CRE 151 - The Souls of black folks du bois

 The Souls of black folks du bois

1.      Rather than ask me How does it feel to be a problem…they say I know some good black folks, or the racism in the south is really bad, I know you are angry about it..

2.      But he rarely actually answers the unasked problem..How does it feel to be a problem

3.      Being a problem is a strange/peculiar experience -impacts everyone from birth..and he declares in Europe

4.      It was not until he was in school, when giving cards one of the female students refused his..why

a.      Because he was different from the others

b.      Shut out from their world by a vast veil

c.      Even though he could outrun them, he could outscore them on test, get advanced degrees..he was still an outcast a stranger in his own country

d.      A prison house closed in on them…the walls were strait an stubborn to the white, but relentlessly narrow\, tall and unsalable for the sons of night..those who plod darly on in resignation..

e.      Beat unavailing palms against the stone, half hopelessly watching the blue sky above..

5.      After the Egyptian, Indian, Greek, Roman, Teuton and Mongolian =the Negro a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and givted with second sight in this American world

a.      A world which yields no true self-consciousness but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world

b.      A peculiar sensation -double consciousness

                                                              i.      a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others

                                                             ii.      measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity

c.      One forever feels his two-ness -an American, a Negro: two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideas in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

6.      The History of American Black -filled with striff..longing to attain self-conscious manhood to merge his double self into a better and truer self

7.      Where neither of his older selves is lost

8.      He would not Africanize America, for America ahs much to teach the world and afric.

9.      He would not bleach his Negro should in a flood of white Americanism..for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world

10.  He simply wishes to be both Black and American without being cursed or spit upon by his fellow, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

11.  End o fhis strivings -to be a coworkers in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to use his best powers and latent genius

12.  The shadow of the black can be seen briefly in the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy, of Egypt the Sphinx

13.  We rarely get the whole or true picture..of the Black throughout the whole continent and history of Africa..

14.  In America, at the time of this writing, just a few years since the Emancipation, the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful strivings..

15.  It appears to be ineffectual, lack of power, but it is not weakness …it is the contradiction of the double aims

16.  Double armed struggle of the black artisan -on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, on the other hand to plough and nail an dig for a poverty stricken horde – in the end he is a poor craftsman because he had only put half his heart in either cause..

By poverty and ignorance his people -the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy 0by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks

The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a dancing and a singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artists; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-0beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people.

17.  What happens when one is trapped, unable to do their best, unable to be free

18.  Few have worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for 2 centuries

a.      So far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all vfillanies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice

b.      Emancipation was the key to the promised land-but years have passed and yet the freedom has not come…

19.  The nation has not found any peace from its sins, the freedman has yet to find freedom in his promised land..

20.  The shadow of deep disappointment rests on the negro people -a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.

21.  The first decade a prolong vain search for freedom

a.      Ever eluded their grasp, a dream,

b.      The holocaust of war, the terrors of KKK, the lies of carpet baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes left the bewildered serf with no answer but the old cry for freedom

22.  The dream was caught up in the ideal of liberty -supposedly granted by the 15^th amendment

23.  The ballot which appeared to be the visible sign of freedom -the chief means of gaining and perfecting liberty -that had been partially endowed to him by the war

24.  Had votes not made war and emancipated millions?

25.  Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen

26.  A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom

a.      A decade went by, the revolution of 1876 came and left the half-free serv weary, wondering but still inspired.

What happened leading up to 1876..druring reconstruction although blacks saw dramatic increases in political power, as 16 AA served in Congress including two U.S. senators. There was never black freedom or supremacy..

Reconstruction governments served an expanding citizenry. Establishing the first state funded public schools systems, increased bargaining power of laborers, taxation more equitable, outlawing racial discrimination in public transportation, and attempted to create a new South with economic growth that would benefit both blacks and whites, the funding of railroads and other enterprises..but these programs were filled with corruption and rising taxes, alienating more and more white voters.

Blacks established independent religious institutions that became the centers of their community…still in existence.

