudices of the</p><p>master and the ignorance of the slave, and all seemed clear sailing</p><p>out of the wreckage of the storm. Meantime, starting in this decade</p><p>yet especially developing from 1885 to 1895, began the industrial</p><p>revolution of the South. The land saw glimpses of a new destiny and</p><p>the stirring of new ideals. The educational system striving to com-</p><p>plete itself saw new obstacles and a field of work ever broader and</p><p>deeper. The Negro colleges, hurriedly founded, were inadequately</p><p>equipped, illogically distributed, and of varying efficiency and grade;</p><p>the normal and high schools were doing little more than common-</p><p>school work, and the common schools were training but a third of</p><p>the children who ought to be in them, and training these too often</p><p>poorly. At the same time the white South, by reason of its sudden</p><p>conversion from the slavery ideal, by so much the more became set</p><p>and strengthened in its racial prejudice, and crystallized it into harsh</p><p>law and harsher custom; while the marvellous pushing forward of</p><p>the poor white daily threatened to take even bread and butter from</p><p>the mouths of the heavily handicapped sons of the freedmen. In the</p><p>midst, then, of the larger problem of Negro education sprang up the</p><p>more practical question of work, the inevitable economic quandary</p><p>that faces a people in the transition from slavery to freedom, and</p><p>especially those who make that change amid hate and prejudice,</p><p>lawlessness and ruthless competition.</p><p>The industrial school springing to notice in this decade, but com-</p><p>ing to full recognition in the decade beginning with 1895, was the</p><p>proffered answer to this combined educational and economic crisis,</p><p>and an answer of singular wisdom and timeliness. From the very</p><p>first in nearly all the schools some attention had been given to train-</p><p>ing in handiwork, but now was this training first raised to a dignity</p><p>that brought it in direct touch with the South’s magnificent indus-</p><p>trial development, and given an emphasis which reminded black folk</p><p>that before the Temple of Knowledge swing the Gates of Toil.</p><p>Yet after all they are but gates, and when turning our eyes from the</p><p>temporary and the contingent in the Negro problem to the broader</p><p>question of the permanent uplifting and civilization of black men in</p><p>America, we have a right to inquire, as this enthusiasm for material</p><p>advancement mounts to its height, if after all the industrial school is</p><p>the final and sufficient answer in the training of the Negro race; and</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk66</p><p>to ask gently, but in all sincerity, the ever-recurring query of the ages,</p><p>Is not life more than meat, and the</p><p>body more than raiment? And</p><p>men ask this to-day all the more eagerly because of sinister signs in</p><p>recent educational movements. The tendency is here, born of slavery</p><p>and quickened to renewed life by the crazy imperialism of the day,</p><p>to regard human beings as among the material resources of a land to</p><p>be trained with an eye single to future dividends. Race-prejudices,</p><p>which keep brown and black men in their “places,” we are coming to</p><p>regard as useful allies with such a theory, no matter how much they</p><p>may dull the ambition and sicken the hearts of struggling human</p><p>beings. And above all, we daily hear that an education that encour-</p><p>ages aspiration, that sets the loftiest of ideals and seeks as an end</p><p>culture and character rather than breadwinning, is the privilege of</p><p>white men and the danger and delusion of black.</p><p>Especially has criticism been directed against the former educa-</p><p>tional efforts to aid the Negro. In the four periods I have mentioned,</p><p>we find first, boundless, planless enthusiasm and sacrifice; then the</p><p>preparation of teachers for a vast public-school system; then the</p><p>launching and expansion of that school system amid increasing</p><p>difficulties; and finally the training of workmen for the new and</p><p>growing industries. This development has been sharply ridiculed as</p><p>a logical anomaly and flat reversal of nature. Soothly we have been</p><p>told that first industrial and manual training should have taught the</p><p>Negro to work, then simple schools should have taught him to read</p><p>and write, and finally, after years, high and normal schools could</p><p>have completed the system, as intelligence and wealth demanded.</p><p>That a system logically so complete was historically impossible,</p><p>it needs but a little thought to prove. Progress in human affairs is</p><p>more often a pull than a push, surging forward of the exceptional</p><p>man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to</p><p>his vantage-ground. Thus it was no accident that gave birth to</p><p>universities centuries before the common schools, that made fair</p><p>Harvard the first flower of our wilderness. So in the South: the mass</p><p>of the freedmen at the end of the war lacked the intelligence so</p><p>necessary to modern workingmen. They must first have the common</p><p>school to teach them to read, write, and cipher; and they must have</p><p>higher schools to teach teachers for the common schools. The white</p><p>teachers who flocked South went to establish such a common-school</p><p>system. Few held the idea of founding colleges; most of them at first</p><p>Of the Training of Black Men 67</p><p>would have laughed at the idea. But they faced, as all men since them</p><p>have faced, that central paradox of the South,––the social separation</p><p>of the races. At that time it was the sudden volcanic rupture of nearly</p><p>all relations between black and white, in work and government and</p><p>family life. Since then a new adjustment of relations in economic and</p><p>political affairs has grown up,––an adjustment subtle and difficult</p><p>to grasp, yet singularly ingenious, which leaves still that frightful</p><p>chasm at the color-line across which men pass at their peril. Thus,</p><p>then and now, there stand in the South two separate worlds; and</p><p>separate not simply in the higher realms of social intercourse, but</p><p>also in church and school, on railway and street-car, in hotels and</p><p>theatres, in streets and city sections, in books and newspapers, in</p><p>asylums and jails, in hospitals and graveyards. There is still enough</p><p>of contact for large economic and group coöperation, but the separ-</p><p>ation is so thorough and deep that it absolutely precludes for the</p><p>present between the races anything like that sympathetic and effect-</p><p>ive group-training and leadership of the one by the other, such as the</p><p>American Negro and all backward peoples must have for effectual</p><p>progress.</p><p>This the missionaries of ’68 soon saw; and if effective industrial</p><p>and trade schools were impracticable before the establishment of a</p><p>common-school system, just as certainly no adequate common</p><p>schools could be founded until there were teachers to teach them.</p><p>Southern whites would not teach them; Northern whites in suf-</p><p>ficient numbers could not be had. If the Negro was to learn, he</p><p>must teach himself, and the most effective help that could be given</p><p>him was the establishment of schools to train Negro teachers. This</p><p>conclusion was slowly but surely reached by every student of the</p><p>situation until simultaneously, in widely separated regions, without</p><p>consultation or systematic plan, there arose a series of institutions</p><p>designed to furnish teachers for the untaught. Above the sneers of</p><p>critics at the obvious defects of this procedure must ever stand its</p><p>one crushing rejoinder: in a single generation they put thirty thou-</p><p>sand black teachers in the South; they wiped out the illiteracy of the</p><p>majority of the black people of the land, and they made Tuskegee</p><p>possible.</p><p>Such higher training-schools tended naturally to deepen broader</p><p>development: at first they were common and grammar schools, then</p><p>some became high schools. And finally, by 1900, some thirty-four</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk68</p><p>had one year or more of studies of college grade. This development</p><p>was reached with different degrees of speed in different institutions:</p><p>Hampton is still a high school, while Fisk University started her</p><p>college in 1871, and Spelman Seminary* about 1896. In all cases the</p><p>aim was identical,––to maintain the standards of the lower training</p><p>by giving teachers and leaders the best practicable training; and</p><p>above all, to furnish the black world with adequate standards of</p><p>human culture and lofty ideals of life. It was not enough that the</p><p>teachers of teachers should be trained in technical normal methods;</p><p>they must also, so far as possible, be broad-minded, cultured men and</p><p>women, to scatter civilization among a people whose ignorance was</p><p>not simply of letters, but of life itself.</p><p>It can thus be seen that the work of education in the South began</p><p>with higher institutions of training, which threw off as their foliage</p><p>common schools, and later industrial schools, and at the same time</p><p>strove to shoot their roots ever deeper toward college and university</p><p>training. That this was an inevitable and necessary development,</p><p>sooner or later, goes without saying; but there has been, and still is, a</p><p>question in many minds if the natural growth was not forced, and if</p><p>the higher training was not either overdone or done with cheap and</p><p>unsound methods. Among white Southerners this feeling is wide-</p><p>spread and positive. A prominent Southern journal voiced this in a</p><p>recent editorial.</p><p>“The experiment that has been made to give the colored students classical</p><p>training has not been satisfactory. Even though many were able to pursue</p><p>the course, most of them did so in a parrot-like way, learning what was</p><p>taught, but not seeming to appropriate the truth and import of their</p><p>instruction, and graduating without sensible aim or valuable occupation</p><p>for their future. The whole scheme has proved a waste of time, efforts, and</p><p>the money of the state.”</p><p>While most fair-minded men would recognize this as extreme</p><p>and overdrawn, still without doubt many are asking, Are there a</p><p>sufficient number of Negroes ready for college training to warrant</p><p>the undertaking? Are not too many students prematurely forced into</p><p>this work? Does it not have the effect of dissatisfying the young</p><p>Negro with his environment? And do these graduates succeed in</p><p>real life? Such natural questions cannot be evaded, nor on the other</p><p>hand must a Nation naturally skeptical as to Negro ability assume an</p><p>Of the Training of Black Men 69</p><p>unfavorable answer without careful inquiry and patient openness</p><p>to conviction. We must not forget that most Americans answer all</p><p>queries regarding the Negro a priori, and that the least that human</p><p>courtesy can do is to listen to evidence.</p><p>The advocates of the higher education of the Negro would be the</p><p>last to deny the incompleteness and glaring defects of the present</p><p>system: too many institutions have attempted to do college work, the</p><p>work in some cases has not been thoroughly</p><p>done, and quantity</p><p>rather than quality has sometimes been sought. But all this can be</p><p>said of higher education throughout the land; it is the almost inevit-</p><p>able incident of educational growth, and leaves the deeper question of</p><p>the legitimate demand for the higher training of Negroes untouched.</p><p>And this latter question can be settled in but one way,––by a first-</p><p>hand study of the facts. If we leave out of view all institutions which</p><p>have not actually graduated students from a course higher than that</p><p>of a New England high school, even though they be called colleges;</p><p>if then we take the thirty-four remaining institutions, we may clear</p><p>up many misapprehensions by asking searchingly, What kind of</p><p>institutions are they? what do they teach? and what sort of men do</p><p>they graduate?</p><p>And first we may say that this type of college, including Atlanta,</p><p>Fisk, and Howard, Wilberforce and Lincoln, Biddle, Shaw,* and</p><p>the rest, is peculiar, almost unique. Through the shining trees</p><p>that whisper before me as I write, I catch glimpses of a boulder of</p><p>New England granite, covering a grave, which graduates of Atlanta</p><p>University have placed there, with this inscription:</p><p>“in grateful memory of their</p><p>former teacher and friend*</p><p>and of the unselfish life he</p><p>lived, and the noble work he</p><p>wrought; that they, their</p><p>children, and their children’s</p><p>children might be</p><p>blessed.”</p><p>This was the gift of New England to the freed Negro: not alms,</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk70</p><p>but a friend; not cash, but character. It was not and is not money</p><p>these seething millions want, but love and sympathy, the pulse of</p><p>hearts beating with red blood;––a gift which to-day only their own</p><p>kindred and race can bring to the masses, but which once saintly</p><p>souls brought to their favored children in the crusade of the sixties,</p><p>that finest thing in American history, and one of the few things</p><p>untainted by sordid greed and cheap vainglory. The teachers in these</p><p>institutions came not to keep the Negroes in their place, but to raise</p><p>them out of the defilement of the places where slavery had wallowed</p><p>them. The colleges they founded were social settlements; homes</p><p>where the best of the sons of the freedmen came in close and sympa-</p><p>thetic touch with the best traditions of New England. They lived</p><p>and ate together, studied and worked, hoped and harkened in the</p><p>dawning light. In actual formal content their curriculum was doubt-</p><p>less old-fashioned, but in educational power it was supreme, for it</p><p>was the contact of living souls.</p><p>From such schools about two thousand Negroes have gone forth</p><p>with the bachelor’s degree. The number in itself is enough to put at</p><p>rest the argument that too large a proportion of Negroes are receiv-</p><p>ing higher training. If the ratio to population of all Negro students</p><p>throughout the land, in both college and secondary training, be</p><p>counted, Commissioner Harris assures us “it must be increased to</p><p>five times its present average” to equal the average of the land.</p><p>Fifty years ago the ability of Negro students in any appreciable</p><p>numbers to master a modern college course would have been dif-</p><p>ficult to prove. To-day it is proved by the fact that four hundred</p><p>Negroes, many of whom have been reported as brilliant students,</p><p>have received the bachelor’s degree from Harvard, Yale, Oberlin,</p><p>and seventy other leading colleges. Here we have, then, nearly</p><p>twenty-five hundred Negro graduates, of whom the crucial query</p><p>must be made, How far did their training fit them for life? It is of</p><p>course extremely difficult to collect satisfactory data on such a</p><p>point,––difficult to reach the men, to get trustworthy testimony,</p><p>and to gauge that testimony by any generally acceptable criterion of</p><p>success. In 1900, the Conference at Atlanta University* undertook to</p><p>study these graduates, and published the results. First they sought</p><p>to know what these graduates were doing, and succeeded in getting</p><p>answers from nearly two-thirds of the living. The direct testimony</p><p>was in almost all cases corroborated by the reports of the colleges</p><p>Of the Training of Black Men 71</p><p>where they graduated, so that in the main the reports were worthy of</p><p>credence. Fifty-three per cent of these graduates were teachers,––</p><p>presidents of institutions, heads of normal schools, principals of city</p><p>school-systems, and the like. Seventeen per cent were clergymen;</p><p>another seventeen per cent were in the professions, chiefly as phys-</p><p>icians. Over six per cent were merchants, farmers, and artisans,</p><p>and four per cent were in the government civil-service. Granting</p><p>even that a considerable proportion of the third unheard from are</p><p>unsuccessful, this is a record of usefulness. Personally I know many</p><p>hundreds of these graduates, and have corresponded with more than</p><p>a thousand; through others I have followed carefully the life-work of</p><p>scores; I have taught some of them and some of the pupils whom</p><p>they have taught, lived in homes which they have builded, and</p><p>looked at life through their eyes. Comparing them as a class with my</p><p>fellow students in New England and in Europe, I cannot hesitate in</p><p>saying that nowhere have I met men and women with a broader spirit</p><p>of helpfulness, with deeper devotion to their life-work, or with more</p><p>consecrated determination to succeed in the face of bitter difficulties</p><p>than among Negro college-bred men. They have, to be sure, their</p><p>proportion of ne’er-do-weels, their pedants and lettered fools, but</p><p>they have a surprisingly small proportion of them; they have not that</p><p>culture of manner which we instinctively associate with university</p><p>men, forgetting that in reality it is the heritage from cultured homes,</p><p>and that no people a generation removed from slavery can escape</p><p>a certain unpleasant rawness and gaucherie,* despite the best of</p><p>training.</p><p>With all their larger vision and deeper sensibility, these men have</p><p>usually been conservative, careful leaders. They have seldom been</p><p>agitators, have withstood the temptation to head the mob, and have</p><p>worked steadily and faithfully in a thousand communities in the</p><p>South. As teachers, they have given the South a commendable sys-</p><p>tem of city schools and large numbers of private normal-schools and</p><p>academies. Colored college-bred men have worked side by side with</p><p>white college graduates at Hampton; almost from the beginning the</p><p>backbone of Tuskegee’s teaching force has been formed of graduates</p><p>from Fisk and Atlanta. And to-day the institute is filled with college</p><p>graduates, from the energetic wife of the principal* down to the</p><p>teacher of agriculture, including nearly half of the executive council</p><p>and a majority of the heads of departments. In the professions,</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk72</p><p>college men are slowly but surely leavening the Negro church, are</p><p>healing and preventing the devastations of disease, and beginning to</p><p>furnish legal protection for the liberty and property of the toiling</p><p>masses. All this is needful work. Who would do it if Negroes did</p><p>not? How could Negroes do it if they were not trained carefully</p><p>for it? If white people need colleges to furnish teachers, ministers,</p><p>lawyers, and doctors, do black people need nothing of the sort?</p><p>If it is true that there are an appreciable number of Negro youth in</p><p>the land capable by character and talent to receive that higher train-</p><p>ing, the end of which is culture, and if the two and a half thousand</p><p>who have had something of this training in the past have in the main</p><p>proved themselves useful to their race and generation, the question</p><p>then comes, What place in the future development of the South</p><p>ought the Negro college and college-bred man to occupy? That the</p><p>present social separation and acute race-sensitiveness must eventu-</p><p>ally yield to the influences of culture, as the South grows civilized,</p><p>is clear. But such transformation calls for singular wisdom and</p><p>patience. If, while the healing of this vast sore is progressing, the</p><p>races are to live for many years side by side, united in economic</p><p>effort, obeying a common government, sensitive to mutual thought</p><p>and feeling, yet subtly and silently separate</p><p>better the condition of former slaves during the Reconstruction</p><p>era. Chapter III, ‘Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others’, is an</p><p>unsparing critique of the accommodationist politics of the most</p><p>powerful black leader of the period, especially with regard to his</p><p>emphasis on industrial training for blacks in the South. The next</p><p>two chapters escort the reader ‘within and without the Veil’, with a</p><p>portrait of black rural life in Tennessee (based on Du Bois’s experi-</p><p>ences as a college student working two summers as a schoolteacher),</p><p>and an examination of Atlanta, warning against the ‘lust for gold’:</p><p>‘Atlanta must not lead the South to dream of material prosperity as</p><p>the touchstone of all success’ (p. 56). Chapter VI, ‘Of the Training</p><p>of Black Men’, amplifies Du Bois’s central argument for the import-</p><p>ance of higher education––black colleges and universities devoted</p><p>to a liberal arts curriculum rather than simply the trade instruction</p><p>favoured by Washington––in the uplift of the population. The next</p><p>three chapters, rich with detail and the transcribed voices of indi-</p><p>vidual African Americans in Dougherty County, Georgia, offer a</p><p>powerful indictment of the impact of debt, racism, and segregation</p><p>on the ‘Black Belt’ of the South. Chapters X to XII introduce the</p><p>reader to the ‘deeper recesses’ of black life ‘within the Veil’: ‘Of the</p><p>Faith of the Fathers’ emphasizes the crucial role of the black church,</p><p>the ‘first Afro-American institution’ and the ‘expression of the inner</p><p>ethical life of a people’ (pp. 132, 133), while in ‘Of the Passing of the</p><p>First-Born’, Du Bois offers a poignant eulogy to his own infant son,</p><p>who had died of diphtheria in 1899, as an instance of a broader black</p><p>‘human sorrow’; Chapter XII, a biography of Alexander Crummell,</p><p>pays tribute to the nineteenth-century black intellectual who influ-</p><p>enced Du Bois most deeply. The Souls of Black Folk concludes with a</p><p>short story, ‘Of the Coming of John’, which returns in tragic tones to</p><p>the themes of Chapters VI and IX, and a magisterial interpretation</p><p>of the Negro spirituals or ‘Sorrow Songs’, for Du Bois the pinnacle</p><p>of American cultural achievement.</p><p>One way to gain a sense of the depth of revision Du Bois under-</p><p>took in assembling Souls is to compare the first chapter, ‘Of Our</p><p>Spiritual Strivings’, with the speech ‘The Conservation of Races’,</p><p>included in this edition as Appendix I. ‘The Conservation of Races’</p><p>was delivered in March 1897 at the first meeting of the American</p><p>Negro Academy, an organization aiming to promote black scholarly</p><p>achievement that had been founded by Crummell. In August of the</p><p>Introduction xi</p><p>same year, Du Bois published ‘Strivings of the Negro People’, the</p><p>essay which he would revise into the first chapter of Souls. The two</p><p>pieces are both attempts to make sense of the position of peoples of</p><p>African descent in the world at the turn of the century, and to</p><p>consider the proper role of the African American intellectual as an</p><p>advocate for, and leader of, his people. Although there are a number</p><p>of echoes in phrase and theme, the two pieces differ markedly in</p><p>approach. In recent years, some scholars have argued that ‘The</p><p>Conservation of Races’ gives evidence of Du Bois’s commitment</p><p>to a problematic understanding of ‘race’ grounded in biological</p><p>essence.11 Although Du Bois notes the vagueness of the term, he</p><p>nonetheless considers the ‘race idea’ to provide what he calls</p><p>‘efficiency as the vastest and most ingenious invention for human</p><p>progress’, seemingly because it inspires ‘growth’ through collective</p><p>pursuit and achievement. Throughout the piece, Du Bois struggles</p><p>awkwardly to theorize race beyond ‘scientific definition’, in a manner</p><p>that would admit differences of ‘common blood, descent and phys-</p><p>ical peculiarities’ but also attend to the other ‘subtle forces’ that have</p><p>‘separated men into groups’. He ultimately fails to explain these</p><p>‘deeper differences’, which he describes in vague terms as ‘spiritual,</p><p>psychical, differences––undoubtedly based on the physical, but</p><p>infinitely transcending them’ (p. 182). Here, the confrontation of</p><p>racial difference leaves the American Negro in a state of ‘self-</p><p>questioning and hesitation’ with regard to his proper relation to</p><p>the United States:</p><p>Here, then, is the dilemma, and it is a puzzling one, I admit. No Negro</p><p>who has given earnest thought to the situation of his people in America</p><p>has failed, at some time in life, to find himself at these cross-roads; has</p><p>failed to ask himself at some time: What, after all, am I? Am I an American</p><p>or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be a Negro</p><p>as soon as possible and be an American? If I strive as a Negro, am I not</p><p>perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates Black and White</p><p>11 For this debate, see Anthony Appiah, ‘The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and</p><p>the Illusion of Race’, in Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed.), ‘Race’, Writing, and Difference</p><p>(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 21–37; and the responses to Appiah in</p><p>Bernard W. Bell, Emily Grosholz, and James B. Stewart (eds.), W. E. B. Du Bois on Race</p><p>and Culture: Philosophy, Politics, and Poetics (New York: Routledge, 1996), esp. Lucius</p><p>Outlaw, ‘ “Conserve” Races? In Defense of W. E. B. Du Bois’, 15–38; see also Alys</p><p>Weinbaum, Wayward Reproductions: Genealogies of Race and Nation in Transatlantic</p><p>Modern Thought (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 226–8.</p><p>Introductionxii</p><p>America? Is not my only possible practical aim the subduction of all that is</p><p>Negro in me to the American? Does my black blood place upon me any</p><p>more obligation to assert my nationality than German, or Irish or Italian</p><p>blood would?</p><p>It is such incessant self-questioning and the hesitation that arises from</p><p>it, that is making the present period a time of vacillation and contradiction</p><p>for the American Negro. (p. 184)</p><p>In ‘Strivings of the Negro People’, especially as it is revised into</p><p>the first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, there is a wholesale</p><p>rethinking of this passage. In place of the individual doubt expressed</p><p>in ‘The Conservation of Races’, the later piece announces a theory of</p><p>what Du Bois calls ‘double consciousness’.12 There is no longer the</p><p>insistence on defining the term ‘race’; in its place is a nuanced con-</p><p>sideration of the impact of prejudice, in situations of social inter-</p><p>action, on black consciousness. Thus Du Bois introduces the topic in</p><p>the first person, narrating the first occasion in his childhood when he</p><p>was faced with the ‘shadow’ of discrimination. Thus he describes it</p><p>as a ‘strange experience’, better described through a literary figure</p><p>(‘a vast veil’) than a sociological category (race). The subsequent</p><p>passage is one of the most often quoted in twentieth-century</p><p>American literature:</p><p>After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and</p><p>Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted</p><p>with second-sight in this American world,––a world which yields him</p><p>no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the</p><p>revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-</p><p>consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes</p><p>of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in</p><p>amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,––an American, a</p><p>Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring</p><p>ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being</p><p>torn asunder.</p><p>The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,––this</p><p>12 A number of scholars have traced possible sources for Du Bois’s adoption of this</p><p>term both in the American Transcendentalism of Emerson and in the ‘new psychology’</p><p>of Du Bois’s former teacher William James. See esp. Rampersad, Art and Imagination of</p><p>W. E. B. Du Bois, 68–90; Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., ‘W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of</p><p>Double Consciousness’, American Literature 64/2 (June 1992), 299–309; and Shamoon</p><p>Zamir, Dark Voices: W. E. B. Du Bois and American Thought, 1888–1903</p><p>in many matters of</p><p>deeper human intimacy,––if this unusual and dangerous development</p><p>is to progress amid peace and order, mutual respect and growing</p><p>intelligence, it will call for social surgery at once the delicatest and</p><p>nicest in modern history. It will demand broad-minded, upright men,</p><p>both white and black, and in its final accomplishment American</p><p>civilization will triumph. So far as white men are concerned, this fact</p><p>is to-day being recognized in the South, and a happy renaissance</p><p>of university education seems imminent. But the very voices that</p><p>cry hail to this good work are, strange to relate, largely silent or</p><p>antagonistic to the higher education of the Negro.</p><p>Strange to relate! for this is certain, no secure civilization can be</p><p>built in the South with the Negro as an ignorant, turbulent prole-</p><p>tariat. Suppose we seek to remedy this by making them laborers and</p><p>nothing more: they are not fools, they have tasted of the Tree of Life,</p><p>and they will not cease to think, will not cease attempting to read the</p><p>riddle of the world. By taking away their best equipped teachers and</p><p>leaders, by slamming the door of opportunity in the faces of their</p><p>bolder and brighter minds, will you make them satisfied with their</p><p>Of the Training of Black Men 73</p><p>lot? or will you not rather transfer their leading from the hands of</p><p>men taught to think to the hands of untrained demagogues? We</p><p>ought not to forget that despite the pressure of poverty, and despite</p><p>the active discouragement and even ridicule of friends, the demand</p><p>for higher training steadily increases among Negro youth: there</p><p>were, in the years from 1875 to 1880, 22 Negro graduates from</p><p>Northern colleges; from 1885 to 1890 there were 43, and from 1895</p><p>to 1900, nearly 100 graduates. From Southern Negro colleges there</p><p>were, in the same three periods, 143, 413, and over 500 graduates.</p><p>Here, then, is the plain thirst for training; by refusing to give this</p><p>Talented Tenth* the key to knowledge, can any sane man imagine that</p><p>they will lightly lay aside their yearning and contentedly become</p><p>bewers of wood and drawers of water?</p><p>No. The dangerously clear logic of the Negro’s position will more</p><p>and more loudly assert itself in that day when increasing wealth and</p><p>more intricate social organization preclude the South from being, as</p><p>it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk.</p><p>Such waste of energy cannot be spared if the South is to catch up</p><p>with civilization. And as the black third of the land grows in thrift</p><p>and skill, unless skilfully guided in its larger philosophy, it must</p><p>more and more brood over the red past and the creeping, crooked</p><p>present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt and revenge and throws</p><p>its new-found energies athwart the current of advance. Even to-day</p><p>the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their</p><p>position and the moral crookedness of yours. You may marshal</p><p>strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries, lacking</p><p>though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them</p><p>which you may not wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen! If you</p><p>deplore their presence here, they ask, Who brought us? When you</p><p>cry, Deliver us from the vision of intermarriage, they answer that</p><p>legal marriage is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and</p><p>prostitution. And if in just fury you accuse their vagabonds of violat-</p><p>ing women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The wrong</p><p>which your gentlemen have done against helpless black women in</p><p>defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two millions</p><p>of mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable blood. And finally, when</p><p>you fasten crime upon this race as its peculiar trait, they answer that</p><p>slavery was the arch-crime, and lynching and lawlessness its twin</p><p>abortion; that color and race are not crimes, and yet they it is which</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk74</p><p>in this land receives most unceasing condemnation, North, East,</p><p>South, and West.