The Life and Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois
Afro-Am 610 [691B], UMass/Amherst
Spring 1999 302 New
Africa House
T 10:00 am-12:30 pm Prof. Ernest Allen
A critical examination of the life and thought of W. E. B. Du Bois, paramount black scholar and activist whose massive body of scholarly work spans the period from late 19th through the mid-20th centuries. Course covers the major works of Du Bois: The Philadelphia Negro; The Souls of Black Folk; Black Reconstruction; and Dusk of Dawn. The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, The World and Africa, and The Education of Black People, as well as selected essays by Du Bois, are also addressed. Topics include Du Bois as sociologist, historian, propagandist, and creative writer, taking into account his often shifting views on art and culture, politics, leadership, civil rights and the color line, trade unionism, Pan-Africanism, socialism, internationalism, and, of course, double consciousness, among other issues.
Two papers, ranging in length from 10 to 15 pages and addressing different aspects of Du Bois' intellectual life, are required; guidelines to be provided.
Required Books
The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: International Pubishers, 1968)
Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro (1899; rpt. Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization Ltd., 1973)
Du Bois, The Education of Black People; Ten Critiques, 1906-1960, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973) [out of print; on reserve]
The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader, ed. Eric J. Sundquist (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); contains The Souls of Black Folk and some required essays
Bernard W. Bell, Emily Grosholz, James B. Stewart, eds., W. E. B. Du Bois on Race and Culture: Philosophy, Politics, and Poetics (New York: Routledge, 1996)
Arnold Rampersad, The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: Schocken, 1990) [out of print; on reserve]
Du Bois, The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History (New York: The Viking Press, 1947)
Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Towards an Autobiography of a Race Concept (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1940)
Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (1935; rpt. Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization Ltd., 1976) [out of print; on reserve]
Du Bois, Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887-1961, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985) [one essay: "The Negro and Social Reconstruction"]
Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944-1963 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986) [out of print; on reserve]
Reading Schedule
January 26: Intro to Course
February 2: Biographical Overview
The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: International Pubishers, 1968) [on reserve]
Optional background reading
David L. Lewis, W. E. B. Du BoisBiography of a Race (New York: H. Holt, 1993)
February 9: Late-19th Century Urban Conditions: Da Philly Negro
Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro (1899; rpt. Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization Ltd., 1973), chpts. 1-13 [on reserve]
John H. Bracey, August Meier, Elliott M. Rudwick, eds., intro to The Black Sociologists: The First Half Century (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1971), 1-12
Optional background reading
Dan S. Green and Edwin D. Driver, eds., intro to W. E. B. Du Bois on Sociology and the Black Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 1-48
Michael B. Katz and Thomas J. Sugrue, eds., W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and the City: The Philadelphia Negro and Its Legacy, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998)
HOLIDAY (Presidents' Day), Monday, February 15; follow Monday schedule on Tuesday, February 16
February 16: No Class Unless Alternative Date Available. Continue Reading
The Philadelphia Negro (continued), chpts. 14-Special Report on Domestic Service
February 23: The 'Tortured Tenth': Leadership, Service, and Education
Henry L. Morehouse, "The Talented Tenth," Independent (23 April 1896): 1
Du Bois, "The Talented Tenth," in The Negro Problem; A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of To-day (New York: J. Pott & Co., 1903), 33-75
Du Bois, "The Talented Tenth: Memorial Address," Boulé Journal 15 (October 1948): 3-13; rpt. in W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. David L. Lewis (New York: H. Holt, 1995), 347-53
Du Bois, The Education of Black People; Ten Critiques, 1906-1960, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973) [out of print; on reserve]
Optional background reading
Alfred A. Moss, The American Negro Academy: Voice of the Talented Tenth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981)
Robert Gooding-Williams, "Du Bois's Counter-Sublime," Massachusetts Review 35 (June 1994): 202-24
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), chpt. 2 ("The Female Talented Tenth")
Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)
Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cornel West, The Future of the Race (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1996).
