Final Look at the Souls of Black Folk

The final chapters of DuBois’ work center on the question of what he and other characters believe constitutes “the real world” in the years after emancipation. DuBois uses the story of the birth of his child to discuss the urge to protect life “behind the veil” and still pretend that life as a black man could be separate but equal in order to better enjoy life. The death of his son brings him crashing back to the reality that life can’t remain behind the veil. His knowledge that the humanity and emotion experienced at his son’s funeral were sacred experiences that any man ought to consider holy clashes bitterly with the idea that whites witnessing the procession must think little of him and his companions dressed up in their church finery. 

I was continuously interested in Du Bois’ use of symbolism, which  revolves around vision. The ‘‘veil’’ is his main metaphor for the distance and misconception between black and white Americans, and is responsible for the way African Americans see themselves as dualistic and distorted. Darkness generally symbolizes ignorance and despair, such as in the opening to ‘‘The Sorrow Songs’’; enslaved black people in the past are termed ‘‘they that walked in darkness.’’ Similar use of imagery seemed to concern impaired vision including haze, dimness, dusk, shadow, and mist. 

Du Bois first mentions the ‘‘veil” in his forethought and extends the metaphor throughout the text. The ‘‘veil” is a metaphoric film between black people and white America that obscures the true identity of black people. Du Bois attributes the confused dual identity of his people to the ‘‘veil,” which makes it impossible for blacks to see themselves in entirety as well. Du Bois extrapolates on his metaphor with extensive use of visual imagery, or the impairment thereof. Darkness, light, brightness, shadow, and haze appear throughout the text. In effect, according to Du Bois, difficulty in perception is fundamental to being African American. 

The Souls of Black Folk

W. E. B. DuBois establishes two focal ideas in the initial five chapters of The Souls of Black Folk. First, Dubois presents the historic “problem” of black identity and the “color-line” throughout not only America history but also international history. His argument extends up to the present to establish blacks as both American citizens and American victims. This “double identity” would be a continual problem for blacks and whites alike, according to DuBois.
Secondly, DuBois notes that while emancipation was noble, the lack of infrastructure to accommodate the release of hundreds of thousands of former slaves into the American economy developed a major disruption for the national and regional governments. Regardless of the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which had as its charter the job of organizing the freed slaves and helping them assimilate into a capitalist and democratic society, without a method for measuring the ways in which blacks needed to be equipped for their newfound freedom, it was hard for the association to recognize and provide the fundamental information and preparation the freed men needed.
DuBois does not consider the Freedmen’s Bureau a failure, by any means. He describes both how the organization helped blacks advance in attaining education, pursuing the ownership of land, enjoying more civil rights, and where it was unable to help them as effectively in securing the vote, attaining equal political and judicial representation, changing centuries of prejudiced attitudes. The creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau created diverging opinions among politicians, who debated not only where the Bureau should operate within the national government but also what its functions were. The annual renewal of the Bureau’s charter was also the subject of heated arguments that revealed the confused reception of emancipation.