</p><p>I will not say such arguments are wholly justified,––I will not</p><p>insist that there is no other side to the shield; but I do say that of the</p><p>nine millions of Negroes in this nation, there is scarcely one out of</p><p>the cradle to whom these arguments do not daily present themselves</p><p>in the guise of terrible truth. I insist that the question of the future is</p><p>how best to keep these millions from brooding over the wrongs of</p><p>the past and the difficulties of the present, so that all their energies</p><p>may be bent toward a cheerful striving and co-operation with their</p><p>white neighbors toward a larger, juster, and fuller future. That one</p><p>wise method of doing this lies in the closer knitting of the Negro to</p><p>the great industrial possibilities of the South is a great truth. And</p><p>this the common schools and the manual training and trade schools</p><p>are working to accomplish. But these alone are not enough. The</p><p>foundations of knowledge in this race, as in others, must be sunk</p><p>deep in the college and university if we would build a solid, perman-</p><p>ent structure. Internal problems of social advance must inevitably</p><p>come,––problems of work and wages, of families and homes, of</p><p>morals and the true valuing of the things of life; and all these and</p><p>other inevitable problems of civilization the Negro must meet and</p><p>solve largely for himself, by reason of his isolation; and can there be</p><p>any possible solution other than by study and thought and an appeal</p><p>to the rich experience of the past? Is there not, with such a group</p><p>and in such a crisis, infinitely more danger to be apprehended from</p><p>half-trained minds and shallow thinking than from over-education</p><p>and over-refinement? Surely we have wit enough to found a Negro</p><p>college so manned and equipped as to steer successfully between the</p><p>dilettante and the fool. We shall hardly induce black men to believe</p><p>that if their stomachs be full, it matters little about their brains.</p><p>They already dimly perceive that the paths of peace winding between</p><p>honest toil and dignified manhood call for the guidance of skilled</p><p>thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the black lowly</p><p>and the black men emancipated by training and culture.</p><p>The function of the Negro college, then, is clear: it must maintain</p><p>the standards of popular education, it must seek the social regener-</p><p>ation of the Negro, and it must help in the solution of problems of</p><p>race contact and co-operation. And finally, beyond all this, it must</p><p>develop men. Above our modern socialism, and out of the worship</p><p>Of the Training of Black Men 75</p><p>of the mass, must persist and evolve that higher individualism which</p><p>the centres of culture protect; there must come a loftier respect for</p><p>the sovereign human soul that seeks to know itself and the world</p><p>about it; that seeks a freedom for expansion and self-development;</p><p>that will love and hate and labor in its own way, untrammeled alike</p><p>by old and new. Such souls aforetime have inspired and guided</p><p>worlds, and if we be not wholly bewitched by our Rhine-gold, they</p><p>shall again. Herein the longing of black men must have respect: the</p><p>rich and bitter depth of their experience, the unknown treasures of</p><p>their inner life, the strange rendings of nature they have seen, may</p><p>give the world new points of view and make their loving, living, and</p><p>doing precious to all human hearts. And to themselves in these the</p><p>days that try their souls, the chance to soar in the dim blue air above</p><p>the smoke is to their finer spirits boon and guerdon for what they</p><p>lose on earth by being black.</p><p>I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line</p><p>I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and</p><p>welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of even-</p><p>ing that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of</p><p>the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and</p><p>they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed</p><p>with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us,</p><p>O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull</p><p>red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest</p><p>peering from this</p><p>high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite,* we sight the Promised</p><p>Land?</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk76</p><p>vii</p><p>Of the Black Belt</p><p>I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,</p><p>As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.</p><p>Look not upon me, because I am black,</p><p>Because the sun hath looked upon me:</p><p>My mother’s children were angry with me;</p><p>They made me the keeper of the vineyards;</p><p>But mine own vineyard have I not kept.</p><p>The Song of Solomon*</p><p>Out of the North the train thundered, and we woke to see the</p><p>crimson soil of Georgia stretching away bare and monotonous right</p><p>and left. Here and there lay straggling, unlovely villages, and lean</p><p>men loafed leisurely at the depots; then again came the stretch of</p><p>pines and clay. Yet we did not nod, nor weary of the scene; for this is</p><p>historic ground. Right across our track, three hundred and sixty</p><p>years ago, wandered the cavalcade of Hernando de Soto,* looking for</p><p>gold and the Great Sea; and he and his foot-sore captives dis-</p><p>appeared yonder in the grim forests to the west. Here sits Atlanta,</p><p>the city of a hundred hills, with something Western, something</p><p>Southern, and something quite its own, in its busy life. And a little</p><p>past Atlanta, to the southwest, is the land of the Cherokees, and</p><p>there, not far from where Sam Hose* was crucified, you may stand on</p><p>a spot which is to-day the centre of the Negro problem,––the centre</p><p>of those nine million men who are America’s dark heritage from</p><p>slavery and the slave-trade.</p><p>Not only is Georgia thus the geographical focus of our Negro</p><p>population, but in many other respects, both now and yesterday, the</p><p>Negro problems have seemed to be centered in this State. No other</p><p>State in the Union can count a million Negroes among its citizens,</p><p>––a population as large as the slave population of the whole Union</p><p>in 1800; no other State fought so long and strenuously to gather this</p><p>host of Africans. Oglethorpe* thought slavery against law and</p><p>gospel; but the circumstances which gave Georgia its first inhabit-</p><p>ants were not calculated to furnish citizens over-nice in their ideas</p><p>about rum and slaves. Despite the prohibitions of the trustees,</p><p>these Georgians, like some of their descendants, proceeded to take</p><p>the law into their own hands; and so pliant were the judges, and so</p><p>flagrant the smuggling, and so earnest were the prayers of White-</p><p>field,* that by the middle of the eighteenth century all restrictions</p><p>were swept away, and the slave-trade went merrily on for fifty years</p><p>and more.</p><p>Down in Darien, where the Delegal riots* took place some sum-</p><p>mers ago, there used to come a strong protest against slavery from</p><p>the Scotch Highlanders; and the Moravians of Ebenezea* did not like</p><p>the system. But not till the Haytian Terror of Toussaint* was the</p><p>trade in men even checked; while the national statute of 1808* did not</p><p>suffice to stop it. How the Africans poured in!––fifty thousand</p><p>between 1790 and 1810, and then, from Virginia and from smug-</p><p>glers, two thousand a year for many years more. So the thirty thou-</p><p>sand Negroes of Georgia in 1790 were doubled in a decade,––were</p><p>over a hundred thousand in 1810, had reached two hundred thou-</p><p>sand in 1820, and half a million at the time of the war. Thus like a</p><p>snake the black population writhed upward.</p><p>But we must hasten on our journey. This that we pass as we leave</p><p>Atlanta is the ancient land of the Cherokees,––that brave Indian</p><p>nation which strove so long for its fatherland, until Fate and the</p><p>United States Government drove them beyond the Mississippi. If</p><p>you wish to ride with me you must come into the “Jim Crow Car.”</p><p>There will be no objection,––already four other white men, and a</p><p>little white girl with her nurse, are in there. Usually the races are</p><p>mixed in there; but the white coach is all white. Of course this car is</p><p>not so good as the other, but it is fairly clean and comfortable.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk78</p><p>The discomfort lies chiefly in the hearts of those four black men</p><p>yonder––and in mine.</p><p>We rumble south in quite a business-like way. The bare red clay</p><p>and pines of Northern Georgia begin to disappear, and in their place</p><p>appears a rich rolling land, luxuriant, and here and there well tilled.</p><p>This is the land of the Creek Indians; and a hard time the Georgians</p><p>had to seize it. The towns grow more frequent and more interesting,</p><p>and brand-new cotton mills rise on every side. Below Macon the</p><p>world grows darker; for now we approach the Black Belt,––that</p><p>strange land of shadows, at which even slaves paled in the past, and</p><p>whence come now only faint and half-intelligible murmurs to the</p><p>world beyond. The “Jim Crow Car” grows larger and a shade better;</p><p>three rough field-hands and two or three white loafers accompany us,</p><p>and the newsboy still spreads his wares at one end. The sun is</p><p>setting, but we can see the great cotton country as we enter it,––the</p><p>soil now dark and fertile, now thin and gray, with fruit-trees and</p><p>dilapidated buildings,––all the way to Albany.</p><p>At Albany, in the heart of the Black Belt, we stop. Two hundred</p><p>miles south of Atlanta, two hundred miles west of the Atlantic, and</p><p>one hundred miles north of the Great Gulf lies Dougherty County,</p><p>with ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites. The Flint</p><p>River winds down from Andersonville, and, turning suddenly at</p><p>Albany, the county-seat, hurries on to join the Chattahoochee and</p><p>the sea. Andrew Jackson knew the Flint well, and marched across it</p><p>once to avenge the Indian Massacre at Fort Mims. That was in 1814,</p><p>not long before the battle of New Orleans; and by the Creek treaty</p><p>that followed this campaign, all Dougherty County, and much other</p><p>rich land, was ceded to Georgia. Still, settlers fought shy of this land,</p><p>for the Indians were all about, and they were unpleasant neighbors</p><p>in those days. The panic of 1837, which Jackson bequeathed to</p><p>Van Buren, turned the planters from the impoverished lands of</p><p>Virginia, the Carolinas, and east Georgia, toward the West. The</p><p>Indians were removed to Indian Territory, and settlers poured into</p><p>these coveted lands to retrieve their broken fortunes. For a radius of</p><p>a hundred miles about Albany, stretched a great fertile land, luxuri-</p><p>ant with forests of pine, oak, ash, hickory, and poplar; hot with</p><p>the sun and damp with the rich black swamp-land; and here the</p><p>corner-stone of the Cotton Kingdom was laid.</p><p>Albany is to-day a wide-streeted, placid, Southern town, with a</p><p>Of the Black Belt 79</p><p>broad sweep of stores and saloons, and flanking rows of homes,––</p><p>whites usually to the north, and blacks to the south. Six days in the</p><p>week the town looks decidedly too small for itself, and takes frequent</p><p>and prolonged naps. But on Saturday suddenly the whole county</p><p>disgorges itself upon the place, and a perfect flood of black peasantry</p><p>pours through the streets, fills the stores, blocks the sidewalks,</p><p>chokes the thoroughfares, and takes full possession of the town.</p><p>They are black, sturdy, uncouth country folk, good-natured and</p><p>simple, talkative to a degree, and yet far more silent and brooding</p><p>than the crowds of the Rhine-pfalz, or Naples, or Cracow. They</p><p>drink considerable quantities of whiskey, but do not get very drunk;</p><p>they talk and laugh loudly at times, but seldom quarrel or fight.</p><p>They walk up and down the streets, meet and gossip with friends,</p><p>stare at the shop windows, buy coffee, cheap candy, and clothes, and</p><p>at dusk drive home––happy? well no, not exactly happy, but much</p><p>happier than as though they had not come.</p><p>Thus Albany is a real capital,––a typical Southern county town,</p><p>the centre of the life of ten thousand souls; their point of contact</p><p>with the outer world, their centre of news and gossip, their market</p><p>for buying and selling, borrowing and lending, their fountain of</p><p>justice and law. Once upon a time we knew country life so well and</p><p>city life so little, that we illustrated city life as that of a closely</p><p>crowded country district. Now the world has well-nigh forgotten</p><p>what the country is, and we must imagine a little city of black people</p><p>scattered far and wide over three</p><p>hundred lonesome square miles of</p><p>land, without train or trolley, in the midst of cotton and corn, and</p><p>wide patches of sand and gloomy soil.</p><p>It gets pretty hot in Southern Georgia in July,––a sort of dull,</p><p>determined heat that seems quite independent of the sun; so it took</p><p>us some days to muster courage enough to leave the porch and</p><p>venture out on the long country roads, that we might see this</p><p>unknown world. Finally we started. It was about ten in the morning,</p><p>bright with a faint breeze, and we jogged leisurely southward in the</p><p>valley of the Flint. We passed the scattered box-like cabins of the</p><p>brick-yard hands, and the long tenement-row facetiously called</p><p>“The Ark,” and were soon in the open country, and on the confines</p><p>of the great plantations of other days. There is the “Joe Fields</p><p>place”; a rough old fellow was he, and had killed many a “nigger” in</p><p>his day. Twelve miles his plantation used to run,––a regular barony.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk80</p><p>It is nearly all gone now; only straggling bits belong to the family,</p><p>and the rest has passed to Jews and Negroes. Even the bits which are</p><p>left are heavily mortgaged, and, like the rest of the land, tilled by</p><p>tenants. Here is one of them now,––a tall brown man, a hard worker</p><p>and a hard drinker, illiterate, but versed in farm-lore, as his nodding</p><p>crops declare. This distressingly new board house is his, and he has</p><p>just moved out of yonder moss-grown cabin with its one square</p><p>room.</p><p>From the curtains in Benton’s house, down the road, a dark</p><p>comely face is staring at the strangers; for passing carriages are not</p><p>every-day occurrences here. Benton is an intelligent yellow man with</p><p>a good-sized family, and manages a plantation blasted by the war and</p><p>now the broken staff of the widow. He might be well-to-do, they say;</p><p>but he carouses too much in Albany. And the half-desolate spirit of</p><p>neglect born of the very soil seems to have settled on these acres. In</p><p>times past there were cotton-gins and machinery here; but they have</p><p>rotted away.</p><p>The whole land seems forlorn and forsaken. Here are the rem-</p><p>nants of the vast plantations of the Sheldons, the Pellots, and the</p><p>Rensons; but the souls of them are passed. The houses lie in half ruin,</p><p>or have wholly disappeared; the fences have flown, and the families</p><p>are wandering in the world. Strange vicissitudes have met these</p><p>whilom masters. Yonder stretch the wide acres of Bildad Reasor; he</p><p>died in war-time, but the upstart overseer hastened to wed the</p><p>widow. Then he went, and his neighbors too, and now only the black</p><p>tenant remains; but the shadow-hand of the master’s grand-nephew</p><p>or cousin or creditor stretches out of the gray distance to collect the</p><p>rack-rent* remorselessly, and so the land is uncared-for and poor.</p><p>Only black tenants can stand such a system, and they only because</p><p>they must. Ten miles we have ridden to-day and have seen no</p><p>white face.</p><p>A resistless feeling of depression falls slowly upon us, despite the</p><p>gaudy sunshine and the green cotton-fields. This, then, is the Cotton</p><p>Kingdom,––the shadow of a marvellous dream. And where is the</p><p>King? Perhaps this is he,––the sweating ploughman, tilling his</p><p>eighty acres with two lean mules, and fighting a hard battle with</p><p>debt. So we sit musing, until, as we turn a corner on the sandy road,</p><p>there comes a fairer scene suddenly in view,––a neat cottage snugly</p><p>ensconced by the road, and near it a little store. A tall bronzed man</p><p>Of the Black Belt 81</p><p>rises from the porch as we hail him, and comes out to our carriage.</p><p>He is six feet in height, with a sober face that smiles gravely. He</p><p>walks too straight to be a tenant,––yes, he owns two hundred and</p><p>forty acres. “The land is run down since the boom-days of eighteen</p><p>hundred and fifty,” he explains, and cotton is low. Three black ten-</p><p>ants live on his place, and in his little store he keeps a small stock of</p><p>tobacco, snuff, soap, and soda, for the neighborhood. Here is his gin-</p><p>house with new machinery just installed. Three hundred bales of</p><p>cotton went through it last year. Two children he has sent away to</p><p>school. Yes, he says sadly, he is getting on, but cotton is down to four</p><p>cents; I know how Debt sits staring at him.</p><p>Wherever the King may be, the parks and palaces of the Cotton</p><p>Kingdom have not wholly disappeared. We plunge even now into</p><p>great groves of oak and towering pine, with an undergrowth of myr-</p><p>tle and shrubbery. This was the “home-house” of the Thompsons,––</p><p>slave-barons who drove their coach and four in the merry past. All is</p><p>silence now, and ashes, and tangled weeds. The owner put his whole</p><p>fortune into the rising cotton industry of the fifties, and with the</p><p>falling prices of the eighties he packed up and stole away. Yonder is</p><p>another grove, with unkempt lawn, great magnolias, and grass-</p><p>grown paths. The Big House stands in half-ruin, its great front door</p><p>staring blankly at the street, and the back part grotesquely restored</p><p>for its black tenant. A shabby, well-built Negro he is, unlucky and</p><p>irresolute. He digs hard to pay rent to the white girl who owns</p><p>the remnant of the place. She married a policeman, and lives in</p><p>Savannah.</p><p>Now and again we come to churches. Here is one now,––</p><p>Shepherd’s, they call it,––a great whitewashed barn of a thing,</p><p>perched on stilts of stone, and looking for all the world as though it</p><p>were just resting here a moment and might be expected to waddle off</p><p>down the road at almost any time. And yet it is the centre of a</p><p>hundred cabin homes; and sometimes, of a Sunday, five hundred</p><p>persons from far and near gather here and talk and eat and sing.</p><p>There is a school-house near,––a very airy, empty shed; but even this</p><p>is an improvement, for usually the school is held in the church.</p><p>The churches vary from log-huts to those like Shepherd’s, and the</p><p>schools from nothing to this little house that sits demurely on the</p><p>county line. It is a tiny plank-house, perhaps ten by twenty, and has</p><p>within a double row of rough unplaned benches, resting mostly on</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk82</p><p>legs, sometimes on boxes. Opposite the door is a square home-made</p><p>desk. In one corner are the ruins of a stove, and in the other a</p><p>dim blackboard. It is the cheerfulest schoolhouse I have seen in</p><p>Dougherty, save in town. Back of the schoolhouse is a lodge-house</p><p>two stories high and not quite finished. Societies meet there,––</p><p>societies “to care for the sick and bury the dead”; and these societies</p><p>grow and flourish.</p><p>We had come to the boundaries of Dougherty, and were about to</p><p>turn west along the county-line, when all these sights were pointed</p><p>out to us by a kindly old man, black, white-haired, and seventy.</p><p>Forty-five years he had lived here, and now supports himself and his</p><p>old wife by the help of the steer tethered yonder and the charity of</p><p>his black neighbors. He shows us the farm of the Hills just across the</p><p>county line in Baker,––a widow and two strapping sons, who raised</p><p>ten bales (one need not add “cotton” down here) last year. There are</p><p>fences and pigs and cows, and the soft-voiced, velvet-skinned young</p><p>Memnon, who sauntered half-bashfully over to greet the strangers,</p><p>is proud of his home. We turn now to the west along the county line.</p><p>Great dismantled trunks of pines tower above the green cotton-</p><p>fields, cracking their naked gnarled fingers toward the border of</p><p>living forest beyond. There is little beauty in this region, only a sort</p><p>of crude abandon that suggests power,––a naked grandeur, as it</p><p>were. The houses are bare and straight; there are no hammocks or</p><p>easy-chairs, and few flowers. So when, as here at Rawdon’s, one sees</p><p>a vine clinging to a little porch, and home-like windows peeping over</p><p>the fences, one takes a long breath. I think I never before quite</p><p>realized the place of the Fence in civilization. This is the Land of the</p><p>Unfenced, where crouch on either hand scores of ugly one-room</p><p>cabins, cheerless and dirty. Here lies the Negro problem in its naked</p><p>dirt and penury. And here are no fences. But now and then the criss-</p><p>cross rails or straight palings break into view, and then we know a</p><p>touch of culture</p><p>is near. Of course Harrison Gohagen,––a quiet</p><p>yellow man, young, smooth-faced, and diligent,––of course he is</p><p>lord of some hundred acres, and we expect to see a vision of well-</p><p>kept rooms and fat beds and laughing children. For has he not fine</p><p>fences? And those over yonder, why should they build fences on the</p><p>rack-rented land? It will only increase their rent.</p><p>On we wind, through sand and pines and glimpses of old plan-</p><p>tations, till there creeps into sight a cluster of buildings,––wood and</p><p>Of the Black Belt 83</p><p>brick, mills and houses, and scattered cabins. It seemed quite a</p><p>village. As it came nearer and nearer, however, the aspect changed:</p><p>the buildings were rotten, the bricks were falling out, the mills were</p><p>silent, and the store was closed. Only in the cabins appeared now and</p><p>then a bit of lazy life. I could imagine the place under some weird</p><p>spell, and was half-minded to search out the princess. An old ragged</p><p>black man, honest, simple, and improvident, told us the tale. The</p><p>Wizard of the North––the Capitalist––had rushed down in the sev-</p><p>enties to woo this coy dark soil. He bought a square mile or more,</p><p>and for a time the field-hands sang, the gins groaned, and the mills</p><p>buzzed. Then came a change. The agent’s son embezzled the funds</p><p>and ran off with them. Then the agent himself disappeared. Finally</p><p>the new agent stole even the books, and the company in wrath closed</p><p>its business and its houses, refused to sell, and let houses and furni-</p><p>ture and machinery rust and rot. So the Waters-Loring plantation</p><p>was stilled by the spell of dishonesty, and stands like some gaunt</p><p>rebuke to a scarred land.</p><p>Somehow that plantation ended our day’s journey; for I could not</p><p>shake off the influence of that silent scene. Back toward town we</p><p>glided, past the straight and thread-like pines, past a dark tree-</p><p>dotted pond where the air was heavy with a dead sweet perfume.</p><p>White slender-legged curlews flitted by us, and the garnet blooms of</p><p>the cotton looked gay against the green and purple stalks. A peasant</p><p>girl was hoeing in the field, white-turbaned and black-limbed. All</p><p>this we saw, but the spell still lay upon us.</p><p>How curious a land is this,––how full of untold story, of tragedy</p><p>and laughter, and the rich legacy of human life; shadowed with a</p><p>tragic past, and big with future promise! This is the Black Belt</p><p>of Georgia. Dougherty County is the west end of the Black Belt,</p><p>and men once called it the Egypt of the Confederacy. It is full of</p><p>historic interest. First there is the Swamp, to the west, where the</p><p>Chickasawhatchee flows sullenly southward. The shadow of an old</p><p>plantation lies at its edge, forlorn and dark. Then comes the pool;</p><p>pendent gray moss and brackish waters appear, and forests filled</p><p>with wildfowl. In one place the wood is on fire, smouldering in dull</p><p>red anger; but nobody minds. Then the swamp grows beautiful; a</p><p>raised road, built by chained Negro convicts, dips down into it, and</p><p>forms a way walled and almost covered in living green. Spreading</p><p>trees spring from a prodigal luxuriance of undergrowth; great dark</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk84</p><p>green shadows fade into the black background, until all is one mass</p><p>of tangled semi-tropical foliage, marvellous in its weird savage</p><p>splendor. Once we crossed a black silent stream, where the sad trees</p><p>and writhing creepers, all glinting fiery yellow and green, seemed</p><p>like some vast cathedral,––some green Milan builded of wildwood.</p><p>And as I crossed, I seemed to see again that fierce tragedy of seventy</p><p>years ago. Osceola, the Indian-Negro chieftain, had risen in the</p><p>swamps of Florida, vowing vengeance. His war-cry reached the red</p><p>Creeks of Dougherty, and their war-cry rang from the Chattahoochee</p><p>to the sea. Men and women and children fled and fell before them as</p><p>they swept into Dougherty. In yonder shadows a dark and hideously</p><p>painted warrior glided stealthily on,––another and another, until</p><p>three hundred had crept into the treacherous swamp. Then the</p><p>false slime closing about them called the white men from the east.</p><p>Waist-deep, they fought beneath the tall trees, until the war-cry was</p><p>hushed and the Indians glided back into the west. Small wonder the</p><p>wood is red.</p><p>Then came the black slaves. Day after day the clank of chained</p><p>feet marching from Virginia and Carolina to Georgia was heard in</p><p>these rich swamp lands. Day after day the songs of the callous, the</p><p>wail of the motherless, and the muttered curses of the wretched</p><p>echoed from the Flint to the Chickasawhatchee, until by 1860 there</p><p>had risen in West Dougherty perhaps the richest slave kingdom the</p><p>modern world ever knew. A hundred and fifty barons commanded</p><p>the labor of nearly six thousand Negroes, held sway over farms with</p><p>ninety thousand acres of tilled land, valued even in times of cheap</p><p>soil at three millions of dollars. Twenty thousand bales of ginned</p><p>cotton went yearly to England, New and Old; and men that came</p><p>there bankrupt made money and grew rich. In a single decade</p><p>the cotton output increased four-fold and the value of lands was</p><p>tripled. It was the heyday of the nouveau riche, and a life of careless</p><p>extravagance reigned among the masters. Four and six bob-tailed</p><p>thoroughbreds rolled their coaches to town; open hospitality and gay</p><p>entertainment were the rule. Parks and groves were laid out, rich</p><p>with flower and vine, and in the midst stood the low wide-halled “big</p><p>house,” with its porch and columns and great fire-places.</p><p>And yet with all this there was something sordid, something</p><p>forced,––a certain feverish unrest and recklessness; for was not all</p><p>this show and tinsel built upon a groan? “This land was a little Hell,”</p><p>Of the Black Belt 85</p><p>said a ragged, brown, and grave-faced man to me. We were seated</p><p>near a roadside blacksmith-shop, and behind was the bare ruin of</p><p>some master’s home. “I’ve seen niggers drop dead in the furrow, but</p><p>they were kicked aside, and the plough never stopped. And down in</p><p>the guard-house, there’s where the blood ran.”</p><p>With such foundations a kingdom must in time sway and fall. The</p><p>masters moved to Macon and Augusta, and left only the irrespon-</p><p>sible overseers on the land. And the result is such ruin as this, the</p><p>Lloyd “home-place”:––great waving oaks, a spread of lawn, myrtles</p><p>and chestnuts, all ragged and wild; a solitary gate-post standing</p><p>where once was a castle entrance; an old rusty anvil lying amid</p><p>rotting bellows and wood in the ruins of a blacksmith shop; a wide</p><p>rambling old mansion, brown and dingy, filled now with the grand-</p><p>children of the slaves who once waited on its tables; while the family</p><p>of the master has dwindled to two lone women, who live in Macon</p><p>and feed hungrily off the remnants of an earldom. So we ride on,</p><p>past phantom gates and falling homes,––past the once flourishing</p><p>farms of the Smiths, the Gandys, and the Lagores,––and find all</p><p>dilapidated and half ruined, even there where a solitary white</p><p>woman, a relic of other days, sits alone in state among miles of</p><p>Negroes and rides to town in her ancient coach each day.</p><p>This was indeed the Egypt of the Confederacy,––the rich granary</p><p>whence potatoes and corn and cotton poured out to the famished</p><p>and ragged Confederate troops as they battled for a cause lost long</p><p>before 1861. Sheltered and secure, it became the place of refuge for</p><p>families, wealth, and slaves. Yet even then the hard ruthless rape of</p><p>the land began to tell. The red-clay sub-soil already had begun to</p><p>peer above the loam. The harder the slaves were driven the more</p><p>careless and fatal was their farming. Then came the revolution of</p><p>war and Emancipation, the bewilderment of Reconstruction,––and</p><p>now, what is the Egypt of the Confederacy, and what meaning has it</p><p>for the nation’s weal or woe?</p><p>It is a land of rapid contrasts and of curiously mingled hope and</p><p>pain. Here sits a pretty blue-eyed quadroon hiding her bare feet; she</p><p>was married only last week, and yonder in the field is her dark young</p><p>husband, hoeing to support her, at thirty cents a day without board.</p><p>Across the way is Gatesby, brown and tall, lord of two thousand acres</p><p>shrewdly</p><p>won and held. There is a store conducted by his black son,</p><p>a blacksmith shop, and a ginnery. Five miles below here is a town</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk86</p><p>owned and controlled by one white New Englander. He owns almost</p><p>a Rhode Island county, with thousands of acres and hundreds</p><p>of black laborers. Their cabins look better than most, and the farm,</p><p>with machinery and fertilizers, is much more business-like than any</p><p>in the county, although the manager drives hard bargains in wages.</p><p>When now we turn and look five miles above, there on the edge of</p><p>town are five houses of prostitutes,––two of blacks and three of</p><p>whites; and in one of the houses of the whites a worthless black boy</p><p>was harbored too openly two years ago; so he was hanged for rape.</p><p>And here, too, is the high whitewashed fence of the “stockade,” as</p><p>the county prison is called; the white folks say it is ever full of black</p><p>criminals,––the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail,</p><p>and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs</p><p>criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor.</p><p>The Jew is the heir of the slave-baron in Dougherty; and as we</p><p>ride westward, by wide stretching cornfields and stubby orchards of</p><p>peach and pear, we see on all sides within the circle of dark forest a</p><p>Land of Canaan. Here and there are tales of projects for money-</p><p>getting, born in the swift days of Reconstruction,––“improvement”</p><p>companies, wine companies, mills and factories; nearly all failed, and</p><p>the Jew fell heir. It is a beautiful land, this Dougherty, west of the</p><p>Flint. The forests are wonderful, the solemn pines have disappeared,</p><p>and this is the “Oakey Woods,” with its wealth of hickories, beeches,</p><p>oaks, and palmettos. But a pall of debt hangs over the beautiful land;</p><p>the merchants are in debt to the wholesalers, the planters are in debt</p><p>to the merchants, the tenants owe the planters, and laborers bow and</p><p>bend beneath the burden of it all. Here and there a man has raised</p><p>his head above these murky waters. We passed one fenced stock-</p><p>farm, with grass and grazing cattle, that looked very homelike after</p><p>endless corn and cotton. Here and there are black freeholders: there</p><p>is the gaunt dull-black Jackson, with his hundred acres. “I says,</p><p>‘Look up! If you don’t look up you can’t get up,’ ” remarks Jackson,</p><p>philosophically. And he’s gotten up. Dark Carter’s neat barns would</p><p>do credit to New England. His master helped him to get a start, but</p><p>when the black man died last fall the master’s sons immediately laid</p><p>claim to the estate. “And them white folks will get it, too,” said my</p><p>yellow gossip.