First published in 1903, this extraordinary work
not only recorded and explained history, it helped to alter its course. Written
after Du Bois had earned his Ph.D. from Harvard and studied in Berlin, these 14
essays contain both the academic language of sociology and the rich lyrics of
African spirituals, which Du Bois called "sorrow songs." New
introduction by Randall Kenan. Major school adoption title.
The Souls of Black Folk
Price: $5.95
On Double Consciousness
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the
Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and
gifted with second-sight in this American world,--a world which yields him no
true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of
the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this
sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring
one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One
ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts,
two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged
strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this
strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self
into a better and truer self. ...
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Excerpted from the chapter "Of Our Spiritual
Strivings"