92 DL6b
Broderick, Francis L $>5,00
*EBo Du Bois, Megro leader
lii a time of crisis. Stanford,
Calif 0, Stanford University
Press, 1959*
259p*
MOV 10 1!75
WEF ,HJ1
STACKS 92 D816b
Broderick, Francis L.
W.E.B. Du Bois, Negro
leader in a time of
1959.
Photograph by Carl Van Vechten
William Edward Burghardt DuBois
W. 8. ft
NEGRO LEADER
IN A TIME OF CRISIS
by
Francis . Roderick
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Stanford, California
1939
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
1959 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-7422
PUBLISHED WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE FORD FOUNDATION
To Mother and Dad
W^TPORT OCT 29 1959
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A study of the public career of a complex figure like William
Edward Burghardt DuBois, who has put so much on the record
and who has been a controversial figure for over half a century,
invites controversy at almost every chapter. It is not the job of
the historian to avoid controversy. It is his job to reconstruct the
past as accurately as his limitations permit, even when his judg
ments contradict existing judgments. This is what I have done.
My intention has been neither to exalt nor to demean Dr. DuBois;
it has been to understand him in the context of his time.
My work has put me in debt to many people. At the head of
the list is Dr. DuBois himself. Not only did he ease my way into
sources of information, such as the Harvard archives, which other
wise would have been unavailable; he also gave me unlimited
access to his own voluminous papers. Since he has kept full and
well-organized files since his adolescence, this opened up a sizable
body of material without which it would have been almost im
possible to look into the first half of his life. Unfortunately my
research had been carried only to 1910 when, at the time of his
indictment by a federal grand jury in 1951, he closed his papers
to outsiders. My chapters for the period following 1910 had to
rely on other material, published and unpublished. I am grate
ful for his permission to use the material already collected. While
I worked in Dr. DuBois s office, first at the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People and then at the Council
on African Affairs, I had the continuing cooperation of his sec
retary, Lillian Murphy, and, in the early months of my work, of
his research assistant, Hugh H. Smythe. Dr. Smythe did much
to orient me in Negro history and made available to me a number
of DuBois s speeches in 1948.
Many others have helped along the way. I have a continuing
obligation to Oscar Handlin, who guided the work from the be
ginning and gave the final version a close critical reading, both
vii
VH1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
for style and for content. His own published work suggests what
a valuable aid this has been. Walter P. Metzger read through the
manuscript carefully; almost every page is better because of his
suggestions. Richard F. Niebling and Janet Wicks Gillespie went
over the text with me chapter by chapter, and Henry W. Bragdon
gave me some valuable tips on organization. Eric F. Goldman
advised me in the early stages. Herbert Aptheker did much to
ease my orientation in the DuBois papers and generously made
available to me the work he had done in the DuBois papers on
the Niagara Movement. Leslie H. Fishel, Jr., pointed out many
bits of material on DuBois in the Negro press. I profited a great
deal from conversations with C. Flint Kellogg, who worked in the
DuBois papers at the same time as I, and even more from a three-
day exchange of views and notes with Elliott M. Rudwick, who
was studying DuBois from a different point of view. Arna Bon-
temps helped me track down a reference on DuBois and gave me
a revealing comment on DuBois s influence on the "Negro Renais
sance." The late Walter White allowed me to look at the files of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
and to study the minutes of its board of directors. Until the late
stages of my work, I knew August Meier only through his writings.
Personal acquaintance has confirmed what is apparent in his pub
lished workthat is, a subtle grasp of Negro history of the past
hundred years.
Library and librarians carried toleration far. I am grateful
for the courtesies of the Widener and Houghton Libraries at Har
vard, the Davis Library at Phillips Exeter Academy, the manu
script division of the Library of Congress, the Sterling Memorial
Library at Yale, the New York Public Library and its branch, the
Schomburg Collection, the Union Theological Seminary Library,
the Boston Public Library, the State University of Iowa Library,
the Howard University Library, and the Congregational Library
in Boston. I owe a special debt to Jean Blackwell at the Schom
burg Collection and to Margaret P. Tate at the Davis Library.
My wife, Barbara Baldridge Broderick, has put up with much
in the name of DuBois. Her patience has been admirable, but her
judgment and skepticism have been worth even more. I can see
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX
why scholars want wives, but I do not understand how they can
get them.
Though everybody knows it, I suppose I must say explicitly
that none of these people bears responsibility for anything which
appears below.
Parts of the material in this book have appeared, in different
form, in the Progressive, the Journal of Negro Education, Phylon,
and (without my permission) in the Negro History Bulletin.
A word on the footnotes. I am reluctant to weigh down the
book with them, yet anxious to satisfy the curiosity of the reader
about the precise time and place of something Dr. DuBois has
said. The result is a compromise which, like most compromises,
will satisfy nobody. I have given the source for quotations close
to the length of a sentence, but not for single words or phrases
picked up because of their characteristic flavor. In borderline
cases, I have followed my own whim. When I discuss Dr. DuBois s
books at some length, it has not seemed necessary to add dozens
of useless citations for each page from which a quotation was
drawn.
F. L. B.
Exeter, New Hampshire
November i, 1958
PREFACE
American Negroes greeted liberation from slavery as the "day of
jubilee," not realizing that emancipation only freed them for a
long struggle, the end of which is still not in sight. That struggle
has now been carried on beyond three generations, and for each
of these there arose a leader whose career symbolized an epoch.
For thirty years, from 1865 to 1895, Frederick Douglass spoke
for Negro America. A crusading abolitionist, he carried the tra
dition of democratic idealism into the period when the goal of
freedom was not the abrogation of slavery but the enjoyment of
political, civil, and social equality. A loyal Republican office
holder, Douglass continued to demand full rights for Negroes even
after they were set adrift by the party of Lincoln, and when the
South began to impose ever narrower limitations on Negro equal
ity. Until his death in 1895, he spoke brave words. But by 1895
they were hollow words.
As if by prearrangement, Booker T. Washington came to na
tional prominence the year Douglass died. The principal of a
Negro industrial school in Alabama, Washington viewed the Ne
gro s plight from its lowest economic level, not from the plane of
justice. The period of his leadership coincided with the great
retreat into disfranchising constitutions and Jim Crow legislation
in the South. Though he never repudiated a single long-range
goal of Douglass s program for Negro progress, Washington was
prepared to move cautiously through a dark night, speaking soft
words to white men and careful words to colored men. For twenty
years Washington appealed to a national mood of moderation on
Negro rights: economic progress, especially through industrial
education, and postponement of civil, political, and, above all,
social equality.
At Washington s death in 1915, the Negroand perhaps the
nation as a whole was ready for the uncompromising demands of
W. E. B. DuBois. Some would say that the leadership passed
xi
xii PREFACE
years before; but that would be hard to concede. Long restive
under Washington s acquiescence in second-class citizenship, Du-
Bois ordered the Negro to be a man and demanded that white
America recognize him as such. Slowly at first and then in in
creasing numbers, the race responded, so that even when DuBois
faltered after thirty years of shouting, enough of the race had
heard him to carry on without him. A generation looking for
Negro equality by 1963, the hundredth anniversary of the Eman
cipation Proclamation, is using his great ideas.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Preface xi
I. The Search for a Career i
II. The Scholar s Role 33
III. From Tower to Arena 55
IV. Entente with White Liberals 90
V. Pan-Africa and Socialism 123
VI. Negro Chauvinism 150
VII. The Time of Hesitation 180
VIII. The Eclipse of Race 198
IX. The Man behind the Myth 227
Bibliographical Note 233
Notes 237
Index 253
Xlll
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
After his birth in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, Will
DuBois took twenty-six years to settle on a career. A black man
in a white culture, he learned that the barrier of color created
two worlds: a dominant white society and a separate Negro com
munity. Alert and sensitive, he became a part of both worlds. In
the process, nothing impressed him so much as the intensity of
the hostility between them, yet he came to see in each the roots of
reconcilation: among white men, a commitment to Christianity,
democracy, and truth; among Negroes, a wealth of undirected
talent avid for leadership. Here was the task for a young man s
lifetime: to set his talents as the mediator between two cultures.
With that goal in view, young Will DuBois, bright pupil and
high-school orator, moved on to his career as Dr. W. E. Burghardt
DuBois, historian, sociologist, teacher, and missionary to both
races.
Doing the Groundwork
[ A mulatto of French Huguenot, Dutch, and Negro ancestry,
Will DuBois the name is pronounced Du-Boyce was born into
Great Barrington s small Negro community, perhaps fifty strong
in a town of five thousand. 1 It was a confined, provincial group.
It kept in touch with the colored families in the nearby town of
Lee, but as a rule its world did not stretch beyond the Berkshires^
When the National Convention of Colored Men met in Louis
ville, Kentucky, in 1883 a meeting which attracted Frederick
Douglass, the best-known spokesman for the race, and other lead
ers from twenty-four states Great Barrington Negroes took no
interest except to disapprove of this sort of concerted action.
These same older, established families also looked down their
noses at "contraband" Negroes immigrating from the South and
breaking in on their comfortably settled society.
2 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
The Burghardts, Will s mother s family, had been in the com
munity since Revolutionary days; Will s maternal great-grand
father, born a slave, had been manumitted after fighting briefly
for the colonial forces. Ever since, the family had had small farms
in nearby Egremont Plains. Will s father s family lived farther
east. His paternal grandfather, Alexander DuBois, had been a
steward on a ship on the West Indies run, and Will s father,
Alfred, had been born in Santo Domingo. When the family
settled down in New Haven, Connecticut, Alfred fled from his
stern parent and found his way west to Great Barrington to ply
his trade as a barber. There he married Mary Burghardt. When
Will was still quite young, his father wandered away and did not
return, and the young lad and his mother moved to grandfather
Burghardt s farm.
When Will reached school age, his mother left her father s
farm and came to town, determined to give her son every possible
educational opportunity. In town he could attend the public
school regularly. If she could get him a good education, then suc
cess, she was sure, was just a matter of sacrifice and hard work. Am
bitious for her son, she gave him her sense of purpose, and in turn
enjoyed his little successes as her own. Her brother, also a barber,
shared their cramped tenement and helped with their expenses.