</p><p>I turn from these well-tended acres with a comfortable feeling that</p><p>the Negro is rising. Even then, however, the fields, as we proceed,</p><p>Of the Black Belt 87</p><p>begin to redden and the trees disappear. Rows of old cabins appear</p><p>filled with renters and laborers,––cheerless, bare, and dirty, for the</p><p>most part, although here and there the very age and decay makes the</p><p>scene picturesque. A young black fellow greets us. He is twenty-two,</p><p>and just married. Until last year he had good luck renting; then</p><p>cotton fell, and the sheriff seized and sold all he had. So he moved</p><p>here, where the rent is higher, the land poorer, and the owner inflex-</p><p>ible; he rents a forty-dollar mule for twenty dollars a year. Poor</p><p>lad!––a slave at twenty-two. This plantation, owned now by a</p><p>Russian Jew, was a part of the famous Bolton estate. After the war it</p><p>was for many years worked by gangs of Negro convicts,––and black</p><p>convicts then were even more plentiful than now; it was a way of</p><p>making Negroes work, and the question of guilt was a minor one.</p><p>Hard tales of cruelty and mistreatment of the chained freemen are</p><p>told, but the county authorities were deaf until the free-labor market</p><p>was nearly ruined by wholesale migration. Then they took the con-</p><p>victs from the plantations, but not until one of the fairest regions of</p><p>the “Oakey Woods” had been ruined and ravished into a red waste,</p><p>out of which only a Yankee or a Jew could squeeze more blood from</p><p>debt-cursed tenants.</p><p>No wonder that Luke Black, slow, dull, and discouraged, shuffles</p><p>to our carriage and talks hopelessly. Why should he strive? Every</p><p>year finds him deeper in debt. How strange that Georgia, the world-</p><p>heralded refuge of poor debtors, should bind her own to sloth and</p><p>misfortune as ruthlessly as ever England did! The poor land groans</p><p>with its birth-pains, and brings forth scarcely a hundred pounds of</p><p>cotton to the acre, where fifty years ago it yielded eight times as</p><p>much. Of this meagre yield the tenant pays from a quarter to a third</p><p>in rent, and most of the rest in interest on food and supplies bought</p><p>on credit. Twenty years yonder sunken-cheeked, old black man has</p><p>labored under that system, and now, turned day-laborer, is support-</p><p>ing his wife and boarding himself on his wages of a dollar and a half a</p><p>week, received only part of the year.</p><p>The Bolton convict farm formerly included the neighboring plan-</p><p>tation. Here it was that the convicts were lodged in the great log</p><p>prison still standing. A dismal place it still remains, with rows of ugly</p><p>huts filled with surly ignorant tenants. “What rent do you pay here?”</p><p>I inquired. “I don’t know,––what is it, Sam?” “All we make,”</p><p>answered Sam. It is a depressing place,––bare, unshaded, with no</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk88</p><p>charm of past association, only a memory of forced human toil,––</p><p>now, then, and before the war. They are not happy, these black men</p><p>whom we meet throughout this region. There is little of the joyous</p><p>abandon and playfulness which we are wont to associate with the</p><p>plantation Negro. At best, the natural good-nature is edged with</p><p>complaint or has changed into sullenness and gloom. And now and</p><p>then it blazes forth in veiled but hot anger. I remember one big red-</p><p>eyed black whom we met by the roadside. Forty-five years he had</p><p>labored on this farm, beginning with nothing, and still having</p><p>nothing. To be sure, he had given four children a common-school</p><p>training, and perhaps if the new fence-law had not allowed unfenced</p><p>crops in West Dougherty he might have raised a little stock and kept</p><p>ahead. As it is, he is hopelessly in debt, disappointed, and embit-</p><p>tered. He stopped us to inquire after the black boy in Albany, whom</p><p>it was said a policeman had shot and killed for loud talking on the</p><p>sidewalk. And then he said slowly: “Let a white man touch me, and</p><p>he dies; I don’t boast this,––I don’t say it around loud, or before</p><p>the children,––but I mean it. I’ve seen them whip my father and</p><p>my old mother in them cotton-rows till the blood ran; by––” and we</p><p>passed on.</p><p>Now Sears, whom we met next lolling under the chubby oak-</p><p>trees, was of quite different fibre. Happy?––Well, yes; he laughed</p><p>and flipped pebbles, and thought the world was as it was. He had</p><p>worked here twelve years and has nothing but a mortgaged mule.</p><p>Children? Yes, seven; but they hadn’t been to school this year,––</p><p>couldn’t afford books and clothes, and couldn’t spare their work.</p><p>There go part of them to the fields now,––three big boys astride</p><p>mules, and a strapping girl with bare brown legs. Careless ignorance</p><p>and laziness here, fierce hate and vindictiveness there;––these are the</p><p>extremes of the Negro problem which we met that day, and we</p><p>scarce knew which we preferred.</p><p>Here and there we meet distinct characters quite out of the ordin-</p><p>ary. One came out of a piece of newly cleared ground, making a wide</p><p>detour to avoid the snakes. He was an old, hollow-cheeked man, with</p><p>a drawn and characterful brown face. He had a sort of self-contained</p><p>quaintness and rough humor impossible to describe; a certain cynical</p><p>earnestness that puzzled one. “The niggers were jealous of me over</p><p>on the other place,” he said, “and so me and the old woman begged</p><p>this piece of woods, and I cleared it up myself. Made nothing for two</p><p>Of the Black Belt 89</p><p>years, but I reckon I’ve got a crop now.” The cotton looked tall and</p><p>rich, and we praised it. He curtsied low, and then bowed almost to</p><p>the ground, with an imperturbable gravity</p><p>that seemed almost suspi-</p><p>cious. Then he continued, “My mule died last week,”––a calamity in</p><p>this land equal to a devastating fire in town,––“but a white man</p><p>loaned me another.” Then he added, eyeing us, “Oh, I gets along</p><p>with white folks.” We turned the conversation. “Bears? deer?” he</p><p>answered, “well, I should say there were,” and he let fly a string of</p><p>brave oaths, as he told hunting-tales of the swamp. We left him</p><p>standing still in the middle of the road looking after us, and yet</p><p>apparently not noticing us.</p><p>The Whistle place, which includes his bit of land, was bought</p><p>soon after the war by an English syndicate, the “Dixie Cotton and</p><p>Corn Company.” A marvellous deal of style their factor put on, with</p><p>his servants and coach-and-six; so much so that the concern soon</p><p>landed in inextricable bankruptcy. Nobody lives in the old house</p><p>now, but a man comes each winter out of the North and collects his</p><p>high rents. I know not which are the more touching,––such old</p><p>empty houses, or the homes of the masters’ sons. Sad and bitter tales</p><p>lie hidden back of those white doors,––tales of poverty, of struggle,</p><p>of disappointment. A revolution such as that of ’63 is a terrible</p><p>thing; they that rose rich in the morning often slept in paupers’ beds.</p><p>Beggars and vulgar speculators rose to rule over them, and their</p><p>children went astray. See yonder sad-colored house, with its cabins</p><p>and fences and glad crops? It is not glad within; last month the</p><p>prodigal son of the struggling father wrote home from the city for</p><p>money. Money! Where was it to come from? And so the son rose in</p><p>the night and killed his baby, and killed his wife, and shot himself</p><p>dead. And the world passed on.</p><p>I remember wheeling around a bend in the road beside a graceful</p><p>bit of forest and a singing brook. A long low house faced us, with</p><p>porch and flying pillars, great oaken door, and a broad lawn shining</p><p>in the evening sun. But the window-panes were gone, the pillars</p><p>were worm-eaten, and the moss-grown roof was falling in. Half</p><p>curiously I peered through the unhinged door, and saw where, on</p><p>the wall across the hall, was written in once gay letters a faded</p><p>“Welcome.”</p><p>Quite a contrast to the southwestern part of Dougherty County</p><p>is the northwest. Soberly timbered in oak and pine, it has none of</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk90</p><p>that half-tropical luxuriance of the southwest. Then, too, there are</p><p>fewer signs of a romantic past, and more of systematic modern land-</p><p>grabbing and money-getting. White people are more in evidence</p><p>here, and farmer and hired labor replace to some extent the absentee</p><p>landlord and rack-rented tenant. The crops have neither the luxuri-</p><p>ance of the richer land nor the signs of neglect so often seen, and</p><p>there were fences and meadows here and there. Most of this land was</p><p>poor, and beneath the notice of the slave-baron, before the war. Since</p><p>then his nephews and the poor whites and the Jews have seized it.</p><p>The returns of the farmer are too small to allow much for wages, and</p><p>yet he will not sell off small farms. There is the Negro Sanford; he</p><p>has worked fourteen years as overseer on the Ladson place, and</p><p>“paid out enough for fertilizers to have bought a farm,” but the</p><p>owner will not sell off a few acres.</p><p>Two children––a boy and a girl––are hoeing sturdily in the fields</p><p>on the farm where Corliss works. He is smooth-faced and brown,</p><p>and is fencing up his pigs. He used to run a successful cotton-gin,</p><p>but the Cotton Seed Oil Trust has forced the price of ginning so low</p><p>that he says it hardly pays him. He points out a stately old house over</p><p>the way as the home of “Pa Willis.” We eagerly ride over, for</p><p>“Pa Willis” was the tall and powerful black Moses who led the</p><p>Negroes for a generation, and led them well. He was a Baptist</p><p>preacher, and when he died two thousand black people followed him</p><p>to the grave; and now they preach his funeral sermon each year. His</p><p>widow lives here,––a weazened, sharp-featured little woman, who</p><p>curtsied quaintly as we greeted her. Further on lives Jack Delson,</p><p>the most prosperous Negro farmer in the county. It is a joy to meet</p><p>him,––a great broad-shouldered, handsome black man, intelligent</p><p>and jovial. Six hundred and fifty acres he owns, and has eleven black</p><p>tenants. A neat and tidy home nestled in a flower-garden, and a little</p><p>store stands beside it.</p><p>We pass the Munson place, where a plucky white widow is renting</p><p>and struggling; and the eleven hundred acres of the Sennet planta-</p><p>tion, with its Negro overseer. Then the character of the farms begins</p><p>to change. Nearly all the lands belong to Russian Jews; the overseers</p><p>are white, and the cabins are bare board-houses scattered here and</p><p>there. The rents are high, and day-laborers and “contract” hands</p><p>abound. It is a keen, hard struggle for living here, and few have time</p><p>to talk. Tired with the long ride, we gladly drive into Gillonsville. It</p><p>Of the Black Belt 91</p><p>is a silent cluster of farm-houses standing on the cross-roads, with</p><p>one of its stores closed and the other kept by a Negro preacher. They</p><p>tell great tales of busy times at Gillonsville before all the railroads</p><p>came to Albany; now it is chiefly a memory. Riding down the street,</p><p>we stop at the preacher’s and seat ourselves before the door. It was</p><p>one of those scenes one cannot soon forget:––a wide, low, little</p><p>house, whose motherly roof reached over and sheltered a snug little</p><p>porch. There we sat, after the long hot drive, drinking cool water,––</p><p>the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent</p><p>old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the</p><p>ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the</p><p>preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher’s wife, plump,</p><p>yellow, and intelligent. “Own land?” said the wife; “well, only this</p><p>house.” Then she added quietly, “We did buy seven hundred acres</p><p>up yonder, and paid for it; but they cheated us out of it. Sells was the</p><p>owner.” “Sells!” echoed the ragged misfortune, who was leaning</p><p>against the balustrade and listening, “he’s a regular cheat. I worked</p><p>for him thirty-seven days this spring, and he paid me in cardboard</p><p>checks which were to be cashed at the end of the month. But he</p><p>never cashed them,––kept putting me off. Then the sheriff came and</p><p>took my mule and corn and furniture––” “Furniture?” I asked; “but</p><p>furniture is exempt from seizure by law.” “Well, he took it just the</p><p>same,” said the hard-faced man.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk92</p><p>vii i</p><p>Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece</p><p>But the Brute said in his breast, “Till the mills I grind have ceased,</p><p>The riches shall be dust of dust, dry ashes be the feast!</p><p>“On the strong and cunning few</p><p>Cynic favors I will strew;</p><p>I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies;</p><p>From the patient and the low</p><p>I will take the joys they know;</p><p>They shall hunger after vanities and still an-hungered go.</p><p>Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies arise;</p><p>Brother’s blood shall cry on brother up the dead and empty skies.”</p><p>W illiam Vaughn Moody.*</p><p>Have you ever seen a cotton-field white with the harvest,––its</p><p>golden fleece hovering above the black earth like a silvery cloud</p><p>edged with dark green, its bold white signals waving like the foam</p><p>of billows from Carolina to Texas across that Black and human</p><p>Sea? I have sometimes half suspected that here the winged ram</p><p>Chrysomallus left that Fleece after which Jason and his Argonauts*</p><p>went vaguely wandering into the shadowy East three thousand years</p><p>ago; and certainly one might frame a pretty and not far-fetched</p><p>analogy of witchery and dragon’s teeth, and blood and armed men,</p><p>between the ancient and the modern Quest of the Golden Fleece in</p><p>the Black Sea.</p><p>And now the golden fleece is found; not only found, but, in its</p><p>birthplace, woven. For the hum of the cotton-mills is the newest and</p><p>most significant thing in the New South today. All through the</p><p>Carolinas and Georgia, away down to Mexico, rise these gaunt red</p><p>buildings, bare and homely, and yet so busy and noisy withal that</p><p>they scarce seem to belong to the slow and sleepy land. Perhaps</p><p>they</p><p>sprang from dragons’ teeth. So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the</p><p>world still bows beneath her sceptre. Even the markets that once</p><p>defied the parvenu have crept one by one across the seas, and</p><p>then slowly and reluctantly, but surely, have started toward the</p><p>Black Belt.</p><p>To be sure, there are those who wag their heads knowingly and tell</p><p>us that the capital of the Cotton Kingdom has moved from the Black</p><p>to the White Belt,––that the Negro of to-day raises not more than</p><p>half of the cotton crop. Such men forget that the cotton crop has</p><p>doubled, and more than doubled, since the era of slavery, and that,</p><p>even granting their contention, the Negro is still supreme in a</p><p>Cotton Kingdom larger than that on which the Confederacy builded</p><p>its hopes. So the Negro forms to-day one of the chief figures in a</p><p>great world-industry; and this, for its own sake, and in the light of</p><p>historic interest, make the field-hands of the cotton country worth</p><p>studying.</p><p>We seldom study the condition of the Negro to-day honestly and</p><p>carefully. It is so much easier to assume that we know it all. Or</p><p>perhaps, having already reached conclusions in our own minds, we</p><p>are loth to have them disturbed by facts. And yet how little we really</p><p>know of these millions,––of their daily lives and longings, of their</p><p>homely joys and sorrows, of their real shortcomings and the meaning</p><p>of their crimes! All this we can only learn by intimate contact with</p><p>the masses, and not by wholesale arguments covering millions separ-</p><p>ate in time and space, and differing widely in training and culture.</p><p>To-day, then, my reader, let us turn our faces to the Black Belt</p><p>of Georgia and seek simply to know the condition of the black</p><p>farm-laborers of one county there.</p><p>Here in 1890 lived ten thousand Negroes and two thousand</p><p>whites. The country is rich, yet the people are poor. The key-note of</p><p>the Black Belt is debt; not commercial credit, but debt in the sense of</p><p>continued inability on the part of the mass of the population to make</p><p>income cover expense. This is the direct heritage of the South from</p><p>the wasteful economies of the slave régime; but it was emphasized</p><p>and brought to a crisis by the Emancipation of the slaves. In 1860,</p><p>Dougherty County had six thousand slaves, worth at least two and a</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk94</p><p>half millions of dollars; its farms were estimated at three millions,––</p><p>making five and a half millions of property, the value of which</p><p>depended largely on the slave system, and on the speculative demand</p><p>for land once marvellously rich but already partially devitalized by</p><p>careless and exhaustive culture. The war then meant a financial</p><p>crash; in place of the five and a half millions of 1860, there remained</p><p>in 1870 only farms valued at less than two millions. With this came</p><p>increased competition in cotton culture from the rich lands of Texas;</p><p>a steady fall in the normal price of cotton followed, from about</p><p>fourteen cents a pound in 1860 until it reached four cents in 1898.</p><p>Such a financial revolution was it that involved the owners of the</p><p>cotton-belt in debt. And if things went ill with the master, how fared</p><p>it with the man?</p><p>The plantations of Dougherty County in slavery days were not as</p><p>imposing and aristocratic as those of Virginia. The Big House was</p><p>smaller and usually one-storied, and sat very near the slave cabins.</p><p>Sometimes these cabins stretched off on either side like wings; some-</p><p>times only on one side, forming a double row, or edging the road that</p><p>turned into the plantation from the main thoroughfare. The form</p><p>and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is</p><p>to-day the same as in slavery days. Some live in the self-same cabins,</p><p>others in cabins rebuilt on the sites of the old. All are sprinkled in</p><p>little groups over the face of the land, centering about some dilapi-</p><p>dated Big House where the head-tenant or agent lives. The general</p><p>character and arrangement of these dwellings remains on the whole</p><p>unaltered. There were in the county, outside the corporate town of</p><p>Albany, about fifteen hundred Negro families in 1898. Out of all</p><p>these, only a single family occupied a house with seven rooms;</p><p>only fourteen have five rooms or more. The mass live in one- and</p><p>two-room homes.</p><p>The size and arrangements of a people’s homes are no unfair</p><p>index of their condition. If, then, we inquire more carefully into</p><p>these Negro homes, we find much that is unsatisfactory. All over the</p><p>face of the land is the one-room cabin,––now standing in the shadow</p><p>of the Big House, now staring at the dusty road, now rising dark and</p><p>sombre amid the green of the cotton-fields. It is nearly always old</p><p>and bare, built of rough boards, and neither plastered nor ceiled.</p><p>Light and ventilation are supplied by the single door and by the</p><p>square hole in the wall with its wooden shutter. There is no glass,</p><p>Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece 95</p><p>porch, or ornamentation without. Within is a fireplace, black and</p><p>smoky, and usually unsteady with age. A bed or two, a table, a</p><p>wooden chest, and a few chairs compose the furniture; while a stray</p><p>show-bill or a newspaper makes up the decorations for the walls.</p><p>Now and then one may find such a cabin kept scrupulously neat,</p><p>with merry steaming fireplace and hospitable door; but the majority</p><p>are dirty and dilapidated, smelling of eating and sleeping, poorly</p><p>ventilated, and anything but homes.</p><p>Above all, the cabins are crowded. We have come to associate</p><p>crowding with homes in cities almost exclusively. This is primarily</p><p>because we have so little accurate knowledge of country life. Here in</p><p>Dougherty County one may find families of eight and ten occupying</p><p>one or two rooms, and for every ten rooms of house accommodation</p><p>for the Negroes there are twenty-five persons. The worst tenement</p><p>abominations of New York do not have above twenty-two persons for</p><p>every ten rooms. Of course, one small, close room in a city, without a</p><p>yard, is in many respects worse than the larger single country room.</p><p>In other respects it is better; it has glass windows, a decent chimney,</p><p>and a trustworthy floor. The single great advantage of the Negro</p><p>peasant is that he may spend most of his life outside his hovel, in the</p><p>open fields.</p><p>There are four chief causes of these wretched homes: First, long</p><p>custom born of slavery has assigned such homes to Negroes; white</p><p>laborers would be offered better accommodations, and might, for</p><p>that and similar reasons, give better work. Secondly, the Negroes,</p><p>used to such accommodations, do not as a rule demand better; they</p><p>do not know what better houses mean. Thirdly, the landlords as a</p><p>class have not yet come to realize that it is a good business invest-</p><p>ment to raise the standard of living among labor by slow and judi-</p><p>cious methods; that a Negro laborer who demands three rooms and</p><p>fifty cents a day would give more efficient work and leave a larger</p><p>profit than a discouraged toiler herding his family in one room and</p><p>working for thirty cents. Lastly, among such conditions of life there</p><p>are few incentives to make the laborer become a better farmer. If he</p><p>is ambitious, he moves to town or tries other labor; as a tenant-</p><p>farmer his outlook is almost hopeless, and following it as a makeshift,</p><p>he takes the house that is given him without protest.</p><p>In such homes, then, these Negro peasants live. The families are</p><p>both small and large; there are many single tenants,––widows and</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk96</p><p>bachelors, and remnants of broken groups. The system of labor</p><p>and the size of the houses both tend to the breaking up of family</p><p>groups: the grown children go away as contract hands or migrate to</p><p>town, the sister goes into service; and so one finds many families</p><p>with hosts of babies, and many newly married couples, but compara-</p><p>tively few families with half-grown and grown sons and daughters.</p><p>The average size of Negro families has undoubtedly decreased since</p><p>the war, primarily from economic stress. In Russia over a third of the</p><p>bridegrooms and over half the brides are under twenty; the same was</p><p>true of the ante-bellum Negroes. To-day,</p><p>however, very few of the</p><p>boys and less than a fifth of the Negro girls under twenty are mar-</p><p>ried. The young men marry between the ages of twenty-five and</p><p>thirty-five; the young women between twenty and thirty. Such post-</p><p>ponement is due to the difficulty of earning sufficient to rear and</p><p>support a family; and it undoubtedly leads, in the country districts,</p><p>to sexual immorality. The form of this immorality, however, is very</p><p>seldom that of prostitution, and less frequently that of illegitimacy</p><p>than one would imagine. Rather, it takes the form of separation and</p><p>desertion after a family group has been formed. The number of</p><p>separated persons is thirty-five to the thousand,––a very large num-</p><p>ber. It would of course be unfair to compare this number with</p><p>divorce statistics, for many of these separated women are in reality</p><p>widowed, were the truth known, and in other cases the separation is</p><p>not permanent. Nevertheless, here lies the seat of greatest moral</p><p>danger. There is little or no prostitution among these Negroes, and</p><p>over three-fourths of the families, as found by house-to-house</p><p>investigation, deserve to be classed as decent people with consider-</p><p>able regard for female chastity. To be sure, the ideas of the mass</p><p>would not suit New England, and there are many loose habits and</p><p>notions. Yet the rate of illegitimacy is undoubtedly lower than in</p><p>Austria or Italy, and the women as a class are modest. The plague-</p><p>spot in sexual relations is easy marriage and easy separation. This is</p><p>no sudden development, nor the fruit of Emancipation. It is the</p><p>plain heritage from slavery. In those days Sam, with his master’s</p><p>consent, “took up” with Mary. No ceremony was necessary, and in</p><p>the busy life of the great plantations of the Black Belt it was usually</p><p>dispensed with. If now the master needed Sam’s work in another</p><p>plantation or in another part of the same plantation, or if he took a</p><p>notion to sell the slave, Sam’s married life with Mary was usually</p><p>Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece 97</p><p>unceremoniously broken, and then it was clearly to the master’s</p><p>interest to have both of them take new mates. This widespread cus-</p><p>tom of two centuries has not been eradicated in thirty years. To-day</p><p>Sam’s grandson “takes up” with a woman without license or cere-</p><p>mony; they live together decently and honestly, and are, to all intents</p><p>and purposes, man and wife. Sometimes these unions are never</p><p>broken until death; but in too many cases family quarrels, a roving</p><p>spirit, a rival suitor, or perhaps more frequently the hopeless battle</p><p>to support a family, lead to separation, and a broken household is the</p><p>result. The Negro church has done much to stop this practice,</p><p>and now most marriage ceremonies are performed by the pastors.</p><p>Nevertheless, the evil is still deep seated, and only a general raising</p><p>of the standard of living will finally cure it.</p><p>Looking now at the county black population as a whole, it is fair to</p><p>characterize it as poor and ignorant. Perhaps ten percent compose</p><p>the well-to-do and the best of the laborers, while at least nine per</p><p>cent are thoroughly lewd and vicious. The rest, over eighty per cent,</p><p>are poor and ignorant, fairly honest and well meaning, plodding, and</p><p>to a degree shiftless, with some but not great sexual looseness. Such</p><p>class lines are by no means fixed; they vary, one might almost say,</p><p>with the price of cotton. The degree of ignorance cannot easily be</p><p>expressed. We may say, for instance, that nearly two-thirds of them</p><p>cannot read or write. This but partially expresses the fact. They are</p><p>ignorant of the world about them, of modern economic organiza-</p><p>tion, of the function of government, of individual worth and possi-</p><p>bilities,––of nearly all those things which slavery in self-defence had</p><p>to keep them from learning. Much that the white boy imbibes</p><p>from his earliest social atmosphere forms the puzzling problems of</p><p>the black boy’s mature years. America is not another word for</p><p>Opportunity to all her sons.</p><p>It is easy for us to lose ourselves in details in endeavoring to grasp</p><p>and comprehend the real condition of a mass of human beings. We</p><p>often forget that each unit in the mass is a throbbing human soul.</p><p>Ignorant it may be, and poverty stricken, black and curious in limb</p><p>and ways and thought; and yet it loves and hates, it toils and tires, it</p><p>laughs and weeps its bitter tears, and looks in vague and awful long-</p><p>ing at the grim horizon of its life,––all this, even as you and I. These</p><p>black thousands are not in reality lazy; they are improvident and</p><p>careless; they insist on breaking the monotony of toil with a glimpse</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk98</p><p>at the great town-world on Saturday; they have their loafers and</p><p>their rascals; but the great mass of them work continuously and</p><p>faithfully for a return, and under circumstances that would call forth</p><p>equal voluntary effort from few if any other modern laboring class.</p><p>Over eighty-eight per cent of them––men, women, and children––</p><p>are farmers. Indeed, this is almost the only industry. Most of the</p><p>children get their schooling after the “crops are laid by,” and very</p><p>few there are that stay in school after the spring work has begun.</p><p>Child-labor is to be found here in some of its worst phases, as foster-</p><p>ing ignorance and stunting physical development. With the grown</p><p>men of the county there is little variety in work: thirteen hundred are</p><p>farmers, and two hundred are laborers, teamsters, etc., including</p><p>twenty-four artisans, ten merchants, twenty-one preachers, and</p><p>four teachers. This narrowness of life reaches its maximum among</p><p>the women: thirteen hundred and fifty of these are farm laborers,</p><p>one hundred are servants and washerwomen, leaving sixty-five</p><p>housewives, eight teachers, and six seamstresses.</p><p>Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in</p><p>the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world</p><p>earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or</p><p>resting after the heat of the strife. But here ninety-six per cent are</p><p>toiling; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a</p><p>home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of</p><p>the past; little of careless happy childhood and dreaming youth. The</p><p>dull monotony of daily toil is broken only by the gayety of the</p><p>thoughtless and the Saturday trip to town. The toil, like all farm toil,</p><p>is monotonous, and here there are little machinery and few tools to</p><p>relieve its burdensome drudgery. But with all this, it is work in the</p><p>pure open air, and this is something in a day when fresh air is scarce.</p><p>The land on the whole is still fertile, despite long abuse. For nine</p><p>or ten months in succession the crops will come if asked: garden</p><p>vegetables in April, grain in May, melons in June and July, hay in</p><p>August, sweet potatoes in September, and cotton from then to</p><p>Christmas. And yet on two-thirds of the land there is but one crop,</p><p>and that leaves the toilers in debt. Why is this?</p><p>Away down the Baysan road, where the broad flat fields are</p><p>flanked by great oak forests, is a plantation; many thousands of acres</p><p>it used to run, here and there, and beyond the great wood. Thirteen</p><p>hundred human beings here obeyed the call of one,––were his in</p><p>Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece 99</p><p>body, and largely in soul. One of them lives there yet,––a short,</p><p>stocky man, his dull-brown face seamed and drawn, and his tightly</p><p>curled hair gray-white. The crops? Just tolerable, he said; just</p><p>tolerable. Getting on? No––he wasn’t getting on at all. Smith of</p><p>Albany “furnishes” him, and his rent is eight hundred pounds of</p><p>cotton. Can’t make anything at that. Why didn’t he buy land?</p><p>Humph! Takes money to buy land. And he turns away. Free! The</p><p>most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time, amid the</p><p>broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted hopes of mothers and</p><p>maidens, and the fall of an empire,––the most piteous thing amid all</p><p>this was the black freedman who threw down his hoe because the</p><p>world called him free. What did such a mockery of freedom mean?</p><p>Not a cent of money, not</p><p>an inch of land, not a mouthful of</p><p>victuals,––not even ownership of the rags on his back. Free! On</p><p>Saturday, once or twice a month, the old master, before the war, used</p><p>to dole out bacon and meal to his Negroes. And after the first flush of</p><p>freedom wore off, and his true helplessness dawned on the freedman,</p><p>he came back and picked up his hoe, and old master still doled out</p><p>his bacon and meal. The legal form of service was theoretically far</p><p>different; in practice, task-work or “cropping” was substituted for</p><p>daily toil in gangs; and the slave gradually became a metayer, or</p><p>tenant on shares, in name, but a laborer with indeterminate wages</p><p>in fact.