The Souls of Black Folk. W. E. B. Du Bois. 1868–1963.
HEREIN lie buried many things which if read
with patience may show the strange
meaning of being black here in 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.
1
I pray you, then, receive my little
book in all charity, studying my words with me,
forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the
faith and passion that is in me, and
seeking the grain of truth hidden there.
2
I have sought here to sketch,
in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which
ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive.
First, in two chapters I have tried
to show what Emancipation meant to them, and
what was its aftermath. In a third
chapter I have pointed out the slow rise of
personal leadership, and criticised
candidly the leader who bears the chief burden
of his race to-day. Then, in two other
chapters I have sketched in swift outline
the two worlds within and without the Veil,
and thus have come to the central problem
of training men for life. Venturing now
into deeper detail, I have in two chapters
studied the struggles of the massed millions
of the black peasantry, and in another have
sought to make clear the present
relations of the sons of master and man.
3
Leaving, then, the world of the
white man, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it
that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,—the
meaning of its religion, the
passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle
of its greater souls. All this I have
ended with a tale twice told but seldom written.
4
Some of these thoughts of mine
have seen the light before in other guise. For kindly
consenting to their republication here, in
altered and extended form, I must thank the
publishers of The Atlantic Monthly, The World’s
Work, The Dial, The New
World, and the Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social
Science.
5
Before each chapter, as now printed,
stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs,—some
echo of haunting melody from the only American
music which welled up from black
souls in the dark past. And, finally, need
I add that I who speak here am bone of the
bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live
within the Veil?
W. E. B. DU B.
ATLANTA, GA., Feb. 1, 1903.
6
Found at <http://www.bartleby.com/114/100.html>
, Access Date: December 14, 1999.