The Souls of Black Folk

Du Bois opens this chapter and all subsequent chapters with an epigraph from a poem. In some editions, these poems are accompanied by bars of music from traditional African-American spirituals. Du Bois begins the chapter by noting the difficulty of interacting with whites who are hesitant to address the issue of race with him because he is African American.

As a race, African Americans suffer from “double-consciousness,” which Du Bois defines as a “sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others” (3). African Americans are trapped by racism and find their efforts and talents consumed by the exhausting struggle to be recognized as Americans by people who view them with contempt. The African American simply wants the chance to be both American and African American, to be “a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius” (3).

Going from ancient Egypt and Ethiopia through to the years following Emancipation, Du Bois sees flashes of genius and potential that are never fulfilled because of the burden of “the double-aimed struggle of the black artisan,” in which the artisan seeks to “escape white contempt” for Africa while also working to care for “a poverty-stricken horde” (3). As a result, the black artist’s “innate love of harmony and beauty” (4) is wasted because his audience despises African Americans. In the face of such a struggle, people have gone astray.

Despite the negative impact of racism, Du Bois argues, no one loves freedom more than African Americans. Many saw the end of slavery as the fulfillment of all the race’s dreams. Yet, years have gone by, and still the nation has failed to make good on the full benefits that should come with freedom.

Having achieved freedom from slavery, African Americans next turned to the ability to vote to achieve their goal of complete freedom. When Reconstruction gave African Americans the vote, they then turned to education. The earliest African-American intellectuals then examined African Americans with critical eyes and found poverty, ignorance, and the heavy burden of illegitimacy resulting from white exploitation of African-American women.

Despite these handicaps, African Americans were compared to others who had been given more; they were of course found wanting, a situation that caused deep despair for African Americans and reinforced racist ideas about the innate inferiority of African Americans. In the face of such contempt and their own despair, some African Americans made a devil’s bargain to “[b]e content to be servants and nothing more” (6), to give up the right to vote, and to accept an education designed for servants. The silver lining of this capitulation was that African Americans at last saw the reality of their situation and what was needed for the race to progress.

At the time of his writing, Du Bois describes African Americans as in a time of “storm and stress” (6), struggling to reconcile double aims— “physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands” (6). To save themselves, African Americans must reconcile all these goals: becoming a race that honors its heritage but doing so “in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic” (6).

African Americans are not just recipients of American history and culture. They most fully embody the love of freedom espoused by the Founding Fathers, they have given America its only original music, they—along with Native Americans—created America’s native folklore, and they alone have spirituality that resists the crude materialism of so much of modern American culture. America will be a lesser country if it does not acknowledge these gifts. In other words, the “Negro Problem” is an American problem. 

In this chapter, Du Bois argues that the central cause of the Civil War was slavery. As soon as the war began, the Union faced the problem of what to do with the slaves they encountered in the South. Their answers—war proclamations, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Freedmen’s Bureau—created the race problem of the current day. Du Bois examines American history from 1861 to 1872 to support this argument.

Despite the Confederate narrative that the war was not about slavery, masses of fugitive slaves fled to the Union armies that invaded the South. Union forces either treated fugitives as contraband property and returned them to pursuing slavers, or else declared them to be free. When Union leaders recognized that fugitive slaves were resources for the Confederacy, they welcomed the fugitives as laborers. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and a call for African Americans to enlist as soldiers were the logical outcomes of this policy.

Overwhelmed by the women and children who came with the men, the Union at first gave the responsibility of managing former slaves to the Treasury Department and then moved the job back to the military. Missionary and aid societies sprang up to meet the humanitarian crisis posed by the presence of so many former slaves, but it was clear that a more methodical approach must be found to manage so many people, many of whom had no concept of how to manage their lives as free people.

The government instituted a system whereby ex-slaves were assigned to work on leased and confiscated former estates. Former slaves were registered, provided with some form of education, given some social service support, and made answerable to the administrators of this system. Fugitive slaves followed close behind the Union’s General Sherman as he made his way through the South on his March to the Sea, so the same system that had been set up elsewhere was instituted with a military field order in order to settle and support these fugitives in South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia.

