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The Souls of Black Folk

W. E. B. Du Bois, a black, Harvard educated teacher, published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. Du BoisÆ essays collected in this work are emblematic of Du BoisÆ questioning of white and black relations in U.S. society post-Reconstruction. The Souls of Black Folk perhaps represents the first time a black individual asserted the notion that the world did not exclusively belong to white people. Instead, it encourages the philosophy of education and training as a means to liberation. It also forged a bond among educated black individuals to begin airing their grievances in order to achieve greater economic, political, and social freedoms.

Unlike black leaders like Booker T. Washington, Du Bois believed that African Americans should fight for political power, civil rights, and the higher education of black youth as a means of achieving freedom and equality. Du Bois believed in the importance of education as a means of achieving true freedom and equality for African Americans. As he writes, ôThe function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schoolsàit is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of lifeö (Du Bois 1994, 58).

Du Bois argued that vocational education of blacks was not only insufficient to provide true knowledge and wisdom, but was also one more example of segregation of the black individual as inferior to the opportunities and capabilities of the white individual. As he writes, ôWe daily hear that an education that encourages aspiration, that sets the loftiest of ideals and seeks as an end culture and character rather than breadwinning, is the privilege of white men and the danger and delusion of blackö (Du Bois 1994, 58-59). Like many of our contemporary schools for African Americans, Du Bois asserts that those schools that did exist to instruct black youth were

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The Souls of Black Folk. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 15:54, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1710048.html