One Hundred Years Ago
By Dwight A. Moody, Dean of the Chapel
Georgetown University, KY

            One hundred years ago: two brothers took their new-fangled flying machine for a North Carolina ride; both the Buick and the Ford motor companies were born; Niagara Falls slowed to a drought-induced trickle; and Harry C. Gammeter patented the multigraph duplicating machine.

            That same year William Edward Bughardt DuBois burst upon the cultural scene as a writer of courage, elegance, and erudition. He did so with the publication of a collection of essays entitled The Souls of Black Folk.

            “It struck like a thunderclap,” someone said; and another described it as “the only Southern book of any distinction published in many a year.” Its only rival for influence within the black community was Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

From the day of the book’s publication until his death in 1963, DuBois was an intellectual and literary star with few peers.

I picked up a centennial copy of the book some weeks ago, published by “The Modern Library of the World’s Best Books.” The introduction alone was worth the price, a biographical and literary preface written by David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize winning historian of Rutgers University.

Here’s what I learned. At age 20, DuBois entered Harvard, eventually becoming the first black person to earn the doctor of philosophy degree from that university. At age 34, while a professor at Atlanta University, he published the aforementioned book. At age 42 he was instrumental in establishing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. At age 66, he broke with the NAACP, returned to teaching, and in the following years, published four books.

That’s not all. At age 76, he served as advisor to the founding of the United Nations. At age 83, he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Senate then was indicted by a McCarthy-era grand jury, leaving him disillusioned with American democracy. At age 90 he was honored by both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Finally at age 95, he died a citizen and resident of Ghana.

Here’s what Lewis thinks: “DuBois wrote of the genius, humanity, and destiny of people of African descent with a passion, eloquence, and lucidity intended to deliver a reeling blow to the prevailing claims of the day of black inferiority.”

Along the way, DuBois criticized the then-dominant, technical-school philosophy of Booker T. Washington, advocating instead the long-term necessity of liberal arts and professional education for African-Americans.

Du Bois introduced the hyphenated description “African-American” and preferred the phrase “people of color” to the word Negroes. He pioneered a sociological analysis based of close observation and description, first in Philadelphia and then in Georgia. He understood, long before others, that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”

He spoke of “the Veil” that separates the black from white; and of his own first-born son: “And thus in the Land of the Color-line I saw, as it fell across my baby, the shadow of the Veil. Within the Veil he was born, and there within he shall live, seeing with those bright, wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw the shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby.”

W. E. B. DuBois asserted that “the music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody with its touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil.” He would not, therefore, have been surprised at the numerous offspring of this music; with names like jazz, rhythm and blues, gospel, rock and roll, and soul.

“But back of this,” he observed, “still broods silently the deep religious feeling of the real Negro heart, the stirring unguided might of powerful human souls who have lost the guiding star of the past and are seeking in the great night a new religious ideal. Someday the Awakening will come, when the pent-up vigor of ten million souls shall sweep irresistibly toward the goal, out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where all that makes life worth living—Liberty, Justice, and Right—is marked ‘For White People Only’.”

A work of prophecy and also of powerful prose: no wonder this book was deemed worthy of a centennial edition; it certainly is worthy of another generation of readers.

© 2004 Dwight A. Moody

Updated Sunday, March 07, 2004