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

1. Striving: Work, Culture, and Liberty

15 1 striving Work, Culture, and Liberty John Jones to himself (quoting Esther 4:16), on his way to Altamaha to seek a teaching job from Judge Henderson: “I will go unto the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.” Judge Henderson to John Jones upon their meeting about the job: “I knew your father, John, he belonged to my brother, and he was a good Nigger.” —W. E. B. Du Bois1 “herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” Du Bois opened his classic volume, The Souls of Black Folk, with these two sentences. They are attention getting; the second sentence is adamant. Du Bois did not speculate on the future’s problems, which most of us, more modest, would have done; he announced, in 1903, that the color line is the problem of the twentieth century. David Levering Lewis, in his prizewinning biography of Du Bois, concludes, “This problem [of the color line] is the leitmotif of the book, a problem Du Bois examined from the perspective of institutions and ideals, and from that of the educated, the ignorant, the rural hard-pressed, and the urban beleaguered.”2 But in lines as famous (and as often quoted) as the reference to the color line, Du Bois also wrote: [T]he Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this doubleconsciousness , this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,— an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled 16 Striving strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. Arnold Rampersad’s literary biography of Du Bois describes “the Veil” as “the central metaphor both of black existence and of the book.” And literary theorist and critic Eric Sundquist concludes that the description of double consciousness is “the most famous idea advanced by Du Bois, perhaps the most famous advanced by any African American.” Political scientist and theorist Adolph Reed Jr. describes double consciousness as “a distinctly attractive template for the articulation of both interpretive and substantive, academic and hortatory arguments concerning the race’s status.”3 Du Bois’ remarks about the veil, the color line, and double consciousness captured, and for more than one hundred years have continued to hold, scholarly and popular attention.4 The attention is not unwarranted. To have written with such insight and passion about the color line, practically at the point of its (post–Civil War) institutionalization, was a major accomplishment; the veil was both a powerful metaphor and an important symbol in African American culture; and the concept of double consciousness seemed to capture the way black people lived their lives.5 Nevertheless , by putting them back into the context of the whole book, this chapter shifts the focus from double consciousness, the veil, and the color line to other, perhaps more important but grossly under analyzed, aspects of the book.6 Just a few lines after that “gentle” but dramatic statement about the color line in the forethought to The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois stated his purpose: “I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive.”7 Since Du Bois was as much a philosopher as a historian, political economist, and sociologist, his wording should alert us that his description of the material world (the color line), despite its vividness, was merely a vehicle for illustrating a larger point. The phrase “spiritual world” suggests an interest in the incorporeal, however closely related it might be to the physical world. Du Bois was, after all, writing about “the striving in the souls of black folk” (emphasis added). The veil was undoubtedly central to the discussion, but Du Bois was a careful writer, and his reference to a “veil” obligates...