She pieced out their income by occasional domestic service; some
unobtrusive charity added a little more; and, as Will grew older,
he helped a bit with boyish chores: splitting kindling, mowing
lawns, firing a stove in a millinery shop.
For young Will it was a happy life. In an unpublished short
story written some years later, DuBois, under a thin disguise, re
called his boyhood as almost idyllic: a "demure" town with its
winding Housatonic River searching out the way from the Great
Hoosac Range to the Taconic Hills; skating by moonlight on
Mansfield Pond, coasting down Castle Hill (where the railroad
added the spice of real danger), and playing Indians during the
summer. There was a brook running through the little yard in
front of his house. There were the sweet eyes and filmy dresses
of his landlady s niece.
The white community found room for him in its social life,
for in this Northern region the color line was faint. Years later,
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 3
he could recall "almost no experience of segregation or color dis
crimination." 2 His schoolmates, mostly white, welcomed him
readily in their activities and in their homes, and when occasional
quarrels grew into pitched battles, they followed boyish logic
rather than the color line. Like the richer white children, whom
Will "annexed" as his "natural companions," young Will felt
the native s patronizing scorn for the overdressed children of sum
mer colonists. Social divisions were defined more clearly by class
than by color. When the influx of an Irish and South German
working class into the town s manufacturing plant added an alien
element to the homogeneous community of Americans of Eng
lish and Dutch descent, the Burghardts, resident in the neighbor
hood for several generations, associated themselves with the es
tablished families rather than with the newcomers. For his part,
young Will "cordially despised" the mill workers as a "ragged,
ignorant, drunken proletariat, grist for the dirty woolen mills
and the poor-house." 3 From his companions, as well as from his
mother, he learned the capitalist ethic of late nineteenth-century
America: "Wealth was the result of work and saving and the rich
rightly inherited the earth. The poor, on the whole, were to be
blamed. They were lazy or unfortunate, and if unfortunate their
fortunes could easily be mended by thrift and sacrifice." 41
DuBois s own experience in school confirmed this philosophy:
without financial resources, he achieved success on his ability
alone. He took the standard "classical" college preparatory course:
four years of Latin and three of Greek; arithmetic, algebra, and
geometry in three of the four years; one year of English; a year of
ancient and American history; and scattered bits of geography,
physiology, and hygiene. In addition, like every other student,
he presented compositions, declamations, and recitations, and per
formed occasional exercises in reading, spelling, and music. Com
peting with the children of the town s leading families, he matched
his talent against theirs and usually won. DuBois recalls that
while they struggled to perform well for visitors, he answered
glibly, tauntingly. His high-school principal, Frank A. Hosmer,
encouraged him to plan for college and even helped to provide
the necessary textbooks. Will rewarded Hosmer s confidence by
completing the high-school course with high honors, along with
4 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
various extracurricular distinctions such as the presidency of the
high-school lyceum. (Many years after DuBois s school days at
Great Barrington, DuBois wondered what would have happened
if Hosmer had been "born with no faith in darkies/ ") 5
Several decades later, as DuBois recalled these experiences with
wonder, he realized that if the high school had had fraternities,
honor societies, and dances, there might have been more color dis
crimination. As it was, however, the color line only faintly crossed
his educational experience. When students differed, it was merely
a difference in levels and types of talent: Art Gresham could draw
caricatures for the High School Howler, DuBois could express his
meaning better in words; Mike McCarthy, a perfect marble player,
was dumb in Latin. Will was inferior in ball games but could
lead the pack in exploring, story-telling, and planning intricate
games. He happened to have a lively intellect he accepted the
fact and reveled in it. At the home of Maria Baldwin, a teacher
at the high school, he would make himself the center of argument:
this was, as he says himself, his "hottest, narrowest, self-centered,
confident period, with only faint beginnings of doubts," when he
knew most things "definitely" and argued with a "scathing, un
sympathetic finality that scared some into silence." 6 The impor
tant fact was that neither the argument nor the silence arose from
color. Indeed Miss Baldwin, herself a Negro instructor of hun
dreds of white children, effectively symbolized Great Barrington s
apparent indifference to race.
In the Negro community DuBois came to hold a special place.
As a member of one of the oldest families, as the only Negro in
his high-school class of twelve, as one of the two or three students
who would go on to college, and as the local correspondent for a
Negro newspaper, he took on seriousness and self-importance all
out of proportion to his sixteen years. Already DuBois was fasci
nated by the record of his own intellectual development. At the
age of fifteen, he was gathering and annotating his collected
papers. In the same year, he had started to use his newspaper
column in the New York Globe as a running critical commentary
on the internal activities of the Negro community. The Globe
(later the New York Freeman) was a pioneer newspaper published
by T. Thomas Fortune to serve as a chronicle for Negroes of the
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 5
northeast. It gave much space to national news, but it kept its
local touch through short columns of items supplied by dozens
of local correspondents. Few reporters were as young as Will,
yet there was probably no one in the neighborhood of Great
Barrington better equipped by education and interest. The re
porter quickly became a social critic. The services at the African
Methodist Episcopal Church he found "interesting," though not
as fully attended as they might have been. He recorded the gen
eral regret among "our people" that they had no local business
men. On another occasion, "those intending to replenish their
libraries" were advised "to consult the Globe correspondent be
fore so doing." He encouraged the suggestion of forming a liter
ary society in the colored community as the "best thing" for people
there. He condemned "another wrangle" in the Negro church at
Lee as a "shocking scene." During the Christmas season of 1884,
the Sons of Freedom, of which DuBois was secretary-treasurer,
decided to take up the history of the United States at its next
meeting and "pursue it as far as possible." Two weeks later he
reported that it had been pursued with profit. The citizens of
the town formed a law-and-order society to curb the sale of liquor;
DuBois said it would be a "good plan" for some colored men to
join. Alarmed by the numbers of Negroes absent from town meet
ing, he warned his readers sternly that they took too little interest
in politics to protect their rights. He even proposed a caucus to
line up a solid bloc of Negro votes. Little escaped his interest.
Week by week, he awarded gold stars to the local Negro commu
nity, or turned himself into the village scold. 7
Toward the end of his high-school course, he escaped the shel
tered valley, and as he visited the larger Negro concentrations in
Connecticut and Rhode Island, he felt overwhelmed by the full
grandeur of the race. At New Bedford he met his grandfather,
old Alexander DuBois, a formidable figure short, thick-set, taci
turn; curt but civil with his grandson; awesome with the dignity
of eighty years. At Rocky Point, Rhode Island, where Will wit
nessed an unusually large congregation of Negroes "of every hue
and bearing," he was "transported with amazement and dreams."
Noting nothing of poverty and degradation, he saw only "ex
traordinary beauty of skin-color and utter equality of mien." 8
6 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
Characteristically, in his reports on these trips he balanced satis
faction and regret: he found evidences of industry and wealth
but not enough literary societies, which "of all things ought not
to be neglected." 9
During that time DuBois sensed little slights which he asso
ciated with his color. Among the older girls with whom he had
played for years, coolness developed when strangers or summer
boaders came to town. One summer visitor cut Will by refusing
his "visiting card" in a juvenile (and therefore very serious)
burlesque of a custom of their elders. In school he came to sense
an aloofness rooted in something other than resentment of his
superior academic ability. In politics the color line was more per
ceptible. On the one hand, the Globe recorded that Negroes took
part in town meetings as a matter of course and marched in politi
cal parades without being "tucked in the rear nor parcelled off by
themselves." 10 But, on the other hand, when the Republican town
committee selected a white Democrat for night watchman over a
Negro Republican, DuBois could not doubt that racial bias had
dictated the appointment. When the town determined to push
Will s career along, he was characteristically shunted off to Fisk,
a Negro college in Tennessee training young Negroes to lead their
own people, rather than prepared directly for Harvard, the goal
of his ambitions, or for Amherst or Williams, closer at hand. His
Negro friends resented his being sent off to school in the South
(among "his own people," as his white supporters put it), for the
South had an "unholy name" in DuBois s community, and his
family and his colored friends regarded the citizens of Great
Barrington, not the Southern Negroes, as "his people." Yet, as
DuBois himself noted later, Great Barrington could not expect
that a colored person of his talents would find an adequate role
in the local social system.
Despite these occasional hints that New England was not al
together color blind, DuBois left Great Barrington in the summer
of 1885 with tittle first-hand awareness of discrimination. The
town had accepted him as a person, admitting him to its select
society and sharing with him its disdain for the newcomers who-
worked in the mills and worshipped in the Catholic church. It
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 7
had trained him. It had encouraged him to higher education,
and had even contributed to his college expenses.
Young Will set out for Tennessee in the fall of 1885. Seven
teen years old, slight in build, he had a handsome bronze skin,
dark hair, sharp features. He moved and spoke rapidly a young
man in a hurry. His mother died just before he left, too soon to
see his exciting career develop, but not too soon to see him well
launched upon it. A simple and untutored woman, she had left
young Will her pride in a family free since Revolutionary times,
her ambition for his success, and her determination to make every
sacrifice necessary for that success. To his credit, DuBois remem
bered this legacy with deep gratitude each time he reflected on
his early years. The mature DuBois linked her name with William
James in describing the formative influences crucial for his de
velopment.
