The Souls Of Black Folks Summary

The book, “The Souls of Black Folks,” written by W.E.B (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois discusses the engrained effects of slavery, discrimination, and racism that cannot be simply repaired just because slavery was legally abolished in 1865 after the American Civil War. Du Bois goes on to explain the deeply rooted social inequalities and injustices that strongly affect every African American or black person. Moreover, the writer argues that the black individual lives two completely different realities in this world a struggle that no other race encounters and he categorizes this idea as double consciousness and he explains that positive leadership and education is the strongest way that African Americans can grow. By reading this book, the

In this writing, he explains his perspective and introduces his arguments and main points by first inserting epigraphs of negro spirituals because they are “haunting melodies from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past.” (Du Bois 31) In the first chapter the author explains the concept of double consciousness as being the “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” (Du Bois 34) Moreover, The black person in America is torn between two worlds and two identities, they are an African American and they are an American. The writer explains how that person will never be complete or accepted because they live a life of confusion where they are constantly fighting to simply feel like and be treated like an average person. Throughout this book this concept is explained using various historical examples, the struggle of black people is examined, and the solutions to lessening the burdens of the past are also explained. In the third chapter, Du bois mentions the acts of strong leaders such as Booker T. Washington who founded Tuskegee Institute where African Americans were educated, and he also mentions other leaders who helped strengthen the Black