If You Get to Heaven Befo' I Do;
             WEB DuBois's Construct of the Doctrine of Blackness
             "But back of this still broods silently the deep religious feeling of the real Negro heart, the stirring, unguided might of powerful human souls who have lost their guiding star...and seek in the great night a new religious ideal. Some day the Awakening will come, when...ten million souls shall sweep irresistible toward the Goal, out of the valley of the Shadow of Death, where all that makes life worth living – Liberty, Justice, Right – is marked "For white People Only."
             DuBois makes it clear in his autobiography and elsewhere that he does not believe in God, and organized religion. In his test, speeches and fiction, it is impossible not to relate his devout work ethic and moral zealotry with some type of religion. Nearly all of his fiction alludes to religion in general, and almost all to Christianity, specifically. He is constantly discussing, addressing or referring to God in all of his fiction, and in many of his speeches and text. However, there is ample evidence that Dubious is not a 'religious' man as the phrase is commonly used. It is unclear if he believes in an omnipotent being, but it is obvious that he does not adhere to any specific religious doctrine.
             Many may argue that his fictional evocation of heaven and hell tell of his conscious or subconscious belief in religion or that it shows the contradiction in his own ideology. While one can try to disprove what DuBois stated and restated in his own words – even reiterated in no uncertain terms in the autobiography at the end his life, I find it easier to accept as the truth that he adhered to no religion.
             So how can one explain these other apparent signs of his orthodoxy? Although DuBois was unmatched in his liberalism at a time when it was popular to be anything but, his conventionality is stark when it comes to ideas such ...