The Souls of Black Folk

by W. Du Bois

  HEAR MY CRY, 0 God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world-wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest wonderful. (Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.) Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed

  THE END

  NOTES

  I. OF OUR SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS

  3 “O, water ... crying to me”] Arthur Symons’s poem “The Crying of Water” (September 18, 1900).

  3 prefatory spiritual] “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” Du Bois unravels the mysteries of the Sorrow Songs (except for Chapters III, V, VIII, and IX, the identities of which remain enigmatic) in Chapter XIV. Chapter II’s prefatory spiritual is “My Lord, What a Mourning!”; Chapter IV, “My Way’s Cloudy”; Chapter VI, “March On”; Chapter VII, “Bright Sparkles”; Chapter X, “Steal Away Home”; Chapter XI, “I Hope My Mother Will Be There”; Chapter XII, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”; Chapter XIII, “You May Bury Me in the East”; and Chapter XIV, “Wrestlin’ Jacob.”

  4 Mechanicsville] The battle of Mechanicsville (in Virginia), which took place on June 26, 1862; otherwise known as the battle of Beaver Dam Creek and part of the Seven Days’ Battles. Lee’s Confederate troops routed McClellan’s Union troops, but ultimately the Confederacy sustained more losses.

  4 Housatonic] New England river, flowing from the Berk shires (Massachusetts) to Long Island Sound.

  7 “Shout ... your liberty”] One of the many freedom spirituals.

  7 “Take any shape ... tremble”] From Macbeth, III, iv, 102-3.

  8 Fifteenth Amendment] Ratified March 30, 1870; granted black suffrage (in theory) and enabled Congress to enforce this amendment.

  10 Toussaint] Toussaint L‘Ouverture, leader of the black forces in Haiti after the uprising against the white French government in August 1791. Napoleon, viewing Toussaint as an obstacle to French power in the New World, devised a scheme to trick him into going willingly to France in 1800, but even so, the French were unable to subdue the island.

  II. OF THE DAWN OF FREEDOM

  13 “Careless seems ... above His own”] From James Russell Lowell’s “The Present Crisis,” dated December 1844, eighth stanza.

  13 spiritual] “My Lord, What a Mourning!”

  14 Freedmen’s Bureau] An organization created by Congress in March 1865 to ensure that recently emancipated blacks in the South would be able to practice their civil rights and to help them in their transition from slaves to free men (in the realm of shelter, food, education, work, and medicine). The bureau stayed in existence until 1872. Primarily it was a failure because it lacked federal commitment, sufficient funds, and dedicated personnel. Compare note for page 42 on the Revolution of 1876 and the end of Reconstruction.

  14 Ben Butler] Union General Benjamin F. Butler (1818- 1893) was known for his controversial military policy which declared that fugitive slaves were contraband of war and thus could not be returned to the masters, but rather were made to work for federal forces. In 1862, he gathered a whole regiment of free blacks in Louisiana. He also established one of three military savings banks for free blacks and black soldiers of the Civil War in Norfolk, Virginia.

  14 Fremont] John Charles (1813-1880), Union major general, explorer, and politician. He was known especially for his controversial emancipation proclamation (August 30, 1861), which stated basically (before Lincoln’s proclamation did) that slaves were “freedmen.”

  14 Halleck] Henry W. (1815-1872), Union major general who succeeded Frémont in command of St. Louis, later became Union chief of staff (March 1864). General Halleck adopted the policy of returning runaway slaves to their masters in the West.

  15 Pierce] Edward Lillie (1829-1897), a Northern abolitionist from Boston, who helped freedmen adjust to their new condition and who wrote the Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner.

  15 Fortress Monroe] Early in the Civil War, blacks sought refuge within Union lines, near Fortress Monroe, Virginia. The earliest school for freedmen was established here in September 1861.

  15 Sherman] William Tecumseh (1820-1891); Union Civil War general who led the march from Atlanta to the sea (1864) (see note for page 17). Thousands of slaves joined Sherman’s ranks on his march.