</p><p>Still the price of cotton fell, and gradually the landlords deserted</p><p>their plantations, and the reign of the merchant began. The mer-</p><p>chant of the Black Belt is a curious institution,––part banker, part</p><p>landlord, part contractor, and part despot. His store, which used</p><p>most frequently to stand at the cross-roads and become the centre of</p><p>a weekly village, has now moved to town; and thither the Negro</p><p>tenant follows him. The merchant keeps everything,––clothes and</p><p>shoes, coffee and sugar, pork and meal, canned and dried goods,</p><p>wagons and ploughs, seed and fertilizer,––and what he has not in</p><p>stock he can give you an order for at the store across the way. Here,</p><p>then, comes the tenant, Sam Scott, after he has contracted with some</p><p>absent landlord’s agent for hiring forty acres of land; he fingers his</p><p>hat nervously until the merchant finishes his morning chat with</p><p>Colonel Sanders, and calls out, “Well, Sam, what do you want?” Sam</p><p>wants him to “furnish” him,–– i. e., to advance him food and clothing</p><p>for the year, and perhaps seed and tools, until his crop is raised and</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk100</p><p>sold. If Sam seems a favorable subject, he and the merchant go to a</p><p>lawyer, and Sam executes a chattel mortgage on his mule and wagon</p><p>in return for seed and a week’s rations. As soon as the green cotton-</p><p>leaves appear above the ground, another mortgage is given on the</p><p>“crop.” Every Saturday, or at longer intervals, Sam calls upon the</p><p>merchant for his “rations”; a family of five usually gets about thirty</p><p>pounds of fat side-pork and a couple of bushels of corn-meal a</p><p>month. Besides this, clothing and shoes must be furnished; if Sam</p><p>or his family is sick, there are orders on the druggist and doctor; if</p><p>the mule wants shoeing, an order on the blacksmith, etc. If Sam is a</p><p>hard worker and crops promise well, he is often encouraged to</p><p>buy more,––sugar, extra clothes, perhaps a buggy. But he is seldom</p><p>encouraged to save. When cotton rose to ten cents last fall, the</p><p>shrewd merchants of Dougherty County sold a thousand buggies in</p><p>one season, mostly to black men.</p><p>The security offered for such transactions––a crop and chattel</p><p>mortgage––may at first seem slight. And, indeed, the merchants tell</p><p>many a true tale of shiftlessness and cheating; of cotton picked at</p><p>night, mules disappearing, and tenants absconding. But on the whole</p><p>the merchant of the Black Belt is the most prosperous man in the</p><p>section. So skilfully and so closely has he drawn the bonds of the law</p><p>about the tenant, that the black man has often simply to choose</p><p>between pauperism and crime; he “waives” all homestead exemp-</p><p>tions in his contract; he cannot touch his own mortgaged crop,</p><p>which the laws put almost in the full control of the land-owner and</p><p>of the merchant. When the crop is growing the merchant watches it</p><p>like a hawk; as soon as it is ready for market he takes possession of it,</p><p>sells it, pays the land-owner his rent, subtracts his bill for supplies,</p><p>and if, as sometimes happens, there is anything left, he hands it over</p><p>to the black serf for his Christmas celebration.</p><p>The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agri-</p><p>culture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant. The currency of</p><p>the Black Belt is cotton. It is a crop always salable for ready money,</p><p>not usually subject to great yearly fluctuations in price, and one</p><p>which the Negroes know how to raise. The landlord therefore</p><p>demands his rent in cotton, and the merchant will accept mortgages</p><p>on no other crop. There is no use asking the black tenant, then, to</p><p>diversify his crops,––he cannot under this system. Moreover, the</p><p>system is bound to bankrupt the tenant. I remember once meeting a</p><p>Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece 101</p><p>little one-mule wagon on the River road. A young black fellow sat in</p><p>it driving listlessly, his elbows on his knees. His dark-faced wife sat</p><p>beside him, stolid, silent.</p><p>“Hello!” cried my driver,––he has a most impudent way of</p><p>addressing these people, though they seem used to it,––“what have</p><p>you got there?”</p><p>“Meat and meal,” answered the man, stopping. The meat lay</p><p>uncovered in the bottom of the wagon,––a great thin side of fat pork</p><p>covered with salt; the meal was in a white bushel bag.</p><p>“What did you pay for that meat?”</p><p>“Ten cents a pound.” It could have been bought for six or seven</p><p>cents cash.</p><p>“And the meal?”</p><p>“Two dollars.” One dollar and ten cents is the cash price in town.</p><p>Here was a man paying five dollars for goods which he could have</p><p>bought for three dollars cash, and raised for one dollar or one dollar</p><p>and a half.</p><p>Yet it is not wholly his fault. The Negro farmer started behind,––</p><p>started in debt. This was not his choosing, but the crime of this</p><p>happy-go-lucky nation which goes blundering along with its</p><p>Reconstruction tragedies, its Spanish war interludes and Philippine</p><p>matinees, just as though God really were dead. Once in debt, it is no</p><p>easy matter for a whole race to emerge.</p><p>In the year of low-priced cotton, 1898, out of three hundred ten-</p><p>ant families one hundred and seventy-five ended their year’s work in</p><p>debt to the extent of fourteen thousand dollars; fifty cleared nothing,</p><p>and the remaining seventy-five made a total profit of sixteen hundred</p><p>dollars. The net indebtedness of the black tenant families of the</p><p>whole county must have been at least sixty thousand dollars. In a</p><p>more prosperous year the situation is far better; but on the average</p><p>the majority of tenants end the year even, or in debt, which means</p><p>that they work for board and clothes. Such an economic organization</p><p>is radically wrong. Whose is the blame?</p><p>The underlying causes of this situation are complicated but dis-</p><p>cernible. And one of the chief, outside the carelessness of the nation</p><p>in letting the slave start with nothing, is the widespread opinion</p><p>among the merchants and employers of the Black Belt that only by</p><p>the slavery of debt can the Negro be kept at work. Without doubt,</p><p>some pressure was necessary at the beginning of the free-labor</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk102</p><p>system to keep the listless and lazy at work; and even to-day the mass</p><p>of the Negro laborers need stricter guardianship than most Northern</p><p>laborers. Behind this honest and widespread opinion dishonesty and</p><p>cheating of the ignorant laborers have a good chance to take refuge.</p><p>And to all this must be added the obvious fact that a slave ancestry</p><p>and a system of unrequited toil has not improved the efficiency or</p><p>temper of the mass of black laborers. Nor is this peculiar to Sambo;</p><p>it has in history been just as true of John and Hans, of Jacques and</p><p>Pat, of all ground-down peasantries. Such is the situation of the</p><p>mass of the Negroes in the Black Belt to-day; and they are thinking</p><p>about it. Crime, and a cheap and dangerous socialism, are the inevit-</p><p>able results of this pondering. I see now that ragged black man</p><p>sitting on a log, aimlessly whittling a stick. He muttered to me with</p><p>the murmur of many ages, when he said: “White man sit down whole</p><p>year; Nigger work day and night and make crop; Nigger hardly gits</p><p>bread and meat; white man sittin’ down gits all. It’s wrong.” And</p><p>what do the better classes of Negroes do to improve their situation?</p><p>One of two things: if any way possible, they buy land; if not, they</p><p>migrate to town. Just as centuries ago it was no easy thing for the serf</p><p>to escape into the freedom of town-life, even so to-day there are</p><p>hindrances laid in the way of county</p><p>laborers. In considerable parts</p><p>of all the Gulf States, and especially in Mississippi, Louisiana,</p><p>and Arkansas, the Negroes on the plantations in the back-country</p><p>districts are still held at forced labor practically without wages.</p><p>Especially is this true in districts where the farmers are composed of</p><p>the more ignorant class of poor whites, and the Negroes are beyond</p><p>the reach of schools and intercourse with their advancing fellows. If</p><p>such a peon should run away, the sheriff, elected by white suffrage,</p><p>can usually be depended on to catch the fugitive, return him, and ask</p><p>no questions. If he escape to another county, a charge of petty thiev-</p><p>ing, easily true, can be depended upon to secure his return. Even if</p><p>some unduly officious person insist upon a trial, neighborly comity</p><p>will probably make his conviction sure, and then the labor due the</p><p>county can easily be bought by the master. Such a system is impos-</p><p>sible in the more civilized parts of the South, or near the large towns</p><p>and cities; but in those vast stretches of land beyond the telegraph</p><p>and the newspaper the spirit of the Thirteenth Amendment is sadly</p><p>broken. This represents the lowest economic depths of the black</p><p>American peasant; and in a study of the rise and condition of the</p><p>Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece 103</p><p>Negro freeholder we must trace his economic progress from this</p><p>modern serfdom.</p><p>Even in the better-ordered country districts of the South the free</p><p>movement of agricultural laborers is hindered by the migration-</p><p>agent laws.* The “Associated Press” recently informed the world of</p><p>the arrest of a young white man in Southern Georgia who repre-</p><p>sented the “Atlantic Naval Supplies Company,” and who “was caught</p><p>in the act of enticing hands from the turpentine farm of Mr. John</p><p>Greer.” The crime for which this young man was arrested is taxed</p><p>five hundred dollars for each county in which the employment agent</p><p>proposes to gather laborers for work outside the State. Thus the</p><p>Negroes’ ignorance of the labor-market outside his own vicinity</p><p>is increased rather than diminished by the laws of nearly every</p><p>Southern State.</p><p>Similar to such measures is the unwritten law of the back districts</p><p>and small towns of the South, that the character of all Negroes</p><p>unknown to the mass of the community must be vouched for by</p><p>some white man. This is really a revival of the old Roman idea of the</p><p>patron under whose protection the new-made freedman was put. In</p><p>many instances this system has been of great good to the Negro, and</p><p>very often under the protection and guidance of the former master’s</p><p>family, or other white friends, the freedman progressed in wealth and</p><p>morality. But the same system has in other cases resulted in the</p><p>refusal of whole communities to recognize the right of a Negro to</p><p>change his habitation and to be master of his own fortunes. A black</p><p>stranger in Baker County, Georgia, for instance, is liable to be</p><p>stopped anywhere on the public highway and made to state his busi-</p><p>ness to the satisfaction of any white interrogator. If he fails to give</p><p>a suitable answer, or seems too independent or “sassy,” he may be</p><p>arrested or summarily driven away.</p><p>Thus it is that in the country districts of the South, by written or</p><p>unwritten law, peonage, hindrances to the migration of labor, and a</p><p>system of white patronage exists over large areas. Besides this, the</p><p>chance for lawless oppression and illegal exactions is vastly greater in</p><p>the country than in the city, and nearly all the more serious race</p><p>disturbances of the last decade have arisen from disputes in the</p><p>county between master and man,––as, for instance, the Sam Hose</p><p>affair. As a result of such a situation, there arose, first, the Black Belt;</p><p>and, second, the Migration to Town. The Black Belt was not, as many</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk104</p><p>assumed, a movement toward fields of labor under more genial</p><p>climatic conditions; it was primarily a huddling for self-protection,––</p><p>a massing of the black population for mutual defence in order to</p><p>secure the peace and tranquillity necessary to economic advance.</p><p>This movement took place between Emancipation and 1880, and</p><p>only partially accomplished the desired results. The rush to town</p><p>since 1880 is the counter-movement of men disappointed in the</p><p>economic opportunities of the Black Belt.</p><p>In Dougherty County, Georgia, one can see easily the results of</p><p>this experiment in huddling for protection. Only ten per cent of the</p><p>adult population was born in the county, and yet the blacks out-</p><p>number the whites four or five to one. There is undoubtedly a secur-</p><p>ity to the blacks in their very numbers,––a personal freedom from</p><p>arbitrary treatment, which makes hundreds of laborers cling to</p><p>Dougherty in spite of low wages and economic distress. But a change</p><p>is coming, and slowly but surely even here the agricultural laborers</p><p>are drifting to town and leaving the broad acres behind. Why is this?</p><p>Why do not the Negroes become land-owners, and build up the</p><p>black landed peasantry, which has for a generation and more been the</p><p>dream of philanthropist and statesman?</p><p>To the car-window sociologist, to the man who seeks to under-</p><p>stand and know the South by devoting the few leisure hours of a</p><p>holiday trip to unravelling the snarl of centuries,––to such men very</p><p>often the whole trouble with the black field-hand may be summed up</p><p>by Aunt Ophelia’s word,* “Shiftless!” They have noted repeatedly</p><p>scenes like one I saw last summer. We were riding along the highroad</p><p>to town at the close of a long hot day. A couple of young black fellows</p><p>passed us in a mule-team, with several bushels of loose corn in the</p><p>ear. One was driving, listlessly bent forward, his elbows on his</p><p>knees,––a happy-go-lucky, careless picture of irresponsibility. The</p><p>other was fast asleep in the bottom of the wagon. As we passed we</p><p>noticed an ear of corn fall from the wagon. They never saw it,––not</p><p>they. A rod farther on we noted another ear on the ground; and</p><p>between that creeping mule and town we counted twenty-six ears of</p><p>corn. Shiftless? Yes, the personification of shiftlessness. And yet</p><p>follow those boys: they are not lazy; to-morrow morning they’ll be</p><p>up with the sun; they work hard when they do work, and they work</p><p>willingly. They have no sordid, selfish, money-getting ways, but</p><p>rather a fine disdain for mere cash. They’ll loaf before your face and</p><p>Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece 105</p><p>work behind your back with good-natured honesty. They’ll steal a</p><p>watermelon, and hand you back your lost purse intact. Their great</p><p>defect as laborers lies in their lack of incentive to work beyond the</p><p>mere pleasure of physical exertion. They are careless because they</p><p>have not found that it pays to be careful; they are improvident</p><p>because the improvident ones of their acquaintance get on about as</p><p>well as the provident. Above all, they cannot see why they should</p><p>take unusual pains to make the white man’s land better, or to fatten</p><p>his mule, or save his corn. On the other hand, the white land-owner</p><p>argues that any attempt to improve these laborers by increased</p><p>responsibility, or higher wages, or better homes, or land of their own,</p><p>would be sure to result in failure. He shows his Northern visitor the</p><p>scarred and wretched land; the ruined mansions, the worn-out soil</p><p>and mortgaged acres, and says, This is Negro freedom!</p><p>Now it happens that both master and man have just enough argu-</p><p>ment on their respective sides to make it difficult for them to under-</p><p>stand each other. The Negro dimly personifies in the white man all</p><p>his ills and misfortunes; if he is poor, it is because the white man</p><p>seizes the fruit of his toil; if he is ignorant, it is because the white</p><p>man gives him neither time nor facilities to learn; and, indeed, if any</p><p>misfortune happens to him, it is because of some hidden machin-</p><p>ations of “white folks.” On the other hand, the masters and the</p><p>masters’ sons have never been able to see why the Negro, instead of</p><p>settling down to be day-laborers for bread and clothes, are infected</p><p>with a silly desire to rise in the world, and why they are sulky,</p><p>(Chicago:</p><p>University of Chicago Press, 1995), 153–68.</p><p>Introduction xiii</p><p>longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a</p><p>better and truer self. (pp. 8–9)</p><p>There are passages in The Souls of Black Folk (for example, the</p><p>sentences on the ‘double life’ of the American Negro towards the end</p><p>of ‘Of the Faith of the Fathers’, p. 136) that retain some of the sense</p><p>of ‘vacillation and contradiction’ expressed in ‘The Conservation of</p><p>Races’. But there is something more complex announced in ‘Of Our</p><p>Spiritual Strivings’, because double consciousness is at once a</p><p>deprivation (an inability to see oneself except ‘through the eyes of</p><p>others’) and a gift (an endowment of ‘second-sight’, that seems to</p><p>allow a deeper or redoubled comprehension of the complexities of</p><p>‘this American world’). In this reformulation, we are reminded that</p><p>‘alienation––raised to a conscious level, cultivated, and directed––</p><p>has revolutionary potential’.13 And we are provided with a vision of</p><p>the goal: a ‘merging’ of these ‘unreconciled strivings’ in a ‘better and</p><p>truer self’, allowed to participate as a ‘co-worker in the kingdom of</p><p>culture’ (p. 9).</p><p>The title of the book itself announces a departure from the rhet-</p><p>oric of race, derived from nineteenth-century social Darwinism, to</p><p>the spiritual vocabulary of German Romanticism. As the biographer</p><p>David Levering Lewis points out, ‘the German influences are</p><p>unmistakable with their suggestion of materializing spirit and dia-</p><p>lectical struggle, the whole surging process coming to concretion in</p><p>das Volk––a mighty nation with a unique soul. It is as though the</p><p>voices of Schopenhauer and Sojourner Truth were blended.’14</p><p>Rather than the ‘conservation of races’, Du Bois’s book argues (in</p><p>‘Of the Wings of Atalanta’) that universities must be developed in</p><p>the South to develop ‘broad ideals and true culture’, the ‘conservation</p><p>of soul from sordid aims and petty passions’ (p. 60).</p><p>The other key term introduced by The Souls of Black Folk arises</p><p>in the second sentence of the ‘Forethought’, in another memorable</p><p>formulation: ‘the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem</p><p>of the color-line’ (p. 3). Du Bois first used this phrase in July 1900,</p><p>when he attended the first Pan-African Conference in London,</p><p>organized by Trinidadian lawyer Henry Sylvester Williams and</p><p>13 Thomas C. Holt, ‘The Political Uses of Alienation: W. E. B. Du Bois on Politics,</p><p>Race, and Culture, 1903–1940’, American Quarterly 42/2 (June 1990), 306.</p><p>14 Lewis, Du Bois: Biography, 282.</p><p>Introductionxiv</p><p>attended by a number of luminaries, including the Haitian politician</p><p>Benito Sylvain, the former slave Henry ‘Box’ Brown, and the African</p><p>American feminist Anna Julia Cooper. In the final sessions of the</p><p>conference in Westminster Town Hall, Du Bois gave a speech</p><p>titled ‘To the Nations of the World’ that opened with a remarkable</p><p>paragraph:</p><p>In the metropolis of the modern world, in this closing year of the</p><p>nineteenth century there has been assembled a congress of men and</p><p>women of African blood, to deliberate solemnly upon the present situ-</p><p>ation and outlook of the darker races of mankind. The problem of the</p><p>twentieth century is the problem of the colour line, the question as to how</p><p>far differences of race . . . are going to be made, hereafter, the basis of</p><p>denying to over half the world the right of sharing to their utmost ability</p><p>the opportunities and privileges of modern civilisation.15</p><p>In The Souls of Black Folk, it is crucial to keep in mind that the</p><p>‘color-line’ for Du Bois is never solely a matter of racial prejudice in</p><p>the United States; as it is phrased in the opening sentence of ‘Of the</p><p>Dawn of Freedom’, the term invokes ‘the relation of the darker to</p><p>the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the</p><p>islands of the sea’ (p. 15). Or, as Du Bois writes in passing in the</p><p>chapter on Booker T. Washington, ‘the recent course of the United</p><p>States toward weaker and darker peoples in the West Indies, Hawaii,</p><p>and the Philippines’ should be a reminder that the ‘color-line’ is</p><p>global: ‘for where in the world may we go and be safe from lying and</p><p>brute force?’ (p. 40). This anti-imperialist sensibility, which is</p><p>implicit rather than foregrounded in The Souls of Black Folk, would</p><p>become pivotal in Du Bois’s work after the First World War, in books</p><p>such as Darkwater (1920) and Dark Princess (1928); it is one of the</p><p>main issues that Du Bois underlines in his preface to the anniversary</p><p>edition of The Souls of Black Folk published in 1953.16</p><p>The literary scholar Robert Stepto has noted the ‘hortatory qual-</p><p>ity’17 of Souls: its patterns of address to the reader (implicitly framed</p><p>as white American), in a tone that ranges from the solicitous and</p><p>genteel––as with the invocation of ‘you, Gentle Reader’ in the</p><p>15 Du Bois, ‘To the Nations of the World’, in W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. David</p><p>Levering Lewis (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 639.</p><p>16 W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘Fifty Years After’, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Blue</p><p>Heron, 1953), pp. ix–xi. This preface is included in Appendix III to this volume.</p><p>17 Stepto, From Behind the Veil, 55.</p><p>Introduction xv</p><p>second sentence of the ‘Forethought’––to the prophetic and accusa-</p><p>tory, as in the acid words to ‘Southern Gentlemen’ in Chapter VI,</p><p>‘Of the Training of Black Men’: ‘Even to-day the masses of the</p><p>Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the</p><p>moral crookedness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments</p><p>against them, but their counter-cries, lacking though they be in</p><p>formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not</p><p>wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen!’ (p. 74). In the main, these</p><p>modes of address allow Du Bois to compel the reader into a confron-</p><p>tation with the realities of black life in the South. Often ‘you’ are</p><p>explicitly invited on a journey ‘within the Veil’ with Du Bois as he</p><p>surveys the ‘Egypt of the Confederacy’, above all in the middle</p><p>chapters of the book. The most famous example occurs near the</p><p>beginning of Chapter VII, ‘Of the Black Belt’, where Du Bois</p><p>explains:</p><p>If you wish to ride with me you must come into the ‘Jim Crow Car.’ There</p><p>will be no objection,––already four other white men, and a little white girl</p><p>with her nurse, are in there. Usually the races are mixed in there; but the</p><p>white coach is all white. Of course this car is not so good as the other, but</p><p>it is fairly clean and comfortable. The discomfort lies chiefly in the hearts</p><p>of those four black men yonder––and in mine. (pp. 78–9).</p><p>With passages like this one, The Souls of Black Folk makes its readers</p><p>‘fellow travellers’ in an attempt to unmake their innermost racial</p><p>conditioning and reflexes, forcing them to see black life through</p><p>black eyes.</p><p>This moral and historical re-education of the reader (which runs</p><p>parallel to Du Bois’s calls for the education of the Negro) is simul-</p><p>taneously an argument about the proper approach to the study of the</p><p>‘Negro problem’. In the late 1890s, Du Bois had been thoroughly</p><p>committed to the sociological study of race. If the method is first</p><p>apparent in The Philadelphia Negro, it becomes a long-term col-</p><p>laborative plan with Du Bois’s editorial direction of the Atlanta</p><p>University Studies. Years later, he explained that ‘the Negro prob-</p><p>lem was in my mind a matter of systematic investigation and intelli-</p><p>gent understanding. The world was thinking wrong about race,</p><p>because it did not know. The ultimate evil was stupidity. The cure</p><p>for it was knowledge based on scientific investigation.’18 Du Bois’s</p><p>18 Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn, 597.</p><p>Introductionxvi</p><p>perspective was transformed by two terrible events in 1899. That</p><p>April, he was appalled by the vicious lynching of Sam Hose, an</p><p>agricultural worker who had been accused of murder in Palmetto,</p><p>Georgia, outside Atlanta. Du Bois had written a carefully reasoned</p><p>letter in protest at the lynching, and he was on his way to deliver it to</p><p>the offices of the Atlanta Constitution when he learned that Hose had</p><p>been tortured, burnt, and dismembered by a mob of more than</p><p>dissatisfied, and careless, where their fathers were happy and dumb</p><p>and faithful. “Why, you niggers have an easier time than I do,” said a</p><p>puzzled Albany merchant to his black customer. “Yes,” he replied,</p><p>“and so does yo’ hogs.”</p><p>Taking, then, the dissatisfied and shiftless field-hand as a starting-</p><p>point, let us inquire how the black thousands of Dougherty have</p><p>struggled from him up toward their ideal, and what that ideal is. All</p><p>social struggle is evidenced by the rise, first of economic, then of</p><p>social classes, among a homogeneous population. To-day the follow-</p><p>ing economic classes are plainly differentiated among these Negroes.</p><p>A “submerged tenth” of croppers, with a few paupers; forty per</p><p>cent who are metayers and thirty-nine per cent of semi-metayers and</p><p>wage-laborers. There are left five per cent of money-renters and</p><p>six per cent of freeholders,––the “Upper Ten” of the land. The</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk106</p><p>croppers are entirely without capital, even in the limited sense of</p><p>food or money to keep them from seed-time to harvest. All they</p><p>furnish is their labor; the land-owner furnishes land, stock, tools,</p><p>seed, and house; and at the end of the year the laborer gets from a</p><p>third to a half of the crop. Out of his share, however, comes pay and</p><p>interest for food and clothing advanced him during the year. Thus</p><p>we have a laborer without capital and without wages, and an</p><p>employer whose capital is largely his employees’ wages. It is an</p><p>unsatisfactory arrangement, both for hirer and hired, and is usually</p><p>in vogue on poor land with hard-pressed owners.</p><p>Above the croppers come the great mass of the black population</p><p>who work the land on their own responsibility, paying rent in cotton</p><p>and supported by the crop-mortgage system. After the war this sys-</p><p>tem was attractive to the freedmen on account of its larger freedom</p><p>and its possibilities for making a surplus. But with the carrying out</p><p>of the crop-lien system, the deterioration of the land, and the slavery</p><p>of debt, the position of the metayers has sunk to a dead level of</p><p>practically unrewarded toil. Formerly all tenants had some capital,</p><p>and often considerable; but absentee landlordism, rising rack-rent,</p><p>and falling cotton have stripped them well-nigh of all, and probably</p><p>not over half of them to-day own their mules. The change from</p><p>cropper to tenant was accomplished by fixing the rent. If, now, the</p><p>rent fixed was reasonable, this was an incentive to the tenant to</p><p>strive. On the other hand, if the rent was too high, or if the land</p><p>deteriorated, the result was to discourage and check the efforts of the</p><p>black peasantry. There is no doubt that the latter case is true; that in</p><p>Dougherty County every economic advantage of the price of cotton</p><p>in market and of the strivings of the tenant has been taken advantage</p><p>of by the landlords and merchants, and swallowed up in rent and</p><p>interest. If cotton rose in price, the rent rose even higher; if cotton</p><p>fell, the rent remained or followed reluctantly. If a tenant worked</p><p>hard and raised a large crop, his rent was raised the next year; if that</p><p>year the crop failed, his corn was confiscated and his mule sold for</p><p>debt. There were, of course, exceptions to this,––cases of personal</p><p>kindness and forbearance; but in the vast majority of cases the rule</p><p>was to extract the uttermost farthing from the mass of the black farm</p><p>laborers.</p><p>The average metayer pays from twenty to thirty per cent of his</p><p>crop in rent. The result of such rack-rent can only be evil,––abuse</p><p>Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece 107</p><p>and neglect of the soil, deterioration in the character of the laborers,</p><p>and a widespread sense of injustice. “Wherever the country is poor,”</p><p>cried Arthur Young,* “it is in the hands of metayers,” and “their</p><p>condition is more wretched than that of day-laborers.” He was</p><p>talking of Italy a century ago; but he might have been talking of</p><p>Dougherty County to-day. And especially is that true to-day which</p><p>he declares was true in France before the Revolution: “The metayers</p><p>are considered as little better than menial servants, removable at</p><p>pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things to the will of the</p><p>landlords.” On this low plane half the black population of Dougherty</p><p>County––perhaps more than half the black millions of this land––</p><p>are to-day struggling.</p><p>A degree above these we may place those laborers who receive</p><p>money wages for their work. Some receive a house with perhaps a</p><p>garden-spot; then supplies of food and clothing are advanced, and</p><p>certain fixed wages are given at the end of the year, varying from</p><p>thirty to sixty dollars, out of which the supplies must be paid for,</p><p>with interest. About eighteen per cent of the population belong to</p><p>this class of semi-metayers, while twenty-two per cent are laborers</p><p>paid by the month or year, and are either “furnished” by their own</p><p>savings or perhaps more usually by some merchant who takes his</p><p>chances of payment. Such laborers receive from thirty-five to fifty</p><p>cents a day during the working season. They are usually young</p><p>unmarried persons, some being women; and when they marry they</p><p>sink to the class of metayers, or, more seldom, become renters.</p><p>The renters for fixed money rentals are the first of the emerging</p><p>classes, and form five per cent of the families. The sole advantage of</p><p>this small class is their freedom to choose their crops, and the</p><p>increased responsibility which comes through having money trans-</p><p>actions. While some of the renters differ little in condition from the</p><p>metayers, yet on the whole they are more intelligent and responsible</p><p>persons, and are the ones who eventually become land-owners.</p><p>Their better character and greater shrewdness enable them to gain,</p><p>perhaps to demand, better terms in rents; rented farms, varying</p><p>from forty to a hundred acres, bear an average rental of about fifty-</p><p>four dollars a year. The men who conduct such farms do not long</p><p>remain renters; either they sink to metayers, or with a successful</p><p>series of harvests rise to be land-owners.</p><p>In 1870 the tax-books of Dougherty report no Negroes as</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk108</p><p>landholders. If there were any such at that time,––and there may</p><p>have been a few,––their land was probably held in the name of some</p><p>white patron,––a method not uncommon during slavery. In 1875</p><p>ownership of land had begun with seven hundred and fifty acres; ten</p><p>years later this had increased to over sixty-five hundred acres, to nine</p><p>thousand acres in 1890 and ten thousand in 1900. The total assessed</p><p>property has in this same period risen from eighty thousand dollars</p><p>in 1875 to two hundred and forty thousand dollars in 1900.