This patchwork system was far from efficient. In 1863 and 1864, Congress provided some relief to what had become a military problem by officially recognizing this system of leasing land and parceling it out to ex-slaves, a partial solution that was to be administered by the Treasury. Eventually, Congress established the Bureau for Freedmen in the War Department, but there was much back and forth about how to manage the confiscated lands and former slaves. In the end, the law was kept intentionally vague, with the Freedmen’s Bureau assigned responsibility for the material needs of former slaves and for eventually parceling out confiscated land in 40-acre plots to the ex-slaves at some undetermined future point. African Americans became “the ward[s] of the nation” (10), and the country assumed a task of “vast responsibilities, indefinite powers, and limited resources” (11)—with no appropriation of funds to complete the task.

Oliver Howard, an inexperienced soldier with little administrative or business background, was appointed to lead the Freedmen’s Bureau. The organization immediately faced the problem of the abandoned Southern estates. While the plan had been to put slaves on the lands of their former masters, doing so would have required confiscation of private property that owners quickly reclaimed at the end of the war. Another difficulty was shoehorning the Bureau into the patchwork systems of aid and relief already established and primarily led by military men ill fitted for doing such work. Nevertheless, the Freedmen’s Bureau managed to provide some relief within a year by meeting immediate material needs, returning some ex-slaves to their places of origin, and mobilizing white women from New England as schoolteachers.

By 1866, members of Congress questioned the constitutionality of the Bureau’s wide-ranging powers, which had seemed appropriate during war time but not so much during peace. Congress passed a bill that expanded the Bureau’s powers to the extent necessary to do its job, but Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, vetoed the bill. It took a rewritten bill and overriding a second presidential veto to establish the Bureau after the war. The Bureau had an impact on almost every part of the civil society of the South.

Du Bois argues that the mission of the Freedmen’s Bureau was doomed to fail in the poisonous atmosphere of the post–Civil War South, which had been leveled by the war. African Americans were keenly aware that Southerners had fought to keep them as chattel, so they had no problem with the federal government punishing the South. The racial violence that swept the South during this moment in American history also made the period one of strife.

By 1869, large numbers of African Americans received medical treatment from Bureau doctors; due to its central role in administering labor contracts, the Bureau essentially became a labor agency. The promise of 40 acres and a mule for all freedmen went mostly unfulfilled, though the Bureau successfully supported primary education. However, the Bureau utterly failed in meting out impartial justice. The Bureau tended to favor freedmen and at times was unfair to former slaveowners and whites, while the regular court system favored whites and worked hard to curtail the freedom of the freedmen.

Du Bois notes that the failure to establish good relations between ex-slaves and ex-masters had devastating consequences for the Bureau and the South. The Bureau was plagued with scandals, as well as fraud and incompetence; the bank backed by the Bureau failed, and the money that freedmen had saved with the bank disappeared, along with their faith in the idea of saving.

Southern politicians regularly attacked the constitutionality of the Bureau, while their opponents argued that full suffrage for African Americans, rather than long term guardianship by the government, was the only way forward. “Thus,” argues Du Bois, “Negro suffrage ended a civil war by beginning a race feud” (17). The Bureau was dissolved, and African Americans received the vote with the 15th Amendment. By law and custom, however, African Americans were assigned to second-class citizen status.

Du Bois contends that Booker T. Washington’s turn as a national spokesman for African Americans came at a moment of deep uncertainty for African Americans. The country was weary of focusing on racial problems and much more interested in making money. When Washington offered his “Atlanta Compromise”—“his programme of industrial education, conciliation of the South, and submission and silence as to civil and political rights” (18)—the response was initially varied: “it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested and won the admiration of the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes themselves” (19).