  15 Hilton Head] One of the Sea Islands, south of Port Royal Sound, South Carolina. Fort Walker, a Confederate fortification, was situated on the island, which was captured by Captain Samuel F. Du Pont on November 7, 1861.

  15 Port Royal experiment] Port Royal, South Carolina, came under control of the Union troops in 1861. James M. McKim organized a committee in Philadelphia to allow former slaves the supervision of the cotton plantations. The experiment in free labor fared well, but at the end of the Civil War, the land was returned to the former slave-owners.

  16 Amistad] Spanish slave ship taken over (August 1839) in a mutiny off the Cuban coast by Cinque and fifty-two other slaves. Spain demanded the return of the slaves, but the Supreme Court, convinced by the argument of John Quincy Adams, ruled that they should be returned to Africa.

  16- General Dix, Colonel Eaton, General Saxton] Sympathetic

  17 Union army officers who presided over freedmen’s affairs in the occupied South. Dix issued a proclamation protecting slave property and helped freedmen with their new living arrangements. Eaton was appointed by Grant as superintendent to contrabands for the Mississippi Valley in November 1862. Saxton, an abolitionist, had jurisdiction over the South Carolina Sea Islands and supervised the settlement of 40,000 freedmen on land, thereby following Sherman’s order.

  17 Sherman’s raid] General Sherman had moved into Atlanta by September 1864 and had civilians evacuated, after which, in his famous “march to the sea,” he cleared a zone from Atlanta to the Atlantic.

  18 “Field-order Number Fifteen”] This was an order issued January 16, 1865, by General Sherman, which proclaimed that the Sea Islands and the plantation areas within thirty miles of rivers, from Charlestown down to Jacksonville, were to be settled by freedmen.

  18 General Howard] Union major general Oliver Otis Howard ( 1830-1909) was appointed commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau on May 12, 1865, and remained commissioner until the end of the bureau in 1872. Although known for his poor administrative sense; he did devote much energy to the establishment of schools for blacks. Howard University, Washington, D.C., was named for him to recognize his work as a commissioner, and he served as its president from 1869 to 1873.

  19 Charles Sumner] Sumner (1811-1874) was an abolitionist and a U.S. senator. His two-day oration, “The Crime against Kansas,” produced such an uproar that the southern congressman Preston Brooks beat him with his cane while Sumner was at his Senate desk, so badly that the injuries plagued him for three years thereafter. An ardent supporter of enfranchisement of blacks, he joined in the impeachment process of Johnson, who had vetoed the Civil Rights Bill.

  22 quest of Saint Louis] In 1248 Louis IX of France led the Sixth Crusade to the Holy Land. King Louis was canonized in 1297.

  28 Edmund Ware, Samuel Armstrong, and Erastus Cravath]

  Edmund Asa Ware (1837-1885), educator and clergyman, was sent by the American Missionary Association to become the superintendent of the Atlanta school district. In 1867 he was appointed superintendent of education for Georgia by General Oliver Howard of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Ware helped to establish Atlanta University (chartered in 1867), which opened its doors to freedmen. Ware was the first president of Atlanta University.

  Samuel Chapman Armstrong (1839-1893), an educator born to missionary parents, was a Union captain and major in the Civil War and later became the commissioned colonel of the Ninth Regiment, United States black troops. He was appointed an agent of the Freeedmen’s Bureau and took control of a settlement of blacks in Hampton, Vi
rginia, in 1866. In 1868 he received funding from the American Missionary Association and from individual benefactors to establish the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute. His original aim was to found an industrial school for black teachers.

  Erastus Milo Cravath (1833-1900), a clergyman and educator, became sympathetic to the abolitionist cause early in life, with his father being an active participant in the Underground Railroad. After the Civil War, Cravath devoted the rest of his life to educating the freedmen. He helped to establish and supervise many southern schools for blacks, among them Atlanta University and Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee), which he hoped would give blacks a liberal education needed for leadership positions. He was elected president of Fisk University (1875) and helped to arrange the Jubilee Singers’ tour of Europe.

