Suchergebnisse

Title -- Copyright -- Editor's Preface -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Interlude -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Chapter 9 -- Chapter 10 -- Chapter 11 -- Chapter 12 -- Chapter 13 -- Chapter 14 -- Chapter 15 -- Chapter 16 -- Chapter 17 -- Chapter 18 -- Chapter 19 -- Chapter 20 -- Chapter 21 -- Chapter 22 -- Chapter 23 -- Postlude.

Excerpts from a Current History essay published in 1925.

The late Booker T. Washington may be considered in four aspects. First there can be no doubt that his chief significance lies in the fact that he cannot be considered simply as an individual but that he is so inextricably woven into the national and even world movements of his day that his death becomes historic. Again, most Colored men in America are simply "Colored." They are submerged in a great undifferentiated group; they are not considered as individuals but are lumped together as a "race." Mr. Washington was more than "Colored." He was an American, and the comments upon his career tend continually to emphasize the fact that such a struggle upward against terrific odds, such indomitable persistence and versatility of expedient was peculiarly American. After Frederick Douglass, Mr. Washington was the next great exemplification and revelation of problems of race and labor in America, so significant as to go to the very core of our democracy; and finally, there is to consider Mr. Washington's own personality: the silent, watchful, cautious man, rugged, nervous, popular but unsocial, slow but tireless.

This hitherto unpublished essay by W. E. B. Du Bois, the text titled "The Afro-American," which likely dates to the late autumn of 1894 or the winter of 1895, is an early attempt by the young scholar to define for himself the contours of the situation of the Negro, or "Afro-American," in the United States in the mid-1890s. It is perhaps the earliest full text expressing his nascent formulations of both the global "problem of the color-line" and the sense of "double-consciousness" among African Americans in North America.

W. E. B. Du Bois narrates how in the course of his travels in Europe, especially in Germany & Poland, before & after the Second World War, he came slowly to the awareness that racism is not necessarily a question of color, as it is in the US. After his visit to the void where the Warsaw ghetto had been razed by the Nazis, he acquired a larger & less parochial view of racism and, under that head, of the black American question. Adapted from the source document.

The history of the world is not that of individuals, but of groups. And yet it is not the history of socioeconomic classes, but of races. Races are not biological realities, but social & historical realities, each of which has a special message for humanity. But the Negro race, in contrast to the others, has yet to deliver its message. In order to do so it needs to work on two fronts: that of the good moral health of the Black people on the one hand, & that of their education on the other. At once American & Negro, the Black American must not forget to which race he belongs & must ensure that the condition of American Blacks can be improved in order to guarantee the delivery of the message of the Negro race. The object of the American Negro Academy is to guarantee the education of Blacks by Blacks for the conservation of their race. Adapted from the source document.

Presents the text of a preface written by Du Bois for the Blue Heron Press Jubilee edition (1953) of his book, The Souls of Black Folk, which had been out of print for quite awhile. It is noted that Blue Heron was established by Howard Fast after his self-published novel, Spartacus, became a best-seller. His novel had been turned down by his regular publishers who were avoiding works that raised fundamental questions about US society. None of the later editions of Souls contain Du Bois' radical preface to the Blue Heron Press edition, in which he emphasizes the influence of both Sigmund Freud & Karl Marx on the modern world, & discusses the underlying causes of the problem of race/color. Du Bois points out that civilized persons are willing to wage war to maintain the privilege of living in comfort, even at the cost of poverty, ignorance, & disease for the majority. He concludes that the "excuse for this war continues largely to be color & race.". J. Lindroth

Discusses role of Blacks in capitalist development from end of slavery in the 19th century to the mid-twentieth century. Reprinted from Monthly Review, Apr. 1953.

"The Souls of White Folk," as it appeared in Du Bois' Darkwater (1920) & is reprinted here, was based on an essay in the Independent, August 18, 1910, together with part of another essay, "Of the Culture of White Folk," Journal of Race Development, April 1917. The final version in Darkwater was reworked numerous times up to its final publication in 1920.