But they demanded economic independence.

In the summer 1865 Johnson dashed these hopes, as he ordered federal lands set aside exclusively for settlement of black families..by Gen./ William Sherman’s Field Order no. 15 in Jan. 1865, land in South Carolina and Georgia coast -it went back to the former white land owners..without this land blacks had not other choice but to go back to work for white landowners…violent opposition to Reconstruction by white southerners increased..white supremacists organizations committed terrorist acts, such as the KKK targeting Republicans leaders for beatings or assassination. African Americans who asserted their rights were targeted for lynching or beating. In 1873 scores of black militiamen were killed in Colfax, Louisiana after surrendering to armed whites intent on seizing control of local government.

The election of Ulyussses Grant in fall of 1868 signled some change. Republicans controlled all three branches of federal government.  Congress approved 15^th amendment prohibiting states from restricting the right to vote because of race, then enacted Froce acts to suppress political violence

In 1871 Grant launched legal and military offensive that destroyed the Klan, and was reelected in 1872..but Republican support for Reconstruciton was decreasing…then the disputed presidential election of 1876 resolved with Rutherford B. Hayes assuming the presidency, removal last federal troops from the South, and thus ending Reconstruction.

 

27.  With this the freedom was weary, but a new dream was usured in -what votes could not accomplish -education -book olearning could

a.      The black had bee forced into ignorance by whites..they now yearned to learn.

b.      This changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self-cunciousness, self-realization, self respect

28.  He began to see his own soul but still darkly as through a veil, yet he sawhimslef with a semblance of power, a faint revelation of what his future mission was to be..

29.  To attain his place in the workd. He must be himself not another.

30.  He sought o analyze the burden he bore on hi back

a.      The dead weight of social degradation partially masked behind the half-name Negro problem

b.      He felt his poverty -competing with the righ, landed, skilled neighbors

c.      To be a poor man was hard, to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardship

d.      The weight of his ignorance of business, the humanities, the decades and centuries he had been shackled mind, hands, and feet

e.      The burden of all poverty and ignorance was not all he dealt with..

f.        He also dealt with the red stain of bastardy, two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women, the loss of ancient African chastity, hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers. Almost obliteration of the Negro home.

g.       Such a people should not be asked to race with the world

h.      They should be given time and thought to deal with their social problems

i.        But sociologists gleefully counted his bastards, his prostitutes, his soul toiling, sweating black men darkened in a sea of despair.

31.  The shadow of prejudice -the natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the higher against the lower races.

32.  The blacks recognized that if the future was just a devotion to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress then he could do that.

33.  But the nameless prejudice leaps beyond all his hopes, leaving him speechless as personal disrespect, mockery, ridicule and systematic humiliation distorts the fact and cynically ignores their attempts to rise from the bottom of the well of discouragement.

34.  Everything black from Toussaint to the devil -he has been ridiculed, discouraged by a nation that equates black with despair, hopelessness and failure.

35.  But facing the so vast a prejudice did only bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparaging, and lowering of ideals which accompanies repression and breed contempt and hate.

36.  Blacks became the diseased, dying, dark hosts who could not write, where voting was in vain, where education was needed since they mut cook and serve..

The nation echoed and reinforced this self-criticism saying be content to be servants, nothing more..what do half-men need with higher culture..the black man’s ballot by force or fraud was the suicide of the race..you get evil from something good..the more careful education, the clearer perception of the Blacks social responsibilities and sobering realization of the meaning of progress.

 

37.  Blacks began to doubt their faith, was physical freedom, political power, higher education and the training of ther hands in the skills -were they wrong all false..were they just the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power.

38.  What is needed -all of this must be welded into one…

39.  The training of the schools need today more than ever

40.  The training of hands -skills and the training of baroder, deeper higher culture of gifted minds and h[pure hearts

41.  The power of the ballot need in sheer self defense or they will find themselves into a second slavery

42.  Freedom of life, limb, freedom to work think, freedom tolove and apire..work, culture, liberty -are not individually, but must be done simultaneously..

