the school opens and he begins teaching her along
with her many classmates, Josie studies “doggedly,”
displaying herself (first in DuBois’s eyes) as “child
woman amid work and worry.” Josie already lives
and studies “beyond the Veil” of both genders in
black America, and she now receives instructions
in the classroom from an American black who is
himself “beyond the Veil.” But her family problems
become “the Veil that [hangs] between [her] and
Opportunity.” Josie’s financial duties to her family
prevent her from attending school, especially with
recent “crop fail[ures]” and local racism. Moreover,
Josie suffers distress from seeing her “angry” brother,
Jim, imprisoned in a Lebanon jail due to accusations
of “stealing wheat,” only to witness Jim and another
brother, John, steal money from her purse. DuBois
links Josie’s now “thin” appearance and “silence” with
her family situation, but he continues to remind the
reader of Josie’s determination to persevere through
her family veil, for she labors in Nashville and helps
her brother, Dennis, “the carpenter,” and builder of
“six” additional rooms in the family home, to further
furnish and maintain the family home. Nonethe-
less, family woes, such as the announcement of her
sister Lizzie’s pregnancy, diminish her prospects and
“vision of schooldays,” and her physical appearance
becomes what DuBois describes earlier as “homely.”
Josie’s attempts to live, work, and learn “beyond
the Veil” crumble due to the limited vision and life
choices made within her family. She becomes a
failed heroic figure in the end, for although she chal-
lenges and constructs new roles as a daughter, sister,
worker, and student by becoming a mother, father,
and primary financial provider for the family, all the
while trying to maintain her work and school status,
she cannot retain social and educational mobil-
ity within such complex and challenging familial
roles and social responsibilities. In a later chapter
in Souls, “Of the Wings of Atlanta,” DuBois calls
for the black community to become cultural bear-
ers of “knowledge” in the world so as to eliminate
ignorance and encourage students such as Josie to
remain students, committed to their own roles as
cultural bearers. For Josie, additional support from
the community may have given her the chance to
remain in school; however, and perhaps nonetheless,
she teaches DuBois and his readers “an unconscious
moral heroism” that remains intact throughout a
most positive yet difficult life (74).
Patrice Natalie Delevanteidentity in The Souls of Black Folks
In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. DuBois first
investigates why black identity is normally summed
up by nonblacks with the question: “How does it feel
to be a problem?” DuBois rarely answers this ques-
tion when asked personally; rather, he sees being “a
problem” as something that is “peculiar” to African
Americans. He uses the metaphor of the “veil” to
describe black America’s inherent peculiarity: the
inability to gain access to opportunities available
to nonblacks within the United States. The veil is
both a blessing, because it grants blacks multiple
ways of looking at the world, and a curse, because
nonblacks use the veil to oppress blacks and render
them invisible. DuBois refers to the ability to see the
world as a Negro and a nonblack as “double sight,” a
“double consciousness.” For example, the interaction
between blacks and whites during slavery allowed
blacks to see how whites discern and justify their
“contempt and pity” of blacks. DuBois longs for
blacks to overcome “the veil,” become truer Negroes
and Americans, without being regarded with disdain
by white America.
Throughout the text, DuBois makes compari-
sons between black America and the biblical Jews.
The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40
years before reaching their destination. DuBois sees
a similar parallel with ex-slaves postemancipation.
Blacks were granted freedom from whites—liberty,
to be more exact—but in the coming years, they bore
the weight of freedom with the problems caused by
prejudice, harassment, poverty, homelessness, and
rape, among others. DuBois refers to this as a “waste
of double aims,” which causes the black artists to
seek alternative ways to gain worth and purpose.
Though the Freedmen’s Aid societies pushed for
the legalization of black marriages, payment of
black soldiers, free black education, and increased
labor opportunities, as well as land ownership, they
failed to make blacks permanent productive freemen
due to strong outside opposition and internal poor
choices.378 DuBois, W. E. B.