</p><p>Two circumstances complicate this development and make it in</p><p>some respects difficult to be sure of the real tendencies; they are the</p><p>panic of 1893, and the low price of cotton in 1898. Besides this, the</p><p>system of assessing property in the country districts of Georgia is</p><p>somewhat antiquated and of uncertain statistical value; there are no</p><p>assessors, and each man makes a sworn return to a tax-receiver. Thus</p><p>public opinion plays a large part, and the returns vary strangely from</p><p>year to year. Certainly these figures show the small amount of</p><p>accumulated capital among the Negroes, and the consequent large</p><p>dependence of their property on temporary prosperity. They have</p><p>little to tide over a few years of economic depression, and are at the</p><p>mercy of the cotton-market far more than the whites. And thus the</p><p>land-owners, despite their marvellous efforts, are really a transient</p><p>class, continually being depleted by those who fall back into the class</p><p>of renters or metayers, and augmented by newcomers from the</p><p>masses. Of the one hundred land-owners in 1898, half had bought</p><p>their land since 1893, a fourth between 1890 and 1893, a fifth</p><p>between 1884 and 1890, and the rest between 1870 and 1884. In</p><p>all, one hundred and eighty-five Negroes have owned land in this</p><p>county since 1875.</p><p>If all the black land-owners who had ever held land here had kept</p><p>it or left it in the hands of black men, the Negroes would have owned</p><p>nearer thirty thousand</p><p>acres than the fifteen thousand they now</p><p>hold. And yet these fifteen thousand acres are a creditable show-</p><p>ing,––a proof of no little weight of the worth and ability of the Negro</p><p>people. If they had been given an economic start at Emancipation, if</p><p>they had been in an enlightened and rich community which really</p><p>desired their best good, then we might perhaps call such a result</p><p>small or even insignificant. But for a few thousand poor ignorant</p><p>field-hands, in the face of poverty, a falling market, and social stress,</p><p>to save and capitalize two hundred thousand dollars in a generation</p><p>Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece 109</p><p>has meant a tremendous effort. The rise of a nation, the pressing</p><p>forward of a social class, means a bitter struggle, a hard and soul-</p><p>sickening battle with the world such as few of the more favored</p><p>classes know or appreciate.</p><p>Out of the hard economic conditions of this portion of the Black</p><p>Belt, only six per cent of the population have succeeded in emerging</p><p>into peasant proprietorship; and these are not all firmly fixed, but</p><p>grow and shrink in number with the wavering of the cotton-market.</p><p>Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and</p><p>half of them sit in hopeless serfdom. For these there is one other</p><p>avenue of escape toward which they have turned in increasing num-</p><p>bers, namely, migration to town. A glance at the distribution of land</p><p>among the black owners curiously reveals this fact. In 1898 the hold-</p><p>ings were as follows: Under forty acres, forty-nine families; forty to</p><p>two hundred and fifty acres, seventeen families; two hundred and</p><p>fifty to one thousand acres, thirteen families; one thousand or more</p><p>acres, two families. Now in 1890 there were forty-four holdings, but</p><p>only nine of these were under forty acres. The great increase of</p><p>holdings, then, has come in the buying of small homesteads near</p><p>town, where their owners really share in the town life; this is a part of</p><p>the rush to town. And for every land-owner who has thus hurried</p><p>away from the narrow and hard conditions of country life, how many</p><p>field-hands, how many tenants, how many ruined renters, have</p><p>joined that long procession? Is it not strange compensation? The sin</p><p>of the country districts is visited on the town, and the social sores of</p><p>city life to-day may, here in Dougherty County, and perhaps in many</p><p>places near and far, look for their final healing without the city walls.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk110</p><p>ix</p><p>Of the Sons of Master and Man</p><p>Life treads on life, and heart on heart;</p><p>We press too close in church and mart</p><p>To keep a dream or grave apart.</p><p>Mrs. Browning.*</p><p>The world-old phenomenon of the contact of diverse races of men</p><p>is to have new exemplification during the new century. Indeed, the</p><p>characteristic of our age is the contact of European civilization</p><p>with the world’s undeveloped peoples. Whatever we may say of the</p><p>results of such contact in the past, it certainly forms a chapter in</p><p>human action not pleasant to look back upon. War, murder, slavery,</p><p>extermination, and debauchery,––this has again and again been the</p><p>result of carrying civilization and the blessed gospel to the isles of the</p><p>sea and the heathen without the law. Nor does it altogether satisfy</p><p>the conscience of the modern world to be told complacently that all</p><p>this has been right and proper, the fated triumph of strength over</p><p>weakness, of righteousness over evil, of superiors over inferiors. It</p><p>would certainly be soothing if one could readily believe all this; and</p><p>yet there are too many ugly facts for everything to be thus easily</p><p>explained away. We feel and know that there are many delicate dif-</p><p>ferences in race psychology, numberless changes that our crude social</p><p>measurements are not yet able to follow minutely, which explain much</p><p>of history and social development. At the same time, too, we know</p><p>that these considerations have never adequately explained or excused</p><p>the triumph of brute force and cunning over weakness and innocence.</p><p>It is, then, the strife of all honorable men of the twentieth century</p><p>to see that in the future competition of races the survival of the</p><p>fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the</p><p>true; that we may be able to preserve for future civilization all that is</p><p>really fine and noble and strong, and not continue to put a premium</p><p>on greed and impudence and cruelty. To bring this hope to fruition,</p><p>we are compelled daily to turn more and more to a conscientious</p><p>study of the phenomena of race-contact,––to a study frank and fair,</p><p>and not falsified and colored by our wishes or our fears. And we have</p><p>in the South as fine a field for such a study as the world affords,––a</p><p>field, to be sure, which the average American scientist deems some-</p><p>what beneath his dignity, and which the average man who is not a</p><p>scientist knows all about, but nevertheless a line of study which by</p><p>reason of the enormous race complications with which God seems</p><p>about to punish this nation must increasingly claim our sober atten-</p><p>tion, study, and thought, we must ask, what are the actual relations</p><p>of whites and blacks in the South? and we must be answered, not by</p><p>apology or fault-finding, but by a plain, unvarnished tale.</p><p>In the civilized life of to-day the contact of men and their relations</p><p>to each other fall in a few main lines of action and communication:</p><p>there is, first, the physical proximity of homes and dwelling-places,</p><p>the way in which neighborhoods group themselves, and the contigu-</p><p>ity of neighborhoods. Secondly, and in our age chiefest, there are the</p><p>economic relations,––the methods by which individuals coöperate</p><p>for earning a living, for the mutual satisfaction of wants, for the</p><p>production of wealth. Next, there are the political relations, the</p><p>coöperation in social control, in group government, in laying and</p><p>paying the burden of taxation. In the fourth place there are the less</p><p>tangible but highly important forms of intellectual contact and com-</p><p>merce, the interchange of ideas through conversation and conference,</p><p>through periodicals and libraries; and, above all, the gradual forma-</p><p>tion for each community of that curious tertium quid* which we call</p><p>public opinion. Closely allied with this come the various forms</p><p>of social contact in everyday life, in travel, in theatres, in house</p><p>gatherings, in marrying and giving in marriage. Finally, there are</p><p>the varying forms of religious enterprise, of moral teaching and</p><p>benevolent endeavor. These are the principal ways in which men</p><p>living in the same communities are brought into contact with each</p><p>other. It is my present task, therefore, to indicate, from my point of</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk112</p><p>view, how the black race in the South meet and mingle with the</p><p>whites in these matters of everyday life.</p><p>First, as to physical dwelling. It is usually possible to draw in</p><p>nearly every Southern community a physical color-line on the map,</p><p>on the one side of which whites dwell and on the other Negroes. The</p><p>winding and intricacy of the geographical color line varies, of course,</p><p>in different communities. I know some towns where a straight line</p><p>drawn through the middle of the main street separates nine-tenths of</p><p>the whites from nine-tenths of the blacks. In other towns the older</p><p>settlement of whites has been encircled by a broad band of blacks;</p><p>in still other cases little settlements or nuclei of blacks have sprung</p><p>up amid surrounding whites. Usually in cities each street has its</p><p>distinctive color, and only now and then do the colors meet in close</p><p>proximity. Even in the country something of this segregation is</p><p>manifest in the smaller areas, and of course in the larger phenomena</p><p>of the Black Belt.</p><p>All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural</p><p>clustering by social grades common to all communities. A Negro</p><p>slum may be in dangerous proximity to a white residence quarter,</p><p>while it is quite common to find a white slum planted in the heart</p><p>of a respectable Negro district. One thing, however, seldom occurs:</p><p>the best of the whites and the best of the Negroes almost never</p><p>live</p><p>in anything like close proximity. It thus happens that in nearly every</p><p>Southern town and city, both whites and blacks see commonly the</p><p>worst of each other. This is a vast change from the situation in the</p><p>past, when, through the close contact of master and house-servant in</p><p>the patriarchal big house, one found the best of both races in close</p><p>contact and sympathy, while at the same time the squalor and dull</p><p>round of toil among the field-hands was removed from the sight and</p><p>hearing of the family. One can easily see how a person who saw</p><p>slavery thus from his father’s parlors, and sees freedom on the streets</p><p>of a great city, fails to grasp or comprehend the whole of the new</p><p>picture. On the other hand, the settled belief of the mass of the</p><p>Negroes that the Southern white people do not have the black man’s</p><p>best interests at heart has been intensified in later years by this</p><p>continual daily contact of the better class of blacks with the worst</p><p>representatives of the white race.</p><p>Coming now to the economic relations of the races, we are on</p><p>ground made familiar by study, much discussion, and no little</p><p>Of the Sons of Master and Man 113</p><p>philanthropic effort. And yet with all this there are many essential</p><p>elements in the coöperation of Negroes and whites for work and</p><p>wealth that are too readily overlooked or not thoroughly understood.</p><p>The average American can easily conceive of a rich land awaiting</p><p>development and filled with black laborers. To him the Southern</p><p>problem is simply that of making efficient workingmen out of this</p><p>material, by giving them the requisite technical skill and the help of</p><p>invested capital. The problem, however, is by no means as simple as</p><p>this, from the obvious fact that these workingmen have been trained</p><p>for centuries as slaves. They exhibit, therefore, all the advantages and</p><p>defects of such training; they are willing and good-natured, but not</p><p>self-reliant, provident, or careful. If now the economic development</p><p>of the South is to be pushed to the verge of exploitation, as seems</p><p>probable, then we have a mass of workingmen thrown into relentless</p><p>competition with the workingmen of the world, but handicapped</p><p>by a training the very opposite to that of the modern self-reliant</p><p>democratic laborer. What the black laborer needs is careful personal</p><p>guidance, group leadership of men with hearts in their bosoms, to</p><p>train them to foresight, carefulness, and honesty. Nor does it require</p><p>any fine-spun theories of racial differences to prove the necessity of</p><p>such group training after the brains of the race have been knocked</p><p>out by two hundred and fifty years of assiduous education in submis-</p><p>sion, carelessness, and stealing. After Emancipation, it was the plain</p><p>duty of some one to assume this group leadership and training of the</p><p>Negro laborer. I will not stop here to inquire whose duty it was,––</p><p>whether that of the white ex-master who had profited by unpaid toil,</p><p>or the Northern philanthropist whose persistence brought on the</p><p>crisis, or the National Government whose edict freed the bondmen;</p><p>I will not stop to ask whose duty it was, but I insist it was the duty</p><p>of some one to see that these workingmen were not left alone and</p><p>unguided, without capital, without land, without skill, without eco-</p><p>nomic organization, without even the bald protection of law, order,</p><p>and decency,––left in a great land, not to settle down to slow and</p><p>careful internal development, but destined to be thrown almost</p><p>immediately into relentless and sharp competition with the best</p><p>of modern workingmen under an economic system where every</p><p>participant is fighting for himself, and too often utterly regardless of</p><p>the rights or welfare of his neighbor.</p><p>For we must never forget that the economic system of the South</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk114</p><p>to-day which has succeeded the old régime is not the same system as</p><p>that of the old industrial North, of England, or of France, with their</p><p>trades-unions, their restrictive laws, their written and unwritten</p><p>commercial customs, and their long experience. It is, rather, a copy</p><p>of that England of the early nineteenth century, before the factory</p><p>acts,––the England that wrung pity from thinkers and fired the</p><p>wrath of Carlyle. The rod of empire that passed from the hands of</p><p>Southern gentlemen in 1865, partly by force, partly by their own</p><p>petulance, has never returned to them. Rather it has passed to those</p><p>men who have come to take charge of the industrial exploitation</p><p>of the New South,––the sons of poor whites fired with a new thirst</p><p>for wealth and power, thrifty and avaricious Yankees, shrewd and</p><p>unscrupulous Jews. Into the hands of these men the Southern labor-</p><p>ers, white and black, have fallen; and this to their sorrow. For the</p><p>laborers as such there is in these new captains of industry neither</p><p>love nor hate, neither sympathy nor romance; it is a cold question</p><p>of dollars and dividends. Under such a system all labor is bound to</p><p>suffer. Even the white laborers are not yet intelligent, thrifty, and</p><p>well trained enough to maintain themselves against the powerful</p><p>inroads of organized capital. The results among them, even, are long</p><p>hours of toil, low wages, child labor, and lack of protection against</p><p>usury and cheating. But among the black laborers all this is aggra-</p><p>vated, first, by a race prejudice which varies from a doubt and distrust</p><p>among the best element of whites to a frenzied hatred among the</p><p>worst; and, secondly, it is aggravated, as I have said before, by the</p><p>wretched economic heritage of the freedmen from slavery. With this</p><p>training it is difficult for the freedman to learn to grasp the oppor-</p><p>tunities already opened to him, and the new opportunities are seldom</p><p>given him, but go by favor to the whites.</p><p>Left by the best elements of the South with little protection or</p><p>oversight, he has been made in law and custom the victim of the</p><p>worst and most unscrupulous men in each community. The crop-</p><p>lien system which is depopulating the fields of the South is not</p><p>simply the result of shiftlessness on the part of Negroes, but is</p><p>also the result of cunningly devised laws as to mortgages, liens, and</p><p>misdemeanors, which can be made by conscienceless men to entrap</p><p>and snare the unwary until escape is impossible, further toil a farce,</p><p>and protest a crime. I have seen, in the Black Belt of Georgia, an</p><p>ignorant, honest Negro buy and pay for a farm in installments three</p><p>Of the Sons of Master and Man 115</p><p>separate times, and then in the face of law and decency the enterpris-</p><p>ing Russian Jew who sold it to him pocketed money and deed and</p><p>left the black man landless, to labor on his own land at thirty cents a</p><p>day. I have seen a black farmer fall in debt to a white storekeeper,</p><p>and that storekeeper go to his farm and strip it of every single</p><p>marketable article,––mules, ploughs, stored crops, tools, furniture,</p><p>bedding, clocks, looking-glass,––and all this without a warrant,</p><p>without process of law, without a sheriff or officer, in the face of the</p><p>law for homestead exemptions, and without rendering to a single</p><p>responsible person any account or reckoning. And such proceedings</p><p>can happen, and will happen, in any community where a class of</p><p>ignorant toilers are placed by custom and race-prejudice beyond the</p><p>pale of sympathy and race-brotherhood. So long as the best elements</p><p>of a community do not feel in duty bound to protect and train and</p><p>care for the weaker members of their group, they leave them to be</p><p>preyed upon by these swindlers and rascals.</p><p>This unfortunate economic situation does not mean the hindrance</p><p>of all advance in the black South, or the absence of a class of black</p><p>landlords and mechanics who, in spite of disadvantages, are accumu-</p><p>lating property and making good citizens. But it does mean that this</p><p>class is not nearly so large as a fairer economic system might easily</p><p>make it, that those who survive in the competition are handicapped</p><p>so as to accomplish much less than they deserve to, and that, above</p><p>all, the personnel of the successful class is left to chance and accident,</p><p>and not to any intelligent</p><p>culling or reasonable methods of selection.</p><p>As a remedy for this, there is but one possible procedure. We must</p><p>accept some of the race prejudice in the South as a fact,––deplorable</p><p>in its intensity, unfortunate in results, and dangerous for the future,</p><p>but nevertheless a hard fact which only time can efface. We cannot</p><p>hope, then, in this generation, or for several generations, that the</p><p>mass of the whites can be brought to assume that close sympathetic</p><p>and self-sacrificing leadership of the blacks which their present situ-</p><p>ation so eloquently demands. Such leadership, such social teaching</p><p>and example, must come from the blacks themselves. For some time</p><p>men doubted as to whether the Negro could develop such leaders;</p><p>but to-day no one seriously disputes the capability of individual</p><p>Negroes to assimilate the culture and common sense of modern</p><p>civilization, and to pass it on, to some extent at least, to their fellows.</p><p>If this is true, then here is the path out of the economic situation,</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk116</p><p>and here is the imperative demand for trained Negro leaders of</p><p>character and intelligence,––men of skill, men of light and leading,</p><p>college-bred men, black captains of industry, and missionaries of</p><p>culture; men who thoroughly comprehend and know modern civil-</p><p>ization, and can take hold of Negro communities and raise and train</p><p>them by force of precept and example, deep sympathy, and the</p><p>inspiration of common blood and ideals. But if such men are to be</p><p>effective they must have some power,––they must be backed by the</p><p>best public opinion of these communities, and able to wield for their</p><p>objects and aims such weapons as the experience of the world has</p><p>taught are indispensable to human progress.</p><p>Of such weapons the greatest, perhaps, in the modern world is the</p><p>power of the ballot; and this brings me to a consideration of the third</p><p>form of contact between whites and blacks in the South,––political</p><p>activity.</p><p>In the attitude of the American mind toward Negro suffrage can</p><p>be traced with unusual accuracy the prevalent conceptions of gov-</p><p>ernment. In the fifties we were near enough the echoes of the French</p><p>Revolution to believe pretty thoroughly in universal suffrage. We</p><p>argued, as we thought then rather logically, that no social class was so</p><p>good, so true, and so disinterested as to be trusted wholly with the</p><p>political destiny of its neighbors; that in every state the best arbiters</p><p>of their own welfare are the persons directly affected; consequently</p><p>that it is only by arming every hand with a ballot,––with the right to</p><p>have a voice in the policy of the state,––that the greatest good to the</p><p>greatest number could be attained. To be sure, there were objections</p><p>to these arguments, but we thought we had answered them tersely</p><p>and convincingly; if some one complained of the ignorance of voters,</p><p>we answered, “Educate them.” If another complained of their venal-</p><p>ity, we replied, “Disfranchise them or put them in jail.” And, finally,</p><p>to the men who feared demagogues and the natural perversity of some</p><p>human beings we insisted that time and bitter experience would</p><p>teach the most hardheaded. It was at this time that the question of</p><p>Negro suffrage in the South was raised. Here was a defenceless</p><p>people suddenly made free. How were they to be protected from</p><p>those who did not believe in their freedom and were determined to</p><p>thwart it? Not by force, said the North; not by government guardian-</p><p>ship, said the South; then by the ballot, the sole and legitimate</p><p>defence of a free people, said the Common Sense of the Nation.</p><p>Of the Sons of Master and Man 117</p><p>No one thought, at the time, that the ex-slaves could use the ballot</p><p>intelligently or very effectively; but they did think that the posses-</p><p>sion of so great power by a great class in the nation would compel</p><p>their fellows to educate this class to its intelligent use.</p><p>Meantime, new thoughts came to the nation: the inevitable period</p><p>of moral retrogression and political trickery that ever follows in the</p><p>wake of war overtook us. So flagrant became the political scandals</p><p>that reputable men began to leave politics alone, and politics con-</p><p>sequently became disreputable. Men began to pride themselves on</p><p>having nothing to do with their own government, and to agree tacitly</p><p>with those who regarded public office as a private perquisite. In this</p><p>state of mind it became easy to wink at the suppression of the Negro</p><p>vote in the South, and to advise self-respecting Negroes to leave</p><p>politics entirely alone. The decent and reputable citizens of the</p><p>North who neglected their own civic duties grew hilarious over the</p><p>exaggerated importance with which the Negro regarded the fran-</p><p>chise. Thus it easily happened that more and more the better class</p><p>of Negroes followed the advice from abroad and the pressure from</p><p>home, and took no further interest in politics, leaving to the careless</p><p>and the venal of their race the exercise of their rights as voters.</p><p>The black vote that still remained was not trained and educated, but</p><p>further debauched by open and unblushing bribery, or force and</p><p>fraud; until the Negro voter was thoroughly inoculated with the idea</p><p>that politics was a method of private gain by disreputable means.</p><p>And finally, now, to-day, when we are awakening to the fact that</p><p>the perpetuity of republican institutions on this continent depends</p><p>on the purification of the ballot, the civic training of voters, and the</p><p>raising of voting to the plane of a solemn duty which a patriotic</p><p>citizen neglects to his peril and to the peril of his children’s chil-</p><p>dren,––in this day, when we are striving for a renaissance of civic</p><p>virtue, what are we going to say to the black voter of the South? Are</p><p>we going to tell him still that politics is a disreputable and useless</p><p>form of human activity? Are we going to induce the best class of</p><p>Negroes to take less and less interest in government, and to give up</p><p>their right to take such an interest, without a protest? I am not saying</p><p>a word against all legitimate efforts to purge the ballot of ignorance,</p><p>pauperism, and crime. But few have pretended that the present</p><p>movement for disfranchisement in the South is for such a purpose;</p><p>it has been plainly and frankly declared in nearly every case that the</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk118</p><p>object of the disfranchising laws is the elimination of the black man</p><p>from politics.</p><p>Now, is this a minor matter which has no influence on the main</p><p>question of the industrial and intellectual development of the Negro?</p><p>Can we establish a mass of black laborers and artisans and landhold-</p><p>ers in the South who, by law and public opinion, have absolutely</p><p>no voice in shaping the laws under which they live and work? Can</p><p>the modern organization of industry, assuming as it does free demo-</p><p>cratic government and the power and ability of the laboring classes</p><p>to compel respect for their welfare,––can this system be carried out</p><p>in the South when half its laboring force is voiceless in the public</p><p>councils and powerless in its own defence? To-day the black man of</p><p>the South has almost nothing to say as to how much he shall be</p><p>taxed, or how those taxes shall be expended; as to who shall execute</p><p>the laws, and how they shall do it; as to who shall make the laws, and</p><p>how they shall be made. It is pitiable that frantic efforts must be</p><p>made at critical times to get law-makers in some States even to listen</p><p>to the respectful presentation of the black man’s side of a current</p><p>controversy. Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look</p><p>upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of</p><p>humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have</p><p>little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely</p><p>no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consider-</p><p>ation; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers,</p><p>but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes</p><p>than let one guilty one escape.</p><p>I should be the last one to deny the patent weaknesses and</p><p>shortcomings of the Negro people; I should</p><p>be the last to withhold</p><p>sympathy from the white South in its efforts to solve its intricate</p><p>social problems. I freely acknowledge that it is possible, and some-</p><p>times best, that a partially undeveloped people should be ruled by</p><p>the best of their stronger and better neighbors for their own good,</p><p>until such time as they can start and fight the world’s battles alone.</p><p>I have already pointed out how sorely in need of such economic and</p><p>spiritual guidance the emancipated Negro was, and I am quite will-</p><p>ing to admit that if the representatives of the best white Southern</p><p>public opinion were the ruling and guiding powers in the South</p><p>to-day the conditions indicated would be fairly well fulfilled. But the</p><p>point I have insisted upon, and now emphasize again, is that the best</p><p>Of the Sons of Master and Man 119</p><p>opinion of the South to-day is not the ruling opinion. That to leave</p><p>the Negro helpless and without a ballot to-day is to leave him, not</p><p>to the guidance of the best, but rather to the exploitation and</p><p>debauchment of the worst; that this is no truer of the South than</p><p>of the North,––of the North than of Europe: in any land, in any</p><p>country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and</p><p>despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy</p><p>of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a tempta-</p><p>tion which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will</p><p>withstand.</p><p>Moreover, the political status of the Negro in the South is closely</p><p>connected with the question of Negro crime. There can be no doubt</p><p>that crime among Negroes has sensibly increased in the last thirty</p><p>years, and that there has appeared in the slums of great cities a dis-</p><p>tinct criminal class among the blacks. In explaining this unfortunate</p><p>development, we must note two things: (1) that the inevitable result</p><p>of Emancipation was to increase crime and criminals, and (2) that</p><p>the police system of the South was primarily designed to control</p><p>slaves. As to the first point, we must not forget that under a strict</p><p>slave system there can scarcely be such a thing as crime. But when</p><p>these variously constituted human particles are suddenly thrown</p><p>broadcast on the sea of life, some swim, some sink, and some hang</p><p>suspended, to be forced up or down by the chance currents of a</p><p>busy hurrying world. So great an economic and social revolution as</p><p>swept the South in ’63 meant a weeding out among the Negroes</p><p>of the incompetents and vicious, the beginning of a differentiation</p><p>of social grades. Now a rising group of people are not lifted bodily</p><p>from the ground like an inert solid mass, but rather stretch upward</p><p>like a living plant with its roots still clinging in the mould. The</p><p>appearance, therefore, of the Negro criminal was a phenomenon</p><p>to be awaited; and while it causes anxiety, it should not occasion</p><p>surprise.</p><p>Here again the hope for the future depended peculiarly on careful</p><p>and delicate dealing with these criminals. Their offences at first were</p><p>those of laziness, carelessness, and impulse, rather than of malignity</p><p>or ungoverned viciousness. Such misdemeanors needed discriminat-</p><p>ing treatment, firm but reformatory, with no hint of injustice, and</p><p>full proof of guilt. For such dealing with criminals, white or black,</p><p>the South had no machinery, no adequate jails or reformatories; its</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk120</p><p>police system was arranged to deal with blacks alone, and tacitly</p><p>assumed that every white man was ipso facto* a member of that police.</p><p>Thus grew up a double system of justice, which erred on the white</p><p>side by undue leniency and the practical immunity of red-handed</p><p>criminals, and erred on the black side by undue severity, injustice,</p><p>and lack of discrimination. For, as I have said, the police system of</p><p>the South was originally designed to keep track of all Negroes, not</p><p>simply of criminals; and when the Negroes were freed and the whole</p><p>South was convinced of the impossibility of free Negro labor, the</p><p>first and almost universal device was to use the courts as a means of</p><p>reënslaving the blacks. It was not then a question of crime, but rather</p><p>one of color, that settled a man’s conviction on almost any charge.</p><p>Thus Negroes came to look upon courts as instruments of injustice</p><p>and oppression, and upon those convicted in them as martyrs and</p><p>victims.</p><p>When, now, the real Negro criminal appeared, and instead of</p><p>petty stealing and vagrancy we began to have highway robbery,</p><p>burglary, murder, and rape, there was a curious effect on both sides</p><p>the color-line: the Negroes refused to believe the evidence of white</p><p>witnesses or the fairness of white juries, so that the greatest deter-</p><p>rent to crime, the public opinion of one’s own social caste, was lost,</p><p>and the criminal was looked upon as crucified rather than hanged.</p><p>On the other hand, the whites, used to being careless as to the</p><p>guilt or innocence of accused Negroes, were swept in moments</p><p>of passion beyond law, reason, and decency. Such a situation is</p><p>bound to increase crime, and has increased it. To natural viciousness</p><p>and vagrancy are being daily added motives of revolt and revenge</p><p>which stir up all the latent savagery of both races and make peaceful</p><p>attention to economic development often impossible.