  28 Fisk, Atlanta, Howard, and Hampton] Black colleges established in the South. Fisk University was founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta University in 1865; Howard University in 1867 in Washington, D.C.; and Hampton Institute in 1868 in Hampton, Virginia. Although Howard University was established without special admission for blacks, they quickly constituted the majority of the student population.

  III. OF MR. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON AND OTHERS

  36 “From birth ... unmanned!”] From Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto II, stanza LXXIV, line 710. “Hereditary Bondsmen! ... the blow?” “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Canto II, stanza LXXVI, lines 720-21.

  36 Booker T. Washington] Black educator, writer, and spokesman (1856-1915), who assumed the role of the acknowledged leader of the black cause after the death of Frederick Douglass in 1895.

  37 Tuskegee] Tuskegee Institute, a black college established as a normal school in 1881 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Booker T. Washington was its founder and first principal.

  37 Atlanta Compromise] An address which Booker T. Washington delivered at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18, 1895, advocating economic improvement for blacks but not political or social equality. The whole of the speech is printed in Chapter 14 of his autobiography, Up from Slavery.

  37 Jefferson Davis] President of the Confederacy.

  41 Maroons] Small guerrilla bands of runaway slaves formed during the course of the eighteenth century. These fugitive slaves in the West Indies, called Maroons, settled in inaccessible areas (in forests, near swamps, on mountaintops), and were feared by whites for their raids on nearby plantations or settlements and for their incitement of slaves to rebel against the masters. By 1730, conditions had gotten so out of hand in Jamaica under the leadership of the runaway slave Cudjo that the British were forced to send out two additional regiments to protect their territory. In the mid-1700s, fugitive slaves had found incomparable leadership in the ex-slave Macandal, an African who believed he was the black Messiah who would force the whites off the island and establish a black community. He also protested the whites’ seizing of the island from the Indians. Macandal’s plot to overthrow the government was discovered, and he was executed.

  41 Danish blacks] The fugitive slaves of the Danish islands (today known as the Virgin Islands), who, like the Maroons, grouped together in the eighteenth century to rebel against white authority.

  41 Cato of Stono] In 1739 Cato of Stono, a slave, led an insurrection of one hundred slaves in Stono, South Carolina. Their plan to escape to the Spanish colony of Florida was unsuccessful.

  41 Phyllis] Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784), brought to Boston as a slave in 1761, became known for her ability to write poetry, and her book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was the first volume of verse published by an Afro-American writer (1773).

  41 Attucks] Crispus Attucks (1723-1770), who escaped slavery at seventeen from Massachusetts, was a black patriot, the first person to die in the Boston Massacre, preceding the Revolutionary War.

  41 Salem and Poor] Peter Salem (ca. 1750-1816) was a slave who was granted his freedom when he became a soldier in the American colonial forces. He is best known for his participation in the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775), and tradition has it that he killed the first English soldier in battle. He served in the Continental Army during the remainder of the war, but died in the poorhouse.

  Salem Poor (1747-?) was a freeman who also fought in the American colonial forces (and also participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill). He was known for his patriotic zeal and acts of courage.

  41 Banneker (1731-1806) and Derham (ca. 1762-?)] Born in Maryland in 1731, Benjamin Banneker became a well-known mathematician and scientist. His annual almanac for farmers (1792-1802) was the first scientific book written and published by an Afro-American.

  James C. Derham was born into slavery in 1762 in Philadelphia. His owners were physicians who taught him the art of medicine. He bought his freedom from them in 1783 and embarked on a successful medical career in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he set up his own practice and treated blacks and whites alike.

  41 Cuffe] Paul Cuffe (1759-1817), son of an African father and an American Indian mother, born in Boston, where he became a merchant and seaman. Master of his own ship, he fostered trade with African nations and favored emigration of black colonists back to Africa; also, together with his brother, he petitioned for suffrage for Indians and blacks.

