The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois’ describes a harrowing struggle of black people following emancipation. He eloquently details the frustration of the newly freed people, who after years of deprivation and humiliation, no longer have the tools to properly make of their freedom what they had dreamed and envisioned.


On the one hand, they are aware that they are no less able, having been given the same tools as the white man, to create and prosper in the world. On the other, they continue to exist in a world seen through the distorted lens of their white oppressors. Treated as lesser than, given access to little education, black people remain oppressed but only with a different title now of ‘free’ attached to them.


This knowing that one is free yet still unable to flourish in a society where the system is skewed for them to fail, leads to a sense of ‘double consciousness,’ where-in the black man is aware of himself through his own eyes as well as through the eyes of the prejudiced whites who look down on and oppress him. “By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks,” DuBois explains in a long list of double standards and inscrutable paradoxes confronting black people, particularly those with special talents and ambitions.

In regards to the failed 'Freedmen's Bureau,' Dubois writes that, "it came to regard it's work as merely temporary, and negro suffrage as a final answer to all present perplexities... so the Freedmen's Beurau died, and it's child was the Fifteenth Amendment." The tone with which Dubois laments this exchange of the Bureau for suffrage brings to question his valuiation of the Fifteenth Amendement to African American progress. Despite the obvious shortcomings of the Bureau to instill real lasting assistance, DuBois seems disapointed at its dissipation and uncertain as to the benefits of negro suffrage to making real progress. Having a voice in electing suitable representation is a highly significant marker of progress, yet Dubois skims over it half-heartedly.

literacy tests impeding the african american vote

A 1985 article from the The Nebraska Law review echos the significance of the Fifteenth Amendment and the concerns of Dubois, by expanding on the idea that additional measures need to be taken to, "preserve or enhance the political effectiveness of racial minorities."


The institution of segregation is mentioned by both DuBois and Anna J. Cooper in ‘A Voice From the South,’ as being an insurmountable obstruction to the progress of black people. Both authors make mention of a certain more talented group of African Americans bearing a responsibility to bridge the gap between white and black communities. Ultimately, both authors place a special emphasis on access to education as a key to progress and true freedom and equality.