On "The Souls of Black Folk" by W. E. B. Du Bois ***

This is the first of about ten books I've pulled from the Black Panther Reading List (https://library.pugetsound.edu/c.php?g=782488&p=5607493), which is not a list of books by or about the Black Panthers but rather a list of books, as I understand it, that the Black Panthers assigned to their members at the height of the movement. The idea of reading such a list came to me while listening to the Mother Country Radicals podcast. On that podcast, a story is recounted wherein a young recruit attending a meeting learns about becoming armed. He tells the person running the meeting he wants to be so armed; the next day, expecting some sort of weaponry, he's instead handed a stack of books: "These are your arms." So I thought it would be intriguing to read what such members were being armed with--a sort of different way to approach reading about the Panthers: read what they read.

Du Bois's book is the oldest on the list. I'm glad finally to get around to reading it and to reading his work. He's been referenced so often in other reading, it seems a shame it took me so long to get around to him.

This classic book is at its best when Du Bois gives us his historical take on the Reconstruction period. I had never read about the Freedmen's Bureau, for instance, at such length; another chapter focuses on the work of Booker T. Washington, who has long come in for a great deal of criticism for his accomodationism, and there is no exception here. There is also chapter on African American religion that I found intriguing. Du Bois spends much of his work focusing on how to improve circumstances for freedmen--via education, via political means. These discussions, alongside the history, are the most interesting.

When Du Bois veers into more personal territory, recounting visiting a poor family or having a child, I found my mind more often wandering. As with many authors of the time, he waxes poetic, with flowery language, in these situations, and I found myself more interested in the larger issues of the other essays.

That's not to say that these personal flairs don't connect to the larger themes. The penultimate chapter reads more like story than an essay. It's about a man who went north for education; his return to the South does not go well. He is seen by whites in the area as "uppity" simply for acting like a human being, often, it seems, even without intending to make some sort of political or activist stance. He's suspect to whites, because of his education, and perhaps has also become a bit "out of practice" kowtowing to southern ways. His next to final sin is daring the kids in a class he teaches to learn something of their own culture (I hear echoes or the current ban on certain "race conscious" readings in Florida--I can't believe we're still dealing with such bans one-hundred-plus years later). In the end, he finds that he can't stay, which means that the hometown locals don't receive the aid that that education he has received should have enabled for their community. It's the story of one man--one likely similar to Du Bois himself in some ways--but it makes the larger points about the difficulties presented in improving the lot of a large segment of the people of the nation.