During his three years at Fisk the quality of his work at Great
Barrington admitted him to sophomore standing upon entrance-
he found himself in a very different world. Later he would recall
the experience:
I was tossed boldly into the "Negro Problem." From a section
and circumstances where the status of me and my folk could be
rationalized as the result of poverty and limited training, and
settled essentially by schooling and hard effort, I suddenly came
to a region where the world was split into white and black
halves, and where the darker half was held back by race preju
dice and legal bonds, as well as by deep ignorance and dire
poverty. 11
Yet what resources appeared to meet the problem! When Will
was set down at Fisk among two hundred students from all parts
of the South, a new world opened up to himnot a little lost
group, but "a world in size and a civilization in potentiality." At
Great Barrington high school, he had been almost alone. But
at Fisk, thirty-five Negroes were registered in the college depart
ment. Here, he thought, was the advance guard of the Negro
civilizing army; here the yearning for truth which would bring
the Negro race abreast of modern civilization; here the variety of
8 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
hue in both sexes which showed the immense physical richness
of the Negro mass; here the difference in background, a catalog of
Negro experience in nineteenth-century America. To Will, who
had never been south of New Haven, fellow students from Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, . for the most part
five to ten years older than he, "could paint from their own ex
perience a wide and vivid picture of the post-war South and of its
black millions. There were men . . . who knew every phase of
insult and repression." 12 DuBois s two summer sessions of teach
ing in Wilson County introduced him to the Southern rural Ne
gro, whose poverty made every day spent in school during the
summer months a financial drain, but who nonetheless sought out
education for himself and for his children.
As DuBois saw them all, his spirit took possession of them,
and his ambition told him to lead them. In a "public rhetorical"
he told his Fisk classmates, "ye destined leaders of a noble people":
"I am a Negro; and I glory in the name! I am proud of the black
blood that flows in my veins. From all the recollections dear to
my boyhood have I come here, not to pose as a critic but to join
hands with this, my people." He spoke with passion of the "mis
sion of the black orator of the soth century" to raise his people
by the power of truth. 13 Almost sixty years later, DuBois could
still remember the fervor of those days: "The excellent and earnest
teaching, the small college classes; the absence of distractions,
either in athletics or society, enabled me to re-arrange and re
build my program for freedom and progress among Negroes. I
replaced my hitherto egocentric world by a world centering and
whirling about my race in America. . . . Through the leadership
of men like me and my fellows, we were going to have these en
slaved Israelites out of the still enduring bondage in short order." 14
Along with similar colleges, such as Atlanta and Howard, Fisk
had been founded after the Civil War to help train Negro youth
as a leaven of intelligence for the race as a whole. Supported
largely by Northern white philanthropic organizations or by de
nominational groups, and at one time aided financially by the
Freedmen s Bureau, these colleges drew students from all parts
of the South. Fisk itself, founded and supported by the American
Missionary Society, spoke of its purpose in its catalog for 1884-
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 9
1885: "Fisk University aims to be a great center of the best Chris
tian Educational forces for the training of the colored youth
of the South, that they may be disciplined and inspired as leaders
in the vitally important work that needs to be done for their race
in this country and on the continent of Africa." The college hoped
"to thoroughly establish among the colored youth the conviction
of the absolute necessity of patient, long-continued, exact and
comprehensive work in preparation for high positions and large
responsibilities." 15
Within the walls of the University, accepting and accepted by
the all-white teaching staff, DuBois had three enriching years. In
his first year, he studied the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Greek
Testament; conic sections and the calculus; rhetoric; French gram
mar and literature; and botany. In junior year, he read Livy and
Tacitus along with Demosthenes Oration on the Crown and
Sophocles Antigone, studied German grammar and translations,
and found time for physiology, hygiene, and astronomy. Finally
in his senior year, he and six classmates studied "mental sciences/
using John Bascom s Science of Mind and James McCosh s Laws
of Discursive Thought. Ethics, political economy, English litera
ture, and a laboratory course in chemistry rounded out a heavy
schedule. The university explicitly rejected industrial education
as part of its formal curriculum, but, as the catalog put it, "man
ual labor is dignified and made honorable." 16
Almost forty years later, on the occasion of a commencement
address at Fisk, and perhaps under the influence of the occasion,
DuBois recalled those three years of "splendid inspiration" and
"nearly perfect happiness" with teachers whom he respected, amid
surroundings which inspired him. The ten years after Fisk he
chronicled as "a sort of prolongation of my Fisk college days. I
was at Harvard but not of it. I was a student of Berlin but still
the son of Fisk." 1T At Fisk Adam Spence taught him Greek,
and Frederick A. Chase the natural sciences. DuBois came to
think of these two, along with William James and Albert Bush-
nell Hart at Harvard, as the persons outside his own family who
had influenced him most. With a missionary commitment to the
uplift of the Negro race, this devoted band, headed by President
Erastus Cravath, spurred DuBois on by judging his skills and
1O THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
knowledge without attention to his color. When, at the end of
three years at Fisk, DuBois looked North to Harvard, they en
dorsed his application with praise beyond the usual platitudes
of letters of recommendation. Though Fiske did not have a
regular marking and ranking system, President Cravath spoke
of DuBois s high rank, noted his "unusually quick, active mind,"
and could hardly fail to mention that Will was ambitious. Other
teachers referred to his manliness, faithfulness to duty, earnest
ness in study, and excellent scholarship. Chase in the physical
sciences gave a more revealing picture by recording that in addi
tion to his regular assignments, Will had done outside work in
anatomy, and, though he never overworked and had a remarkable
capacity for sleep, he achieved "first grade" in scholarship. Chase
admitted that DuBois might give the impression of being some
what conceited, but added that this trait would not prevent faith
ful work. 18 In DuBois s mind, this encouragement from his Fisk
teachers did something to compensate for the discriminatory pat
tern of Southern life.
They had much to redeem. Away from Fisk, DuBois was not
a promising student, but simply a Negro; and thus the "race ques
tion" at last became an intimate experience pressing in on him
daily. The move toward legal segregation and Negro disfranchise-
ment had not yet gained ground in the South, but informally
enforced etiquette and extralegal coercion made personal affronts
routine. In a generous mood, DuBois could explain the South s
attitude in terms of ignorance or misunderstanding: in an unpub
lished short story written in these years, he tells of a young Negro
teacher who recognizes, after a conversation with two white men
in a village store, that the white South s intentions are good and
that its prejudice would yield to education. But how long could
patience and generosity mask the hostile white world which, this
hot-tempered Negro boy was sure, rejected black men as "aliens,
strangers, outcasts from the House of Jacob niggers." 19 In his
own person, he saw the kind of teacher and the sort of education
which Tennessee was giving to the Negro a college student who
for two months in the summer worked for $28 or $30 in an antique
shack in Wilson County to bring culture to Negroes who had had
only one other school session since the Civil War.
THE SEApE FOR A CAREER 1 1
In his junior or senior year, DuBois put together a full state
ment of the Negro s grievances. In "An Open Letter to the South
ern People,"* written about 1887, DuBois assailed the arbitrary
line between the white man and the Negro in the South; they were,
respectively, patrician and plebeian, capitalist and laborer, Demo
crat and Republican. He pointed to an anomaly: while justifying
disfranchisement by Negro ignorance, the white South refused
equal educational opportunities. Trial by peers, a free ballot,
free entrance into the various callings of life all had been denied
to the Negro. The white South placed the Negro at the level of
a dog or a horse. He warned that Negroes, forced into the galley,
the hovel, and the Jim Crow car, responded with hatred, which
retarded the progress of both races. Yet there was hope: if the
"best of you" in the white South would lay aside race prejudice
and make common cause with educated Negro leaders, together
they could give direction to the masses. This appeal was directed
at Southern white conservatives who, as C. Vann Woodward says,
held to "an aristocratic philosophy of paternalism and noblesse
oblige" and who felt more comfortable with mannerly colored
men than with what a Charleston paper called "unmannerly and
ruffianly white men." 20 DuBois rejected their paternalism, for he
felt that he, and educated Negroes like him, shared this noblesse;
yet he was anxious to work with them, for he hoped that the black
and white men of taste and education could join hands to lead the
ignorant of both races. Needless to say, this appeal went un
heededthe walls rarely come tumbling down in response to
manifestoes by college students.
About the same time that DuBois was urging enlightened white
men to join hands with educated Negroes, he made a dramatic
appeal to Negroes as well. Speaking at an intercollegiate conven
tion of Negro students, the fiery young orator told them to throw
off their "political serfdom" in the Republican party and to vote
on issues, specifically issues important to the Negro, like federal
aid to education, civil rights, and lynching. If Negroes voted
thoughtfully, he said, "gratitude for services rendered would be
due not to the party but to the principles upon which it stands.
* The letter, now in the DuBois papers, was probably never published.
12 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
When it leaves those principles, it leaves it[s] right to your suf
frages. Too often have men forgotten the substance principle and
gone after the shadow party. . . . Neglecting the sacred duties of
citizenship more sacred in a Republic than elsewhere, they have
given up the manipulation of parties into the hands of political
bosses and ward machines who represent no principles but those
of dishonesty and avarice; then taking a ballot labelled with the
name of their patron saint they march to the ballot box." Repub
licans, he said, had abandoned the principles of Lincoln; there
fore, they had no right to Negro votes. DuBois longed for a Negro
Parnell dangling a bloc of votes between the two great parties; but
if not a Parnell, at least an independent vote responsive to politi
cal wooing.
Neither party, he said, liked Negroes, but both wanted votes,
and Negroes should be willing to bargain with Democrats,* espe
cially since the recent administration under Grover Cleveland
had, much to the Negro s surprise, treated him like a man. Times
had changed: the South of slavery was dead. DuBois denied that
the outrages of caste prejudice could be laid at the door of the
Democratic party: "They arise from the blind race prejudice
which, however reprehensible, is nevertheless natural when a
horde of ignorant slaves are suddenly made the equals of their
one-time masters." Then he added, very significantly in view of
his later development: "We ourselves make the color line broader
when in defiance of our principles and best interests we vote in
opposition to the people of this section because they re white and
we re black. Our interests are not antagonistic, they are one and
the same, and to blind you[r]selves to any party in spite of these
bonds of mutual interest . . . [is] to keep alive the smoldering
coals of Race antagonism." 21
*The idea for this switch to the Democrats probably came to DuBois
through the influence of T. Thomas Fortune, editor of the Globe and the
Freeman (the papers to which DuBois contributed Great Barrington news)
and author of The Negro in Politics (New York, 1885), where the idea of
"Race first; then party" (p. 38) is developed at length. DuBois has never
acknowledged this influence, for he and Fortune feuded in later years. But
the parallels between Fortune s ideas and DuBois s, their close relationship
through the newspaper, and Fortune s substantial prestige in the Negro com
munity as a pioneer newspaper editor lend support to this assumption.
