Jonathan Harrison Jan 15, 2009
W.E.B Du Bois
"For it is the Jim Crow car, and the fact that he may not smoke a cigar and drink a cup of tea with the white man in the South, that most galls William E. Burghardt Du Bois of the Atlanta College for Negroes." (wikipedia)
This quote summerizes the main point that Dubois, in his lifetime of work, strived to get across, the fact that all men are equal and deserve the same natural rights. The example of Jim crow car gives us insight towards the books message that the Jim Crow laws are rediculous and inherintly unfair. Dubois was outraged about the fact that African Americans were good enough to plow the fields but couldn't partake in ordinary pleasentries such as dining or smoking and this problem was the major foundation for the politcal activism in which Dubois took place in the rest of his life.
W. E. B. Dubois " The Souls of Black Folk" was an intricate look into the real problem of racism and assimilation at an inferior level which faced the United States. The politcal movement of Booker T Washington, although inspiring at the time, seems to be nothing more than a sell out or compromise due to the horrable nature of the time. Its easy for me to look back now and criticise Washington's stance for I am one hundred years removed from the situation, yet Dubois is fully addressing the glaring issues that stand out to all of us with a reasonable sense of right and wrong. How can a man be called free if he can't vote to elect the officials that are to represent him. He's not free at all is the anwser, and one learns from a young age that knowledge equals power, and all the great tyrants of the past have known this and forced their will by controling the knowledge available to the general public. Washingtons strategy of elimanting the stepping stones towards higher learning for all African Americans is not a realistic plan to go forward yet a map to keep African Americans at a stand still in a Society that is built on moving forward and making progress. Dubois realized all this right away and this book is a definate cry if not challenge to Booker T and all people of the African American decent to not settle but strive to reach high places and set goals that would be suitable for not only a black child but a white child as well. Their should not be two levels of dreaming and wanting and until every Black man in America starts to want and aspire to be, if not at the same level but even hire, than every white man Dubois would argue that The color issue will never go away and the African American people will never progress to the level that they rightfully should. Dubois definately holds the more modern and more likeable opinion between himself and Washington, yet I am born Hundred years after the fact and can not be a true judge just give education opinions on who's right and who's wrong.
