White scholars were only just then starting to do the sort of sociological research that Du Bois exhibits in The Souls of Black Folks. (His style which can sound stilted to modern ears was the language of scholarship of his era.) Cry from the heart And also because he can weave in a wealth of anecdotal information from his own experience and from ethnographic studies he has carried out.Įven more, Du Bois takes on the mantle of authority because, like the white scholars he emulates and competes with, he has synthesized all of this material, and, using logic and rhetoric, he has laid out the facts in a manner that makes them undeniable. That’s because he has done unprecedented, in-depth research and is able to trot out statistics to support his assertions. Nonetheless, the 35-year-old Du Bois writes as if he has full authority to lecture white America. This, at a time when the white majority expected, demanded, Blacks to be quiet, humble and subservient. In it, a Black man lectured white America about the realities of the color line - “the Veil” - particularly the southern states. The Souls of Black Folk was extraordinary when published and remains a key document of American literature today. Indeed, in 1903, the year he published the book, and the three previous years, an average of 95 African Americans were violently tortured and killed throughout the South, often in a festival-like atmosphere.īorn in 1868 in Great Barrington in far western Massachusetts, of Dutch, African and English ancestry, Du Bois was living in the Deep South, teaching at Atlanta University, when his book was published. It was courageous of Du Bois to address head-on “the problem of the color line” in America at the dawn of the 20 th century - audacious, even dangerous. Actually, “chutzpah” is too light-hearted a word.

Du Bois in putting together this collection of essays and sketches. Rereading The Souls of Black Folks, I am struck by the sheer chutzpah of W.E.B.

The souls of black