</p><p>But the chief problem in any community cursed with crime is</p><p>not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young</p><p>from being trained to crime. And here again the peculiar conditions</p><p>of the South have prevented proper precautions. I have seen twelve-</p><p>year-old boys working in chains on the public streets of Atlanta,</p><p>directly in front of the schools, in company with old and hardened</p><p>criminals; and this indiscriminate mingling of men and women</p><p>and children makes the chain-gangs perfect schools of crime and</p><p>debauchery. The struggle for reformatories, which has gone on in</p><p>Virginia, Georgia, and other States, is the one encouraging sign of</p><p>Of the Sons of Master and Man 121</p><p>the awakening of some communities to the suicidal results of this</p><p>policy.</p><p>It is the public schools, however, which can be made, outside the</p><p>homes, the greatest means of training decent self-respecting citizens.</p><p>We have been so hotly engaged recently in discussing trade-schools</p><p>and the higher education that the pitiable plight of the public-school</p><p>system in the South has almost dropped from view. Of every five</p><p>dollars spent for public education in the State of Georgia, the white</p><p>schools get four dollars and the Negro one dollar; and even then</p><p>the white public-school system, save in the cities, is bad and cries</p><p>for reform. If this is true of the whites, what of the blacks? I am</p><p>becoming more and more convinced, as I look upon the system of</p><p>common-school training in the South, that the national government</p><p>must soon step in and aid popular education in some way. To-day it</p><p>has been only by the most strenuous efforts on the part of the think-</p><p>ing men of the South that the Negro’s share of the school fund has</p><p>not been cut down to a pittance in some half-dozen States; and that</p><p>movement not only is not dead, but in many communities is gaining</p><p>strength. What in the name of reason does this nation expect of</p><p>a people, poorly trained and hard pressed in severe economic com-</p><p>petition, without political rights, and with ludicrously inadequate</p><p>common-school facilities? What can it expect but crime and listless-</p><p>ness, offset here and there by the dogged struggles of the fortunate</p><p>and more determined who are themselves buoyed by the hope that in</p><p>due time the country will come to its senses?</p><p>I have thus far sought to make clear the physical, economic, and</p><p>political relations of the Negroes and whites in the South, as I have</p><p>conceived them, including, for the reasons set forth, crime and edu-</p><p>cation. But after all that has been said on these more tangible matters</p><p>of human contact, there still remains a part essential to a proper</p><p>description of the South which it is difficult to describe or fix in</p><p>terms easily understood by strangers. It is, in fine, the atmosphere of</p><p>the land, the thought and feeling, the thousand</p><p>and one little actions</p><p>which go to make up life. In any community or nation it is these little</p><p>things which are most elusive to the grasp and yet most essential to</p><p>any clear conception of the group life taken as a whole. What is thus</p><p>true of all communities is peculiarly true of the South, where, out-</p><p>side of written history and outside of printed law, there has been</p><p>going on for a generation as deep a storm and stress of human souls,</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk122</p><p>as intense a ferment of feeling, as intricate a writhing of spirit, as</p><p>ever a people experienced. Within and without the sombre veil</p><p>of color vast social forces have been at work,––efforts for human</p><p>betterment, movements toward disintegration and despair, tragedies</p><p>and comedies in social and economic life, and a swaying and lifting</p><p>and sinking of human hearts which have made this land a land of</p><p>mingled sorrow and joy, of change and excitement and unrest.</p><p>The centre of this spiritual turmoil has ever been the millions</p><p>of black freedmen and their sons, whose destiny is so fatefully bound</p><p>up with that of the nation. And yet the casual observer visiting the</p><p>South sees at first little of this. He notes the growing frequency of</p><p>dark faces as he rides along,––but otherwise the days slip lazily on,</p><p>the sun shines, and this little world seems as happy and contented as</p><p>other worlds he has visited. Indeed, on the question of questions––</p><p>the Negro problem––he hears so little that there almost seems to be</p><p>a conspiracy of silence; the morning papers seldom mention it, and</p><p>then usually in a far-fetched academic way, and indeed almost every</p><p>one seems to forget and ignore the darker half of the land, until the</p><p>astonished visitor is inclined to ask if after all there is any problem</p><p>here. But if he lingers long enough there comes the awakening:</p><p>perhaps in a sudden whirl of passion which leaves him gasping at its</p><p>bitter intensity; more likely in a gradually dawning sense of things</p><p>he had not at first noticed. Slowly but surely his eyes begin to catch</p><p>the shadows of the color-line: here he meets crowds of Negroes and</p><p>whites; then he is suddenly aware that he cannot discover a single dark</p><p>face; or again at the close of a day’s wandering he may find himself in</p><p>some strange assembly, where all faces are tinged brown or black, and</p><p>where he has the vague, uncomfortable feeling of the stranger. He</p><p>realizes at last that silently, resistlessly, the world about flows by him</p><p>in two great streams: they ripple on in the same sunshine, they</p><p>approach and mingle their waters in seeming carelessness,––then</p><p>they divide and flow wide apart. It is done quietly; no mistakes are</p><p>made, or if one occurs, the swift arm of the law and of public opinion</p><p>swings down for a moment, as when the other day a black man and a</p><p>white woman were arrested for talking together on Whitehall Street</p><p>in Atlanta.</p><p>Now if one notices carefully one will see that between these two</p><p>worlds, despite much physical contact and daily intermingling, there</p><p>is almost no community of intellectual life or point of transference</p><p>Of the Sons of Master and Man 123</p><p>where the thoughts and feelings of one race can come into direct</p><p>contact and sympathy with the thoughts and feelings of the other.</p><p>Before and directly after the war, when all the best of the Negroes</p><p>were domestic servants in the best of the white families, there were</p><p>bonds of intimacy, affection, and sometimes blood relationship,</p><p>between the races. They lived in the same home, shared in the family</p><p>life, often attended the same church, and talked and conversed with</p><p>each other. But the increasing civilization of the Negro since then</p><p>has naturally meant the development of higher classes: there are</p><p>increasing numbers of ministers, teachers, physicians, merchants,</p><p>mechanics, and independent farmers, who by nature and training are</p><p>the aristocracy and leaders of the blacks. Between them, however,</p><p>and the best element of the whites, there is little or no intellectual</p><p>commerce. They go to separate churches, they live in separate</p><p>sections, they are strictly separated in all public gatherings, they</p><p>travel separately, and they are beginning to read different papers and</p><p>books. To most libraries, lectures, concerts, and museums, Negroes</p><p>are either not admitted at all, or on terms peculiarly galling to the</p><p>pride of the very classes who might otherwise be attracted. The</p><p>daily paper chronicles the doings of the black world from afar with</p><p>no great regard for accuracy; and so on, throughout the category of</p><p>means for intellectual communication,––schools, conferences, efforts</p><p>for social betterment, and the like,––it is usually true that the very</p><p>representatives of the two races, who for mutual benefit and the</p><p>welfare of the land ought to be in complete understanding and sym-</p><p>pathy, are so far strangers that one side thinks all whites are narrow</p><p>and prejudiced, and the other thinks educated Negroes dangerous</p><p>and insolent. Moreover, in a land where the tyranny of public opin-</p><p>ion and the intolerance of criticism is for obvious historical reasons</p><p>so strong as in the South, such a situation is extremely difficult to</p><p>correct. The white man, as well as the Negro, is bound and barred by</p><p>the color-line, and many a scheme of friendliness and philanthropy,</p><p>of broad-minded sympathy and generous fellowship between the two</p><p>has dropped still-born because some busybody has forced the color-</p><p>question to the front and brought the tremendous force of unwritten</p><p>law against the innovators.</p><p>It is hardly necessary for me to add very much in regard to the</p><p>social contact between the races. Nothing has come to replace that</p><p>finer sympathy and love between some masters and house servants</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk124</p><p>which the radical and more uncompromising drawing of the color-</p><p>line in recent years has caused almost completely to disappear. In a</p><p>world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit</p><p>beside him, to look frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating</p><p>with red blood; in a world where a social cigar or a cup of tea</p><p>together means more than legislative halls and magazine articles and</p><p>speeches,––one can imagine the consequences of the almost utter</p><p>absence of such social amenities between estranged races, whose</p><p>separation extends even to parks and street-cars.</p><p>Here there can be none of that social going down to the people,––</p><p>the opening of heart and hand of the best to the worst, in generous</p><p>acknowledgment of a common humanity and a common destiny. On</p><p>the other hand, in matters of simple almsgiving, where there can be</p><p>no question of social contact, and in the succor of the aged and sick,</p><p>the South, as if stirred by a feeling of its unfortunate limitations, is</p><p>generous to a fault. The black beggar is never turned away without a</p><p>good deal more than a crust, and a call for help for the unfortunate</p><p>meets quick response. I remember, one cold winter, in Atlanta, when</p><p>I refrained from contributing to a public relief fund lest Negroes</p><p>should be discriminated against, I afterward inquired of a friend:</p><p>“Were any black people receiving aid?” “Why,” said he, “they were</p><p>all black.”</p><p>And yet this does not touch the kernel of the problem. Human</p><p>advancement is not a mere question of almsgiving, but rather of</p><p>sympathy and coöperation among classes who would scorn charity.</p><p>And here is a land where, in the higher walks of life, in all the higher</p><p>striving for the good and noble and true, the color-line comes to</p><p>separate natural friends and co-workers; while at the bottom of the</p><p>social group, in the saloon, the gambling-hell, and the brothel, that</p><p>same line wavers and disappears.</p><p>I have sought to paint an average picture of real relations between</p><p>the sons of master and man in the South. I have not glossed over</p><p>matters for policy’s sake, for I fear we have already gone too far</p><p>in that sort of thing. On the other hand, I have sincerely sought to</p><p>let no unfair exaggerations creep in. I do not doubt that in some</p><p>Southern communities conditions are better than those I have indi-</p><p>cated; while I am</p><p>no less certain that in other communities they are</p><p>far worse.</p><p>Of the Sons of Master and Man 125</p><p>Nor does the paradox and danger of this situation fail to interest</p><p>and perplex the best conscience of the South. Deeply religious and</p><p>intensely democratic as are the mass of the whites, they feel acutely</p><p>the false position in which the Negro problems place them. Such</p><p>an essentially honest-hearted and generous people cannot cite the</p><p>caste-levelling precepts of Christianity, or believe in equality of</p><p>opportunity for all men, without coming to feel more and more with</p><p>each generation that the present drawing of the color-line is a flat</p><p>contradiction to their beliefs and professions. But just as often as</p><p>they come to this point, the present social condition of the Negro</p><p>stands as a menace and a portent before even the most open-minded:</p><p>if there were nothing to charge against the Negro but his blackness</p><p>or other physical peculiarities, they argue, the problem would be com-</p><p>paratively simple; but what can we say to his ignorance, shiftlessness,</p><p>poverty, and crime? can a self-respecting group hold anything but</p><p>the least possible fellowship with such persons and survive? and shall</p><p>we let a mawkish sentiment sweep away the culture of our fathers or</p><p>the hope of our children? The argument so put is of great strength,</p><p>but it is not a whit stronger than the argument of thinking Negroes:</p><p>granted, they reply, that the condition of our masses is bad; there</p><p>is certainly on the one hand adequate historical cause for this, and</p><p>unmistakable evidence that no small number have, in spite of tre-</p><p>mendous disadvantages, risen to the level of American civilization.</p><p>And when, by proscription and prejudice, these same Negroes are</p><p>classed with and treated like the lowest of their people, simply</p><p>because they are Negroes, such a policy not only discourages thrift</p><p>and intelligence among black men, but puts a direct premium on the</p><p>very things you complain of,––inefficiency and crime. Draw lines of</p><p>crime, of incompetency, of vice, as tightly and uncompromisingly</p><p>as you will, for these things must be proscribed; but a color-line not</p><p>only does not accomplish this purpose, but thwarts it.</p><p>In the face of two such arguments, the future of the South</p><p>depends on the ability of the representatives of these opposing views</p><p>to see and appreciate and sympathize with each other’s position,––</p><p>for the Negro to realize more deeply than he does at present the need</p><p>of uplifting the masses of his people, for the white people to realize</p><p>more vividly than they have yet done the deadening and disastrous</p><p>effect of a color-prejudice that classes Phillis Wheatley and Sam Hose*</p><p>in the same despised class.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk126</p><p>It is not enough for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is</p><p>the sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white South to</p><p>reply that their social condition is the main cause of prejudice. They</p><p>both act as reciprocal cause and effect, and a change in neither alone</p><p>will bring the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can</p><p>improve to any great extent. The Negro cannot stand the present</p><p>reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color-line</p><p>indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the con-</p><p>dition of the Negro is ever the excuse for further discrimination. Only</p><p>by a union of intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this</p><p>critical period of the Republic shall justice and right triumph,––</p><p>“That mind and soul according well,</p><p>May make one music as before,</p><p>But vaster.”*</p><p>Of the Sons of Master and Man 127</p><p>x</p><p>Of the Faith of the Fathers</p><p>Dim face of Beauty haunting all the world,</p><p>Fair face of Beauty all too fair to see,</p><p>Where the lost stars adown the heavens are hurled,––</p><p>There, there alone for thee</p><p>May white peace be.</p><p>. . . . . . . .</p><p>Beauty, sad face of Beauty, Mystery, Wonder,</p><p>What are these dreams to foolish babbling men</p><p>Who cry with little noises neath the thunder</p><p>Of Ages ground to sand,</p><p>To a little sand.</p><p>F iona Macleod.*</p><p>It was out in the country, far from home, far from my foster home,</p><p>on a dark Sunday night. The road wandered from our rambling</p><p>log-house up the stony bed of a creek, past wheat and corn, until we</p><p>could hear dimly across the fields a rhythmic cadence of song,––soft,</p><p>thrilling, powerful, that swelled and died sorrowfully in our ears.</p><p>I was a country school-teacher then, fresh from the East, and had</p><p>never seen a Southern Negro revival. To be sure, we in Berkshire</p><p>were not perhaps as stiff and formal as they in Suffolk of olden time;</p><p>yet we were very quiet and subdued, and I know not what would</p><p>have happened those clear Sabbath mornings had some one punctu-</p><p>ated the sermon with a wild scream, or interrupted the long prayer</p><p>with a loud Amen! And so most striking to me, as I approached the</p><p>village and the little plain church perched aloft, was the air of intense</p><p>excitement that possessed that mass of black folk. A sort of sup-</p><p>pressed terror hung in the air and seemed to seize us,––a pythian</p><p>madness, a demoniac possession, that lent terrible reality to song and</p><p>word. The black and massive form of the preacher swayed and</p><p>quivered as the words crowded to his lips and flew at us in singular</p><p>eloquence. The people moaned and fluttered, and then the gaunt-</p><p>cheeked brown woman beside me suddenly leaped straight into the</p><p>air and shrieked like a lost soul, while round about came wail and</p><p>groan and outcry, and a scene of human passion such as I had never</p><p>conceived before.</p><p>Those who have not thus witnessed the frenzy of a Negro revival</p><p>in the untouched backwoods of the South can but dimly realize</p><p>the religious feeling of the slave; as described, such scenes appear</p><p>grotesque and funny, but as seen they are awful. Three things char-</p><p>acterized this religion of the slave,––the Preacher, the Music, and</p><p>the Frenzy. The Preacher is the most unique personality developed</p><p>by the Negro on American soil. A leader, a politician, an orator, a</p><p>“boss,” an intriguer, an idealist,––all these he is, and ever, too, the</p><p>centre of a group of men, now twenty, now a thousand in number.</p><p>The combination of a certain adroitness with deep-seated earnest-</p><p>ness, of tact with consummate ability, gave him his preëminence,</p><p>and helps him maintain it. The type, of course, varies according</p><p>to time and place, from the West Indies in the sixteenth century to</p><p>New England in the nineteenth, and from the Mississippi bottoms</p><p>to cities like New Orleans or New York.</p><p>The Music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody,</p><p>with its touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and</p><p>defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression</p><p>of human life and longing yet born on American soil. Sprung from</p><p>the African forests, where its counterpart can still be heard, it was</p><p>adapted, changed, and intensified by the tragic soul-life of the slave,</p><p>until, under the stress of law and whip, it became the one true</p><p>expression of a people’s sorrow, despair, and hope.</p><p>Finally the Frenzy or “Shouting,” when the Spirit of the Lord</p><p>passed by, and, seizing the devotee, made him mad with supernatural</p><p>joy, was the last essential of Negro religion and the one more</p><p>devoutly believed in than all the rest. It varied in expression from the</p><p>silent rapt countenance or the low murmur and moan to the mad</p><p>abandon of physical fervor,––the stamping, shrieking, and shouting,</p><p>the rushing to and fro and wild waving of arms, the weeping and</p><p>laughing, the vision and the trance. All this is nothing new in the</p><p>Of the Faith of the Fathers 129</p><p>world, but old as religion, as Delphi and Endor.* And so firm a hold</p><p>did it have on the Negro, that many generations firmly believed that</p><p>without this visible manifestation of the God there could be no true</p><p>communion with the Invisible.</p><p>These were the characteristics of Negro religious life as developed</p><p>up to the time of Emancipation. Since under the peculiar circum-</p><p>stances of the black man’s environment they were the one expression</p><p>of his higher life, they are of deep interest</p><p>to the student of his</p><p>development, both socially and psychologically. Numerous are the</p><p>attractive lines of inquiry that here group themselves. What did</p><p>slavery mean to the African savage? What was his attitude toward</p><p>the World and Life? What seemed to him good and evil,––God and</p><p>Devil? Whither went his longings and strivings, and wherefore were</p><p>his heart-burnings and disappointments? Answers to such questions</p><p>can come only from a study of Negro religion as a development,</p><p>through its gradual changes from the heathenism of the Gold Coast</p><p>to the institutional Negro church of Chicago.</p><p>Moreover, the religious growth of millions of men, even though</p><p>they be slaves, cannot be without potent influence upon their con-</p><p>temporaries. The Methodists and Baptists of America owe much of</p><p>their condition to the silent but potent influence of their millions</p><p>of Negro converts. Especially is this noticeable in the South, where</p><p>theology and religious philosophy are on this account a long way</p><p>behind the North, and where the religion of the poor whites is a</p><p>plain copy of Negro thought and methods. The mass of “gospel”</p><p>hymns which has swept through American churches and well-nigh</p><p>ruined our sense of song consists largely of debased imitations of</p><p>Negro melodies made by ears that caught the jingle but not the</p><p>music, the body but not the soul, of the Jubilee songs. It is thus clear</p><p>that the study of Negro religion is not only a vital part of the history</p><p>of the Negro in America, but no uninteresting part of American</p><p>history.</p><p>The Negro church of to-day is the social centre of Negro life in</p><p>the United States, and the most characteristic expression of African</p><p>character. Take a typical church in a small Virginian town: it is the</p><p>“First Baptist”––a roomy brick edifice seating five hundred or more</p><p>persons, tastefully finished in Georgia pine, with a carpet, a small</p><p>organ, and stained-glass windows. Underneath is a large assembly</p><p>room with benches. This building is the central club-house of a</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk130</p><p>community of a thousand or more Negroes. Various organizations</p><p>meet here,––the church proper, the Sunday-school, two or three</p><p>insurance societies, women’s societies, secret societies, and mass</p><p>meetings of various kinds. Entertainments, suppers, and lectures</p><p>are held beside the five or six regular weekly religious services.</p><p>Considerable sums of money are collected and expended here,</p><p>employment is found for the idle, strangers are introduced, news is</p><p>disseminated and charity distributed. At the same time this social,</p><p>intellectual, and economic centre is a religious centre of great power.</p><p>Depravity, Sin, Redemption, Heaven, Hell, and Damnation are</p><p>preached twice a Sunday with much fervor, and revivals take place</p><p>every year after the crops are laid by; and few indeed of the com-</p><p>munity have the hardihood to withstand conversion. Back of this</p><p>more formal religion, the Church often stands as a real conserver of</p><p>morals, a strengthener of family life, and the final authority on what</p><p>is Good and Right.</p><p>Thus one can see in the Negro church to-day, reproduced in</p><p>microcosm, all that great world from which the Negro is cut off by</p><p>color-prejudice and social condition. In the great city churches the</p><p>same tendency is noticeable and in many respects emphasized. A</p><p>great church like the Bethel of Philadelphia* has over eleven hundred</p><p>members, an edifice seating fifteen hundred persons and valued at</p><p>one hundred thousand dollars, an annual budget of five thousand</p><p>dollars, and a government consisting of a pastor with several assist-</p><p>ing local preachers, an executive and legislative board, financial</p><p>boards and tax collectors; general church meetings for making laws;</p><p>subdivided groups led by class leaders, a company of militia, and</p><p>twenty-four auxiliary societies. The activity of a church like this is</p><p>immense and far-reaching, and the bishops who preside over these</p><p>organizations throughout the land are among the most powerful</p><p>Negro rulers in the world.</p><p>Such churches are really governments of men, and consequently a</p><p>little investigation reveals the curious fact that, in the South, at least,</p><p>practically every American Negro is a church member. Some, to be</p><p>sure, are not regularly enrolled, and a few do not habitually attend</p><p>services; but, practically, a proscribed people must have a social</p><p>centre, and that centre for this people is the Negro church. The</p><p>census of 1890 showed nearly twenty-four thousand Negro churches</p><p>in the country, with a total enrolled membership of over two and a</p><p>Of the Faith of the Fathers 131</p><p>half millions, or ten actual church members to every twenty-eight</p><p>persons, and in some Southern States one in every two persons.</p><p>Besides these there is the large number who, while not enrolled as</p><p>members, attend and take part in many of the activities of the</p><p>church. There is an organized Negro church for every sixty black</p><p>families in the nation, and in some States for every forty families,</p><p>owning, on an average, a thousand dollars’ worth of property each,</p><p>or nearly twenty-six million dollars in all.</p><p>Such, then, is the large development of the Negro church since</p><p>Emancipation. The question now is, What have been the successive</p><p>steps of this social history and what are the present tendencies?</p><p>First, we must realize that no such institution as the Negro church</p><p>could rear itself without definite historical foundations. These foun-</p><p>dations we can find if we remember that the social history of the</p><p>Negro did not start in America. He was brought from a definite</p><p>social environment,––the polygamous clan life under the headship</p><p>of the chief and the potent influence of the priest. His religion</p><p>was nature-worship, with profound belief in invisible surrounding</p><p>influences, good and bad, and his worship was through incantation</p><p>and sacrifice. The first rude change in this life was the slave ship and</p><p>the West Indian sugar-fields. The plantation organization replaced</p><p>the clan and tribe, and the white master replaced the chief with far</p><p>greater and more despotic powers. Forced and long-continued toil</p><p>became the rule of life, the old ties of blood relationship and kinship</p><p>disappeared, and instead of the family appeared a new polygamy and</p><p>polyandry, which, in some cases, almost reached promiscuity. It was</p><p>a terrific social revolution, and yet some traces were retained of the</p><p>former group life, and the chief remaining institution was the Priest</p><p>or Medicine-man. He early appeared on the plantation and found his</p><p>function as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown,</p><p>the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong,</p><p>and the one who rudely but picturesquely expressed the longing,</p><p>disappointment, and resentment of a stolen and oppressed people.</p><p>Thus, as bard, physician, judge, and priest, within the narrow limits</p><p>allowed by the slave system, rose the Negro preacher, and under him</p><p>the first Afro-American institution, the Negro church. This church</p><p>was not at first by any means Christian nor definitely organized;</p><p>rather it was an adaptation and mingling of heathen rites among the</p><p>members of each plantation, and roughly designated as Voodooism.</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk132</p><p>Association with the masters, missionary effort and motives of</p><p>expediency gave these rites an early veneer of Christianity, and after</p><p>the lapse of many generations the Negro church became Christian.</p><p>Two characteristic things must be noticed in regard to this church.</p><p>First, it became almost entirely Baptist and Methodist in faith;</p><p>secondly, as a social institution it antedated by many decades the</p><p>monogamic Negro home. From the very circumstances of its begin-</p><p>ning, the church was confined to the plantation, and consisted</p><p>primarily of a series of disconnected units; although, later on, some</p><p>freedom of movement was allowed, still this geographical limitation</p><p>was always important and was one cause of the spread of the</p><p>decentralized and democratic Baptist faith among the slaves. At the</p><p>same time, the visible rite of baptism appealed strongly to their</p><p>mystic</p><p>temperament. To-day the Baptist Church is still largest in</p><p>membership among Negroes, and has a million and a half communi-</p><p>cants. Next in popularity came the churches organized in connection</p><p>with the white neighboring churches, chiefly Baptist and Methodist,</p><p>with a few Episcopalian and others. The Methodists still form the</p><p>second greatest denomination, with nearly a million members. The</p><p>faith of these two leading denominations was more suited to the slave</p><p>church from the prominence they gave to religious feeling and</p><p>fervor. The Negro membership in other denominations has always</p><p>been small and relatively unimportant, although the Episcopalians</p><p>and Presbyterians are gaining among the more intelligent classes</p><p>to-day, and the Catholic Church is making headway in certain sec-</p><p>tions. After Emancipation, and still earlier in the North, the Negro</p><p>churches largely severed such affiliations as they had had with the</p><p>white churches, either by choice or by compulsion. The Baptist</p><p>churches became independent, but the Methodists were compelled</p><p>early to unite for purposes of episcopal government. This gave</p><p>rise to the great African Methodist Church, the greatest Negro</p><p>organization in the world, to the Zion Church and the Colored</p><p>Methodist,* and to the black conferences and churches in this and</p><p>other denominations.</p><p>The second fact noted, namely, that the Negro church antedates</p><p>the Negro home, leads to an explanation of much that is paradoxical</p><p>in this communistic institution and in the morals of its members.</p><p>But especially it leads us to regard this institution as peculiarly the</p><p>expression of the inner ethical life of a people in a sense seldom true</p><p>Of the Faith of the Fathers 133</p><p>elsewhere. Let us turn, then, from the outer physical development of</p><p>the church to the more important inner ethical life of the people who</p><p>compose it. The Negro has already been pointed out many times as</p><p>a religious animal,––a being of that deep emotional nature which</p><p>turns instinctively toward the supernatural. Endowed with a rich</p><p>tropical imagination and a keen, delicate appreciation of Nature,</p><p>the transplanted African lived in a world animate with gods and</p><p>devils, elves and witches; full of strange influences,––of Good to</p><p>be implored, of Evil to be propitiated. Slavery, then, was to him</p><p>the dark triumph of Evil over him. All the hateful powers of the</p><p>Under-world were striving against him, and a spirit of revolt and</p><p>revenge filled his heart. He called up all the resources of heathenism</p><p>to aid,––exorcism and witchcraft, the mysterious Obi worship* with</p><p>its barbarous rites, spells, and blood-sacrifice even, now and then,</p><p>of human victims. Weird midnight orgies and mystic conjurations</p><p>were invoked, the witch-woman and the voodoo-priest became the</p><p>centre of Negro group life, and that vein of vague superstition which</p><p>characterizes the unlettered Negro even to-day was deepened and</p><p>strengthened.</p><p>In spite, however, of such success as that of the fierce Maroons,</p><p>the Danish blacks,* and others, the spirit of revolt gradually died</p><p>away under the untiring energy and superior strength of the slave</p><p>masters. By the middle of the eighteenth century the black slave had</p><p>sunk, with hushed murmurs, to his place at the bottom of a new</p><p>economic system, and was unconsciously ripe for a new philosophy</p><p>of life. Nothing suited his condition then better than the doctrines</p><p>of passive submission embodied in the newly learned Christianity.