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edriessen's review against another edition
4.0
Before reading this, I only read some things about civil war and the abolishment of slavery in secondary school (in Europe). Where I think it was probably only a subsection of a chapter, or maybe a full chapter. Add some references in ‘the news’ and a movie or two, but no accurate ones I think, and you have my baseline. For me, this book helped me get a better view on the complexity of the times folowing the ‘end of slavery’.
nishat14's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
This book was extremely important. Everything doesn't still stand, but we cannot expect that of any over 100 year old text, but how true it rings to today is almost frightening. I can see myself studying this book for years to come.
flowerbinsh's review against another edition
Read for a required class.
There isn't any reason for my DNFing this book, besides the fact that we did not finish it in class. It was an important read to understand the history of Black lives after Emancipation and what a "freeman" really entailed. Will I finish this, however? No. I think the amount that I read added to my knowledge greatly, and while I think that is important, I don't see the need to continue on outside of class time.
There isn't any reason for my DNFing this book, besides the fact that we did not finish it in class. It was an important read to understand the history of Black lives after Emancipation and what a "freeman" really entailed. Will I finish this, however? No. I think the amount that I read added to my knowledge greatly, and while I think that is important, I don't see the need to continue on outside of class time.
analyticalchaos's review against another edition
4.0
The Souls of Black Folk is evocative and flowing. The prose twists into engaging stories that showcase Du Bois' raw wit and thoughtful reflections. From his experiences as a teacher to critiques of Booker T. Washington's philosophies, Du Bois is deft with word choice and is direct about his perceptions of Black America.
Occasionally, his writing would bog me down. There were extraneous tangents about Reconstruction history that felt obvious. However, I understand that DuBois was trying to create a cohesive narrative, and the history served as background.
What stuck out to me was the inclusive approach to portraying Black culture. Du Bois was very historical, but he also added musical and sociological perspectives. Every chapter had a line or two of Christian revival music that I would plunk out on the piano. I enjoyed the creative details throughout his writing.
I recommend this book. I believe that many Americans will know most of the content. The value in The Souls of Black Folk lies in how relevant his suggestions are today. Even though a century has passed, the issues of the "Color Line" still permeate American society.
Occasionally, his writing would bog me down. There were extraneous tangents about Reconstruction history that felt obvious. However, I understand that DuBois was trying to create a cohesive narrative, and the history served as background.
What stuck out to me was the inclusive approach to portraying Black culture. Du Bois was very historical, but he also added musical and sociological perspectives. Every chapter had a line or two of Christian revival music that I would plunk out on the piano. I enjoyed the creative details throughout his writing.
I recommend this book. I believe that many Americans will know most of the content. The value in The Souls of Black Folk lies in how relevant his suggestions are today. Even though a century has passed, the issues of the "Color Line" still permeate American society.
sawthisdidthat's review against another edition
3.0
(audiobook) Let me preface this with I think this absolutely deserves a spot in American history reading; a pillar in race relations in the United States, and particularly of an often forgotten era - Reconstruction.
I think selecting a few essays from this work would get the point across. One main issue is that he is guilty of purple prose, possibly trying too hard to impress. My attention lagged intermittently due to this; so while clearly a skilled writer, too verbose.
I wish he and Booker T. Washington could have come to some compromises in worldviews. I understand where Washington's thought process came from, having visited his childhood home in Virginia and reading "Up From Slavery" in 2015. His focus on trade-type education was important, but could have agreed with Du Bois on higher education and pushing for civil rights - similarly, Du Bois seemed to dismiss trade-type education, and I wonder, why not both?
Du Bois in general comes across as elitist, separating "good" and "bad" and "upper" and "lower" classes within both black and white people. There are also notes of antisemitism (which he denied this interpretation in letters and also revised the references in the 1953 edition). Lastly, there is next to no focus on women whatsoever, so I am disappointed there.
At the time of its publication, the Nashville Banner warned of The Souls of Black Folk, "This book is dangerous for the Negro to read, for it will only incite discontent and fill his imagination with things that do not exist, or things that should not bear upon his mind."
A few notes for my future memory from Wikipedia with my comment in [...]:
1 "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" lays out an overview of Du Bois's thesis. He says that the blacks of the South need the right to vote, the right to a good education, and to be treated with equality and justice. Here, he also coined "double-consciousness", defined as a "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity." The first chapter also introduces Du Bois's famous metaphor of the veil. According to Du Bois, this veil is worn by all African-Americans because their view of the world and its potential economic, political, and social opportunities are so vastly different from those of white people. [This is one of the best chapters, imo, and gives the primary insight into his thought process and worldview. If you can only read one essay, it should probably be this one.]
