The Souls of Black Folk - Who Are We?

By

Wulgar
Darkenwald, Jr.

W. E. B. DuBois’ 1903 seminal work, “The Souls of Black Folks”, is a series of essays that are articulate, poignant and poetic, thought provoking and heartbreaking. They paint an almost bleak picture of black life upon the canvas of post-Civil War and Reconstructionist America where an once enslaved race has gained its freedom without the resources, skills, and opportunities necessitated to be “free” within the Jim Crow society.

Struggling with the very notion of what it is and means to be of color within that world. “The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American World, a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, —an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

​The work describes American society at the turn of the 20th century, now more than a hundred years hence are we that far removed? Do we know ourselves let alone our souls?