Souls Of Black Folk

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The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois Summary The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. DuBois, begins in the late 1800s with an outline of the struggle for black civil rights. It is written during the decades following President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery in 1863. DuBois uses the occasion as the starting point for his essay about the condition of black life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and to discuss his ideas about what blacks and America as a nation should be doing to guarantee equality for all. DuBois asks, “How does it feel to be a problem?” His first encounter with his status as a “problem” takes place in school when a little girl refuses a card he has offered her as part of a class-wide card exchange. He realizes that blacks have been taught to view themselves through the eyes of others and doesn’t have another source upon which to base identity. This results in a “veil” between the black man’s world, where identity is constructed for him, and the white world, where there are more opportunities and possibilities. DuBois refers to this as double-consciousness, and asks how a man can be “both a Negro and an American.” He speaks of the complexity and foolishness of the Negro’s “double aims,” since achieving respect among the black community differs from doing so in the often cruel white community. DuBois analyzes the first four decades following the end of slavery. During the first decade, he writes, the Black community strove to identify what exactly freedom meant, what forms it was to take, and how it would change at a time when racism continued and organizations like the KKK existed. DuBois felt that the idea of “book-learning” was more important than voting. However, it is a complicated issue because the black man who pursues book-learning faces the veil that has been
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