380 Edwards, Jonathan
DuBois disagreed strongly with leaders such as
Booker T. Washington, who started a new tradition
of black leadership. Washington gained prominence
with a “gospel of Work and Money.” He encouraged
blacks to seek industrial progress and advancements
while forgoing higher education or political gains
and aspirations. Overall, Washington wanted blacks
to achieve in the future, but not now. DuBois, how-
ever, advocated a new black leadership that sought
socioeconomic and political mobility and equal civil
rights. He wanted African Americans to gain influ-
ence in higher education as trainers of black teachers
and even as philanthropists. New black leadership
for DuBois entailed blacks helping blacks develop
and maintain healthy minds and moral personalities.
In The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois praises emerg-
ing traditions of successful black leadership within
businesses and the arts. He admires their moral
makeup: They disprove characteristics attached
to blacks during slavery, including being unfairly
labeled complacent, clownish, lazy, and ignorant.
However, DuBois carefully warns blacks of the
pitfalls of this newly created African American,
including complacency from existing progress or
distractions from future progress due to the love
and abuses of money. Instead, he encourages such
blacks to pursue “patience, humility, manners, and
taste,” but from the top of the socioeconomic lad-
der. Essentially, he wants them to develop successful
characteristics for successful blacks. He calls this
group of highly successful and educated blacks the
“Talented Tenth,” and in his eyes, they are necessary
for black progress and political influence.
DuBois considers black religious traditions that
existed during slavery as central for blacks to
remember and commemorate within their newly
successful lives. Such religious experiences con-
nected slaves inextricably and “visibly” to each other,
both socially and spiritually, and to God. The black
church is the center for black religious connections.
DuBois refers to the preacher as “the most unique
personality developed by the Negro on American
soil,” primarily because he is a very influential and
revered person within the community, awed for his
eloquence and swagger. He leads not only religious
cries and mourning but also the “stamping, shriek-
ing, and shouting” (known as “the Frenzy”) that
characterizes Negro revivals (yearly large religious
gatherings within the “backwoods of the South”).
The preacher possesses social and political influence,
and black bishops are prominent members of the
community: DuBois calls them “the most powerful
Negro rulers of the world.”
DuBois also mentions characteristics peculiar to
African Americans outside the black church. Local
priests and medicine men are also important parts
of the Negro religious experience: They heal, com-
fort, and prophesy. Blacks also connect with other
religions outside the black church, such as voodoo-
ism. These connections were originally an attempt
to seek refuge and freedom from the oppression
of slavery. Furthermore, some slaves deviated from
their religious connections due to their lack of hope
in being free. Radical blacks subsequently aban-
doned the church for alternative ways to cope with
their fight with racism and oppression. According
to DuBois, other blacks turned to crimes and other
forms of violent behavior.
Black traditions, as articulated in The Souls of
Black Folks, are soulful expressions that continue to
bring soul and black(ness) to American history and
experience.
Patrice Natalie DelevanteEDWARDS, JONATHAN “Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God” (1741)
A sermon delivered by the theologian Jonathan
Edwards (1703–58) on July 8, 1741, in Enfield,
Connecticut, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
God” endures as a classic of oratory and rhetoric.
It provides insights into the feelings and ideologies
that swept through the colonies during the First
Great Awakening, a period of religious revival from
about 1730 to 1755. Edwards builds his sermon
from Deuteronomy 32:35—“Their foot shall slide in
due time”—in an attempt to “awaken” his congrega-
tion to ideas about God’s mercy, grace, and wrath,
and about the duties of Christian life.
Edwards aims his message at the “unregener-
ate” Christian—someone who has accepted church
doctrine but not yet accepted the necessity of God’s
grace—and the sermon relies on an abundance of
figurative language to prove that God’s grace is not