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER lg
Though it had no political significance DuBois himself, aged
nineteen or twenty, could not even vote this notion had some
plausibility, for in the late i88o s the Democratic party, both in
the South and under the national administration of Cleveland,
was making efforts to woo the Negro vote away from its senti
mental Republican moorings. (Frederick Douglass said he would
as soon divide the Negro vote "between light and darkness, truth
and error, Heaven and Hell" as divide it between Republicans
and Democrats.) 22 Not raised in slavery and therefore less respon
sive to the appeal of the party of Lincoln, DuBois wanted Ne
groes to respond calculatingly. He looked for a level of independ
ent judgment and political maturity that colored men had not yet
attained. Therefore, the first step in Negro emancipation was a
program to train Negroes to overcome their prejudices. He was
proud that the "heart of Africa" was broader than its mind; but
now the mind must gain equal breadth.
It would be a long struggle. DuBois saw himself leading it.
Harvard and Berlin
The years at Fisk left DuBois with a sense of the "absolute
division of the universe into black and white." 23 In this state of
mind he approached Harvard. The admissions office wanted to
know his "special reason for wishing to enter Harvard College."
His blunt reply, which someone at Fisk intercepted and revised
before it went out in the mail, was: "I have very little money and
think I can get more aid there than elsewhere." 24 He never de
veloped any affection for the university. Glorying in his isolation
and eschewing Harvard life except as a "laboratory of iron and
steel" where he could extend his knowledge, he came to think of
Harvard as a library and a faculty, nothing more. He found him
self a corner room at 20 Flagg Street, a ten-minute walk from the
Yard and a block or so from the Charles River. He boarded at the
common refectory in Memorial Hall his first year, but finding it
too expensive he took modest meals in his room, or in town, or at
an inexpensive eating club. For four years he commuted from his
room to his classes and to the library without ever feeling himself
a part of the university s social community.
14 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
DuBois s academic plans were fluid. Fisk had given inspiration
but not direction. DuBois had already rejected President Cra-
vath s suggestion of the ministry as a career. Trained in a Con
gregational Sunday school, he had during his first year at Fisk
proudly joined the Fisk congregation and asked for the prayers
of his Great Barrington Sunday school to "help guide me in the
path of Christian duty." He approved of a recent revival which
had won forty converts. 25 But during the next three years, or
ganized religion ceased to be meaningful: he believed too little
in Christian dogma to become a minister. In his autobiography
DuBois attributed this attitude to the heresy trials, especially those
controversies over "higher criticism" of the Bible which eventu
ally led to the suspension of Charles A. Briggs from the Presby
terian Church, and to the insistence of the local church at Fisk
that dancing was a sin. Furthermore, the compulsory "book of
Christian Evidences "* struck him as a "cheap piece of special
pleading." 26 Rejecting Christianity as dogma, he also became
distrustful of Christian ethics, for he could find scant ethical com
mitment on the race issue in Christian churches. At the first symp
toms of higher longings among Negroes, DuBois said the year after
he left Fisk: "There is no devil in Hell that would countenance
more flagrant infringements upon Human Liberty, to crush the
rising genius of a People, than the average deacon of the Metho
dist Church South." 27
What career, if not the ministry? It took DuBois several years
to decide. His diary for the Harvard years shows him tussling with
the problem. On occasion he saw himself the tragic hero "What
care I though death be nigh?" he asked; sometimes as an epic poet;
again as a philosopher, author of "A Philosophy by Me"; or as an
orator sending light into civilization. Whatever the role, the un
derlying motive remained constant: to develop himself as a Negro
leader who would use his talents to improve the condition of the
race as a whole. In a course paper for William James, DuBois
wrote that the fundamental question of the universe, past and
future, was Duty. 28 In preparation for duty, "Work is but play
* The reference is probably to William Paley, A View of the Evidences of
Christianity (London, 1794), a text written in the spirit of rationalism to
prove the truth of Christian doctrines. It was widely used in the nineteenth
century.
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 15
with an end in view." Such an attitude invested every action with
high seriousness. On a trip to New York, he wrote, one must see
Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, the Battery,
and Broadway, for these were "the only things to really repay such
a visit." 29
In later years DuBois reconstructed his education as a straight-
line preparation for the life s work which in shadowy form he had
planned from his youth. Actually the decision came relatively late
as the terminal point of desultory intellectual meandering. 80 His
preliminary inquiry to the secretary of the university spoke of
study leading to a Ph.D. in political science, with political econ
omy as a special field. Six months later, in his application for
scholarship aid, he proposed to give "especial attention to the
sciences and Philosophy" as preparation for a postgraduate course,
probably in philosophy. At Harvard, where he repeated the junior
and senior years of college, his first-year courses favored the sci
ences. In addition to a prescribed course in English composition,
a half course in "earlier English Ethics," and an economics course,
he concentrated on scientific subjects: qualitative analysis based
chiefly on laboratory work, a beginner s laboratory course in geol
ogy, and a more advanced geology course given by Nathaniel
Shaler. Though he scored A s in all his science courses, the follow
ing year the exact sciences disappeared from his schedule without
explanation. Perhaps chemistry and geology seemed too remote
from Negro problems and deprived DuBois of an adequate outlet
for what he regarded as his talent for creative writing.
In the second year, the bulk of his work was in philosophy-
George Santayana s French and German philosophy, William
James s logic and psychology, and F. G. Peabody s ethics of social
reform. To these he added the senior composition course; a half
course in elocution; an economic survey of railroads and bimetal-
ism; and Albert Bushnell Hart s Constitutional and Political
History of the United States from 1783 to 1861.
This philosophical schedule was more appealing. There was
inspired teaching by Santayana and James. Furthermore, DuBois s
admission into the realm of speculative ideas allowed him to see
himself as a Negro at the frontiers of knowledge, working under
the developing philosophy of pragmatism and participating in
the most advanced developments of modern thought. DuBois
l6 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
thoroughly enjoyed jousting with ideas. His account book and
diary for this period is full of random sentences reflecting his cur
rent notions about basic questions. "The very conception of the
Caused carries with it the conception of the Uncaused." "The In
finitethat specious invention for making something out of noth
ing." "I hold it Truth: that every argument rests on an unprov-
able postulate which contains implicit the whole conclusion."
"Science is Mathematics. Mathematics is Identity. Science is
Identity."
Yet philosophy did not hold DuBois either, and in graduate
school he shifted to political economy and history. The reason for
this second change is only slightly clearer than for the first. Years
later DuBois recalled that James, like Chase at Fisk, had urged
him away from philosophy: "It is hard to earn a living with
philosophy." 31 Perhaps DuBois s recollection of James s advice was
milder than the original. James, famous for his gentleness in deal
ing with his students, may have preferred this way of saying that
DuBois s talents were ill suited for the logical and speculative
disciplines. Perhaps the two B s which DuBois received in senior
year from James and Santayana compared to the A plus from Hart
in constitutional and political history of the United States indi
cated that the latter was a field better oriented to his talents. Per
haps the inductive study of social problems such as charity, divorce,
labor, prisons, and temperance under Peabody impressed DuBois
as more germane to Negro problems than French philosophy or
James s logic. Maybe the explanation is simpler: he may have re
garded the natural sciences and philosophy as basic equipment;
having surveyed them, he was ready to turn to the more specialized
social sciences which had figured prominently in his early plans.
In any case, by the spring of 1890, when DuBois applied for a
graduate fellowship, he had decided to pursue the Ph.D in social
science "with a view to the ultimate application of its principles
to the social and economic rise of the Negro people." Having can
vassed the catalog thoroughly, DuBois bombarded the graduate
school with applications for every type of aid even remotely con
nected with his project and finally received the $450 Rogers schol
arship for the study of ethics in relation to jurisprudence or soci
ology.
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 17
For the next two years DuBois dug into political and consti
tutional history. The historians of the generation of Hart and
Herbert Baxter Adams sought to understand the present through
a study of the development of institutions; Hart s course, which
DuBois had already taken, was devoted almost exclusively to this
type of history, and little else was included in Harvard s history
offerings. Hart had helped to introduce the German universities
research seminar into Harvard s history department a few years
before DuBois entered the graduate school. DuBois joined Hart s
"seminary" and, following the methodology of his mentor, combed
the statutes of the United States, colonial and state laws, the Con
gressional Record, executive documents, and "contemporary
sources" for material on the African slave trade. It was slow,
painstaking research: by March 1891, he reported to the faculty
that he had located 146 pertinent statutes on the period from 1638
to 1788. At the same time he was carrying a full course load: in
his first year, another course in history, one in English composition,
one in political economy, and one in Roman law; in his second
year, four half-year courses in history and one in political economy.
Once in a while he took time out to compete for a prize in a field
related to his work. But as a rule his research had first claim; in
deed it consumed so much of his time that his course work suffered.
Eventually his hours in the library stacks gave him the material
for his doctoral dissertation and his first book.
In general, DuBois s record at Harvard justified the confidence
of his friends at Fisk, though it did little to increase his modesty.
His five A s and one C (in English composition) in junior year,
four A s and three B s in senior year, and honorable mention in
philosophy at graduation constituted a creditable showing, and
his A-plus in History 13 led Hart to scribble a note of recommenda
tion of DuBois as a good candidate for a graduate fellowship. In
two years of graduate school residence he was awarded five A s
and five B s, and though the completion of his degree took some
what longer than he intended, his thesis, The Suppression of the
African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870,
was published in 1896 as the first volume in the Harvard Historical
Studies*
* For discussion of this work, see below, pp. 35-36.
l8 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
Will found other successes outside the classroom. When he
gave an address, "Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civiliza
tion," to the commencement audience at Harvard at the end of
his senior year, the Nation recorded his distinct personal triumph.