</p><p>Slave masters early realized this, and cheerfully aided religious</p><p>propaganda within certain bounds. The long system of repression</p><p>and degradation of the Negro tended to emphasize the elements in his</p><p>character which made him a valuable chattel: courtesy became humil-</p><p>ity, moral strength degenerated into submission, and the exquisite</p><p>native appreciation of the beautiful became an infinite capacity for</p><p>dumb suffering. The Negro, losing the joy of this world, eagerly</p><p>seized upon the offered conceptions of the next; the avenging Spirit</p><p>of the Lord enjoining patience in this world, under sorrow and tribu-</p><p>lation until the Great Day when He should lead His dark children</p><p>home,––this became his comforting dream. His preacher repeated</p><p>the prophecy, and his bards sang,––</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk134</p><p>“Children, we all shall be free</p><p>When the Lord shall appear!”*</p><p>This deep religious fatalism, painted so beautifully in “Uncle</p><p>Tom,”* came soon to breed, as all fatalistic faiths will, the sensualist</p><p>side by side with the martyr. Under the lax moral life of the planta-</p><p>tion, where marriage was a farce, laziness a virtue, and property a</p><p>theft, a religion of resignation and submission degenerated easily,</p><p>in less strenuous minds, into a philosophy of indulgence and crime.</p><p>Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had</p><p>their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth. Here it was</p><p>that the Home was ruined under the very shadow of the Church,</p><p>white and black; here habits of shiftlessness took root, and sullen</p><p>hopelessness replaced hopeful strife.</p><p>With the beginning of the abolition movement and the gradual</p><p>growth of a class of free Negroes came a change. We often neglect</p><p>the influence of the freedman before the war, because of the paucity of</p><p>his numbers and the small weight he had in the history of the nation.</p><p>But we must not forget that his chief influence was internal,––was</p><p>exerted on the black world; and that there he was the ethical and</p><p>social leader. Huddled as he was in a few centres like Philadelphia,</p><p>New York, and New Orleans, the masses of the freedmen sank into</p><p>poverty and listlessness; but not all of them. The free Negro leader</p><p>early arose and his chief characteristic was intense earnestness and</p><p>deep feeling on the slavery question. Freedom became to him a real</p><p>thing and not a dream. His religion became darker and more intense,</p><p>and into his ethics crept a note of revenge, into his songs a day of</p><p>reckoning close at hand. The “Coming of the Lord” swept this side</p><p>of Death, and came to be a thing to be hoped for in this day.</p><p>Through fugitive slaves and irrepressible discussion this desire for</p><p>freedom seized the black millions still in bondage, and became their</p><p>one ideal of life. The black bards caught new notes, and sometimes</p><p>even dared to sing,––</p><p>“O Freedom, O Freedom, O Freedom over me!</p><p>Before I’ll be a slave</p><p>I’ll be buried in my grave,</p><p>And go home to my Lord</p><p>And be free.”*</p><p>For fifty years Negro religion thus transformed itself and identified</p><p>Of the Faith of the Fathers 135</p><p>itself with the dream of Abolition, until that which was a radical fad</p><p>in the white North and an anarchistic plot in the white South had</p><p>become a religion to the black world. Thus, when Emancipation</p><p>finally came, it seemed to the freedman a literal Coming of the Lord.</p><p>His fervid imagination was stirred as never before, by the tramp of</p><p>armies, the blood and dust of battle, and the wail and whirl of social</p><p>upheaval. He stood dumb and motionless before the whirlwind: what</p><p>had he to do with it? Was it not the Lord’s doing, and marvellous in</p><p>his eyes? Joyed and bewildered with what came, he stood awaiting</p><p>new wonders till the inevitable Age of Reaction swept over the</p><p>nation and brought the crisis of to-day.</p><p>It is difficult to explain clearly the present critical stage of Negro</p><p>religion. First, we must remember that living as the blacks do in</p><p>close contact with a great modern nation, and sharing, although</p><p>imperfectly, the soul-life of that nation, they must necessarily be</p><p>affected more or less directly by all the religious and ethical forces</p><p>that are to-day moving the United States. These questions and</p><p>movements are, however, overshadowed and dwarfed by the (to</p><p>them) all-important question of their civil, political, and economic</p><p>status. They must perpetually discuss the “Negro Problem,”––must</p><p>live, move, and have their being in it, and interpret all else in its light</p><p>or darkness. With this come, too, peculiar problems of their inner</p><p>life,––of the status of women, the maintenance of Home, the train-</p><p>ing of children, the accumulation of</p><p>wealth, and the prevention of</p><p>crime. All this must mean a time of intense ethical ferment, of</p><p>religious heart-searching and intellectual unrest. From the double</p><p>life every American Negro must live, as a Negro and as an American,</p><p>as swept on by the current of the nineteenth while yet struggling in</p><p>the eddies of the fifteenth century,––from this must arise a painful</p><p>self-consciousness, an almost morbid sense of personality and a</p><p>moral hesitancy which is fatal to self-confidence. The worlds within</p><p>and without the Veil of Color are changing, and changing rapidly,</p><p>but not at the same rate, not in the same way; and this must produce</p><p>a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and</p><p>bewilderment. Such a double life, with double thoughts, double</p><p>duties, and double social classes, must give rise to double words</p><p>and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretence or to revolt, to</p><p>hypocrisy or to radicalism.</p><p>In some such doubtful words and phrases can one perhaps most</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk136</p><p>clearly picture the peculiar ethical paradox that faces the Negro of</p><p>to-day and is tingeing and changing his religious life. Feeling that his</p><p>rights and his dearest ideals are being trampled upon, that the public</p><p>conscience is ever more deaf to his righteous appeal, and that all the</p><p>reactionary forces of prejudice, greed, and revenge are daily gaining</p><p>new strength and fresh allies, the Negro faces no enviable dilemma.</p><p>Conscious of his impotence, and pessimistic, he often becomes bitter</p><p>and vindictive; and his religion, instead of a worship, is a complaint</p><p>and a curse, a wail rather than a hope, a sneer rather than a faith. On</p><p>the other hand, another type of mind, shrewder and keener and more</p><p>tortuous too, sees in the very strength of the anti-Negro movement</p><p>its patent weaknesses, and with Jesuitic casuistry is deterred by no</p><p>ethical considerations in the endeavor to turn this weakness to the</p><p>black man’s strength. Thus we have two great and hardly reconcil-</p><p>able streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one</p><p>lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy. The one type of Negro</p><p>stands almost ready to curse God and die, and the other is too often</p><p>found a traitor to right and a coward before force; the one is wedded</p><p>to ideals remote, whimsical, perhaps impossible of realization; the</p><p>other forgets that life is more than meat and the body more than</p><p>raiment. But, after all, is not this simply the writhing of the age</p><p>translated into black,––the triumph of the Lie which to-day, with its</p><p>false culture, faces the hideousness of the anarchist assassin?</p><p>To-day the two groups of Negroes, the one in the North, the</p><p>other in the South, represent these divergent ethical tendencies, the</p><p>first tending toward radicalism, the other toward hypocritical com-</p><p>promise. It is no idle regret with which the white South mourns the</p><p>loss of the old-time Negro,––the frank, honest, simple old servant</p><p>who stood for the earlier religious age of submission and humility.</p><p>With all his laziness and lack of many elements of true manhood, he</p><p>was at least open-hearted, faithful, and sincere. To-day he is gone,</p><p>but who is to blame for his going? Is it not those very persons who</p><p>mourn for him? Is it not the tendency, born of Reconstruction and</p><p>Reaction, to found a society on lawlessness and deception, to tamper</p><p>with the moral fibre of a naturally honest and straightforward people</p><p>until the whites threaten to become ungovernable tyrants and the</p><p>blacks criminals and hypocrites? Deception is the natural defence</p><p>of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years</p><p>against its conquerors; to-day it must be prepared to see its black</p><p>Of the Faith of the Fathers 137</p><p>proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against itself. And how</p><p>natural this is! The death of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved</p><p>long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defence.</p><p>Political defence is becoming less and less available, and economic</p><p>defence is still only partially effective. But there is a patent defence at</p><p>hand,––the defence of deception and flattery, of cajoling and lying.</p><p>It is the same defence which the Jews of the Middle Age used and</p><p>which left its stamp on their character for centuries. To-day the</p><p>young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and</p><p>outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted</p><p>to be silent and wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant,</p><p>endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many</p><p>cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying.</p><p>His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers;</p><p>he must not criticise, he must not complain. Patience, humility,</p><p>and adroitness must, in these growing black youth, replace impulse,</p><p>manliness, and courage. With this sacrifice there is an economic</p><p>opening, and perhaps peace and some prosperity. Without this there</p><p>is riot, migration, or crime. Nor is this situation peculiar to the</p><p>Southern United States,––is it not rather the only method by which</p><p>undeveloped races have gained the right to share modern culture?</p><p>The price of culture is a Lie.</p><p>On the other hand, in the North the tendency is to emphasize the</p><p>radicalism of the Negro. Driven from his birthright in the South by</p><p>a situation at which every fibre of his more outspoken and assertive</p><p>nature revolts, he finds himself in a land where he can scarcely earn</p><p>a decent living amid the harsh competition and the color discrimin-</p><p>ation. At the same time, through schools and periodicals, discussions</p><p>and lectures, he is intellectually quickened and awakened. The soul,</p><p>long pent up and dwarfed, suddenly expands in new-found freedom.</p><p>What wonder that every tendency is to excess,––radical complaint,</p><p>radical remedies, bitter denunciation or angry silence. Some sink,</p><p>some rise. The criminal and the sensualist leave the church for the</p><p>gambling-hell and the brothel, and fill the slums of Chicago and</p><p>Baltimore; the better classes segregate themselves from the group-</p><p>life of both white and black, and form an aristocracy, cultured but</p><p>pessimistic, whose bitter criticism stings while it points out no way</p><p>of escape. They despise the submission and subserviency of the</p><p>Southern Negroes, but offer no other means by which a poor and</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk138</p><p>oppressed minority can exist side by side with its masters. Feeling</p><p>deeply and keenly the tendencies and opportunities of the age in</p><p>which they live, their souls are bitter at the fate which drops the</p><p>Veil between; and the very fact that this bitterness is natural and</p><p>justifiable only serves to intensify it and make it more maddening.</p><p>Between the two extreme types of ethical attitude which I have thus</p><p>sought to make clear wavers the mass of the millions of Negroes,</p><p>North and South; and their religious life and activity partake of</p><p>this social conflict within their ranks. Their churches are differen-</p><p>tiating,––now into groups of cold, fashionable devotees, in no way</p><p>distinguishable from similar white groups save in color of skin; now</p><p>into large social and business institutions catering to the desire for</p><p>information and amusement of their members, warily avoiding</p><p>unpleasant questions both within and without the black world, and</p><p>preaching in effect if not in word: Dum vivimus, vivamus.*</p><p>But back of this still broods silently the deep religious feeling of</p><p>the real Negro heart, the stirring, unguided might of powerful</p><p>human souls who have lost the guiding star of the past and are</p><p>seeking in the great night a new religious ideal. Some day the</p><p>Awakening will come, when the pent-up vigor of ten million souls</p><p>shall sweep irresistibly toward the Goal, out of the Valley of the</p><p>Shadow of Death, where all that makes life worth living––Liberty,</p><p>Justice, and Right––is marked “For White People Only.”</p><p>Of the Faith of the Fathers 139</p><p>xi</p><p>Of the Passing of the First-Born</p><p>O sister, sister, thy first-begotten,</p><p>The hands that cling and the feet that follow,</p><p>The voice of the child’s blood</p><p>2,000</p><p>people. The horror of this episode shook Du Bois’s faith in the</p><p>rational tools of sociology as a means of confronting racism in the</p><p>South. Then, on 24 May, the young professor’s infant son Burghardt</p><p>died after a brief illness. The compounded tragedies had a lasting</p><p>effect on Du Bois’s sense of his intellectual vocation. As he described</p><p>it, ‘two considerations thereafter broke in upon my work and eventu-</p><p>ally disrupted it: first, one could not be a calm, cool, and detached</p><p>scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered and starved; and</p><p>secondly, there was no such definite demand for scientific work of</p><p>the sort that I was doing, as I had confidently assumed would be</p><p>easily forthcoming’.19</p><p>In The Souls of Black Folk, these events reverberate in a recurring</p><p>criticism of a certain kind of sociology, the scholarship of what the</p><p>first chapter calls the ‘cold statistician’ (p. 11). This critique is most</p><p>devastatingly announced in Chapter VIII, ‘Of the Quest of the</p><p>Golden Fleece’, in the satire of the ‘car-window sociologist . . . who</p><p>seeks to understand and know the South by devoting the few leisure</p><p>hours of a holiday trip to unravelling the snarl of centuries’ (p. 105).</p><p>Instead, Du Bois insists on a method of what in the same chapter</p><p>is termed ‘intimate contact’, which requires the slow and patient,</p><p>face-to-face investigation of the complexities of human life, rather</p><p>than generalization about social classes from an untroubled remove:</p><p>We seldom study the condition of the Negro to-day honestly and care-</p><p>fully. It is so much easier to assume that we know it all. Or perhaps, having</p><p>already reached conclusions in our own minds, we are loth to have them</p><p>disturbed by facts. And yet how little we really know of these millions,––</p><p>of their daily lives and longings, of their homely joys and sorrow, of their</p><p>real shortcomings and the meaning of their crimes! All this we can only</p><p>learn by intimate contact with the masses, and not by wholesale arguments</p><p>covering millions separate in time and space, and differing widely in</p><p>training and culture. (p. 94)</p><p>19 Ibid., 603.</p><p>Introduction xvii</p><p>Du Bois upholds another model for the scholar, here, who is</p><p>described both as a ‘student’ and, more ambitiously, as a ‘social seer’,</p><p>capable of extrapolating the lessons of ‘intimate contact’ into the</p><p>instrumental language of public policy.</p><p>Upon its publication in 1903, The Souls of Black Folk drew atten-</p><p>tion above all for its firm and carefully reasoned criticism of Booker</p><p>T. Washington, the former slave who had risen to unparalleled</p><p>prominence and influence as the founder and director of Tuskegee</p><p>Institute in Alabama. Chapter III, ‘Of Mr. Booker T. Washington</p><p>and Others’, is a greatly expanded version of a short review of</p><p>Washington’s autobiography Up from Slavery published by Du Bois</p><p>in the Dial in July 1901 under the title, ‘The Evolution of Negro</p><p>Leadership’. This chapter, and to some degree the book as a whole,</p><p>can be read as the first public statement of a ‘class of Negroes who</p><p>cannot agree with Mr. Washington’ (p. 40) but who had previously</p><p>been silent (in part out of fear at the unchallenged power of</p><p>Washington’s ‘Tuskegee Machine’, easily the dominant force in</p><p>black political life at the turn of the century). Du Bois called this</p><p>class the ‘Talented Tenth’: the portion of the intellectual elite com-</p><p>mitted to the uplift of the black population through the pursuit of</p><p>civil rights, the support for higher education, and the attainment</p><p>of political power. He only employs the phrase once in The Souls of</p><p>Black Folk, in ‘Of the Training of Black Men’ (p. 74), but the book is</p><p>very much the ‘manifesto of the Talented Tenth’,20 and thus an</p><p>appropriate companion to the essay that Du Bois published the same</p><p>year extolling the ‘aristocracy of the race’.21 It was recognized as</p><p>such in its time; as Jessie Fauset, the schoolteacher and future novel-</p><p>ist, wrote in a grateful letter to Du Bois: ‘we have needed someone to</p><p>voice the intricacies of the blind maze of thought and action along</p><p>which the modern, educated colored man or woman struggles’.22</p><p>As thoroughly convincing is the critique of Booker T. Washing-</p><p>ton, and Du Bois’s concomitant argument for the importance of</p><p>higher education, there is an element of unabashed vanguardism in</p><p>20 Lewis, Du Bois: Biography, 288.</p><p>21 W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘The Talented Tenth’, in The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles</p><p>by Representative American Negroes of Today (New York: James Pott & Co., 1903),</p><p>33–75. This essay is included as Appendix II to this edition.</p><p>22 Jessie Fauset, letter to Du Bois, 26 Dec. 1903, in The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du</p><p>Bois, i. Selections, 1877–1934, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of</p><p>Massachusetts Press, 1973), 66.</p><p>Introductionxviii</p><p>the emphasis on the role of the ‘Talented Tenth’. To some degree,</p><p>the focus is logical, given the persistence of segregation and the</p><p>absence of a black professional class, especially in the South: without</p><p>black teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and editors, black civil</p><p>society would remain powerless in the face of a hostile white power</p><p>structure. Nevertheless, Du Bois’s calls for education are suffused</p><p>with an elitism that he himself came to recognize as a dangerous</p><p>predilection in his own temperament. ‘Was there ever a nation on</p><p>God’s fair earth civilized from the bottom upward?’ Du Bois asks</p><p>rhetorically in the essay ‘The Talented Tenth’. ‘Never; it is, ever was</p><p>and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The</p><p>Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to</p><p>their vantage ground’ (p. 193). In another article two years earlier, he</p><p>proclaimed in even stronger terms that ‘social distinctions should be</p><p>observed. A rising race must be aristocratic; the good cannot consort</p><p>with the bad––nor even the best with the less good’.23 The phrasing</p><p>is not so pronounced in The Souls of Black Folk, but there is a stream</p><p>of oddly moralizing observations regarding black ‘criminality’ and</p><p>‘sexual impurity’, and isolated passages such as the following com-</p><p>ment on the founders of the first Negro colleges in the South, from</p><p>the fifth chapter: ‘They forgot, too, just as their successors are for-</p><p>getting, the rule of inequality:––that of the million black youth,</p><p>some were fitted to know and some to dig’ (p. 59). In a speech given</p><p>in 1948, Du Bois himself offered what may be the most eloquent</p><p>critique of his investment in the notion of a ‘Talented Tenth’:</p><p>When I came out of college into the world of work, I realized that it was</p><p>quite possible that my plan of training a talented tenth might put in</p><p>control and power, a group of selfish, self-indulgent, well-to-do men,</p><p>whose basic interest in solving the Negro Problem was personal; personal</p><p>freedom and unhampered enjoyment and use of the world, without any</p><p>real care, or certainly no arousing care, as to what became of the mass of</p><p>American Negroes, or of the mass of any people. My Talented Tenth,</p><p>23 Du Bois, The Black North in 1901: A Social Study. A Series of Articles Originally</p><p>Appearing in the New York Times, November–December, 1901 (New York: Arno Press,</p><p>1969), quoted in Shamoon Zamir, Dark Voices, 150. On the elitist strain in Du Bois’s</p><p>work, see esp. Adolph L. Reed, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought:</p><p>Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 53–4, and</p><p>Kenneth W. Warren, ‘An Inevitable Drift? Oligarchy, Du Bois, and the Politics of Race</p><p>between the Wars’, Boundary 2, 27/3 (2000), 153–69.</p><p>Introduction xix</p><p>I could see, might result in a sort of interracial free-for-all, with the devil</p><p>taking the hindmost and the foremost taking anything they could lay</p><p>hands on.24</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk is framed most noticeably by its epigraphs,</p><p>and their striking juxtaposition of textual excerpts (mainly from</p><p>the European poetic tradition) and snatches of song, what in the</p><p>‘Forethought’ is described as ‘some echo of haunting melody from</p><p>the only American music which welled up from black souls in the</p><p>dark past’ (pp. 3–4).</p><p>crying yet,</p><p>Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?</p><p>Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,</p><p>But the world shall end when I forget.</p><p>Swinburne.*</p><p>“Unto you a child is born,”* sang the bit of yellow paper that flut-</p><p>tered into my room one brown October morning. Then the fear of</p><p>fatherhood mingled wildly with the joy of creation; I wondered how</p><p>it looked and how it felt,––what were its eyes, and how its hair curled</p><p>and crumpled itself. And I thought in awe of her,––she who had</p><p>slept with Death to tear a man-child from underneath her heart,*</p><p>while I was unconsciously wondering. I fled to my wife and child,</p><p>repeating the while to myself half wonderingly, “Wife and child?</p><p>Wife and child?”––fled fast and faster than boat and steam-car, and</p><p>yet must ever impatiently await them; away from the hard-voiced</p><p>city, away from the flickering sea into my own Berkshire Hills that sit</p><p>all sadly guarding the gates of Massachusetts.</p><p>Up the stairs I ran to the wan mother and whimpering babe, to the</p><p>sanctuary on whose altar a life at my bidding had offered itself to win</p><p>a life, and won. What is this tiny formless thing, this new-born wail</p><p>from an unknown world,––all head and voice? I handle it curiously,</p><p>and watch perplexed its winking, breathing, and sneezing. I did not</p><p>love it then; it seemed a ludicrous thing to love; but her I loved, my</p><p>girl-mother, she whom now I saw unfolding like the glory of the</p><p>morning––the transfigured woman.</p><p>Through her I came to love the wee thing, as it grew and waxed</p><p>strong; as its little soul unfolded itself in twitter and cry and half-</p><p>formed word, and as its eyes caught the gleam and flash of life. How</p><p>beautiful he was, with his olive-tinted flesh and dark gold ringlets,</p><p>his eyes of mingled blue and brown, his perfect little limbs, and the</p><p>soft voluptuous roll which the blood of Africa had moulded into his</p><p>features! I held him in my arms, after we had sped far away to our</p><p>Southern home,––held him, and glanced at the hot red soil of</p><p>Georgia and the breathless city of a hundred hills, and felt a vague</p><p>unrest. Why was his hair tinted with gold? An evil omen was golden</p><p>hair in my life. Why had not the brown of his eyes crushed out and</p><p>killed the blue?––for brown were his father’s eyes, and his father’s</p><p>father’s. And thus in the Land of the Color-line I saw, as it fell across</p><p>my baby, the shadow of the Veil.</p><p>Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he</p><p>live,––a Negro and a Negro’s son. Holding in that little head––ah,</p><p>bitterly!––the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny</p><p>dimpled hand––ah, wearily!––to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful,</p><p>and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a</p><p>land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw</p><p>the shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby, I saw the cold city</p><p>towering above the blood-red land. I held my face beside his little</p><p>cheek, showed him the star-children and the twinkling lights as they</p><p>began to flash, and stilled with an even-song the unvoiced terror of</p><p>my life.</p><p>So sturdy and masterful he grew, so filled with bubbling life, so</p><p>tremulous with the unspoken wisdom of a life but eighteen months</p><p>distant from the All-life,––we were not far from worshipping this</p><p>revelation of the divine, my wife and I. Her own life builded and</p><p>moulded itself upon the child; he tinged her every dream and ideal-</p><p>ized her every effort. No hands but hers must touch and garnish</p><p>those little limbs; no dress or frill must touch them that had not</p><p>wearied her fingers; no voice but hers could coax him off to</p><p>Dreamland, and she and he together spoke some soft and unknown</p><p>tongue and in it held communion. I too mused above his little white</p><p>bed; saw the strength of my own arm stretched onward through the</p><p>ages through the newer strength of his; saw the dream of my black</p><p>Of the Passing of the First-Born 141</p><p>fathers stagger a step onward in the wild phantasm of the world;</p><p>heard in his baby voice the voice of the Prophet that was to rise</p><p>within the Veil.</p><p>And so we dreamed and loved and planned by fall and winter, and</p><p>the full flush of the long Southern spring, till the hot winds rolled</p><p>from the fetid Gulf, till the roses shivered and the still stern sun</p><p>quivered its awful light over the hills of Atlanta. And then one night</p><p>the little feet pattered wearily to the wee white bed, and the tiny</p><p>hands trembled; and a warm flushed face tossed on the pillow, and</p><p>we knew baby was sick. Ten days he lay there,––a swift week and</p><p>three endless days, wasting, wasting away. Cheerily the mother</p><p>nursed him the first days, and laughed into the little eyes that smiled</p><p>again. Tenderly then she hovered round him, till the smile fled away</p><p>and Fear crouched beside the little bed.</p><p>Then the day ended not, and night was a dreamless terror, and joy</p><p>and sleep slipped away. I hear now that Voice at midnight calling me</p><p>from dull and dreamless trance,––crying, “The Shadow of Death!</p><p>The Shadow of Death!” Out into the starlight I crept, to rouse the</p><p>gray physician,––the Shadow of Death, the Shadow of Death. The</p><p>hours trembled on; the night listened; the ghastly dawn glided like a</p><p>tired thing across the lamplight. Then we two alone looked upon the</p><p>child as he turned toward us with great eyes, and stretched his</p><p>string-like hands,––the Shadow of Death! And we spoke no word,</p><p>and turned away.</p><p>He died at eventide, when the sun lay like a brooding sorrow</p><p>above the western hills, veiling its face; when the winds spoke not,</p><p>and the trees, the great green trees he loved, stood motionless. I saw</p><p>his breath beat quicker and quicker, pause, and then his little soul</p><p>leapt like a star that travels in the night and left a world of darkness</p><p>in its train. The day changed not; the same tall trees peeped in at</p><p>the windows, the same green grass glinted in the setting sun. Only in</p><p>the chamber of death writhed the world’s most piteous thing––a</p><p>childless mother.</p><p>I shirk not. I long for work. I pant for a life full of striving. I am no</p><p>coward, to shrink before the rugged rush of the storm, nor even</p><p>quail before the awful shadow of the Veil. But hearken, O Death! Is</p><p>not this my life hard enough,––is not that dull and that stretches its</p><p>sneering web about me cold enough,––is not all the world beyond</p><p>these four little walls pitiless enough, but that thou must needs enter</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk142</p><p>here,––thou, O Death? About my head the thundering storm beat</p><p>like a heartless voice, and the crazy forest pulsed with the curses of</p><p>the weak; but what cared I, within my home beside my wife and baby</p><p>boy? Wast thou so jealous of one little coign of happiness that thou</p><p>must needs enter there,––thou, O Death?</p><p>A perfect life was his, all joy and love, with tears to make it</p><p>brighter,––sweet as a summer’s day beside the Housatonic. The</p><p>world loved him; the women kissed his curls, the men looked gravely</p><p>into his wonderful eyes, and the children hovered and fluttered about</p><p>him. I can see him now, changing like the sky from sparkling laugh-</p><p>ter to darkening frowns, and then to wondering thoughtfulness as he</p><p>watched the world. He knew no color-line, poor dear,––and the Veil,</p><p>though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun. He loved</p><p>the white matron, he loved his black nurse; and in his little world</p><p>walked souls alone, uncolored and unclothed. I––yea, all men––are</p><p>larger and purer by the infinite breadth of that one little life. She</p><p>who in simple clearness of vision sees beyond the stars said when he</p><p>had flown, “He will be happy There; he ever loved beautiful things.”</p><p>And I, far more ignorant, and blind by the web of mine own weaving,</p><p>sit alone winding words and muttering, “If still he be, and he be</p><p>There, and there be a There, let him be happy, O Fate!”</p><p>Blithe was the morning of his burial, with bird and song and</p><p>sweet-smelling flowers. The trees whispered to the grass, but the</p><p>children sat with hushed faces. And yet it seemed a ghostly unreal</p><p>day,––the wraith of Life. We seemed to rumble down an unknown</p><p>street behind a little white bundle of posies,</p><p>Interestingly, Du Bois had originally intended to</p><p>close the book with the short story ‘Of the Coming of John’, and</p><p>only wrote the chapter on ‘The Sorrow Songs’ at the urging of his</p><p>editor, Francis Fisher Browne. The chapter contends––debatably,</p><p>perhaps––that the Negro spirituals are inherently ‘the music of an</p><p>unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of</p><p>death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of</p><p>misty wanderings and hidden ways’ (p. 169). The title phrase may</p><p>be derived from the description of the spirituals in Frederick</p><p>Douglass’s 1845 Narrative, the best-known of the narratives written</p><p>by former slaves, in which Douglass suggests that hearing the</p><p>spirituals ‘would do more to impress some minds with the horrible</p><p>character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of phil-</p><p>osophy on the subject could’.25 Or as Du Bois phrases it, the sorrow</p><p>songs are ‘the articulate message of the slave to the world’. The point</p><p>of the unforgettable anecdote about the song sung by Du Bois’s</p><p>grandfather’s grandmother (‘Do ba-na co-ba, ge-ne me, ge-ne</p><p>me! | Ben d’ nu-li, nu-li, nu-li, ben d’ le’) is that the music itself</p><p>carries that message of spiritual striving, beyond the meaning of the</p><p>lyrics: ‘The child sang it to his children and they to their children’s</p><p>children, and so two hundred years it has travelled down to us and</p><p>we sing it to our children, knowing as little as our fathers what</p><p>its words may mean, but knowing well the meaning of its music’</p><p>(p. 170).</p><p>The dual epigraphs are idealistic, in one sense, then, in their</p><p>suggestion that the poetry and music can coexist in some possible</p><p>24 Du Bois, ‘The Talented Tenth Memorial Address’ (1948), in Henry Louis Gates,</p><p>Jr., and Cornel West, The Future of the Race (New York: Knopf, 1996), 162.</p><p>25 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave</p><p>(1845; repr. New York: Penguin, 1982), 57.