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.