The Souls of Black Folk | Page 3

Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small
Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits
you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois
Benedictine College" within the 60 days following each date you
prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois Benedictine
College".
This "Small Print!" by Charles B. Kramer, Attorney Internet
([email protected]); TEL: (212-254-5093) *END*THE
SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

Herein Is Written
The Forethought I. Of Our Spiritual Strivings II. Of the Dawn of
Freedom III. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others IV. Of the
Meaning of Progress V. Of the Wings of Atalanta VI. Of the Training
of Black Men VII. Of the Black Belt VIII. Of the Quest of the Golden

Fleece IX. Of the Sons of Master and Man X. Of the Faith of the
Fathers XI. Of the Passing of the First-Born XII. Of Alexander
Crummell XIII. Of the Coming of John XIV. Of the Sorrow Songs The
Afterthought Selected Bibliography

To Burghardt and Yolande The Lost and the Found

The Forethought
Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show
the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the
Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle
Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the
color line. I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity,
studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of
the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden
there.
I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual
world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive. First,
in two chapters I have tried to show what Emancipation meant to them,
and what was its aftermath. In a third chapter I have pointed out the
slow rise of personal leadership, and criticized candidly the leader who
bears the chief burden of his race to-day. Then, in two other chapters I
have sketched in swift outline the two worlds within and without the
Veil, and thus have come to the central problem of training men for life.
Venturing now into deeper detail, I have in two chapters studied the
struggles of the massed millions of the black peasantry, and in another
have sought to make clear the present relations of the sons of master
and man. Leaving, then, the white world, I have stepped within the Veil,
raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,--the meaning of
its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its
greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom
written, and a chapter of song.

Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in other
guise. For kindly consenting to their republication here, in altered and
extended form, I must thank the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly,
The World's Work, the Dial, The New World, and the Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science. Before each
chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs,--some echo
of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up
from black souls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add that I who
speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live
within the Veil?
W.E.B Du B. ATLANTA, GA., FEB. 1, 1903.

I
Of Our Spiritual Strivings
O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand, All night long crying
with a mournful cry, As I lie and listen, and cannot understand The
voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea, O water, crying for
rest, is it I, is it I? All night long the water is crying to me.
Unresting water, there shall never be rest Till the last moon droop and
the last tide fail, And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west; And
the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea, All life long
crying without avail, As the water all