2 "Of the Dawn of Freedom" covers the period of history from 1861 to 1872 and the Freedmen's Bureau, describing it as "one of the most singular and interesting of the attempts made by a great nation to grapple with vast problems of race and social condition." He says that the bureau was "one of the great landmarks of political and social progress." After a year's work, Du Bois states that "it relieved a vast amount of physical suffering; it transported seven thousand fugitives from congested centres back to the farm; and, best of all, it inaugurated the crusade of the New England school-ma'am." He worried that the demise of the Freedman's Savings Bank, which resulted in huge losses for many freedmen of any savings, resulted in freedmen losing "all the faith in savings". [Another good chapter, and a niche yet relevant topic rarely presented in today's education.]
3 "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" argues against Booker T. Washington's idea of focusing solely on industrial education for black men. He advocates the addition of a classical education to establish leaders and educators in the black community. [A good chapter, and necessary to understand these two important historical figures.]
4 "Of the Meaning of Progress"explores his experiences first, when he was teaching in Tennessee. Secondly he returned after 10 years and found the town where he had worked had suffered many unpleasant changes. He says: "My log schoolhouse was gone. In its place stood Progress; and Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly." [This chapter feels different from the previous ones, more personal.]
5 "Of the Wings of Atalanta" is a meditation on the necessity of widespread higher education in the South. Du Bois compares Atlanta, the City of a Hundred Hills, to Atalanta, and warns against the "greed of gold," or "interpreting the world in dollars." [I'll be honest, my attention started drifting here.]
6 "Of the Training of Black Men" discusses how "to solve the problem of training men for life," especially as it relates to the Negro, who "hang between them and a light a veil so thick, that they shall not even think of breaking through." Du Bois cites the progress of Southern education, consisting of army schools, mission schools, and schools of the Freedman's Bureau, from the end of the Civil War until 1876. [Another historical chapter, could have been condensed further, but still informative.]
7 "Of the Black Belt" calls Albany, Georgia, the "heart of the Black Belt." He says: "Here are the remnants of the vast plantations." [I don't remember this chapter well.]
8 "Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece"claims an analogy between the "ancient and modern "Quest of the Golden Fleece in the Black Sea." Continuing his discussion of Dougherty County, he explains that of the 1500 Negro families around Albany in 1898, many families have 8–10 individuals in one- or two-room homes. These families are plagued with "easy marriage and easy separation," a vestige of slavery, which the Negro church has done much to prevent "a broken household." He claims that most of the black population is "poor and ignorant," more than 80 percent, though "fairly honest and well meaning." "Two-thirds of them cannot read or write," and 80 percent of the men, women and children are farmers. Economically, the Negro has become a slave of debt, says Du Bois. [This chapter also droned on, but the point was basically debt is a major issue, along with broken households, and general poverty and ignorance.]
9 "Of the Sons of Master and Man" discusses "race-contact", specifically as it relates to physical proximity, economic and political relations, intellectual contact, social contact, and religious enterprise. As for physical proximity, Du Bois states there is an obvious "physical color-line" in Southern communities separating whites from Negroes, and a Black Belt in larger areas of the country. He says that here is a need for "Negro leaders of character and intelligence" to help guide Negro communities along the path out of the current economic situation. The power of the ballot is necessary, he asserts, as "in every state the best arbiters of their own welfare are the persons directly affected." He says that "the police system of the South was primarily designed to control slaves," and Negroes viewed its "courts as a means of reenslaving the blacks." Regarding social contact, Du Bois states "there is almost no community of intellectual life or point of transference where the thoughts and feelings of one race can come into direct contact and sympathy with thoughts and feelings of the other." He concludes that "the future of the South depends on the ability of the representatives of these opposing views to see and appreciate and sympathize with each other's position." [This was a very good chapter, and unless I completely misunderstood, seems to suggest assimilation as a solution, alongside voting and positive black leadership.]
