The Souls of Black Folk

Fourteen chapters, thirteen essays and a short story, several revised from earlier magazine pieces, in which Du Bois sets out to show the spiritual world of Black Americans a generation after emancipation. The Forethought announces that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line. The first essay introduces the veil that separates Black and white America and double consciousness, the sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of a world that looks on with contempt. Other chapters assess the Freedmen's Bureau and the aftermath of emancipation, criticise Booker T. Washington's emphasis on industrial training and accommodation, defend higher education for Black students, describe life in the rural South, and mourn the death of Du Bois's infant son. Each chapter opens with lines of verse and a few bars of a spiritual, and the last essay is a study of these sorrow songs.

Double consciousness remains one of the most influential ideas in the philosophy of race, and the book shows philosophy, history, sociology and lyric prose working together.