"DuBois not only far excelled Morgan [Clement Morgan, the other
orator, also a Negro] in mere delivery, but handled his difficult
and hazardous subject with absolute good taste, great moderation,
and almost contemptuous fairness." In contrast to the type repre
sented by Davis the white "Teutonic" ideal of "stalwart man
hood and heroic character" badly smeared with "moral obtuseness
and refined brutality" DuBois set up "the patient, trustful, sub
missive African as a type of citizen the world would some day
honor," the Nation continued. "For the moment the audience
showed itself ready to honor this type as displayed in the orator." 32
Here was the way to a hearing in the white world: a Negro abreast
of modern civilization and devoted to truth could make people
listen. Heartened, DuBois returned the following year to argue
that the Negro problem could be solved if the spirit of Harvard,
"that spirit of intellectual breadth and liberty that seeks Truth
for Truth s sake," prevailed over misunderstood economic prin
ciples in the South. 38 That winter, a joint meeting of Harvard s
history and political-economy seminaries heard a preliminary sum
mary of DuBois s research on the slave trade, and when DuBois re
peated this report at one of the early meetings of the American His
torical Association, Herbert Baxter Adams praised it as a "scholarly
and spirited paper." 84
Successful as a student, DuBois felt that he had to share his edu
cation; as he later expressed it himself, he "tried to take culture out
into the colored community of Boston." 85 He promoted local
plays: he took a part in a production entitled "Sampson and Deli
lah, or the Dude, the Duck and the Devil," a burlesque of the
Negro hair-tonic business. Six months later, on Thanksgiving
night, he was at it again, this time with the Birds of Aristophanes
at the Charles Street Church.
One long address "Does Education Pay?" written in 1891
when DuBois was a first-year graduate student, carried the burden
of his message, and incidentally revealed a good deal about the
speaker, whose lack of tact later became a Negro legend. Speaking
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 1Q
to the National Colored League of Boston,* DuBois reported his
alarm that "a people who have contributed nothing to modern
civilization, who are largely on the lowest stages of barbarism in
these closing days of the igth century," were unfitting themselves
for modern life by neglecting education, even high-school educa-
tion.f At the moment of basic economic and political change, he
said, Negroes were throwing away the road to truth, beauty, and
virtue by ignoring the wisdom of man s past experience. By doing
this, he warned, they disqualified themselves for a part in the future
of mankind and, indeed, destroyed their only legitimate reason for
existence.
He especially defended college life as a time of leisure to study
under a faculty gathered to guide work. He dismissed the usual
criticisms of higher education that it was irreligious, snobbish,
and expensive. The charge that college made a man irreligious he
mocked as "mere fol-de-rol": if religion were not true, men should
not believe it; if it was true, college would confirm it. "A religion
that won t stand the application of reason and common sense," he
said, "is not fit for an intelligent dog." Nor was the charge of snob
bery a fair criticism, he went on, for no thoroughly educated man
ever turned his nose up at a fellow human being, though "on the
other hand, as long as one man is lazy, and another industrious,
you will, you must have social classes." On the matter of cost,
DuBois cited his own expenses to prove that any boy "with grit
and average ability" could get through without a penny.J
DuBois complained that Boston Negroes ("you people," Ee
* The occasion and date of this speech are marked on the manuscript in
the DuBois papers. But DuBois failed to show up for a scheduled speech
about that time, and this may have been the occasion.
f DuBois s prose in this period is worth sampling: "With a coldly critical
world looking on, when every passion, every precedent is calling for the strained
nerve & master hand, when this battle of life never offered dearer booty, when
the blanched face of the coward should never mock our lines, when the blood
of our fathers is shrieking from the soil, to cheer a battle as much nobler
than other battles as the moral and intellectual is nobler than the dust This
day, I have seen I have seen an army throwing away its arms."
J Income: summer work, $125; scholarship, $200; tutoring, $50; monitor-
ships, $10; prizes, $45 total, $430.
Expenses: tuition, $150; books, $25; room, $22; board, $114; fuel, light,
$11; clothes, $60; washing, $18; sundries, $30 total, $430.
20 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
called them) were neglecting existing facilities for a rich cultural
life. He found Negro ideas of recreation stunted: amusements
lacked literary achievement; churches in condemning respectable
dances, card parties, and decent fun of any kind as immoral drove
Negro youth into less reputable establishments. There were other
complaints: churches contributed nothing to practical social work
or to manly character; sermons never contained thoughtful dis
courses of any kind; and revivals concealed deviltry instead of sav
ing souls. To meet a real need, DuBois outlined a complete pro
gram for Negro Boston s social life: libraries, lectures, Chautauqua
circles, literary societies, and churches that stood for "education
and morality." According to his estimate, the Boston community
spent $5,000 a year on amusements. If that were true, he said, the
money should be concentrated in an amusement center which
would provide cultural uplift and still have a surplus to support
some students at Harvard.
The Negro world, he continued, lacked the leadership worthy
of the race. Ethiopia, he asserted, "is calling for the strong man,
the master-felt man, the honest man, and the man who can forget
himself." And in return she has received a "reign of the coward"
scamps among the politicians, rascals among the leaders, "a time-
server for our Moses and a temporizer who is afraid to call a lie a
lie."* Even the great mass of the Negro people, though honest and
generous, he said, seemed afraid to take a stand for "truth, honor,
and grit," though they saw the rottenness. The whole race must
become dutiful and moral: "No Negro can afford to stoop to an
Anglo-Saxon standard of morality."
This type of speech did little to ingratiate DuBois with the Bos
ton community. On his arrival at Harvard, the established Negro
urban communities had opened their social life to him. His Eng
lish themes record various evenings with girlsone at which the
girls took advantage of the privileges of leap year, another at which
two young ladies "apparently did not notice me." One girl teased
this self-conscious intellectual until he decided in despair: "She
* In a poem mourning Douglass s death in 1895, DuBois softened this
judgment: the death of "our mightiest" is as a "watchfire / Waving and bending
in crimson glory" which "Suddenly flashes to the mountain and leaves / A
grim and horrid blackness in the world/
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 2 1
is a thorough trifler in philosophy a still better explanation per
haps ... a woman." His fantasy carried him even further: a
short story written in this period describes the adventures of four
young blades who courted two sets of girls the same evening and
had to steal a trolley to make proper connections.
But the longer he stayed, the less welcome he became. During
DuBois s undergraduate years, the Boston correspondent for the
New York Age had praised his scholastic accomplishments and
noted that, popular and genial, DuBois had made many friends in
and out of school. As he entered graduate school, the praise leveled
off to perfunctory notice, and then dipped into criticism. His
failure to appear for a scheduled speech was reported. His dra
matic efforts were unappreciated and resented. When he went to
Europe, criticism followed him. His letters to the Age about his
European adventures led the Cleveland Gazette to comment:
"Much of W. E. B. DuBois s letters from Europe published in the
New York Age make one very tired. I, I, I, I, Me, me, me, Black
bread and butter/ Scatl"* 6
DuBois s own memory of these years conjures up nothing but
a parade of successes. Actually, there were distinct disappoint
ments. Toward the end of his first term of graduate school, his
English 12 instructor summarized DuBois s work sharply: "Un
thinking seems to me the word for your style. With a good deal
of emotional power, you blaze away pretty much anyhow. Occa
sionally, a sentence or a paragraph, and sometimes even a whole
composition, will be fine. Oftener there will be a nebulous, almost
sulphorous indistinctness of outline. As for reserve of power, it is
rarely to be found. More than most men, you need . . . an appre
ciation of good literature." 37 The graduate school, at the end of
his second year, apparently felt some reservation about his progress,
for his application for a fellowship for the third year, preferably
to be taken abroad, was not approved, and the defensive tone of
DuBois s application suggests that he was under criticism for in
attention to course work and for his slow progress toward his doc
toral examinations.
In general, however, DuBois could regard his academic career
at Harvard with satisfaction. His sampling of courses in the first
two years gave breadth to his education; his specialization in gradu-
22 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
ate school gave depth in a single subject. He had heard applause
from scholarly and popular audiences.
Not so much can be said, however, for his life in the white com-
munity surrounding the classrooms. He never felt himself a part
of his class or of the college, and he deeply resented the color line,
which proved to be more obvious around Cambridge than it had
been at Great Barrington.
There were occasional breaks in the pattern. A program for a
class dinner at the Parker House during Will s undergraduate
years is preserved in his papers. He at least bought a ticket to Class
Day exercises in the Yard during his senior year. Robert Morss
Lovett, a contemporary at Harvard, recalls long hikes with him
(one to Quincy to see "drumlins and dunes") and says he never
thought of DuBois as a Negro until DuBois achieved some honor
as a prize orator. 88 But these were the exceptions. When DuBois
met a fellow undergraduate on the trolley into Boston, an inquiry
about the "race s statistics at Harvard" served to remind him again
of his color as he was regularly reminded, he observed, by 90 per
cent of the visitors to the college. He generally lived apart from
college life. Even marginal organizations such as the Graduates
Club, with mingled social and intellectual interests, were closed to
him.* He trained himself, as most Negroes who circulated among
white men had to train themselves, to ignore stares as he sat down
to a meal. He stayed with his books and was satisfied with his repu
tation as a "grind." He pitied the absence of purpose among his
white contemporaries and mocked the pageant of Harvard: seeing
an anachronistic portrait of Jared Sparks, the nineteenth-century
historian, in a toga, DuBois looked for Socrates in wig and top
boots, or Minerva in a corset.
Early in his career at Harvard, DuBois drew a distinction be
tween the treatment of the Negro in the North and in the South.
In the South, he said, the Negro sustained positive outrage as lib
erty was throttled by prejudice and fear. In the North, he went on,
conditions stung the pride of the ambitious and educated i.e.,
* Thomas E. Will, a classmate, later told DuBois that he, Will, had de
clined membership in the Graduates Club because DuBois was "said to have
been blackballed because of your color/ Will to DuBois, January i, 1906,
DuBois papers.