10 "Of the Faith of the Fathers" describes the rise of the black church and examines the history and contemporary state of religion and spiritualism among African Americans. After recounting his first exposure to the Southern Negro revival, Du Bois notes three things that characterize this religion: the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy—the Frenzy or Shouting being "when the Spirit of the Lord passed by, and, seizing the devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy." Du Bois says that the Negro church is the social center of Negro life. [This chapter was interesting, and clear that Du Bois viewed it all from an agnostic/skeptic perspective.]
11 "Of the Passing of the First-Born"recounts the birth of his first child, a son, and his untimely death as an infant. His son, Burghardt, contracted diphtheria and white doctors in Atlanta refused to treat black patients. [Very sad.]
12 "Of Alexander Crummell" recounts a short biography of Alexander Crummell, an early black priest in the Episcopal Church. [I'm struggling to recall much of this one.]
13 "Of the Coming of John" is a story that describes two young men, both named John, one Black (John Jones) and the other white (John Henderson, the son of the wealthy and powerful Judge Henderson). Both Johns grow up in Georgia, where they were playmates in their youth. Both leave to go off to college, and both the white and Black communities anticipate their returns. When John Jones returns, transformed by his time away, now a serious man with a deep understanding of the world, including the injustice of racism and of Jim Crow, he finds himself at odds with both Black and white. He convinces Judge Henderson to let him become a teacher at the Black school, and is warned to keep his place and to not stir up trouble. The Judge makes his opinions clear: "in this country the Negro must remain subordinate, and can never expect to be the equal of white men....But when they want to reverse nature, and rule white men, and marry white women, and sit in my parlor, then, by God! we'll hold them under if we have to lynch every N-- in the land." John Jones says he accepts the situation and is allowed to teach. Some time passes. One day, word gets back to the Judge that John Jones is "livenin' things up at the darky school." While Judge Henderson storms off to shut down the school, his son, John Henderson, leaves his home and finds John Jones's sister. She is young and beautiful, and John Henderson is bored. He demands a kiss; she runs. He pursues her. John Jones, walking home from the school, which Judge Henderson has just closed, comes upon John Henderson accosting his sister. John Jones picks up a branch and defends his sister, killing John Henderson. In the final paragraphs, a lynch mob on horseback approaches with the Judge in front, for whom John Jones is filled with pity. Knowing what is ahead, John Jones "softly hum[s] the 'Song of the Bride'" in German. [Also sad and enraging.]
14 "The Sorrow Songs" is about Negro music. He refers to the short musical passages at the beginning of each of the other chapters. Du Bois heralds the "melody of the slave songs," or the Negro spirituals, as the "articulate message of the slave to the world." They are the music, not of the joyous black slave, as a good many whites had misread them, but "of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways." For Du Bois, the sorrow songs represented a black folk culture—with its origins in slavery—unadulterated by the civilizing impulses of a northern black church, increasingly obsessed with respectability and with Western aesthetic criteria. Rather than vestiges of a backward time that should be purged, negro spirituals are—for Du Bois—where the souls of black folk past and present are found. Du Bois passionately advocated for the preservation of the spiritual. It is in the retrieval of black cultural folkways—particularly "The Sorrow Songs"—that one of the major complications of Du Bois's project and, later, the Harlem Renaissance surfaces. For Du Bois's contention that the sorrow songs contain a notative excess, and untranscribable element Yolanda Pierce identifies as the "soul" of the sorrow songs. The mappings of sound and signs that make up the languages of white Western culture would prove insufficient to many black literary critics of the 1920s and beyond, and the debates over the abilities to retrieve and preserve black folkways find their roots in Du Bois's treatment of the sorrow songs and in his call for their rescue. [It is in this chapter Du Bois says, "Sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins." Interesting that MLK gets all the accolade for "..not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." An interesting chapter especially as he was an agnostic/skeptic, but essentially names this collection of essays as "The Souls of Black Folk."]
I think selecting a few essays from this work would get the point across. One main issue is that he is guilty of purple prose, possibly trying too hard to impress. My attention lagged intermittently due to this; so while clearly a skilled writer, too verbose.
I wish he and Booker T. Washington could have come to some compromises in worldviews. I understand where Washington's thought process came from, having visited his childhood home in Virginia and reading "Up From Slavery" in 2015. His focus on trade-type education was important, but could have agreed with Du Bois on higher education and pushing for civil rights - similarly, Du Bois seemed to dismiss trade-type education, and I wonder, why not both?
