The Souls of Black Folk

Booker T. Washington is the author of Up from Slavery, the 1891 narrative of his birth as a slave and his achievements as an African-American leader.

Washington’s October 18, 1895, “Atlanta Compromise” speech argued that “[i]n all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” and that “[t]he wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing” (“Booker T. Washington,” Say It Loud, Say It Proud, American Public Media, http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/btwashington.html). Du Bois takes Washington to task in “Of Booker T. Washington and Others” by attacking his strategy as cowardly and un-American. 

John Jones is a fictional character in “Of the Coming of John,” a short story about a young black man’s struggles to gain an education in the North and to re-integrate into his community. John is initially unprepared for the rigors of secondary and postsecondary education, but after a few setbacks he buckles down and manages to get his degree. John returns home embittered when he realizes his education still provides limited opportunities because of racism. A lynch mob kills John after he kills a white man who is assaulting his sister. Du Bois presents John’s story as a tragic tale about how racism diminishes both white and black people in America. 

John Henderson is also a character in “Of the Coming of John.” He is white and has many opportunities ahead of him after he completes a degree at Princeton. Despite having played with John Jones as a boy, John Henderson exhibits the arrogance and racism typical of his class. He insists that John Jones move out of a seat next to a white woman Henderson takes on a date, and he assaults John’s sister to amuse himself. John Jones kills John Henderson near the end of the story, an outcome that underscores Du Bois’s fear that unresolved racial tension and oppression will lead to violence. 

“The Firstborn” is Burghardt Du Bois, W.E.B Du Bois’s son, who died in childhood. Du Bois describes the child as having gold-tinged hair and light-colored eyes, presumably evidence of the sexual exploitation of one of his enslaved ancestors. Du Bois describes the boy as lovable, spoiled by his parents, and innocent of the knowledge of racism.