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 2g
himself but Negroes had grown up in the hope that obstacles
would finally disappear. Now, however, after noble hearts like
Garrison, Sumner, and Phillips had helped raise the Negro from
slavery, the Negro "arisen, educated and willing, fired by memory
of the past," found no door open save that to the dining room and
the kitchen. 89
The church seemed especially at fault. To help defray the ex
penses of his education, DuBois gave "readings" to church groups
for an admission charge of twenty-five cents, shared by the church
and the orator. In the scrapbook for his first year at Harvard, he
chronicled a recent trip to see the rector of " church/ On the
way everyone stared, for it was the God-given right of American
ladies, he said, to eye a social inferior from head to foot without
losing their self-respect. The domestic at the rectory was astonished
to see a Negro calling, but the lady of the house was cordial. She
made a show of how nice she could be to colored people, mentioned
casually the vast debt owed to the Anglo-Saxon race because of the
great interest "her" people had in "your" people and the pile of
clothing sent to Tuskegee the previous winter. In turn, DuBois
gave her an account of the "extraordinary" fact that he was at Har
vard, and "a verbal census of all other such past and future anoma
lies." Then the rector rejected the reading project; rejected po
litely, but rejected. So DuBois returned to Flagg Street: "Mind
not, little heart," he wrote in his diary, "if the world were you I
could love it. And so we have spent a sample day. We are disap
pointed. And yet I have spent the happiest hours of my life when
I have come home in the twilight with a life plan in my bosom
smashed and alone sturdy man, forsooth: laid my head on my
table, and wept." 40 Evidence of a recurring hostility to the white
Christian church appears time after time. He writhed at what he
called the Anglo-Saxon s "high Episcopal Nicene creed" which
justified the white man in putting his heel on the neck of the man
down. He commented on the text: "Ethiopia shall in these days
stretch forth her hands to God." That may be, DuBois wrote, but
"the spectacle [of] the venerable colored dame in this rather un
balanced position in regard to the Anglo-Saxon god has become
somewhat nauseating to the average young Negro of today."* 1 Only
the "self-forgetful Quakers," he said, still remembered God> 2
24 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
By the end of his Harvard years, the range of DuBois s hostility
to American white society had broadened considerably. Despite
some exceptions such as Lovett (even this exception is recorded
by Lovett and not by DuBois), rejection by the white world evoked
in DuBois a mounting bitterness against it. In response to exclu
sion, he countered with an exclusiveness which frequently reduced
him to a group of one. The four years in Cambridge had given
DuBois his fill of social slights, of coolness from Harvard organi
zations, of patronizing wives, and of fellow students who saw him
as a Negro rather than as a classmate.
The Harvard faculty departed dramatically from this pattern
of discrimination. Shaler, who taught DuBois in several courses,
was sensitive to, if not particularly informed about, the Negro
problem. Barrett Wendell flattered DuBois by reading a part of
one of his themes to a crowded class. Hart not only guided his
work, but helped him secure successive Harvard scholarships and
probably arranged for his appearance before the American His
torical Association. A "smoker" of history professors, instructors,
and graduate students included DuBois as a member. William
James, to whom DuBois refers as "my favorite teacher and my
closest friend" and "guide to clear thinking," welcomed him to his
home "repeatedly" and encouraged his work. 43 James commended
DuBois s long course paper, "The Renaissance of Ethics: a critical
comparison of scholastic and modern ethics," as very original, full
of independent thought, vigorously expressedan "exceptionally
promising production." 4 * George Santayana read Kant privately
with DuBois. From Ephraim Emerton and Frank W. Taussig,
President Charles W. Eliot, Josiah Royce, and Charles Eliot Norton
came invitations to call on specified evenings.
In short, at the top level of intellect and scholarship, DuBois
found that he was being accepted, if not as a peer, at least as a
prospective peer. If his color entered into the appraisal of his work,
he did not know it; as far as he could see, the faculty at Harvard
was free from racial prejudice. Looking back, DuBois could say:
"God was good to let me sit awhile at their feet and see the fair
vision of a commonwealth of culture open to all creeds and races
and colors." 45
Meanwhile he had etched a clear picture of life behind the Veil.
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 25
With a wonder tinted with sentimentality, he dwelt lovingly on
the varied beauty of Negroes and on their patience, generosity, and
submissiveness. As discrimination limited the extent of his identi
fication with white culture, he took up this minority group passion
ately and defended it against its white critics. This group, he
thought, could contribute much to American life.
On the other hand, it could receive much more: a vision of the
panorama of modern Western culture. In an age requiring reason
and education, Negroes languished in prejudiced ignorance. The
fault, DuBois thought, lay not with the Negro people themselves
their hearts and souls were sound; the fault lay with incompetent
leadership unprepared to bridge the gap between the "lowest
stages of barbarism" and modern civilization. In DuBois s view,
the first task for the Negro was to develop his cultural resources, to
catch up with his white neighbors.
An unnoticed trap lay under this image of life behind the Veil*
DuBois assumed that the Negro s cultural advance would qualify
him for a full part in modern civilization and presumably for inte
gration in white society. Yet, ironically enough, cultural advance
might actually confirm separation. An increase in Negro business
men might broaden the Negro s range of achievement, presumably
a cultural advance, but it would also set Negroes apart, because
Negro merchants would for the most part serve customers of their
own race. A larger turnout at a town meeting might symbolize
Negro participation in American life; yet if Negroes met in caucus
as a preliminary to bloc-voting, as DuBois suggested, they were
separating themselves from the rest of the town. The notion of the
Negroes as balance of power overlooked the possibility that such
a political device might not compel white justice, but might invite
the alternative of removing the Negro from politics entirely.
DuBois s own experience in Great Barrington illustrated the
dilemma. The same academic success which gave impetus to his
career disqualified him from a role in the town s social system. His
mother might deny discrimination on account of color "it was all
a matter of ability and hard work" 46 but Will s ability and hard
work led to a scholarship at a Negro college, not at Amherst or
Williams. The very process of catching up with modern civiliza
tion created obstacles to integration by exciting opposition among
26 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
white men unable to conceive of the Negro at any but the most
servile level. The cure was, to be sure, not worse than the condi
tion, nor could the condition be met except by applying the cure.
Yet this paradox of Negro progress did exist, and DuBois at this
stage of his career was unaware of it.
Two years at the University of Berlin gave DuBois a chance to
think objectively about the Negro s status and his own relation to
it. In 1892, after two years of graduate study at Harvard, DuBois
went abroad on a granthalf gift, half loan from the Slater Fund,
a philanthropic foundation headed by former President Ruther
ford B. Hayes. DuBois s travels in England, France, Italy, and
Germany, his visits to Vienna, Cracow, and Budapest, and his stud
ies at Berlin released him from his consuming preoccupation with
color. "From the physical provincialism of America and the psychi
cal provincialism of my rather narrow race problem into which I
was born and which seemed to me the essence of life," he recalls,
"I was transplanted and startled into a realization of the real cen
ters of modern civilization and into at least momentary escape
from my own social problems and also into an introduction to new
cultural patterns." 47 He went to the theater every week and to the
symphony now and again. He learned to regard an art gallery as
a house for a single picture, all the others serving simply as a frame
for it. As he sailed down the Rhine, a German family took him
under its wing, and a young Fraiilein may even have fallen in love
with him. Except where Americans had penetrated in some num
bers, DuBois found little in Europe to parallel the racial discrimi
nation inescapable even in the North. In the student beer halls he
was as welcome as any other foreigner. When his exotic color was
a cause for comment at all, it never created a barrier; if anything,
it added to his welcome. During his vacations he traveled to the
limit of his budget. He was fascinated by the rise of anti-Semitism
in Germany: it "has much in common with our own race ques
tion," DuBois said, "and is therefore of considerable interest to
me,"* In Prague he was surprised to find the surge of nationalism
* DuBois to Daniel Coit Gilman, undated, ca. April 1893, DuBois papers.
DuBois appears to have absorbed some anti-Semitism himself. In his "Diary
of my Steerage Trip across the Atlantic" (summer 1895) he says that he had
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 5?7
which led people to avoid the study of German. He made a long
analysis of German socialism, which later apparently served as a
lecture. At the University of Berlin, Heinrich von Treitschke lec
tured on the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race and snarled at the
backwardness of colored peoples, but he greeted DuBois cordially
on a casual meeting before vacation time. Those glorious months
abroad made DuBois realize that "white folk were human." 48
At the university DuBois observed that Harvard s red tape
seemed paralyzing only because Americans had never seen the
"deeper crimson" of Berlin s variety. To the newcomer Berlin s
academic halls glistened with that "ethereal sheen which, to the
fresh American, envelopes everything European," but by Christ
mas time the sheen wore off, and the young scholar settled down
to his ambitious program in the social sciences. 49
His work for the fall term of his first year, for example, included
a course in politics under Treitschke; a study of the beginnings of
the modern state; Rudolph von Gneist s Prussian state reform;
theoretical political economy and "industrialism and society" un
der Adolph Wagner; and Gustav Schmoller s Prussian constitu
tional history. In addition, he was admitted to Schmoller s semi
nar and, as at Harvard, spent the bulk of his time preparing a
research paper, "The Plantation and Peasant Proprietorship Sys
tems of Agriculture in the Southern United States."
The interlude at Berlin served several purposes. For one thing,
Schmoller s cordiality reinforced DuBois s conviction that intellec
tuals were above color prejudice. For another, Schmoller, with one
of the brightest reputations in German economic thought, drew
DuBois away from history into a type of political economy which
could easily be converted into sociology, and, at a more general
level, encouraged him to a career devoted to scholarship. Again
DuBois could look back at a chapter with satisfaction. Though his
plan to take a degree at Berlin never materialized, he brought
seen the aristocracy of the Jewish race and the "low mean cheating pobel,"
but he had seldom seen "the ordinary good hearted good intentioned man."
