August 2025 - The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. DuBois

Post composed by Ralph Edwards

The August book selection for the S.U.R.E. Book Club - The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. DuBois - is likely the most challenging and potentially impactful of the year's readings.  Published in 1903, its most quoted line - "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line . . . "  will likely be referenced in 2103.  Circumstances may not have diminished sufficiently to warrant its dismissal even then.  Through a compilation of philosophical, historical, and sociological essays, DuBois articulates key elements of the Black experience in America, including the Veil, Double Consciousness, and Second Sight.  For Blacks, this helps to conceptualize and explain competing environmental and psychological forces challenging the expression of their humanity. For whites, this can help to illuminate their paucity in awareness and appreciation of the Black experience as well as blindness to the self-diminution of their humanity via whiteness.  That is, the limitations to the experience and expression of one's humanity when filtered through the Veil of white identity. For both, acknowledgement of their varied perceptions and interpretations of their experiences can enhance their mutual enrichment in American life.

DuBois also addresses his differences with Booker T. Washington, the acknowledged "Negro Leader" of that era.  Washington's advocacy of agricultural and trade education and acceptance of limited political participation may have been seen as helpful in obtaining funds for schools and expediting employment for the masses.  For DuBois, civic engagement and political power through enfranchisement were essential to the wellbeing of the newly freed Blacks and the Nation.  A Dudley Randall poem – Booker T. and W.E.B. - encapsulates the competing sentiments and can be read by clicking on the link below.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47690/booker-t-and-web

Overall, the DuBois anthology is essential and seminal to Black and American scholarship. With The Souls of Black Folk, each reader can apply DuBois’s concepts to their life experiences to better understand DuBois’s exposition of the impact of the concepts on Black lives and American society.