March 2: The Souls of Black Folk: Classic or Conundrum?
Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, (1903); rpt. in The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader; all [Reader not available in library]
Francis L. Broderick, "German Influence on the Scholarship of W. E. B. Du Bois," Phylon 19 (Winter 1958): 367-71
Robert Gooding-Williams, "Philosophy of History and Social Critique in The Souls of Black Folk," Social Science Information 26 (1987): 99-114
Gooding-Williams, "Evading Narrative Myth, Evading Prophetic Pragmatism: Cornel West's The American Evasion of Philosophy," Massachusetts Review 32 (Winter 1991-92): 517-42
Du Bois, "The Souls of Black Folk," The Independent 57 (17 November 1904): 1152; rpt. in The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader, 304-05
Optional background reading
Robert B. Stepto, From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), chpt. 3
Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the South since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), chpt. 13.
Robert C. Williams, "W. E. B. Du Bois: Afro-American Philosopher of Social Reality," in Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917, ed. Leonard Harris (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1983), 11-19.
Eugene C. Holmes, "W. E. B. Du Bois: Philosopher," in Black Titan: W. E. B. Du Bois: An Anthology, eds. John Henrik Clarke; Esther Jackson; Ernest Kaiser and J. H. O'Dell (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 76-81.
August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915; Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963)
Richard Cullen Rath, "Echo and Narcissus: The Afrocentric Pragmatism of W. E. B. Du Bois," Journal of American History 84 (September 1997): 461-95.
March 9: Consciousness, Double Consciousness, and the Bearing of Gifts
Souls of Black Folk (cont.), focus on chpts. 1 and 14
Du Bois, The Conservation of Races, American Negro Academy Occasional Papers, No. 2, 1897); rpt. in The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader, 38-47
Du Bois, "The Conservation of Races," Crisis 41 (June 1934): 183 [same title, different text]
John Spencer Bassett, "Two Negro Leaders," The South Atlantic Quarterly 2 (July 1903): 267-72
Dickson D. Bruce Jr., "W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness," American Literature 64 (June 1992): 299-309
Ernest Allen Jr., "Ever Feeling One's Twoness: 'Double Ideals' and 'Double Consciousness' in The Souls of Black Folk," Contributions in Black Studies 9/10 (1992): 55-69
Allen, "On the Reading of Riddles: Rethinking Du Boisian 'Double Consciousness'," in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, ed. Lewis R. Gordon (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 49-68
Optional background reading
Joel Porte, "Emerson, Thoreau, and the Double Consciousness," New England Quarterly 41 (March 1968): 40-50
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), [Sect. B: Self-Consciousness]
Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), intro, esp. 91-99
Johann Gottfried Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man (1800; rpt. New York: Berman, 1966).
Herder, J. G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, trans. and ed. F. M. Barnard (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969)
George S. Schuyler, "Our Greatest Gift to America," in Ebony and Topaz: a Collectanea, ed. Charles S. Johnson, (New York: Opportunity; National Urban League, 1927), 122-24.
SPRING RECESS, March 13-21; FIRST PAPER DUE March 23
March 23: On Race, Culture, Feminism, & Other Subjects
Anthony Appiah, "The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race," in "Race," Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 21-37
Du Bois, "The Damnation of Women," in Darkwater; Voices from Within the Veil (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 163-86.
Bernard W. Bell, Emily Grosholz, James B. Stewart, eds., W. E. B. Du Bois on Race and Culture: Philosophy, Politics, and Poetics (New York: Routledge, 1996) [on reserve]
Optional background reading
Faye V. Harrison, "The Du Boisian Legacy in Anthropology," Critique of Anthroplogy 12 (1992): 239-60
Lee D. Baker, From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), esp. chpt. 5: "Rethinking Race at the Turn of the Century"
Adolph L. Reed Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996)
Alexander Crummell, "The Black Woman of the South: Her Neglects and Her Needs [1883]," in Destiny and Race: Selected Writings, 1840-1898, ed. Wilson Jeremiah Moses (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 211-23.
