Thematic Designs of Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B Du Bois and National Identity
W.E.B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk published in 1903 is a palimpsest whose disparate meanings and allusions unfold a meta-fiction grounded in historicity, protest, hope, and unparalleled scholarship. Divided into sixteen chapters, each chapter tells a story of the failures, hopes, aspirations, mistakes, and diligence of the lives of Southern blacks thirty years after the Civil War.
"Of Our Spiritual Strivings" is the first chapter in Souls of Black Folk, and it serves as a prequel to the succeeding chapters in the novel. In the chapter, Du Bois brings awareness to the fact that the tension engulfing blacks in America is a doppelganger.
Du Bois argues that blacks are haunted by a double image and as a result, see themselves through the eyes of others, especially white America.
Du Bois terms this internal conflict “double consciousness” and proposes that to overcome such internal conflicts, black people must simply strive to be themselves. The chapter also addresses themes such as the salience of political power, the need for civil rights, innate loyalty of the Negro, ideal education, unfulfilled promise to the Negro, and a future bi-racial America in which the talents of black people will complement and supplement those of whites in the building of a more prosperous nation.
In short, Du Bois treats the importance of the ideals of race, ethnicity, and national identity in this chapter.
"Of the Dawn of Freedom" is one of the longest chapters in the book, if not the longest. In this chapter, De Bois devotes its pages to generic themes. Racism, labor, liberty, suffering, vindictiveness, and the rise and failure of the Freedmen’s Bureau during the era of Reconstruction are some of the themes informing Du Bois’s discussion in this chapter. According to Du Bois, General Oliver Howard’s Freedmen’s Bureau contributed to the progress of the newly Emancipated by instituting universal adult education in the South.
However, he faulted the Bureau for its lack of emphasis on establishing more institutions of higher learning to train teachers, who would in turn, impact knowledge to needy black people. He attributed the failure in that regard, in spite of higher institutions like Fisk, Howard, and Atlanta Universities to a Reductionist attitude they adopted to political and civil rights. Du Bois accused the Freedmen’s Bureau of erroneously thinking that mere suffrage could solve the problems facing black folk in the country.
In "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others", Du Bois employs a classical rhetorical skill to debunk what many saw as a largely monist approach that Booker T. Washington adopted to solving some of the problems of the Emancipated. Du Bois first states in a buffer the good things Washington tried to accomplish for Southern blacks after being widely acknowledged as Frederick Douglass’s successor to help redeem Africa Americans.
Then, in a mordant polemic, Du Bois excoriates Washington for pandering to Southern whites, for kowtowing to the fallacious assumption that the Emancipated were not prepared for suffrage a generation after being liberated, and for advocating a superficial instead of a broad educational policy for the Negro. This chapter is also replete with themes of the generosity and ambivalence of some Southern whites, prejudice, historical subtexts, and damnation of Congress for disenfranchising blacks in 1876.
"Of the Meaning of Progress" is an ironic twist on the lives of the Emancipated after the abolition of slavery. In a trope of the absurd, Du Bois satirically muses over the theme of diligence without its due reward through Josie’s life. But, it thematically illustrates that the era of free labor was gone in some areas in the South when Ben pounds Sam Carlon after the latter refused to pay the former for his work.
Furthermore, there are themes of transient freed men and women as well as desire for marriage with its frustrations and dangers. The overarching metaphor of progress in this chapter, however, is education, and Du Bois parodies it through what Jim’s life could have been had he received education.
What Du Bois seems to be substantiating in this chapter is that without institutions of higher learning to tap and nurture the talents of black people, progress would come slowly because it would be in serious competition with retrogression.
In "Of the Wings of Atalanta", Du Bois begins with an antimetabole indicative of the symbolic significance of Atlanta, not only geographically but also politically, socially, and culturally for black people. Du Bois envisions in this chapter that the future of blacks would be problematic, even difficult if it is grounded solely on economic empowerment. In a proselyte enriched in poetic imagery and imagination, Du Bois advocates for institutions of higher learning to train students according to their respective abilities.
Above all, Du Bois observes that universities must teach their students about life and equip them with the epistemological tools they need to inspire them to search for truth, teach them to investigate the latent beauties of life, and teach them to aspire for
goodness in life. The chapter also has a subtext in the New Testament where Christ admonishes that hankering for wealth could lead to the loss of one’s soul.
Du Bois in "Of the Training of Black Men", enthusiastically observes that the best training the Negro can get is university education. He argues that there is separation of the races socially in the South, but that should not circumvent the founding of more colleges and universities to train teachers, intellectuals, physicians, and thinkers for the nation. Du Bois notes that the isolation of the Negro in the South calls for the need for Blacks to help themselves.
The training of more blacks in universities and colleges, Du Bois believes, would help narrow the chasm of ill-feeling and distrust existing between the races in the South. Progress, he says, is a pull, not a push, and college education would help trained Negroes pull their brethren to the sacred ground of skilled thinking and self-reliance. Above all, university education, according to Du Bois, would help blacks rise above the “Veil.”
In "Of the Black Belt", Du Bois tells of contemporary life in a town he calls the richest slave-holding county in antebellum America--Dougherty in Georgia. With Emancipation and Reconstruction, the old masters fled the county, leaving behind the remnants of their past wealth. Themes of decadence, forced labor, unjust incarceration of young black men, despondence arising out of sedulity without due reward, the joy of education, poverty-stricken and wealthy black men under-gird the destiny of black folk in post-Reconstruction South.
But some Southern white men also feel the despondence and frustration being felt by some of black people. White frustration is exemplified by the story of the young white man who shot his son, his wife, and himself for the sole reason of being poor. The chapter also gives a historical demographic account of the enslaved in Dougherty from 1790 to 1860.
This is by no means an analysis of all the chapters in Souls of Black Folk. In addition to being a palimpsest of historical meta fiction with its multi-generic meanings and themes, Souls of Black Folk, like Douglass’s autobiography, is an American jeremiad. It protests against the sins of America, even if mildly and unfolds revelatory and prophetic messages of a bi-racial and freer America where the talents of blacks would complement and supplement the talents of white folk and other minorities.
He also envisioned an America where Historically Black Colleges and Universities would be responsible for producing black teachers, professionals, physicians, thinkers, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs to help pull one another up on the social and political ladder of the nation’s progress.
The Thinker, Dr. W.E.B DuBois
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