The Souls Of Black Folk By W. E. Du Bois

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Mohammed Abdulkadir
Soc-215 Essay Summary
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The Souls Of Black Folk By W.E. Du Bois
The Souls of Black Folk is a collection of essays of African American literature and also an important sociological history of the Black Americans, written by W.E.
Du Bois. In this essay Du Bois put forward an idea of, "The Color line problem as the problem in twentieth century." In this essay he talked about two terms that have now developed into theoretical fields of study “the veil and the double consciousness”. Double consciousness being the belief that African Americans in the United
States lives with two conflicting identities that cannot entirely be understood or merged together. The most important experience is the black identity and the
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I held my face beside his little cheek, showed him the star–children and the twinkling lights as they began to flash, and stilled with an even–song the unvoiced terror of my life” (Du Bois, Ch11).
In the Twelfth “Of Alexander Crummell” is a story of Alexander Crummell, as
Du Bois called it the story of a human heart, the tale of a black boy who many long years ago began to struggle with life that he might know the world and know himself. “Of the Coming of John” the thirteenth, Du Bois tells the story of John Jones. A black man who decided to get an education and while he got the education to become successful, the existence of racism and prejudice destroys him. A glimpse of his experience as Du Bois noted was “He looked now for the first time sharply about him, and wondered he had seen so little before. He grew slowly to feel almost for the first time the Veil that lay between him and the white world; he first noticed now the oppression that had not seemed oppression before, differences that erstwhile seemed natural, restraints and slights that in his boyhood days had gone unnoticed or been greeted with a laugh. He felt angry now when men did not call him "Mister," he clenched his hands at the "Jim Crow" cars, and chafed at the color–line
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“Of the Sorrow Songs” the fourteenth and final chapter in Du Bois Essay of the
Black Folks he explains and presents the sorrow songs of the olden days. A spiritual collection of the Negros, which provides some insights into the tragedy of the past, and the hopes he holds for the future. Du Bois said ever since he was a child these songs have stirred him strangely. “They came out of the South unknown to me, one by one, and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine”.
Finally Du Bois concluded the whole Book with “The Afterthought” a delivery of a final message to the reader and a prayer. “Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still–born into the world wilderness” (Du

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