He found two congenial Jews on the trip, but he shunned the rest "There is
in them all that slyness that lack of straight-forward openheartedness which
goes straight against me/
28 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
back to America flattering testimonials from Schmoller and Wag
ner along with Schmoller s tentative commitment to publish Du-
Bois s Berlin research paper in his "yearbook."
On his twenty-fifth birthday DuBois paused to take stock.
Looking back over his education and forward to his career, he
dedicated himself as the Moses of his people. After a "sacrifice to
the Zeitgeist" of Mercy, God, and Work, and a curious ceremony
with candles, Greek wine, oil, song, and prayer, he dedicated his
library to his mother and then went on to compose a long note in
his diary, speculating on his own place in the modern world:
I am glad I am living, I rejoice as a strong man to run a race,
and I am strong is it egotism is it assuranceor is it the silent
call of the world spirit that makes me feel that I am royal and
that beneath my sceptre a world of kings shall bow. The hot
dark blood of that black forefather born king of men is beat
ing at my heart, and I know that I am either a genius or a fool
.... this I do know: be the Truth what it may I will seek it
on the pure assumption that it is worth seeking and Heaven
nor Hell, God nor Devil shall turn me from my purpose till I
die. I will in this second quarter century of my life, enter the
dark forest of the unknown world for which I have so many
years served my apprenticeship the chart and compass the
world furnishes me I have little faith in yet, I have none better
I will seek till I find and die. There is grandeur in the very-
hopelessness of such a life life? and is life all? If I strive, shall
I live to strive again? I do not know and in spite of the wild
sehnsucht for Eternity that makes my heart sick now and then
I [grit?] my teeth and say I do not care. Carpe Dieml What
if life but life, after all? Its end is its greatest and fullest self
this end is the Good. The Beautiful its attribute its soul, and
Truth is its being. Not three commensurate things are these,
they three dimensions of the cube-mayhap God is the founder,
but for that very reason incomprehensible. The greatest and
fullest life is by definition beautiful, beautiful beautiful as a
dark, passionate woman, beautiful as a golden hearted school
girl, beautiful as a grey haired hero. That is the dimension of
breadth. Then comes Truth what is, cold and indisputable:
That is height. Now I will, so help my Soul, multiply breadth
by height, Beauty by Truth and then Goodness, strength, shall
bind them together into a solid whole. Wherefore? I know not
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER 2 9
now. Perhaps Infinite other dimensions do. This is a wretched
disguise and yet it represents my attitude toward the world. I
am striving to make my life all that life may be and I am limit
ing that strife only in so far as that strife is incompatible with
others of my brothers and sisters making their lives similar.
The crucial question now is where this limit comes .... God
knows I am sorely puzzled. I am firmly convinced that my own
best development is not one and the same with best develop
ment of the world and here I am willing to sacrifice. The sacri
fice is working for the multiplication of (Truth X Beauty) and
now here comes the question how. The general proposition of
working for the world s good becomes too soon sickly senti
mentality. I therefore take the work that the Unknown lays in
my hands & work for the rise of the Negro people, taking for
granted that their best development means the best develop
ment of the world.
This night before my life s altar I reiterate, what my heart
has ...
Here the manuscript breaks off, but it is resumed shortly there
after:
These are my plans: to make a name in science, to make a
name in literature and thus to raise my race. Or perhaps to
raise a visible empire in Africa thro England, France, or Ger
many.
I wonder what will be the outcome? Who knows? 50
This remarkable diary entry, inchoate, histrionic, but, above
all, moving, reveals much of DuBois s sense of himself as a person
destined to redirect the history of his time. This personal assertive-
ness, however, was modified by a sense of duty: he would subordi
nate his personal ambition to the central purpose of elevating the
Negro people. If occasionally duty coincided with personal ambi
tion, that merely demonstrated the extent to which he had inter
twined the two. When he asked the Slater Fund trustees to subsi
dize a second year abroad, he explained that the experience was
absolutely necessary to the completion of his education. He went
on to say: "I realize, gentlemen, the great weight of responsibility
that rests upon the younger generation of Negroes, and I feel that,
handicapped as I must inevitably be to some extent in the race of
life, I cannot afford to start with preparation a whit shorter or
gO THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
cheaper than that deemed necessary to the best usefulness of my
white fellow student." 51 DuBois was ready to pay for the luxury
of his duty, for he offered to renew his fellowship on the same basis
as the original award, half grant and half loan, or as a full loan.
Actually, the Slater trustees renewed his grant on the same terms,
but even so, by the time he started teaching (on a salary of $800 a
year), his education had saddled him with a debt of $1,125. ^ n
short, he mortgaged his future to prepare himself adequately for
the task of serving his race.
A Sense of Mission
The world of DuBois s youth pointed the way to his career. If
white men were guilty of race prejudice arising from ignorance,
if black men were retarded, remote from the culture of the time,
then DuBois must teach both and reconcile them. He knew with
conviction that he had the talent and the technique; his missionary
sense of duty would permit him to do no less. He decided upon a
life s work of teaching and research; as a college teacher he would
dispel Negro ignorance by training other missionaries who could
carry the gospel back to their communities; at the same time, his
research would convert white America to a just appraisal of the
Negro. His career would serve a third purpose as well: it would
fill a genuine personal need. Among white intellectuals he had
always found acceptance. As their peer he would continue to find
it. In the Negro world he would be a liberator. Here was a career,
a mission, which could consume many lifetimes.
This decision was never, to be sure, consciously plotted out.
Yet DuBois had been working toward a scholar s career for several
years: from science through philosophy to history and economics.
With DuBois s background in scientific courses, he found great
appeal in James s pragmatism, for he assumed that pragmatism
gave assurance that ethics, once freed of "scholastic dogma," could
be based on empirical observation and on reason. In his paper for
James, DuBois traced the process by which ethics was "liberating"
itself from ultramundane, theistic teleology that was "useless as
a science." Scholasticism, with its "pernicious" substitution of
THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER gl
dogma for faith, caused reason to be subjected to dogma, and ethics
to be based on dogma instead of on facts. At the time of Descartes
and Bacon, he went on, the separation of science from teleology
and the conviction that only matter was capable of scientific treat
ment led to enormous advances in science, but left metaphysics
bogged down in scholasticism. There it had stayed, he said, as un
productive from Kant to Royce as it had been from Abelard to
Occam. Metaphysics would regain an equal place with science, he
asserted, when it dropped inquiries into the categories of reason,
space, perception, and authority of conscience, and systematically
studied accumulated facts, as the physicist studied heat. With
James and Royce, DuBois continued, an attempt had been made
"to base ethics upon fact to make it a science"* Its method was
to separate the "what" from the "why" on the way to the creation
of an all-embracing science, "the beacon light of a struggling hu
manity to guide its knowledge of the Infinite." (As a side issue,
DuBois took a page or two to prove the necessary existence of ob
jective reality, but James rejected the proof as begging the princi
pal question of the whole idealist position.) Here then, according
to DuBois, was "the cornerstone of a world structurefirst the
What, then the Why underneath the everlasting Ought."
Even after DuBois abandoned his plans for a career in philoso
phy, these ideas showed their reflection in his work. James had
expressed reservations about DuBois s analysis his failure to show
the method of "real teleology" despite his assumption of its exis
tence, the impossibility of making a science out of ethics, and the
"oracular & ambiguous" nature of the conclusion that "truth is
the one path to teleology, teleology is ethics." Yet, despite these
reservations, 52 DuBois continued to assume that the path to reform
lay in the accumulation of empirical knowledge which, dispelling
ignorance and misapprehension, would guide intelligent social
policy. As he said succinctly in his diary: "The Universe is Truth.
The Best ought to be. On these postulates hang all the law and
the prophets."
As success in Hart s course turned DuBois toward history, his
diary noted: "What we want is not a philosophy of history but
* James commented in the margin: "I doubt whether we do seek to make
it a science to me that seems impossible."
32 THE SEARCH FOR A CAREER
such a collection and . . . placement o facts physical and mental
as to furnish material for a philosophy of man." For a Negro with
a missionary sense, this suggested a study of the background of the
Negro in America, a study of his "advance" since emancipation.
The accumulation of adequate historical information for under
standing the Negro, DuBois thought, would pave the way for a just
social policy. At Berlin, Schmoller confirmed this basic analysis,
but redirected DuBois s scholarly ambition to economics, and ulti
mately to sociology. In a letter to the Slater Fund trustees in 1893,
DuBois outlined his program after his return to America: to get
a place in a Negro university (Howard University in Washington
was his first choice) and to build up a department of sociology for
two purposes: "i. Scientifically to study the Negro question past
and present with a view to its best solution. 2. To see how far
Negro students are capable of further independent study & re
search in the best scientific work of the day." 53
DuBois returned from Germany in the summer of 1894, his
education complete (except for receiving his Ph.D. at Harvard in
1895). Conscious that he had received an education rare for any
young American, black or white, he embarked on a mail campaign
to secure a job. Eventually three offers came. He accepted the first,
the chair in classics at Wilberforce University at Xenia, Ohio, at
$800 a year. Shortly thereafter, the Lincoln Institute in Missouri
offered $250 more, and even later, Booker T. Washington invited
DuBois to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to teach mathematics.
DuBois stuck to his original commitment and, in the fall of 1894,
started on a career of teaching and research, which, continuing for
sixteen years, would include what he afterward characterized as
"my real life work." 54
II
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
DuBois made his way to Wilberforce in the hot August of 1894.
Still quite lean, just below medium height and very erect, he wore
a Vandyke beard which, together with his retreating hairline,
gave him an air of maturity beyond his twenty-six years. He had
a high silk hat and affected the gloves and cane of the German
student; together they added to the severe elegance of his appear
ance.
