"The Souls of Black Folk,” by W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903
The story of WEB Du Bois is familiar. Born in Massachusetts
just after the Civil War, the first black man to get a PHD from Harvard;
studied in Europe; essayist and activist, founder of the NAACP in 1909, later joining
the Communist Party and emigrated to Ghana in the early 60s, where he
died. He is buried in Accra.
The trajectory of his life is a gradual radicalization of
his politics and attitude towards racism in the U.S. He concluded it would never go away under
capitalism and renounced his U.S.
citizenship.
This book still resonates more than a 100 years later
because the situation has not fundamentally changed for people of color in the U.S. The book reflects that early period in
Du Bois’ life when he, as an educated black person, attempted to ‘uplift’ his
people while all the time denouncing their oppression. In this book he is still optimistic that some
kind of rapprochement with the southern racists is possible. But he clearly
realizes that the system wants black people to have no political
representation. He says, “the South…is
simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk.” Given the present rebellions against nationwide
police murders of black people and the absence of a black political party or real power nationally, nothing has fundamentally changed for the black proletariat.
Du Bois opposed both Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington,
the latter in a famous essay in this collection. Washington
had traded not making waves over Jim Crow or forced labor for ‘industrial
education’ – limiting the opportunities of black people to trade schooling. It is not possible to read this
essay and conclude that we don’t have our own modern “Booker T Washingtons” in
the caste of upper-middle class black politicians, chiefly Barrack Obama. Du Bois coined the phrase ‘the talented
tenth,’ which later black intellectuals like Franklin Frazier and Harold Cruse
called the ‘black bourgeoisie.’ Cornel
West has just written a book called “Black Prophetic Fire” addressing the very
question of political differences among black leaders, difference which really
reflect class approaches.
In a way, Malcolm X adopted a similar approach to Du Bois while
in the Black Muslims – self-improvement and a militant anti-racism. He, too, started to leave this approach behind, moving towards socialism. The strain solely focusing on
‘self-improvement’ and moralistic scolding of black people still continues
through prominent people like Bill Cosby and Obama. Not to mention a whole strata of
right-wing Black Republicans, businesmen and church preachers.
These essays mix sociology, history, flights of
sophisticated literary writing, fiction, political polemics, political
recommendations (a ‘permanent Freedman’s Bureau’) and reminiscences of Du Bois’
times in Tennessee and Atlanta.
Du Bois has two excellent chapters on Dougherty
County in south-eastern Georgia, a
‘buckle’ of the Black Belt. He describes
exactly how the black tenant serf cotton economy actually worked - the 'crop-lien' system. It perpetuated never-ending debt to the local
white businessman and landlords, and subsequent poverty and ignorance. Dubois estimated that around 95% of the black people
in this county were rural ‘peasants’ or hired hands and did not own land.
Du Bois uses the phrase ‘the Veil’ to describe the barrier
separating black people in the U.S.
from normal American life. He speaks at
every moment of the ‘double consciousness’ of being both black and an
ostensible citizen. Du Bois investigates
the black Church – about the only space black people could feel safe - and
black music (‘sorrow songs’), one of the first to do so. His most famous quote from the book - "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.' Today, the color line and the class line are inextricably mixed, yet still distinct, in every country in the globe.
This book is essential reading to understand the long history of black radical thought in the U.S.
"Souls of Black Folk" and ‘Black Prophetic Fire’ are for sale at Mayday. A review of Du Bois book on "John Brown" is below, along with other reviews of books on the South and black oppression. Use blog search box, upper left.
Red Frog
December 13, 2014
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