The Souls of Black Folk 379To give readers an example of what he sees as
a problematic way of thinking, DuBois critically
examines the rhetoric of the black educator Booker
T. Washington (1856–1915). Washington gained
prominence with his founding of the Tuskegee
Institute and with lectures and speeches about
black life. During his speech known as the “Atlanta
Address”—which DuBois contemptuously called
the “Atlanta Compromise”—Washington called
for blacks to postpone ambitious educational and
political aspirations and the fight for civil rights and
instead seek an industrial education. In other words,
Washington felt that blacks had to work from the
“bottom up” to secure material and industrial wealth.
DuBois explains that blacks are too impatient for
such gradual advancement, and he sees current
social attitudes as inhibiting black intellectual and
political capabilities. He calls Washington’s plan “a
gospel of Work and Money” that reaffirms white
America’s assumptions of blacks as simple and infe-
rior laborers.
Though many in the world deem blacks to be
subhuman, fraudulent, and inferior, DuBois rejoices
that black graduates of higher education are creat-
ing new black identities as teachers, principals, and
presidents of colleges. He refers to them as the “Tal-
ented Tenth” and calls for black colleges to sustain
popular education and the ambitions and training
of the Talented Tenth. In other words, black higher
education should seek to create and sustain the new
Negro identity with leadership potential. Interracial
dialogue and cooperation between blacks and whites
are also necessary factors to salvaging the negative
perceptions of African Americans and embracing
the New Negro.
However, though places such as the Black Belt of
Georgia—once filled with slaves—contain elements
of a promising new black identity, they are also filled
with the realities of nihilism, ignorance, and ghetto
culture, “full of untold story, of tragedy and laughter,
and the rich legacy of human life; shadowed with a
tragic past, and big with future promise!” Black farm
labor here is tied to southern cotton production.
Despite the cotton crisis within Dougherty County,
for example, and though black farmers and their
families live in congested and horrendous living con-
ditions, their identities overall remained unaffected.
They are honorable persons, DuBois concludes,
respecting codes such as female chastity, modesty,
and marriage. He notes that in order for black labor-
ers’ conditions to improve, there needs to be commu-
nal help and accountability such as “careful personal
guidance, group leadership of men... to train them
to foresight, carefulness and honesty.” Black laborers’
identity can this be part of the New Negro identity.
DuBois also equates African-American reli-
gion as synonymous with Negro identity: “In the
South, at least, practically every American Negro is
a church member.”
Patrice Natalie DelevantetraditiOn in The Souls of Black Folks
In The Souls of Black Folks, W. E. B. DuBois refers
to central, distinctive, and endearing features of
African-American life during the eras of slavery
and postemancipation as traditions. Traditions, such
as Negro spirituals, became everyday and celebra-
tory rituals, while other more personal actions, such
as overcoming oppression through educational
advancement, opened up new traditions for black
progress.
Blacks sang sorrow songs to reveal their despair as
slaves. DuBois refers to such sorrowfully intense yet
exhilarating and rhythmic “song[s] and exhortation[s]”
as very telling of slaves’ longing for freedom. Sorrow
songs also revealed their pleas (and even “curses”) to
their Christian faith to free them from oppression.
DuBois notes that slaves’ sorrow songs are essentially
American: “There is no true American music but
the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave.” Blacks
celebrated their freedom after the Civil War with joy-
ous songs proclaiming liberty “shouts” because “God
has brought [their] liberty” (from the Negro spiritual
song “Shout for Freedom”). However, within joyous
songs of freedom also came sad songs of despair,
precisely because freedom came without knowledge
or understanding of what to do with it once it was
achieved. Southern blacks, now mostly sharecroppers,
faced discrimination when seeking land ownership
or schooling for their children. More educated blacks
faced racism while trying to secure voting rights or
seeking higher education. Once again, sorrow songs
explored their anxieties with freedom and their desire
to overcome such anxiety.