43.  The ideal of human brother hood -gained by unifying idea of Race -ideal of fostering and developing the talents and traits of the Negro..not in opposition to or contempt for other races but as conformity to the greater ideals of the American republic

44.  So that some day on American soil the world would see two world-races that give each other those characteristics bp0th so sadly lack

45.  The darker ones come even now not altogether empty handed -but as the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence

46.  No tru American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave

47.  American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African -we black men seem the sol oasi of simple faith and reverence in the dusty desert of dollars and smartness

48.  America will be made the river if it replaced its brutal dyspeptic blundering with the light-hearted determination of Negro humility, the replacement of its vulgar music with the sould of the Sorrow Songs.

49.  The negro problem i9s the American problem. The spiritual striving of the freedmen is the test of our national character…the striving in the souls of black folks.

VI: Of the Training of Black Men.

1.      The cooperation of men -of all races and nations black, yellow and white must thrive together, collectively in order to produce a Living nation..otherwise it is only about force, dominion and death.

2.      But among the south there is the notion that Blacks are just  a simple, clownish creature -tertium quid -third form between men and animals

a.      Is he just a clownish, simple creature lovable within limitations, foreordained to walk within the veil..

b.      And if he dare try to achieve manhood -sheer self-defense of whiteness dare not let them, so they build the walls high, and hang between them and the leight a veil so thick that they shall not even think of breaking through ..

c.      And last -there trickles down the third and darker thought -of the things themselves, the confused, half-conscious matter of men who are black and white, crying “Liberty, freedom, Opportunity”

                                                              i.      The chance to be a living human

                                                             ii.      But suppose blacks are less than human

                                                           iii.      Suppose this is a mad impulse within I all wrong, a mocking mirage ..untrue..

3.      Between the thoughts of human unity, even through conquest and slavery,

a.      The idea that the black man is inferior,

b.      A shriek of the freedmen themselves still unsure of their right to be free

c.      Called to solve the problem of the training of blacks for freedom, life and prosperity.

4.      Within the black community is a laboring force, suited to the semi-tropics, but if America refuses to use and develop them then the nation risks poverty and loss.

5.      If we we as a nation refuse to provide education, then we as a nation will decay because our nation is bui9ld on a lie.

6.      Color-prejudice is a reality

7.      We cannot ignore this reality, nore is it easily abolished by a simple act of legislature

8.      Color prejudice stands in the way of civilication and religion and common decency.

9.      To deny black education and training is to encourage crime and shameless lethargy.

10.  Education is the only answer that will be the best use of all humans, without enslavging or grutalizing them..

11.  Such training will rid us of the poison that lies within the Veil and the mounting fury of shackled humans.

12.  Training for life teaches life, but training for the profitable living towtether of black men and white ..

13.  It should not be determined by accidents of birth or the stock market..but according to talent, character, ability and determination.

14.  Inadequate funding of Black schools, illogically placed, with varying efficiency and grade, normal and high schools which were filled with poorly trained educators, did little to facilitate the learning of blacks.

15.  Southern whites, only strengthened in their racial prejudice developed even harsher laws and customs that pitted poor whites with poor blacks.

16.  Black education lapsed into chaos, as hate and prejudice, lawlessness and ruthless racially motivated competition reached new heights.

17.  The industrial school came into being, in 1895 as the ansee to the educational and economic crisis

18.  Training in the skills was the principal emphasis and singularly directed toward the Blacks.

19.  But is this all that the Black could hope for..to be a skilled worker..

a.      This is just another form of race prejudices which keep black and brown people in their places.