Nellie McKay, "W. E. B. Du Bois: The Black Women in His Writings: Selected Fictional and Autobiographical Portraits," in Critical Essays on W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. William L. Andrews (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1985), 230-52.
March 30: On Du Boisian Esthetics
Arnold Rampersad, The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: Schocken, 1990) [out of print; on reserve]
Optional background reading
Gene Bluestein, The Voice of the Folk: Folklore and American Literary Theory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972)
Bernard Bell, The Folk Roots of Contemporary Afro-American Poetry (Detroit: Broadside Press, 1974)
Bell, "W. E. B. Du Bois's Struggle to Reconcile Folk Art and High Art," in Critical Essays on W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. William L. Andrews (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1985), 106-22.
Jean Fagan Yellin, "An Index of Literary Materials in The Crisis, 1910-1934: Articles, Belles Lettres, and Book Reviews" [part 1], CLA Journal 14 (June 1971): 452-65; [part 2], CLA Journal 15 (December 1971): 197-234
April 6: Desegregation or Self-Determination?: Departing the NAACP
Leslie Pinckney Hill, "The Cheyney Training School for Teachers," Crisis 25 (April 1923): 252-54
G. Edward Dickerson; William Lloyd Imes, "The Cheyney Training School," Crisis 26 (May 1923): 18-21
Du Bois, "The Tragedy of 'Jim Crow'," Crisis 26 (August 1923): 169-72
Du Bois, "The Tuskegee Hospital Muddle," Crisis 26 (September 1923): 216-18
Du Bois, "The Negro and Social Reconstruction," in Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887-1961, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), 103-58
Du Bois, "Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?," Journal of Negro Education 4 (July 1935): 328-35; rpt. in The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader, 423-31
Du Bois, "A Negro Nation Within the Nation," Current History 42 (June 1935): 265-70; rpt. in The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader, 431-38
J. E. Spingarn, David E. Pierce, Walter White, Leslie Pinckney Hill, et al., "Segregation: A Symposium," Crisis 41 (March 1934): 79-82.
J. B. Watson, "Du Bois and Segregation," Crisis 41 (August 1934): 243-44
E. Franklin Frazier, "The Du Bois Program in the Present Crisis," Race 1 (Winter 1935-1936): 11-13
George Streator, "In Search of Leadership," Race 1 (Winter 1935-1936): 14-20
George S. Schuyler, "Reflections on Negro Leadership," Crisis 44 (November 1937): 327-28, 347
Optional background reading
James Weldon Johnson, Negro Americans, What Now? (New York: The Viking Press, 1934); rpt. in The Selected Writings of James Weldon Johnson, ed. Sondra Kathryn Wilson, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 2:138-88
April 13: Africa, Pan-Africanism and the World
Du Bois, The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History (New York: The Viking Press, 1947) [on reserve]
Optional background reading
St. Clair Drake, "Hide My Face?: An Essay on Pan-Africanism and Negritude," in Soon One Morning, ed. Herbert Hill (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), 78-105
P. Olisanwuche Esedebe, Pan-Africanism: The Idea and Movement, 1776-1963 (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1982)
Imanuel Geiss, The Pan-African Movement; A History of Pan-Africanism in America, Europe, and Africa, trans. Ann Keep (New York: Africana Pub. Co., 1974)
Colin Legum, Pan-Africanism; A Short Political Guide (London: Pall Mall Press, 1962)
George Shepperson, "Notes on Negro American Influences on the Emergence of African Nationalism," Journal of African History 1 (1960): 299-312
Shepperson, "'Pan-Africanism' and 'pan-Africanism': Some Historical Notes," Phylon 23 (Winter 1962): 346-58
William Leo Hansberry, "W. E. B. Du Bois' Influence on African History," Freedomways 5 (Winter 1965): 73-87; rpt in Black Titan
Richard B. Moore, "Du Bois and Pan-Africa," Freedomways 5 (Winter 1965): 166-87; rpt. in Black Titan
April 20: Dawn or Dusk?: Reflections on an Uncompleted Life
Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Towards an Autobiography of a Race Concept (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1940) [on reserve]
HOLIDAY (Patriot's Day), Monday, April 19; follow Monday Class Schedule on Wednesday, April 21
April 27: Reflections on Black Reconstruction
Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (1935; rpt. Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization Ltd., 1976) [out of print; on reserve]
Optional background reading