Du Bois in general comes across as elitist, separating "good" and "bad" and "upper" and "lower" classes within both black and white people. There are also notes of antisemitism (which he denied this interpretation in letters and also revised the references in the 1953 edition). Lastly, there is next to no focus on women whatsoever, so I am disappointed there.
At the time of its publication, the Nashville Banner warned of The Souls of Black Folk, "This book is dangerous for the Negro to read, for it will only incite discontent and fill his imagination with things that do not exist, or things that should not bear upon his mind."
A few notes for my future memory from Wikipedia with my comment in [...]:
1 "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" lays out an overview of Du Bois's thesis. He says that the blacks of the South need the right to vote, the right to a good education, and to be treated with equality and justice. Here, he also coined "double-consciousness", defined as a "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity." The first chapter also introduces Du Bois's famous metaphor of the veil. According to Du Bois, this veil is worn by all African-Americans because their view of the world and its potential economic, political, and social opportunities are so vastly different from those of white people. [This is one of the best chapters, imo, and gives the primary insight into his thought process and worldview. If you can only read one essay, it should probably be this one.]
2 "Of the Dawn of Freedom" covers the period of history from 1861 to 1872 and the Freedmen's Bureau, describing it as "one of the most singular and interesting of the attempts made by a great nation to grapple with vast problems of race and social condition." He says that the bureau was "one of the great landmarks of political and social progress." After a year's work, Du Bois states that "it relieved a vast amount of physical suffering; it transported seven thousand fugitives from congested centres back to the farm; and, best of all, it inaugurated the crusade of the New England school-ma'am." He worried that the demise of the Freedman's Savings Bank, which resulted in huge losses for many freedmen of any savings, resulted in freedmen losing "all the faith in savings". [Another good chapter, and a niche yet relevant topic rarely presented in today's education.]
3 "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" argues against Booker T. Washington's idea of focusing solely on industrial education for black men. He advocates the addition of a classical education to establish leaders and educators in the black community. [A good chapter, and necessary to understand these two important historical figures.]
4 "Of the Meaning of Progress"explores his experiences first, when he was teaching in Tennessee. Secondly he returned after 10 years and found the town where he had worked had suffered many unpleasant changes. He says: "My log schoolhouse was gone. In its place stood Progress; and Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly." [This chapter feels different from the previous ones, more personal.]
5 "Of the Wings of Atalanta" is a meditation on the necessity of widespread higher education in the South. Du Bois compares Atlanta, the City of a Hundred Hills, to Atalanta, and warns against the "greed of gold," or "interpreting the world in dollars." [I'll be honest, my attention started drifting here.]
6 "Of the Training of Black Men" discusses how "to solve the problem of training men for life," especially as it relates to the Negro, who "hang between them and a light a veil so thick, that they shall not even think of breaking through." Du Bois cites the progress of Southern education, consisting of army schools, mission schools, and schools of the Freedman's Bureau, from the end of the Civil War until 1876. [Another historical chapter, could have been condensed further, but still informative.]
7 "Of the Black Belt" calls Albany, Georgia, the "heart of the Black Belt." He says: "Here are the remnants of the vast plantations." [I don't remember this chapter well.]
8 "Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece"claims an analogy between the "ancient and modern "Quest of the Golden Fleece in the Black Sea." Continuing his discussion of Dougherty County, he explains that of the 1500 Negro families around Albany in 1898, many families have 8–10 individuals in one- or two-room homes. These families are plagued with "easy marriage and easy separation," a vestige of slavery, which the Negro church has done much to prevent "a broken household." He claims that most of the black population is "poor and ignorant," more than 80 percent, though "fairly honest and well meaning." "Two-thirds of them cannot read or write," and 80 percent of the men, women and children are farmers. Economically, the Negro has become a slave of debt, says Du Bois. [This chapter also droned on, but the point was basically debt is a major issue, along with broken households, and general poverty and ignorance.]
9 "Of the Sons of Master and Man" discusses "race-contact", specifically as it relates to physical proximity, economic and political relations, intellectual contact, social contact, and religious enterprise. As for physical proximity, Du Bois states there is an obvious "physical color-line" in Southern communities separating whites from Negroes, and a Black Belt in larger areas of the country. He says that here is a need for "Negro leaders of character and intelligence" to help guide Negro communities along the path out of the current economic situation. The power of the ballot is necessary, he asserts, as "in every state the best arbiters of their own welfare are the persons directly affected." He says that "the police system of the South was primarily designed to control slaves," and Negroes viewed its "courts as a means of reenslaving the blacks." Regarding social contact, Du Bois states "there is almost no community of intellectual life or point of transference where the thoughts and feelings of one race can come into direct contact and sympathy with thoughts and feelings of the other." He concludes that "the future of the South depends on the ability of the representatives of these opposing views to see and appreciate and sympathize with each other's position." [This was a very good chapter, and unless I completely misunderstood, seems to suggest assimilation as a solution, alongside voting and positive black leadership.]
