Souls of Black Folk, The

The Souls of Black Folk is a collection of 14 interdisciplinary essays penned by W. E. B. Du Bois—one of the major intellectuals in the 20th century—with an emphasis on the black condition and experience in the post-Reconstruction era. Nine of these essays had previously appeared in the pages of prestigious magazines or journals of the day, including Atlantic Monthly, Dial, World's Work, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and New World. In the new text, Du Bois strengthens his arguments by restructuring and polishing these “fugitive pieces” and blends the old pieces with the five new or unpublished essays in order for Souls to become an integrated and unified narrative. Each chapter in Souls is prefaced by two quotations. The first is a citation from a famous writer, usually a Western poet; the second is a bar of music from a black spiritual, what Du Bois calls “the sorrow songs”—the title of the last chapter of the book—which valorizes African cultural heritage as a gift to America. With brilliance and creativity, Souls underscores the longings of African Americans for political freedom and rights, economic equality, social justice, and educational opportunity, as well as their yearnings for self-expression in a nation that had been hostile to them.

Since its publication in 1903, Souls has quickly become a founding text of black studies and one of the most important books in American intellectual history. In underlying the significance of Souls in black life, poet and activist-intellectual James Weldon Johnson states that “this remarkable book … had a greater effect upon and within the Negro race in America than any other single book published in this country since Uncle Tom's Cabin.” African American poet and novelist Langston Hughes singled out this seminal text in reminiscing that “my earliest memories of written words are of those of Du Bois and the Bible.”

Souls paints with clarity and grace the culture, the history, the sociology, and the spirituality of the African American people. In seeking to explain to “the white world” the strivings of black Americans, Du Bois develops the major intellectual motifs and theoretical concepts throughout the book, such as “double-consciousness,” the “two-worlds,” “the veil,” and “the Talented Tenth,” which he associates with American identity and mentality, American democracy and freedom, black leadership and self-determination, and America's racial dilemma. Whether the white world would listen to Du Bois as he plays the role of intellectual-activist and the champion of American democratic ideals, he nevertheless wants white America to ponder the arresting question, “How does it feel to be a problem?” underlying the psychological experience and “the souls” of black America and the complex relationships between black and white Americans.