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

             W.E.B. In 1868 in Massachusetts, Du Bois was one of America's loudest social activists, scholars, and writers. He went to school at Harvard and taught at Wilberforce University and Atlanta University for many years. He helped publish many extreme periodicals and eventually converted to communism. He died in Accra on August 27, 1963.
             The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of fourteen self-contained stories by the extremist African-American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, written over 100 years ago, is a bleak and thought-invoking look at the lives of the former slaves following Emancipation. It addresses nearly all aspects of life, from religion to poverty to race relations, and how the removal of slavery changed them. Some papers take a more historical view, while others are nearly in the form of short stories. What makes The Souls of Black Folk one-of-a-kind is Du Bois' overt lack of objectivity and blatant socialist writing. He was African American, which gives him quite a different view from white historians. He is sympathetic to the troubles of the slaves. He understands with much greater lucidity their daily effort to rise above the slight manipulations of those pitiless enough to take advantage of their weak, somewhat raw position.
             Du Bois also takes mammoth delight in his race and doesn't waver to allocate all of its undertakings and assistance to American humanity with his readers. Given the popular approach of either apathy or hostility towards African Americans at that time in history, The Souls of Black Folk tries to take some significant steps toward earning deference for black America or making others conscious of its optimistic aspects. Du Bois' use of an allegorical "Veil" that separates the blacks from the whites is a distinctive representation that appears throughout the book and serves to join perspectives on how blacks are perceived by white society. "Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live....

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