  41 Haytian revolt] See note for page 10.

  41 Gabriel, Vesey, Nat Turner] leaders of slave insurrections, in 1800, 1822, and 1831 respectively.

  Gabriel Prosser, a Richmond, Virginia slave attempted in 1800 to lead one thousand slaves in rebellion against Richmond. His intent was to establish a black state in Virginia. A turbulent storm and a betrayal by two slave informants led to the plan’s failure. The leaders were captured, tried, and executed.

  Denmark Vesey, an ex-slave and seaman, initiated a slave rebellion in South Carolina in 1822. Vesey and thirty-four of his co-conspirators were executed.

  Nat Turner (1800-1831) was a preacher and rebel who was born into slavery in Southampton County, Virginia. In August 1831 he organized and led the most successful slave revolt in North America. His revolutionary band’s rampage through the countryside terrified whites and showed them the fallacy of the myth of the docile slave. Turner was found guilty and executed.

  41 Walker’s wild appeal] David Walker (1785-1830) was born in North Carolina of a free mother and a slave father. He was educated in Boston. His Appeal called on slaves to rebel against their masters.

  42 Forten and Purvis, Shad, Du Bois, Barbadoes]

  James Forten (1766-1842), a wealthy and successful black sailmaker, was an abolitionist throughout life. Together with Reverend Richard Allen, he circulated a petition in 1800 calling for Congress to end slavery. In the War of 1812, he helped organize a black volunteer force for the defense of Philadelphia. He formed an alliance with William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists in the 1820s. In 1833 Forten helped create the American Antislavery Society. His daughter, Charlotte, wrote The Diary of Charlotte Forten.

  Robert Purvis (1810-1898) was born of mixed parentage. He became an abolitionist leader in Philadelphia and helped found the American Antislavery Society.

  Mary Ann Shad (Shadd) (1823-1893) was born in Delaware, but settled in Canada for twelve years, where she edited Provincial Freemen, a fugitive slave newspaper.

  Alexander Du Bois was W. E. B. Du Bois’s grandfather.

  James G. Barbadoes (1?96-1841) was an abolitionist who helped establish the American Antislavery Society. He tried to colonize a black settlement in Jamaica, but the experiment was unsuccessful. He and two of his children died of fever in the attempt.

  42 Remond, Nell, Wells-Brown, Douglass]

  Charles Lenox Remond (1810-1874), a journalist and member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, helped raise money and support for the abolitionist movement in England.

  William C. Nell (1816-1874), a historian and journalist active in the Underground Railroad. Early in his life, he refused to apply for admission to the bar because he could not support a Constitu
tion that deprived black slaves of their rights. Later he participated in the movement to desegregate schools in Massachusetts. In 1851, he worked as an assistant to Frederick Douglass, and also published his own pamphlet, “Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812.”

  William Wells Brown (1814-1884), a former slave who became an author and lecturer; known for his slave narrative, Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, and for other works on slavery, among them a novel, Clotel, or the President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States and for histories, the most notable of which is The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements.

  Frederick Douglass (ca. 1817-1895), escaped slave, writer, publisher, and abolitionist orator, closely allied early on with the abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. He published and edited the North Star, an abolitionist newspaper. His most famous work is Narrative of the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1845), of which the expanded versions are Bondage and Freedom (1855) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). He remained a crusader for rights and reform for blacks and women throughout his life.

  42 John Brown’s raid] In October 1859, John Brown, a white man, set out to capture the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with the help of a small group of followers, including five blacks. Brown’s goal was to liberate and arm the blacks in the vicinity and to mqve southward, eventually forming a black army of liberation and freeing blacks. The revolt, though unsuccessful, became a rallying point during the Civil War, and John Brown’s name was legion.

  42 Elliot, Bruce, Langston]

  Robert Brown Elliott (1842-1884), educated in Boston and in London; editor of the Leader, in Charleston, South Carolina, an early southern paper published by blacks; held various state and federal offices thereafter; resigned later in life from the U.S. House of Representatives in an attempt to reform corrupt political practices in South Carolina, where he practiced law until his death.