The Souls of Black Folk

1. What role do the song fragments and lyrics at the beginning of each chapter play? What does DuBois's title, The Souls of Black Folk, mean?
2. DuBois uses terms such as "the veil" and "two-ness" to describe the Negro experience in America. In "Of the Coming of John," DuBois describes a boy growing up to recognize "the oppression that had not seemed oppression before." [p.250] Earlier, in "Of Our Spiritual Strivings," DuBois writes about "his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body." [p.45] To what situations and examples from The Souls of Black Folk would you best apply these terms?
3. In "Of the Dawn of Freedom," DuBois sketches the Reconstruction period and the role of the Freedmen's Bureau in particular. What does he claim are the successes and failures of the Freedmen's Bureau? What did DuBois suggest would have been a better policy than the wholesale deconstruction of Reconstruction agencies? [p.77] Do you agree?
4. DuBois repeatedly discusses the role of economics in the lives of Negroes in the post-slavery south. What is the importance of debt in people's lives? How does the credit system work? Who has economic power, and why?
5. What role does DuBois see for education? What were his own experiences as a teacher among emancipated Negroes? What role does he assign to leaders of Negro society? [pp.194-195]

Internet Resources

Black History, American History.

This Atlantic Monthly Flashback includes major essays by DuBois and Washington in their debate over the future of Negroes in America.

The African-American Mosaic

A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture. Includes sections on colonization, abolition, migration, and the WPA oral-history projects of the 1930s.

Eras in Black History, 1863-1896

Encyclopedia Britannica site provides biographies of DuBois, Washington, and others; plus articles about the Freedman's Bureau and Jim Crow.

Writing Black: Literature and History written by and on African Americans

Links to on-line books and articles by prominent African-American leaders and writers. Includes links to writings by Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.

The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

"Online access to Harper's Weekly coverage of the historic 1868 Johnson Impeachment — with over 200 excerpts from 1865-1869." Provides background and context for the battle between radicals and conservatives over the fate of Reconstruction.

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