Despite the narrowness of his vision, Washington became the preeminent representative for African Americans. Du Bois, however, believes it is now time to criticize him openly. Washington has at times been unfairly criticized by racists for even the mildest references to racism and by African Americans who are envious of his power. There are also some thoughtful African Americans who have criticized him in private or self-censured out of a sense of tact and respect. Although the growth of group leadership is positive, Du Bois believes such silence is dangerous to democracy and an impediment to productive action. Du Bois believes a sociological examination of the development of group leadership is necessary to understand the impact of both the negative and positive outcomes of Washington’s leadership.

Considering the history of African-American leadership, Du Bois identifies some trends. Before 1750, African-American leadership was inspired by memories of freedom in Africa and mostly focused on “revolt and revenge” (20). As African Americans contributed to the arts and sciences, and whites engaged with them more humanely at the end of the 18th century, African Americans focused more on assimilation. The end of the Revolutionary War, however, left the country financially damaged and slavery still intact. Inspired by the revolt of slaves during the Haitian Revolution, African Americans in the South engaged in local revolts. In the North, leadership took the form of the founding of the black church.

By the 1830s, slavery seemed a permanent part of the South. In the North, freedmen tried to distinguish themselves from enslaved African Americans, without much success. When efforts at colonization and emigration failed, African Americans turned to abolition, ushering in “a new period of self-assertion and self-development” (21). Du Bois writes, “ultimate freedom and assimilation was the ideal before the leaders, but the assertion of the manhood rights of the Negro by himself was the main reliance” (21). Under the leadership of Frederick Douglass, African Americans continued to assert their rights even after the end of the Civil War and Emancipation. Important figures in the black church also rose to prominence.

The end of Reconstruction and a lack of stable leadership among African Americans allowed the rise of Washington “as essentially the leader not of one race but of two, — a compromiser between the South, the North, and the Negro” (21). Although African Americans at first resisted any signs of compromise, they eventually were willing to trade their political and civil rights in order to gain economic development. Moreover, the North had invested heavily in southern business interests and was happy to support Washington’s compromise position: “Thus, by national opinion, the Negroes began to recognize Mr. Washington's leadership; and the voice of criticism was hushed” (21).

What Du Bois finds deeply troubling and strange is that Washington “represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission” (21), founded on a “gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life” (21). While African Americans have historically asserted themselves during moments when prejudice has run high, Washington instead chose to endorse a program that accepts inferiority as a given. Du Bois believes that “manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing” (21).

Du Bois asks: What have Washington’s compromises on civil rights, citizenship, and higher education for African Americans achieved during the 10 years of his influence? According to Du Bois, in each of these areas, African Americans find themselves with less freedom and fewer resources. Without the vote, assertion of their manhood, and higher learning, Washington’s program is failing.

Two groups are the main source of criticism of Washington’s program. One group, the spiritual descendants of those who revolted during slavery, hates whites and believes emigration is the answer, despite American domination of people of color in places like the Caribbean. The second group quietly and privately criticizes Washington, but it remains hidden because it lacks stable leadership, suffers from infighting, and is reluctant to air intragroup disagreement in a racially hostile culture.

Du Bois believes members of this latter group have a moral duty to speak up. They are neither true men nor true Americans if they allow the future of the race to be destroyed. They must demand the vote with only the same restrictions imposed on whites, “civic equality” (23), and access to higher education sufficient to “train the best of the Negro youth as teachers, professional men, and leaders” (23). While this group certainly recognizes that there are practical considerations that may affect the speed at which these goals can be met, they also insist there can be no compromise on the issue of whether African Americans are inherently inferior. The South’s racism must never be covered over with flattery; they must call out Southerners who oppress African Americans while leaving those who do support African Americans to do their work.

By contrast, Du Bois argues, despite all the good work Washington has done and the times he has criticized the most egregious examples of racial violence, he has given cover to racists with his “propaganda”—“that the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro’s failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his future rise depends primarily on his own efforts” (25). By popularizing the idea that African American are responsible for their own development, Washington has let whites off the hook to become mere spectators in a situation that they helped to create. In the end, Du Bois contends, all right-thinking people need to support Washington when he calls for reasonable aims and oppose him loudly and consistently when he advances a program that requires the surrendering of rights.