20.  Dubois outlines the four periods of Education efforts for the Blacks

a.      Boundless, planless enthusiasms and sacrifice

b.      Preparation of teachers for a vast public school system

c.      Launching and expansion of that system amid increasing difficulties

d.      Finally the training of workmen for the new and growing industries

21.  All of this has been sharply ridiculed as illogical and backward

22.  What should have happen was first industrial and manual training should hve taught the blacks to work

23.  Simple schools could have taught him to read and write

24.  After years of development, high and normal schools could have completed the system as intelligence and wealth demanded

25.  What exists in the south are two separate worlds, separated not only by interactions, but also church and school, on railways and street cars, in hotels and theatres, in street and city sections, in books and newspapers, in asylums and jails, in hospitals and graveyards.

26.  Thus separated there is not enough contact to provide sympathetic, effective group training and leadership one by the other, which is necessary to affect progress. For blacks and others.

27.  White teachers were ill equipped to teach the southern blacks, and the Southern whites refused to do it..

Thus before the industrial schools, and the common and high schools there must be black colleges..to train black teachers…

28.  Such higher training-schools tended naturally to deepen broader development, first they produced common and grammar schools, then some high schools..finally by 1900 there were 34 that has one or more years of college..then the development of degrees at places such as Hampton which was still a high school; Fisk University which started as a college in 1871, Spelman Seminary in 1896;  in all cases the aim was the same -maintain standards at the lower levels by giving teachers and leaders the best practical training possible.

29.  By furnishing the black community with adequate standards in human culture and lofty ideals of life -philosophy

30.  Teachers of teachers should be trained int eh technical normal methods

a.      Broad minded, cultured men and women,

31.  The work of education in the South began with institutions of higher education

32.  But many wondered if this was a waste of time.

33.  What does research say about the 34 institutions

a.      Such as Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, Wilberforce, Lincoln, Biddle, Shaw

b.      These institutions came to lift up the Negro, not keep them in their place

c.      These were social settlements, homes where the best of the sons of freedmen came in close and sympathetic touch with the best traditions of New England

d.      They studied, worked, hoped, and harkened a dawning light

e.      A curriculum where education power was supreme.

f.        Two thousand Negros had graduated with ba degrees

g.       But this was a small number, that they hoped to increase by five fold.

h.      Now blacks were getting degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oberlin, and seventy other leading colleges

i.        Of those who graduated from black schools 53% were teachers, presidents of institutions, heads of normal schools, principals of city schools systems

j.        17 percent were clergymen

k.       17 percent were professions -such as physicians

l.        Six percent were merchants, farmers and artisans

m.    For percent were government civil service.

n.      1/3 were unsessful

34.  The future development of the south dubois argued depended upon the Negro college and college educated student

35.  This was the only way to end social separation, and acute race-sensitiveness

36.  This would serve to civilize the South

37.  No secure civilization can be built in the /South without the Blacks..

38.  They must be more than laborers, but must also be equi9pped as teachers and leaders..

39.  There has been a constant increase in black graduates across the country and in the south..going with the south more that 5 times more graduates than the North..

40.  These he calls the talented tenth

41.  Failure to invest in this group..will only spell doom as the gospel of revolt, revenge and negativity take holds as Blacks rebel against a system that ignores them.

42.  Race is not a crime but forced ignorance is.

43.  But southern blacks will not be idol they will rebel, or they will be embraced.

44.  The function of the Negro college is:

a.      Maintain standards of popular education

b.      Seek social regeneration of blacks

c.      Help solve problems of race contact and co-operation

d.      Must develop the whole person

45.  What then is the training of blacks

a.      Centers of culture

b.      Respect for human sould that seeks to know itself and the world about it

c.      Seeks a freedom fro expansion and self-development

d.      ‘will love, hate, and labor in its won way -not hampered by the old or the new

e.      A respect for the inner life

f.        Knowledge of nature and the world

g.       That will present new points of view

h.      Make their loving, living and doing precious to all human hearts.

i.        To allow thei9r souls to soar above the smoke, as their finer spirits boon and guerdon for what they love on earth by being black.

46.                        I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line

I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and

welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of even-

ing that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of

the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and

they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed

with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us,

O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull

red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this

high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite,* we sight the Promised

Land?

The Souls of Black Folk76

47.