The Souls of Black Folk essays

The Souls of Black Folk essays Author: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois Date of Publication: original publication 1903. Bantam Classic publication July 1989 W.E.B. Du Bois, born in 1868 in Massachusetts, was one of Americas loudest social activists, scholars, and writers. He went to school at Harvard and taught at Wilberforce University as well as Atlanta University for many years. He helped publish many extreme periodicals and eventually converted to communism. He died in Accra on August 27 1963. The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of fourteen self contained stories by the extremist African-American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois written over 100 years ago, is a bleak and thought-invoking look at the lives of the former slaves following Emancipation. It addresses nearly all aspects of life, from religion to poverty to race relations, and how they were changed by the removal of slavery. Some papers take a more historical view while others are nearly in the form of short stories. What makes The Souls of Black Folk one-of-a-kind is Du Bois' overt unobjectivity and blatant socialist writing. He was African American and that gives him quite a different view from white historians of the time. He is sympathetic to the troubles of the slaves and understands with much greater lucidity their daily effort to rise above the slight manipulations of those pitiless enough to take advantage of their weak, somewhat raw position. Du Bois also takes mammoth delight in his race and doesn't waver to allocate all of its undertakings and assistance to American humanity with his readers. Given the popular approach of either apathy or hostility towards African Americans at that time in history, The Souls of Black Folk tries to take some significant steps toward earning deference for black America or at least making others conscious of its optim ...