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nBy 16…the premise of the social and political philosophy that would guide him: Black Americans must organize themselves as a race-conscious bloc in order to win and exercise their freedom. nDu Bois was the first black graduate in his high school’s history. nFour liberal white men took interest in Du Bois: agreed to pay for his college education. These community leaders decided that Du Bois should attend Fisk University—a historically black school in Nashville—rather than Harvard, as Du Bois desired. nIn 1888, transferred to Harvard. In 1892, received a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard, and went on at the University of Berlin. nattended lectures and communicated with some great sociologists of the day, including Max Weber. nIn Europe, recognized that racism in the United States was only one virulent example of racial/ethnic/national subordination and that German anti-Semitism had “much in common with our own race question” nhis second book, The Philadelphia Negro (1899) was the first sociological text on an African American community published in US. nLess than 2 years after Du Bois and Nina Gomer married, first child born. Burghardt died 18, allegedly a victim of sewage pollution in the city’s water system nScholars suggest that it was Du Bois’s deep sorrow prompted the softer, sympathetic tone in his masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). This became Du Bois’s most famous book, and one of the most important books on race and class ever written in the US. nIn 1897, began teaching at Atlanta Univ in Georgia. Remained ‘til 1910. turned his attention to political activism. 1910 …left his academic post at Atlanta University to work full-time for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in New York City. Against the advice of some NAACP board members (several of whom were white), Du Bois founded the journal Crisis, which from the beginning had a distinctly militant tone. history: end of Civ War, racial violence increased! DuBois: just 20-25 yrs later to describe & explain - reconstruction - reconstructed the history of Reconstruction: pointing out the prominent roles that blacks played
Wanted Harvard ... got Fisk and loved it ... "Being around so many of my own color" ... who seemed bound to me by new and exciting ties" - this "sameness" gave him freedom from "2 - ness" Harvard after Fisk for a M.A. then Germany: little or no racial prejudice in Germany
Correspondingly, DuBois' view of white folks was itself transformed. White Europeans became "Not white folks, but folks." "The unity beneath all life clutched me." END OF LIFE: Communist? he was accused - Red Scare .... 1960s was asked to direct a major scholarly project though he was 92 at the time! Pan Africanism: Encyclopedia Africana. in Ghana, DuBois officially joined the Communist Party, stating:
___________NEW FOR THURSDAY ____________ nprimarily concerned with the intersection of race and class. conducted 3 types of research: 1.empirical studies illuminating the actual social conditions of African Americans (e.g., The Philadelphia Negro [1899]) 2.interpretive essays informed by careful historical research and personal experience, & keen observation (e.g., The Souls of Black Folk [1903]) that emphasized the subjective experience and sources of inequality 3.political essays: Pan-Africanist and socialist solutions to inequality & racism
nAt
the same time, Du Bois did not hesitate to criticize the
black community.
nHe censured black parents for not sufficiently reinforcing the value of formal education, assailed the black Church for not adequately combating social corruption and moral decay, and lamented the existence of “the usual substratum of loafers and semi-criminals who will not work” nmaintained that “the better classes of Negroes should recognize their duty toward the masses,” an idea that became one of his most famous. ... the burden for winning freedom and justice for all African Americans of those who were best prepared, rested on the shoulders educationally and economically. It would thus fall to the so-called Talented Tenth to lead the fight against racial discrimination another first of his: ordinary people are the focus of study: nIn 1935, published Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America 1860–1880. It challenged the elitism that pervaded historical studies. In contrast to an elitist emphasis on a few “great men” and magnificent military battles, Du Bois sought to write about “ordinary” people—“ordinary” black people—though it would be a full generation later before a “people’s” social history would find its place in academia. "The Philadelphia Negro" …presents a rich array of empirical information about the lives of Philadelphia African Americans, focusing on the “social condition of the Colored People of the Seventh Ward of Philly.” 5,000 surveys & interviews with African Amers in the 7th Ward …does not lay all the problems in the 7th Ward at the doorstep of the whites: he outlines black individuals’ own role in creating pauperism, alcoholism, and criminality in the black population.
and another first rejected the “sterility of a cloistered research approach” in favor of an interventionist social science, even though this kind of sociology would not be accepted for another 50 years. He began to write with a more “soulful” voice, because, quite rightly (in our view), he recognized that race does not work or exist solely at the “rational” level. nAlthough Du Bois was intensely critical of the black church for failing to address the real economic needs of the black community, in The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois turns his attention to the essence and power of black spirituality.“social center of Negro life in the United States three interrelated concepts for which Du Bois is now famous: 1.the color line Once the color line began to pay dividends thru the colonization and exploitation of Africa and Africans beginning in the 15th C., race became central to world history. 2.double consciousness 3.and the veil. nnotion of double consciousness parallels Simmel’s discussion of the stranger nUnbeknownst to whites, African Americans can see what it means to be white. nBlacks’ “clairvoyance” comes from their servile position. nAs servants, blacks are exposed to the intimate details of whites’ lives; hence they see whites as they really are. QUESTION: How does it feel to be "the problem?" Veil and double-consciousness: "The negro is a sort of 7th son, born with a veil, and gifted w second sight to this American world -- a world which yields him no self-consciousness but only lets him see himself thru the revelation of the other world. it is a peculiar sensation After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world--a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this 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 look on in amused contempt and pit. one ever feels his twoness. this longing to attain self-conscious manhood - to merge his double self into a better and truer self ....
He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American
n... a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people . .The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. color prejudice in the Negro's mind is that widespread feeling of dislike for one's blood which keeps him out of employment, from certain public conveniences, etc. and in gen'l being recognized as a man." ... Most Negroes regard this chief prejudice as the chief cause of their present unfortunate condition. Most white people are quite unconscious of any such powerful & vindictive feeling
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