</p><p>Introductionxx</p><p>‘kingdom of culture’. It is crucial to recognize that Du Bois, in</p><p>drawing on a variety of sources for the musical excerpts,26 chooses</p><p>not to include the lyrics to the spirituals, which often serve to</p><p>underline the arguments of the chapters: Booker T. Washington’s</p><p>idealism is echoed in the otherworldly salvation hoped for in ‘A Great</p><p>Camp-Meeting in the Promised Land’, for example; likewise the</p><p>determined call for education in ‘Of the Training of Black Men’ is</p><p>matched by the strident words of ‘March On’. Du Bois may with-</p><p>hold the lyrics to mark another barrier for the reader, in another</p><p>form––to suggest, again, the inner life ‘within the Veil’, a mode of</p><p>knowledge and ‘striving’ that remains difficult to reach, if not</p><p>inaccessible, using the imperfect and limited means of white culture</p><p>(in this instance, the European technology of musical notation).</p><p>Even if they are songs of sorrow, though, the spirituals also offer</p><p>hope, ‘a faith in the ultimate justice of things’ (p. 175)––which is also</p><p>faith in the possibility in a space beyond or ‘above the Veil’ (p. 76),</p><p>which is another recurring theme of The Souls of Black Folk,</p><p>whether in its invocation of universal truth and artistic universality</p><p>in Chapter VI (‘I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not’, p. 76), or</p><p>in its vision of Du Bois’s son, dead but ‘escaped’ from the bonds of</p><p>the ‘color-line’. Because the music encapsulates this potential, ‘The</p><p>Sorrow Songs’ concludes with yet another argument against the</p><p>‘arrogance’ of human prejudice:</p><p>The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races</p><p>is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency</p><p>and not worth the saving. Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples</p><p>irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men. . . . So woefully</p><p>unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the</p><p>meaning of ‘swift’ and ‘slow’ in human doing, and the limits of human</p><p>26 The sources of Du Bois’s musical epigraphs have been identified and discussed at</p><p>length both in Ronald M. Radano, ‘Soul Texts and the Blackness of Folk’, Modernism/</p><p>Modernity, 2/1 (Jan. 1995), 85–7, and in Eric J. Sundquist, To Wake the Nations: Race in</p><p>the Making of American Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993),</p><p>490–525. Du Bois seems mainly to have drawn on transcriptions and settings by</p><p>Theodore F. Seward in the following sources: G. D. Pike, The Jubilee Singers and their</p><p>Campaign for Twenty Thousand Dollars (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1873); J. B. T. Marsh,</p><p>The Story of the Jubilee Singers, with their Songs (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co.,</p><p>1880); Jubilee Songs: As Sung by the Jubilee Singers, of Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.,</p><p>under the Auspices of the American Missionary Association (New York: Bigelow and</p><p>Main, 1872); and R. Nathaniel Dett (ed.), Religious Folk-Songs of the Negro as Sung at</p><p>Hampton Institute (1874; repr. Hampton, Va.: Hampton Institute Press, 1927).</p><p>Introduction xxi</p><p>perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.</p><p>Why should Æschylus have sung two thousand years before Shakespeare</p><p>was born? Why has civilization flourished in Europe, and flickered,</p><p>flamed, and died in Africa? So long as the world stands meekly dumb</p><p>before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhal-</p><p>lowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who</p><p>brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty? (p. 175)</p><p>The Souls of Black Folk has been described as an ‘orchestrated’ text.</p><p>This is clearly an allusion to the formal and symbolic role of music</p><p>in its pages; but it is also a reference to what the critic Vilashini</p><p>Cooppan has usefully termed Du Bois’s ‘dialectical formalism’.27</p><p>Throughout, at every level of structure from the paired epigraphs to</p><p>the opening and closing statements of the book, The Souls of Black</p><p>Folk is an interwoven pattern of thesis and antithesis, ‘forethought’</p><p>and ‘afterthought’. The most illuminating instance may be the open-</p><p>ing of Chapter VI, ‘Of the Training of Black Men’, in which Du</p><p>Bois invokes a vision of modernity inaugurated within and through</p><p>the slave trade, ‘many thoughts ago’. From that origin, there ‘have</p><p>flowed down to our day three streams of thinking’, he writes. First,</p><p>the imperative of internationalism on the basis of an idealist univer-</p><p>salism (the thought that ‘the multiplying of human wants in culture-</p><p>lands calls for the world-wide coöperation of men in satisfying them,</p><p>pulling the ends of earth nearer, and all men, black, yellow, and</p><p>white’), met by an afterthought that critiques that idealism by noting</p><p>that the history of the world is a record less of universalism than of</p><p>inequity, exploitation, ‘force and dominion’. Second, the thesis of</p><p>racism––that ‘somewhere between men and cattle, God created a</p><p>tertium quid, and called it a Negro’––countered by a reformist</p><p>humanist argument that ‘some of them with favoring chance might</p><p>become men’ (pp. 63–4). And third, the ‘thought of the things them-</p><p>selves’, the African American demand for civil rights and equal</p><p>opportunity, undermined by self-doubt and internalized racism:</p><p>‘suppose, after all, the World is right and we are less than men?’</p><p>These ‘streams of thinking’ leave us, Du Bois writes, with a ‘tangle</p><p>of thought and afterthought wherein we are called to solve the prob-</p><p>lem of training men for life’ (p. 64). If such a problematic ‘tangle’</p><p>27 Stepto, From Beyond the Veil, 52; Vilashini Cooppan, ‘The Double Politics of</p><p>Double Consciousness: Nationalism and Globalism in Souls’, Public Culture, 17/2</p><p>(Spring 2005), 308.</p><p>Introductionxxii</p><p>vibrates through the remainder of the chapter, as Du Bois considers</p><p>the politics of higher education in the post-Reconstruction era, it</p><p>also reverberates at greater levels of remove in The Souls of Black</p><p>Folk as a whole, particularly in the concluding ‘After-Thought’.</p><p>There, Du Bois addresses us again, with the hope and gamble that</p><p>we will take the book up, in our ‘good time’, and make it live on,</p><p>using ‘infinite reason’ to ‘turn the tangle straight’ (p. 178).</p><p>Introduction xxiii</p><p>NOTE ON THE TEXT</p><p>This edition of The Souls of Black Folk reproduces the text of</p><p>the first edition, published by A. C. McClurg and Company on</p><p>18 April 1903.</p><p>Nine of the fourteen chapters in the volume were revisions of</p><p>essays originally published in various periodicals. The first chapter,</p><p>‘Of Our Spiritual Strivings’, is a revision of ‘Strivings of the Negro</p><p>People’, Atlantic Monthly (August 1897); Chapter II, ‘Of the Dawn</p><p>of Freedom’, is a revision of ‘The Freedman’s Bureau’, Atlantic</p><p>Monthly (March 1901); Chapter III, ‘Of Mr. Booker T. Washington</p><p>and Others’, is a revision and expansion of ‘The Evolution of Negro</p><p>Leadership’, The Dial (16 July 1901); Chapter IV, ‘Of the Meaning</p><p>of Progress’, is a revision of ‘A Negro Schoolmaster in the New</p><p>South’, Atlantic Monthly (January 1899); Chapter VI, ‘Of the Train-</p><p>ing of Black Men’, is a revision of an essay published under the same</p><p>title in the Atlantic Monthly (September 1902); Chapter VII, ‘Of the</p><p>Black Belt’, and Chapter VIII, ‘Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece’,</p><p>are revisions drawn from a single essay, ‘The Negro as He Really Is’,</p><p>World’s Work (June 1901); Chapter IX, ‘Of the Sons of Master and</p><p>Man’, is a revision of ‘The Relation of Negroes to the Whites in</p><p>the South’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social</p><p>Science (July–December 1901); Chapter X, ‘Of the Faith of the</p><p>Fathers’, is a revision of ‘The Religion of the American Negro’,</p><p>New World: A Quarterly Review of Religion, Ethics and Theology</p><p>(December 1900).</p><p>Chapter V, ‘Of the Wings of Atalanta’; Chapter IX, ‘Of the Pass-</p><p>ing of the First-Born’; Chapter XII, ‘Of Alexander Crummell’;</p><p>Chapter XIII, ‘Of the Coming of John’; and Chapter XIV, ‘The</p><p>Sorrow Songs’, were written expressly for The Souls of Black Folk.</p><p>The book enjoyed great success; McClurg published twenty-four</p><p>editions between 1903 and 1940, and in 1935 the publisher informed</p><p>Du Bois that the book had sold fifteen thousand copies. In January</p><p>1949 Du Bois bought the original plates from McClurg for one</p><p>hundred dollars. In the fall of 1953, a Fiftieth Anniversary Jubilee</p><p>Edition of The Souls of Black Folk was published by Blue Heron</p><p>Press in New York.</p><p>In the introduction to the Blue Heron edition, ‘Fifty Years Later’</p><p>(reprinted here in Appendix III), Du Bois explained that he had</p><p>made ‘less than a half-dozen alterations in word or phrase’ in the</p><p>1953 version of the text. The historian Herbert Aptheker, when</p><p>preparing an edition of the book in 1973 for Kraus-Thomson, noted</p><p>seven alterations. The literary scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., with</p><p>the assistance of the Black Periodical Literature project, made a line-</p><p>by-line comparison of the 1903 and 1953 editions, and found two</p><p>additional changes, which were first noted in the 1989 Bantam edi-</p><p>tion. These nine changes are listed below; the revisions have been</p><p>indicated in italics (page numbers have been changed in reference to</p><p>the pagination in this edition):</p><p>p. 70 (1903) And first we may say that this type of college,</p><p>including Atlanta, Fisk, and Howard, Wilberforce and</p><p>Lincoln, Biddle, Shaw . . .</p><p>(1953) Claflin</p><p>p. 87 (1903) The Jew is the heir of the slave-baron in</p><p>Dougherty . . .</p><p>(1953) Immigrants are heirs</p><p>p. 87 (1903) . . . nearly all failed, and the Jew fell heir.</p><p>(1953) . . . most failed, and foreigners fell heir.</p><p>p. 88 (1903) This plantation, owned now by a Russian Jew . . .</p><p>(1953) foreigner</p><p>p. 88 (1903) . . . out of which only a Yankee or a Jew could</p><p>squeeze more blood from debt-cursed tenants.</p><p>(1953) an immigrant</p><p>p. 91 (1903) Since then his nephews and the poor whites and the</p><p>Jews have seized it.</p><p>(1953) poor relations and foreign immigrants</p><p>p. 115 (1903) . . . thrifty and avaricious Yankee, shrewd and</p><p>unscrupulous Jews.</p><p>(1953) immigrants</p><p>p. 116 (1903) . . . the enterprising Russian Jew who sold it to</p><p>him . . .</p><p>(1953) American</p><p>p. 138 (1903) It is the same defence which the Jews</p><p>of the Middle Age used . . .</p><p>(1953) peasants</p><p>Note on the Text xxv</p><p>On 27 February 1953, Du Bois wrote a letter to Aptheker which</p><p>the latter quoted in his ‘Introduction’ to the 1973 Kraus-Thomson</p><p>edition to indicate a possible motivation for these revisions, in</p><p>particular with regard to the term ‘Jews’:</p><p>In Los Angeles, a friend gave me a copy of ‘Souls of Black Folk.’ I have</p><p>had a chance to read it in part for the first time in years. I find in chapters</p><p>VII, VIII and IX, five incidental references to Jews. I recall that years ago,</p><p>Jacob Schiff wrote me criticising these references and that I denied any</p><p>thought of race or religious prejudice and promised to go over the pas-</p><p>sages in future editions. These editions succeeded each other without any</p><p>consultation with me, and evidently the matter slipped out of my mind.</p><p>As I re-read these words today, I see that harm might come if they were</p><p>allowed to stand as they are. First of all, I am not at all sure that the</p><p>foreign exploiters to whom I referred in my study of the Black Belt, were</p><p>in fact Jews. I took the word of my informants, and I am now wondering if</p><p>in fact Russian Jews in any numbers were in Georgia at the time. But even</p><p>if they were, what I was condemning was the exploitation and not the race</p><p>nor religion. And I did not, when writing, realize that by stressing the</p><p>name of the group instead of what some members of the [group] may have</p><p>done, I was unjustly maligning a people in exactly the same way my folk</p><p>were then and are now falsely accused.</p><p>In view of this and because of the even greater danger of injustice now</p><p>than then, I want in the event of re-publication [to] change these passages.</p><p>When Du Bois specified some of the revisions to be made in a</p><p>memorandum to Blue Heron dated 16 March 1953, he drafted a</p><p>paragraph to be added to the end of Chapter VII, ‘Of the Black Belt’,</p><p>which read as follows:</p><p>In the foregoing chapter, ‘Jews’ have been mentioned five times, and the</p><p>late Jacob Schiff once complained that this gave an impression of anti-</p><p>Semitism. This at the time I stoutly denied; but as I read the passages</p><p>again in the light of subsequent history, I see how I laid myself open to</p><p>this possible misapprehension. What, of course, I meant to condemn was</p><p>exploitation of black labor and that it was in this country and at that time</p><p>in part a matter of immigrant Jews, was incidental and not essential. My</p><p>inner sympathy with the Jewish people was expressed better in the last</p><p>paragraph of page 152. But this illustrates how easily one slips into</p><p>unconscious condemnation of a whole group.</p><p>This paragraph was not added to the 1953 edition, presumably</p><p>because the references in question had been changed throughout the</p><p>text.</p><p>Note on the Textxxvi</p><p>The changes would thus seem to be intended in the main to avoid</p><p>any implication of anti-Semitism. Although Du Bois continued to</p><p>deny any intentional prejudice, it is noteworthy that, both in the</p><p>letter to Aptheker and the memo to Blue Heron, he is expressly</p><p>critical of the unrecognized or ‘unconscious’ bias in his original</p><p>phrasing in the 1903 edition.</p><p>Note on the Text xxvii</p><p>SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY</p><p>Anderson, Paul Allen, ‘ “Unvoiced Longings”: Du Bois and the “Sorrow</p><p>Songs” ’, in Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance</p><p>Thought (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 13–57.</p><p>Appiah, Anthony, ‘The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion</p><p>of Race’, in Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed.), ‘Race,’ Writing, and Difference</p><p>(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1896), 21–37.</p><p>Aptheker, Herbert, ‘Introduction’ to W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of</p><p>Black Folk (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization, Ltd., 1973),</p><p>5–46.</p><p>Berman, Russell A., ‘Du Bois and Wagner: Race, Nation, and Culture</p><p>between the United States and Germany’, German Quarterly, 70/2</p><p>(spring 1997), 123–35.</p><p>Bruce, Dickson D., Jr., ‘W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double</p><p>Consciousness’, American Literature, 64/2 (June 1992), 299–309.</p><p>Cooppan, Vilashini, ‘The Double Politics of Double Consciousness:</p><p>Nationalism and Globalism in Souls’, Public Culture, 17/2 (spring</p><p>2005), 299–318.</p><p>Du Bois, W. E.</p><p>B., The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York:</p><p>International Publishers, 1968).</p><p>—— Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept,</p><p>in Du Bois, Writings (New York: Library of America, 1986), 549–801.</p><p>—— ‘The Talented Tenth Memorial Address’ (1948), in Gates and West,</p><p>The Future of the Race, 159–77.</p><p>Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., ‘Introduction: Darkly, as Through a Veil’, in</p><p>W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam, 1989),</p><p>pp. vii–xxv.</p><p>—— and West, Cornel, The Future of the Race (New York: Knopf, 1996).</p><p>Gatewood, Willard B, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920</p><p>(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).</p><p>Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness</p><p>(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).</p><p>Gooding-Williams, Robert, ‘Philosophy of History and Social Critique</p><p>in The Souls of Black Folk’, Social Science Information, 26/1 (1987),</p><p>99–114.</p><p>Lewis, David Levering, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919</p><p>(New York: Henry Holt, 1993).</p><p>Radano, Ronald M., ‘Soul Texts and the Blackness of Folk’, Modernism/</p><p>Modernity, 2/1 (Jan. 1995), 71–95.</p><p>Rampersad, Arnold, The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois</p><p>(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976).</p><p>Reed, Adolph L., Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought:</p><p>Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford University Press,</p><p>1997).</p><p>Stepto, Robert B., From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American</p><p>Narrative (1979; 2nd edn., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991).</p><p>Sundquist, Eric J., ‘Swing Low: The Souls of Black Folk’, in To Wake the</p><p>Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature (Cambridge, Mass.:</p><p>Harvard University Press, 1993), 457–539.</p><p>Weheliye, Alexander G., Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity</p><p>(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).</p><p>Zamir, Shamoon, Dark Voices: W. E. B. Du Bois and American Thought,</p><p>1888–1903 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).</p><p>Further Reading in Oxford World’s Classics</p><p>Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an</p><p>American Slave, ed. Deborah E. McDowell.</p><p>Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin.</p><p>Washington, Booker T., Up from Slavery, ed. William L. Andrews.</p><p>Select Bibliography xxix</p><p>A CHRONOLOGY OF W. E. B. DU BOIS</p><p>1868 Born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois in Great Barrington,</p><p>Massachusetts, on 23 February, the only child of Alfred Du</p><p>Bois and Mary Silvina Burghardt. Father moves to New Milford,</p><p>and Du Bois is raised by his mother.</p><p>1884 Graduates from high school in Great Barrington and writes</p><p>occasional articles for the Springfield Republican and for the New</p><p>York Globe.</p><p>1885 Mother dies on 23 March. A group of civic and Congregational</p><p>church leaders in Massachusetts and Connecticut arrange</p><p>a fund to support Du Bois’s studies at Fisk University in</p><p>Nashville, Tennessee. Edits the Fisk Herald.</p><p>1886–7 Teaches school during the summer in a poor black rural</p><p>community near Alexandria, Tennessee.</p><p>1888 Receives BA degree from Fisk in June. Gives the graduation</p><p>address on Bismarck. Awarded a Price-Greenleaf grant of $250,</p><p>he continues his studies at Harvard College, where he is admit-</p><p>ted as a junior. His teachers include Albert Bushnell Hart in</p><p>history and William James and George Santayana in philosophy.</p><p>1890 Earns a BA cum laude in philosophy at Harvard. Gives the</p><p>commencement address on Jefferson Davis. Continues his</p><p>studies at Harvard as a graduate student in social science.</p><p>1891 Receives an MA degree in history from Harvard, writing a</p><p>thesis on the suppression of the African slave trade.</p><p>1892 Wins fellowship from the Slater Fund to study at the Friedrich</p><p>Wilhelm University in Berlin, Germany. Works with Gustav</p><p>Schmoller and Heinrich von Treitschke.</p><p>1894 Denied Ph.D. degree at Friedrich Wilhelm University because</p><p>of residency requirements. Takes a chair in classics at Wilber-</p><p>force University, a black college in Xenia, Ohio.</p><p>1895 Receives Ph.D. in history from Harvard, the first black student</p><p>to do so.</p><p>1896 Marries Nina Gomer, a student at Wilberforce. Publishes his</p><p>doctoral thesis, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the</p><p>United States of America, 1638–1870, as the first volume in the</p><p>Harvard Historical Monograph Series. Hired by the University</p><p>of Pennsylvania to pursue a sociological study of black life in</p><p>Philadelphia.</p><p>1897 Accepts faculty position in economics and history at Atlanta</p><p>University. Helps to found the American Negro Academy, a</p><p>society for the promotion of black scholarly achievement.</p><p>Delivers address ‘The Conservation of Races’ to the Academy.</p><p>Begins to edit the Atlanta University Studies (1898–1914),</p><p>a sociological series devoted to the study of black life. His</p><p>first child, son Burghardt Gomer Du Bois, is born in Great</p><p>Barrington on 2 October.</p><p>1899 Publishes The Philadelphia Negro. Burghardt Gomer Du Bois</p><p>dies on 24 May in Atlanta.</p><p>1900 Attends the First Pan-African Conference in London, organ-</p><p>ized by the Trinidadian lawyer Henry Sylvester Williams. As</p><p>secretary, writes the closing address of the conference, in which</p><p>he declares that ‘the problem of the twentieth century is the</p><p>problem of the colour line’. Assembles an exhibit on black</p><p>American life and economic development for the Paris</p><p>Exposition, and is awarded the grand prize. Daughter Nina</p><p>Yolande is born on 21 October in Great Barrington.</p><p>1902 Offered teaching position at Tuskegee Institute by Booker T.</p><p>Washington; Du Bois declines.</p><p>1903 Publishes The Souls of Black Folk in April. ‘The Talented</p><p>Tenth’ is printed in the collection The Negro Problem.</p><p>1905 Helps to found the Niagara Movement, a group of black leaders</p><p>who work to promote the full civil and economic rights of the</p><p>black population. Founds and edits The Moon Illustrated</p><p>Weekly, a magazine published in Memphis.</p><p>1906 Second conference of the Niagara Movement. The Moon Illus-</p><p>trated Weekly ceases publication in the summer. Atlanta race</p><p>riots in September. Du Bois writes the poem ‘A Litany of</p><p>Atlanta’.</p><p>1907 Du Bois founds and edits Horizon, a monthly journal that</p><p>continues to publish until 1910. Niagara Movement suffers</p><p>increasing difficulties due to financial problems and political</p><p>dissension.</p><p>1909 Joins the recently founded National Negro Committee (the</p><p>precursor of the National Association for the Advancement</p><p>of Colored People). Fifth and last conference of the Niagara</p><p>Movement. Publishes the biography John Brown.</p><p>Chronology xxxi</p><p>1910 Accepts position in New York as the Director of Publications</p><p>and Research of the National Association for the Advancement</p><p>of Colored People (NAACP). Founds and edits the civil rights</p><p>organization’s monthly journal The Crisis.</p><p>1911 Attends Universal Races Congress in London. Publishes first</p><p>novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece. Becomes a member of the</p><p>Socialist Party.</p><p>1912 Supports Woodrow Wilson’s candidacy for president; resigns</p><p>from the Socialist Party.</p><p>1913 Composes and produces The Star of Ethiopia, a pageant</p><p>celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation</p><p>Proclamation.</p><p>1914 Writes editorials in The Crisis in support of women’s suffrage.</p><p>Argues that the First World War is the result of rivalry among</p><p>European states over colonial possessions, especially in Africa,</p><p>but supports the Allied effort nonetheless.</p><p>1915 Booker T. Washington dies in November. Du Bois publishes</p><p>The Negro. Organizes protests against D. W. Griffith’s inflam-</p><p>matory film, The Birth of a Nation.</p><p>1918 Writes an editorial, ‘Close Ranks’, published in July in The</p><p>Crisis, arguing that blacks should support the war effort. Travels</p><p>to Europe in December for the NAACP to study the situation of</p><p>black troops.</p><p>1919 Organizes the First Pan-African Congress in Paris, France,</p><p>a gathering of fifty-seven delegates from the United States, the</p><p>Caribbean, Europe, and Africa.</p><p>1920 Publishes Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil, a collection of</p><p>essays, fiction, and poetry. Founds and edits The Brownies’</p><p>Book, a monthly magazine for black children.</p><p>1921 Second Pan-African</p><p>Congress held in London, Brussels, and</p><p>Paris.</p><p>1922 Advocates the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which is</p><p>blocked in the US Senate.</p><p>1923 Third Pan-African Congress held in Lisbon.</p><p>1924 Publishes The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of</p><p>America.</p><p>1925 Du Bois’s essay ‘The Negro Mind Reaches Out’, first published</p><p>in Foreign Affairs, is included in the anthology The New Negro,</p><p>Chronologyxxxii</p><p>the important collection of Harlem Renaissance writings edited</p><p>by Alain Locke.</p><p>1926 Founds the Krigwa Players, a theatre company in Harlem.</p><p>Travels to the Soviet Union.</p><p>1927 Fourth Pan-African Congress held in New York.</p><p>1928 Publishes the novel Dark Princess. Daughter Yolande marries</p><p>the well-known poet Countee Cullen in a ceremony in Harlem;</p><p>they separate only months later.</p><p>1930 Awarded honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Howard</p><p>University.</p><p>1932 Granddaughter Du Bois Williams born to Yolande and her</p><p>second husband, Arnett Williams.</p><p>1933 Grows increasingly sceptical of the possibility of integration.</p><p>Begins to reconsider stance on segregation. Accepts one-year</p><p>visiting faculty position at Atlanta University.</p><p>1934 After a series of editorials supporting voluntary black self-</p><p>segregation and criticizing efforts at integration, resigns from</p><p>editorship of The Crisis and from the NAACP. Becomes chair-</p><p>man of the Sociology Department at Atlanta University. Begins</p><p>work as editor-in-chief on the Encyclopedia of the Negro,</p><p>supported by the Phelps-Stokes Fund.</p><p>1935 Publishes Black Reconstruction.</p><p>1936 Studies industrial education in Germany on a five-month grant.</p><p>Travels through Poland, the Soviet Union, Manchuria, China,</p><p>and Japan.</p><p>1938 Awarded honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Atlanta Uni-</p><p>versity and honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Fisk</p><p>University.</p><p>1939 Publishes Black Folk, Then and Now.</p><p>1940 Publishes autobiography Dusk of Dawn. Founds and edits the</p><p>quarterly journal Phylon at Atlanta University. Awarded honor-</p><p>ary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at Wilberforce.</p><p>1941 Proposes a series of sociological studies of black life in the</p><p>South in a speech to presidents of southern land-grant colleges</p><p>in Chicago.</p><p>1942 Land-grant college project is adopted, and Du Bois is named</p><p>coordinator.</p><p>1943 Hosts the First Phylon Conference of black educators from</p><p>southern land-grant colleges in April, with funding from the</p><p>Chronology xxxiii</p><p>Carnegie Foundation. Informed by the board of trustees at</p><p>Atlanta University in November that he will be forced to retire</p><p>in June 1944; Du Bois attempts unsuccessfully to overturn the</p><p>decision.</p><p>1944 Hosts the Second Phylon Conference of black educators.</p><p>Named the first black member of the National Institute of Arts</p><p>and Letters. Offered teaching positions at Fisk and Howard</p><p>University, but accepts position as director of special research at</p><p>the NAACP in New York in September.</p><p>1945 Attends San Francisco conference to draft the United Nations</p><p>charter. Attends and presides at the Fifth Pan-African Congress</p><p>organized in Manchester, England. Begins writing a weekly</p><p>column for the Chicago Defender. Wife Nina Du Bois suffers a</p><p>stroke that leaves her partially paralysed on her left side; she is</p><p>hospitalized for eight months. Publishes Color and Democracy:</p><p>Colonies and Peace.</p><p>1947 Edits An Appeal to the World, a collection of essays criticizing</p><p>discrimination in the United States; it is presented to the</p><p>United Nations Commission on Human Rights, where its con-</p><p>sideration is supported by the Soviet Union but ultimately</p><p>blocked by the United States. Begins in March to write for</p><p>the People’s Voice; his weekly column runs until March 1948.</p><p>Travels through Grenada, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Cuba.</p><p>Publishes The World and Africa.</p><p>1948 Supports Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate for</p><p>president. Continues criticism of US foreign policy and racial</p><p>discrimination; there is increasing tension between Du Bois and</p><p>Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP, culminat-</p><p>ing in Du Bois’s dismissal. Joins the Council on African Affairs,</p><p>where he serves as vice-chairman until 1956. Begins writing</p><p>articles for the National Guardian.</p><p>1949 Participates in Cultural and Scientific Conference for World</p><p>Peace in New York in March. Attends First World Congress of</p><p>the Defenders of Peace in Paris in April. Invited to the All-</p><p>Union Conference of Peace Proponents in Moscow in August.</p><p>1950 Co-founds and is named chairman of the Peace Information</p><p>Center, dissolved the same year due to US Department of Just-</p><p>ice intervention. Nina Gomer Du Bois dies in Baltimore in July.</p><p>Attends meeting of the World Peace Committee in Prague in</p><p>August. Runs unsuccessfully for US senate as a candidate of the</p><p>American Labor Party.</p><p>Chronologyxxxiv</p><p>1951 Indicted in February with four others from the Peace Informa-</p><p>tion Center under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.</p><p>Marries Shirley Graham, a writer and activist. Undertakes</p><p>national lecture tour in order to pay the legal fees for his</p><p>defence. Acquitted in November.</p><p>1952 US Department of State denies Du Bois a passport when he</p><p>refuses to sign an affidavit stating that he is not a member of the</p><p>Communist Party. Publishes In Battle for Peace.</p><p>1953 Participates in campaign to support accused Soviet spies Julius</p><p>and Ethel Rosenberg. Publishes eulogy for Stalin in the</p><p>National Guardian. Awarded International Peace Prize by the</p><p>World Peace Council.</p><p>1954 Reacts with surprise to the Supreme Court Brown decision</p><p>outlawing segregation in public schools; Du Bois writes, ‘I have</p><p>seen the impossible happen.’</p><p>1955 Travels to Grenada and Barbados. Refused passport for trip to</p><p>attend the World Youth Festival in Poland.</p><p>1956 Sends a message of support to the Reverend Martin Luther</p><p>King, Jr., during the Montgomery bus boycott. Refused pass-</p><p>port for trip to lecture in China. Refused passport to attend the</p><p>First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists</p><p>sponsored by Présence Africaine in Paris.</p><p>1957 Publishes the historical novel The Ordeal of Mansart, the first</p><p>book in the trilogy The Black Flame. Refused passport to attend</p><p>Ghanaian independence ceremonies.</p><p>1958 Ninetieth birthday celebration held at the Roosevelt Hotel in</p><p>New York; two thousand people attend the event. Starts writing</p><p>a new autobiographical work (published posthumously as The</p><p>Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois). Receives his passport after</p><p>the US Supreme Court rejects the requirement for a political</p><p>affidavit. Departs in August on world tour, visiting Europe and</p><p>the Soviet Union. Awarded honorary Doctor of Economics</p><p>degree by Humboldt (formerly Friedrich Wilhelm) University</p><p>in East Berlin.</p><p>1959 Spends two months in China. Returns to the United States at</p><p>the end of the summer, voyaging through the Soviet Union,</p><p>Sweden, and England. Awarded the International Lenin Prize</p><p>in September. Publishes Mansart Builds a School, the second</p><p>volume of The Black Flame.</p><p>1960 Travels to Ghana and Nigeria.</p><p>Chronology xxxv</p><p>1961 Publishes Worlds of Color, the third volume of The Black Flame.</p><p>Daughter Yolande dies of a heart attack in Baltimore in March.</p><p>Invited by Kwame Nkrumah to move to Ghana and revive the</p><p>Encyclopedia Africana project. Applies for membership in the</p><p>Communist Party of the United States before leaving for Accra</p><p>in October.</p><p>1962 Receives medical treatment in Accra, Budapest, and London.</p><p>Travels to China.</p><p>1963 Awarded honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University</p><p>of Ghana. Acquires Ghanaian citizenship. Dies in Accra on</p><p>27 August, the eve of the civil rights march on Washington, DC.</p><p>Buried with a state funeral in Accra.</p><p>Chronologyxxxvi</p><p>THE SOULS</p><p>OF BLACK FOLK</p><p>to</p><p>BURGHARDT AND YOLANDE</p><p>the lost and the found*</p><p>THE FORETHOUGHT</p><p>Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may</p><p>show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the</p><p>Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you,</p><p>Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the</p><p>problem of the color-line.</p><p>I pray you, then, receive my little book</p>