James S. Allen, Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy 1865-1876 (New York: International Publishers, 1937) [on reserve]
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1989)
May 4: The Red and the Black
Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944-1963 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986) [out of print; on reserve]
Optional background reading
Philip S. Foner, American Socialism and Black Americans: From the Age of Jackson to World War II (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977)
Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (London; New York: Verso, 1998)
Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983)
Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990)
Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (London: Zed; Totowa, NJ: Biblio Distribution Center, 1983)
May 11 Review
LAST DAY OF CLASSES: Wednesday, May 12
SECOND PAPER DUE Friday, May 14 in main office
Selected Bibliography: The Life and Thougfht of W. E. B. Du Bois
1. Du Bois, W. E. B. Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887-1961, ed. Herbert Aptheker. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985.
2. The Autobiography of W. E. B. DuBois; A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century. New York: International Publishers, 1968.
3. The Black Flame; A Trilogy. New York: Mainstream Publishers, 1957-1961.
4. . Black Folk: Then and Now; An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race. 1939; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, 1970.
5. Black Reconstruction. Millwood, NY: 1935; rpt. Kraus-Thomson Organization Ltd., 1976.
6. Dark Princess, A Romance. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928.
7. Darkwater; Voices from Within the Veil. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920.
8. Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Towards an Autobiography of a Race Concept. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1940.
9. The Education of Black People; Ten Critiques, 1906-1960, ed. Herbert Aptheker. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973.
10. The Gift of Black Folk. Boston: Stratford, 1924.
11. John Brown. Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs & Co., 1909.
12. The Negro. New York: H. Holt, 1915.
13. Newspaper Columns, comp. and ed. Herbert Aptheker. 2 vols. White Plains, NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization, 1986.
14. The Ordeal of Mansart. New York: Mainstream Publishers, 1957.
15. The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader, ed. Eric J. Sundquist. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
16. The Philadelphia Negro. 1899; rpt. Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization Ltd., 1973.
17. Prayers for Dark People, ed. Herbert Aptheker. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980.
18. The Quest of the Silver Fleece; A Novel. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1911.
19. The Seventh Son; The Thought and Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. Julius Lester. 2 vols. New York: Random House, 1971.
20. The Souls of Black Folk, eds. David W. Blight, and Robert Gooding-Williams. 1903; rpt. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997.
21. The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870. 1898; rpt. New York: Russell & Russell, 1965.
22. W. E. B. Du Bois Speaks: Speeches and Addresses, 1890-1919, ed. Philip S. Foner. New York; London: Pathfinder Press, 1970.
23. W. E. B. Du Bois Speaks: Speeches and Addresses, 1920-1963, ed. Philip S. Foner. New York; London: Pathfinder Press, 1970.
24. W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. Meyer Weinberg. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
25. W. E. B. Du Bois on Sociology and the Black Community, eds. Dan S. Green, and Edwin D. Driver. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
26. W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. David L. Lewis. New York: H. Holt, 1995.
27. The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History. New York: The Viking Press, 1947.
28. The World of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Quotation Sourcebook, ed. Meyer Weinberg. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.
29. Worlds of Color. New York: Mainstream Publishers, 1961.
30. McDonnell, Robert W., and Paul G. Partington. W. E. B. Du Bois; A Bibliography of Writings About Him. Whittier, CA: P. G. Partington, 1989.
31. Partington, Paul G. W. E. B. Du Bois: A Bibliography of his Published Writings. Whittier, CA: Partington, 1977.
32. Tuttle, William M., ed. W. E. B. Du Bois, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973.