The Soul of Black People
These songs are not mere words set to music, but they are poetry, folklore, history, theology, celebration, sorrow, and soul.
Pierce, The Soul of Du Bois' Black Folk
The "sorrow songs," as Du Bois describes them, are a microcosm of the achievements of African descendants in America; songs, which, like their composers, have been refined by the fires of American slavery, injustice, and oppression. These songs are the "music of an unhappy people," and the creations of "children of disappointment;" and yet, they are also prayers which breathe hope and "a faith in the ultimate justice of things" The cultural expressions of black folks that Du Bois describes in the spirituals, reflect a secondary, but highly significant, definition of the word "soul," namely, those emotions of community and cohesion that thrive in the often unexamined corners of black life.
And here, Du Bois' own life serves as a primary example. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts during the Gilded Age, and raised in a town with fewer than fifty African Americans, Du Bois had little preparation for community life among rural all-black communities, in the North or the South.
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His chapter "On the Meaning of Progress" in The Souls of Black Folk , details the first summer he spends teaching school in a small black town in Tennessee, while an undergraduate student at Fisk University. The town and the people therein were extremely poor; existing almost entirely on sharecropping, this town was a place where people "lived and died in the shadow of one blue hill" When Du Bois secures permission to teach there, and is shown the dilapidated schoolhouse, with its rough plank benches and small blackboard, he is haunted by a "New England vision of neat little desks and chairs," like the ones in his own childhood schoolhouse And while Du Bois was initially a wary stranger to this place, and this setting, there was something about the soul of this community, peopled by "plain and simple" black folks, which reached out and touched his soul.
Maybe it was the soul food that he ate there, in abundance. Despite the utter poverty, Du Bois writes that there was always "plenty of good country fare" He was encouraged to "take out and help myself to fried chicken and wheat biscuit, meat, and corn-pone, string-beans and berries" Maybe it was the religious soul of the community which connected with Du Bois' own sensibilities. He notes that this was a place of "old time religion," with the entire town centered around the "twin temples of the hamlet, the Methodist, and the Hard-Shell Baptist churches" And though there were "frenzied priests at the altar," the faith of the people Du Bois encountered gave him a sense of welcome and belonging Maybe it was the soul music , which Du Bois grew to love, that tied him to this little Tennessee hamlet.
There, the "soft melody and mighty cadences of Negro song fluttered and thundered" Perhaps the soul food, religious soul, and soul music of this rural place all combined to create in Du Bois a sense that this was also his community. Alexandria, Tennessee was so far removed from the well-tended and genteel New England town in which he grew to manhood, and yet Du Bois writes of feeling connected to this community within the inner recesses of his soul.
Although it was only "half-awakened," in this town there existed a "common consciousness, sprung from common joy and grief, at burial, birth, or wedding; from a common hardship in poverty, poor land and low wages; and, above all, the sight of the Veil that hung between us and Opportunity" The use of the word "us" firmly ties Du Bois to a place where he becomes an integral member.
After two summers of teaching in Alexandria, Tennessee, Du Bois does not return for another ten years. In that interim period, Du Bois finishes his Bachelor's degree at Fisk; earns a second Bachelor's and a Master's degree at Harvard; becomes the first African American to be awarded a Ph.
He writes that there "swept" over him a "sudden longing to pass again beyond the blue hill, and to see the homes and the school of other days, and to learn how life had gone with my school-children" And so, Du Bois returns. Some of his students and friends have left Tennessee, others are dead and buried, but many familiar faces remain. And despite his ten-year absence, he is welcomed and treated with the love usually bestowed upon a prodigal son.
With this touching autobiographical account, the reader is privy to the multiple considerations of the souls of black folks in Du Bois' classic text.
The word "soul" is certainly rooted and grounded in specific religious principles. For generations, African Americans fought to prove that they had souls, which could receive Christian salvation, in hopes of elevating the social status of the enslaved from chattel to human being. And yet, for Du Bois, "soul" is not just a term to refer to that immaterial religious substance which we cannot see.
It is "soul" that causes a writer to take up pen to express the inexpressible. The Souls of Black Folk combines, among other forms, classic elegy; autobiographical sketches; sociological studies; short fiction; theology; political protest; musicology; historical profiles; biblical allusion; and Greek mythology.
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Notwithstanding the brilliance of a volume that weaves cross-disciplinary magic, at its center is a writer, who acknowledges that he is a "soul brother;" that he is "bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil" 5. Of the Meaning of Progress V.
Of the Wings of Atalanta VI. Of the Sons of Master and Man X. Of the Faith of the Fathers XI. Du Bois Introduction by Ibram X. Kendi Notes by Monica E. About The Souls of Black Folk The landmark book about being black in America, now in an expanded edition commemorating the th anniversary of W. See all books by W. Inspired by Your Browsing History. Looking for More Great Reads?
The Souls of Black Folk
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