10 "Of the Faith of the Fathers" describes the rise of the black church and examines the history and contemporary state of religion and spiritualism among African Americans. After recounting his first exposure to the Southern Negro revival, Du Bois notes three things that characterize this religion: the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy—the Frenzy or Shouting being "when the Spirit of the Lord passed by, and, seizing the devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy." Du Bois says that the Negro church is the social center of Negro life. [This chapter was interesting, and clear that Du Bois viewed it all from an agnostic/skeptic perspective.]
11 "Of the Passing of the First-Born"recounts the birth of his first child, a son, and his untimely death as an infant. His son, Burghardt, contracted diphtheria and white doctors in Atlanta refused to treat black patients. [Very sad.]
12 "Of Alexander Crummell" recounts a short biography of Alexander Crummell, an early black priest in the Episcopal Church. [I'm struggling to recall much of this one.]
13 "Of the Coming of John" is a story that describes two young men, both named John, one Black (John Jones) and the other white (John Henderson, the son of the wealthy and powerful Judge Henderson). Both Johns grow up in Georgia, where they were playmates in their youth. Both leave to go off to college, and both the white and Black communities anticipate their returns. When John Jones returns, transformed by his time away, now a serious man with a deep understanding of the world, including the injustice of racism and of Jim Crow, he finds himself at odds with both Black and white. He convinces Judge Henderson to let him become a teacher at the Black school, and is warned to keep his place and to not stir up trouble. The Judge makes his opinions clear: "in this country the Negro must remain subordinate, and can never expect to be the equal of white men....But when they want to reverse nature, and rule white men, and marry white women, and sit in my parlor, then, by God! we'll hold them under if we have to lynch every N-- in the land." John Jones says he accepts the situation and is allowed to teach. Some time passes. One day, word gets back to the Judge that John Jones is "livenin' things up at the darky school." While Judge Henderson storms off to shut down the school, his son, John Henderson, leaves his home and finds John Jones's sister. She is young and beautiful, and John Henderson is bored. He demands a kiss; she runs. He pursues her. John Jones, walking home from the school, which Judge Henderson has just closed, comes upon John Henderson accosting his sister. John Jones picks up a branch and defends his sister, killing John Henderson. In the final paragraphs, a lynch mob on horseback approaches with the Judge in front, for whom John Jones is filled with pity. Knowing what is ahead, John Jones "softly hum[s] the 'Song of the Bride'" in German. [Also sad and enraging.]
14 "The Sorrow Songs" is about Negro music. He refers to the short musical passages at the beginning of each of the other chapters. Du Bois heralds the "melody of the slave songs," or the Negro spirituals, as the "articulate message of the slave to the world." They are the music, not of the joyous black slave, as a good many whites had misread them, but "of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways." For Du Bois, the sorrow songs represented a black folk culture—with its origins in slavery—unadulterated by the civilizing impulses of a northern black church, increasingly obsessed with respectability and with Western aesthetic criteria. Rather than vestiges of a backward time that should be purged, negro spirituals are—for Du Bois—where the souls of black folk past and present are found. Du Bois passionately advocated for the preservation of the spiritual. It is in the retrieval of black cultural folkways—particularly "The Sorrow Songs"—that one of the major complications of Du Bois's project and, later, the Harlem Renaissance surfaces. For Du Bois's contention that the sorrow songs contain a notative excess, and untranscribable element Yolanda Pierce identifies as the "soul" of the sorrow songs. The mappings of sound and signs that make up the languages of white Western culture would prove insufficient to many black literary critics of the 1920s and beyond, and the debates over the abilities to retrieve and preserve black folkways find their roots in Du Bois's treatment of the sorrow songs and in his call for their rescue. [It is in this chapter Du Bois says, "Sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins." Interesting that MLK gets all the accolade for "..not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." An interesting chapter especially as he was an agnostic/skeptic, but essentially names this collection of essays as "The Souls of Black Folk."]