W. E. B. Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk

Context

Du Bois came of age during the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War, “Reconstruction” referring to the political process of reintegrating the rebellious Confederate states into the Union. Confederate soldiers returning to ruined homes found themselves in tenuous financial and political circumstances. The defeated South entered a period of economic chaos. In the midst of this postwar turmoil, the U.S. Congress, led by the Radical Republicans (the loose faction of the Republican Party that before the war opposed slavery and after the war defended the rights of African Americans and wanted to impose harsh terms on the rebellious South), enacted the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and other forms of involuntary servitude throughout the United States.

What followed was a flood of legislation and constitutional amendments designed to reshape the racial landscape of the United States. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 gave blacks the right to buy and sell property and to make and enforce contracts to the same extent as white citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, affirmed the citizenship rights of former slaves and guaranteed “due process” and “equal protection” to all citizens under the law. The four Reconstruction Acts (1867–1868) created military districts in the South to ensure order during the states’ return to the Union, required congressional approval for new state constitutions (a requirement for Confederate states to rejoin the Union), gave voting rights to all men in the former Confederacy, and stipulated that Confederate states had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fifteenth Amendment, which took effect in 1870, guaranteed the voting rights of all citizens. The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 gave the U.S. president sweeping powers to combat the Klan and similar organizations in the South that were using violence and intimidation to deprive African Americans of their rights and that often directed their violence against white Republicans who supported equal rights for blacks. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 made it unlawful for inns, restaurants, theaters, and other public facilities to deny access to any individual based on race.

The Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877 represented the turning point in the fate of black Americans in the South. The most disputed presidential election in American history took place in 1876. After the votes were counted, Democrat Samuel Tilden held a narrow lead in both the popular vote and in the Electoral College over Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, but a number of electoral votes were in dispute. In the Compromise of 1877, Democrats (whose stronghold was in the South) agreed to recognize Hayes as president on the condition that he withdraw federal troops from Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana, the only three southern states where postwar troops remained. This event marked the end of the Reconstruction era and allowed whites to reassert their dominance using violence, intimidation, and fraud.

Matters worsened in the years that followed. A series of U.S. Supreme Court cases undermined the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. In the 1876 case United States v. Reese, the Court rejected an African American’s challenge to a poll tax, holding that the Fifteenth Amendment did not affirmatively assure the right to vote and that the poll tax was racially neutral. United States v. Cruikshank, decided the same year, involved an action against a group of whites who used lethal force to break up a political rally that blacks had organized. The Court held that the blacks who brought the case had not established that they were denied any rights based on their color. In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, which was a consolidation of several cases that presented similar issues, the Court declared that the 1875 Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional. The decision established the “state action” doctrine by holding that Congress did not have the authority to regulate private acts of discrimination. In 1896 segregation was affirmed when the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that laws requiring segregation in public transportation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment as long as the separate facilities provided for blacks were equal to those available to whites. Yet another case upheld the outcome of Mississippi’s 1890 state constitutional convention, which had the express purpose of disenfranchising black voters. In Williams v. Mississippi, the Supreme Court held in 1898 that because Mississippi’s voter registration laws were not explicitly discriminatory, they did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois reacted to the rising tide of segregation and racial subordination and established himself as one of the most prominent African American intellectuals and leaders of the early twentieth century. It also set off a heated debate that still reverberates in some circles. A few years before the book was published, the white South found what it believed would be a resolution of the still unsettled question of the status of the black population. The answer to the dilemma came from an unlikely source, a former slave who became perhaps the most powerful person of color in the history of the Republic. The bearer of this solution, Booker T. Washington, spent his childhood in Virginia assisting his family in a series of menial jobs. After he graduated from Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University), Washington received an offer to establish a school in rural Alabama. At what became the Tuskegee Institute, Washington developed a program emphasizing industrial education. He trained brick masons, carpenters, and other student artisans who constructed several of Tuskegee’s buildings. Women were taught the domestic arts. Tuskegee’s program was based on Washington’s belief that black students would be served best by training for vocations in the industrial sphere rather than for professions.

In 1895 Washington delivered a historic speech in Atlanta, Georgia, before a large and mainly white audience—the so-called “Atlanta Compromise” speech. Invoking a metaphor that would be seen as the solution for race relations, Washington, in a statement Du Bois quotes in Chapter III of The Souls of Black Folk, held out one hand and said, “In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet as one hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” He then closed his fingers into a fist to buttress his point. The implication of Washington’s words was clear: African Americans would be trained to be obedient and reliable workers who would not challenge white supremacy. The speech received national acclaim and made Washington the preeminent leader of black America, particularly among white Americans but among many black Americans as well.

Despite his success, there was much about Washington’s philosophy that rankled many African Americans. In addition to preaching accommodation, Washington’s speeches included numerous references to the shortcoming of blacks. These comments were often couched in humorous anecdotes that delighted his white audiences but were demeaning to blacks. Washington ridiculed classical education as “sheer folly” because it would not prepare African Americans for practical occupations.

The lines were drawn. Largely in response to Washington’s popularity, Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of incisive essays, several of which had been previously published in the Atlantic magazine.