Nominally appointed to the chair in Latin and Greek, he soon
shared the load in English, brought German to the curriculum,
and would have added sociology if the college authorities had per
mitted. He also held the official title of "Keeper of Marks." Occa
sionally he even administered the college s formal discipline. Here
was the beginning of his career, he told an English friend: "Life
was now begun & I was half happy." 1
But Wilberforce betrayed his ambitious dreams. In the students
he found "the same eagerness, the same joy of life, the same brains"
as in New England and in Europe. 2 But the religious life of the
college ran afoul of his distaste for dogma and for institutional
worship. Equating educational success with "moral and religious
tone," the school enforced regular attendance at church and for
bade both "clandestine associations" between men and women and
even casual meetings on the campus. Separate walks were pro
vided. 3 Sunday school was a great trial to DuBois, for Scriptural
literalism outraged his intelligence and interpretative teaching
violated college policy. On his twenty-eighth birthday, the new
professor, impatient for scholastic excellence, feared "mental im
becility," because a revival had virtually imprisoned him in his
room for almost a week, his classes suspended by faculty action to
give the spirit free rein, his German and Latin conjugations for
gotten amid the "wild screams cries groans & shrieks" rising from
the chapel below. 4 Between revivals, faculty politics offered a
career to the ambitious and a diversion to the settled; it flourished
4 THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
so abundantly that even the official history of the college refers to
it. Primarily a church school, supported by the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, the college received state funds as well a situa
tion which encouraged the maneuvers of both church and state.
In his notebook DuBois complained that the president bought
security in his own job by the appointment of an influential bish
op s incompetent son. Financial problems regularly distracted the
college s attention: in DuBois s first year, the college faced a debt
of $12,000, with $2,000 being demanded immediately.
Two years of this impatient apprenticeship, brightened only by
his marriage to Nina Gomer, a young girl from Cedar Rapids,
Iowa, whom he had met at the college, made DuBois anxious to
leave. Exasperated by "incompetence and rascality," he writhed
through trivial disputes and looked anxiously for a new job, free
from daily pettifogging. As he wrote at the time: "I can fight giants,
but snakes ouch! Tis the petty sins of petty souls that disarm me
in the very whirl of battle." 5
Relief came when the University of Pennsylvania offered him
a fifteen-month appointment as an assistant instructor in sociology
to prepare a scholarly study of the Negro community of Philadel
phia. (His salary came to $60 a month.) A task so well tailored to
DuBois s training he accepted with alacrity and moved east with
his wife.
The following year, when Atlanta University sought an experi
enced sociologist to direct its studies of the Negro, President Hor
ace Bumstead, who had known of DuBois years before, turned to
him as the man, black or white, best prepared for the task. The
matter of formal religion raised some doubt about the appoint
ment. DuBois remained noncommittal, and Bumstead decided
that DuBois s life with a new wife in the slum area of Philadelphia
in order to perform "beneficent work" gave sufficient evidence of
genuine religion.
DuBois remained at Atlanta for thirteen years, from 1897 to
1910. There he enjoyed a position of academic security in a college
run democratically by its faculty. His talent deferred to and re
spected, he could expect encouragement, within the limits of avail
able funds, for his scholarly work. Distinguished Negroes like
Booker T. Washington and James Weldon Johnson visited the
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE 35
university; notable white citizens such as Jane Addams and Franz
Boas came to speak. He kept in touch by mail with other scholars:
Clark Wissler advised him on anthropology; William James com
mended him for his book, The Souls of Black Folk; Max Weber
urged him to arrange for a German edition of it.
From 1894 until 1910, the scholar s role committed DuBois to
three major tasks: first, to assemble accurate sociological data as
the basis for intelligent social policy toward the Negro; second, to
present the Negro s problems in a favorable light to a larger non-
scholarly audience through lectures, books, and magazine articles;
and third, to take the lead in bringing culture to American Ne
groes.
A Foundation of Facts
DuBois s dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave-
Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870, which was in
press at the time of his appointment to Pennsylvania, was his first
major scholarly production. Following the political and institu
tional orientation of his adviser, Professor Hart, DuBois surveyed
the attempts to enforce the existing laws against the trade, or more
precisely, the failure to enforce them. In DuBois s view, the slave
trade could have been curtailed by three methods: by raising
American moral standards, by enforcing legal prohibition of the
slave trade, or by destroying the economic attractions of the traffic
in men. All three failed, the first because the existence of slavery
itself showed moral weakness at just the point at which moral
strength was needed; the second because the laws were "poorly con
ceived, loosely drawn, and wretchedly enforced," and the third
because no one was willing to attempt it. In a preliminary report
DuBois had said that while Southern planters recognized slave
labor as an economic good and the slave trade as its strong right
arm, and while Northern capital continued unfettered by a con
science, "Northern greed joined to Southern credulity was a combi
nation calculated to circumvent any law, human or divine." 6
The final abolition of slavery he attributed partly to direct
moral appeal and to political sagacity, but principally to the "eco
nomic collapse of the large-farming slave system." This economic
36 THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
emphasis came as rather a surprise, for it received little support in
the text. In his report to the American Historical Association dur
ing his Harvard days, DuBois had concluded that abolition came
from "an enlightened public policy, the common moral sense of a
great people enforcing its sovereign will by majorities for Lincoln
and by the point of the bayonet." 7 This conclusion fitted the ma
terial in his book better than the one he used. The summary pub
lished in the book appears to have been added after his work in
economics at Berlin. DuBois apparently sensed that his economic
explanation was inadequately proved, for in his preface he warned
that because of the paucity of facts and statistics bearing on "the
economic side of the study," the conclusions were subject to modi
fication.
Actually the book was more a study in ethics than in either poli
tics or economics. One reviewer noted that its hortatory tone re
vealed the advocate rather than the historian. Influenced by his
understanding of James s pragmatism, by his own sense of mission,
and by the tone of uplift prevalent in the period, DuBois could not
escape the "ought" which he assumed underlay the "what" and the
"why." Though the book was to be a contribution to the "scientific
study of slavery," DuBois could not conceal his indignation at the
"cupidity and carelessness of our ancestors." Even the Northerners,
made of "sterner moral fibre than the Southern cavaliers and ad
venturers," swept away moral opposition because of the "immense
economic advantages of the slave traffic to a thrifty seafaring com
munity of traders." For DuBois, the obvious question suggested by
the study was: "How far in a state can a recognized moral wrong
safely be compromised?" And his answer, in words with the ring
of The Book of Common Prayer, had little to do with scientific
history: "It behooves nations as well as men to do things at the
very moment when they ought to be done." Yet the book was a
tremendous plum for the young scholar. The hortatory tone was
perhaps unavoidable when DuBois took on a study with racially
sensitive aspects; the narrowness of its legal and institutional re
search followed the current mode. These limitations faded next to
the fact that he had prepared a solid piece of work with which Har
vard inaugurated its Historical Studies.
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE 37
Between his first book and his second, The Philadelphia Negro:
A Social Study, DuBois changed the direction of his scholarship.
The historian turned to sociology, and the moralist struggled to
ward the ideal o objective research. With Charles Booth s Life
and Labour of the People in London and the cooperative volume,
Hull House Maps and Papers, as his models, he conducted a fifteen-
month survey of the 45,000 Negroes centered in the Seventh Ward
of Philadelphia, a door-to-door inquiry on family status, morality,
occupations, religion, social intercourse any pertinent facts about
the Negro which might pierce existing generalizations which, he
said, were based on "fantastic theories, ungrounded assumptions,
or metaphysical subtleties/ He and his sponsors at the university
regarded his study as the raw material from which would emerge
the "solution" of Negro problems in a large American city. With
out this groundwork of "intelligent and discriminating research,"
DuBois said, the labor of the statesman and philanthropist "must
continue to be, in a large extent, barren and unfruitful/
DuBois did not equate "intelligent and discriminating re
search" with absolute truth, and with disarming candor he pointed
out sources of error within his work: errors of the statistical
method, "even greater error" from the imprecision of personal ob
servation; above all, moral conviction and preconceived patterns
of thought which "enter to some extent into the most cold-blooded
scientific research as a disturbing factor." Outside the investigator
more traps threatened: misapprehension, vagueness, forgetfulness,
and deliberate deception on the part of the people being ques
tioned. With so many possibilities of error, the shrewd judgment
of the trained observer had to supplement what was statistically
demonstrable. This was legitimate, if that judgment was guided
by the "heart-quality of fairness, and an earnest desire for truth
despite its possible unpleasantness." When DuBois finished the
study, he was satisfied that his book could pass the most rigorous
tests of reliability. He hoped that it would be only the first in a
series of urban studies which, when taken together, would "consti
tute a fair basis of induction."
The even-handed allotment of blame to both races gave weight
38 THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
to DuBois s claim of relative impartiality. The Negroes he criti
cized for their sexual looseness, the inefficiency of their organiza
tions for social betterment, the failure of the richer Negroes to
assert their leadership and of the poorer to seek it, the venality of
their political life, and the extent of criminal activity within the
race. White Philadelphians, he said, made things worse by their
color prejudice: they created obstacles to Negro employment both
inside and outside trade unions; by regarding Negroes as a group
rather than as individuals, they branded the entire race with the
characteristics of its degenerate criminal class; they used the fear
of ultimate intermarriage to curtail every prospect of Negro ad
vancement.
Yet despite this fair distribution of blame and the "heart-
quality of fairness" in the research itself, DuBois s "Final Word"
arose more from his preconceptions than from his research. Ne
groes were to catch up on modern civilization by paying taxes, sup
porting schools, lowering the crime rate, seeking industrial oppor
tunities, broadening their amusements beyond prayer meetings
and church socials, and in general by emphasizing honesty, truth,
and charity. At the same time, DuBois stressed "above all" the
duty of the better classes of Negroes, frankly called the "aristo
cracy," to reach down to help the retarded masses. The whites had
two duties: first, to enlarge Negro opportunities instead of harping
constantly on the unreal problem of intermarriage; and second,
to cooperate with the better Negroes by recognizing distinctions
within the race. Here again was the DuBois of Fisk, appealing at
once to the "best of you" in the white world and to the Negro elite
in the black, seeking salvation through a Negro aristocracy en
couraged by its white peers. His schoolboy insights now seemed
confirmed by fifteen months of research in Philadelphia.
Actually, certain facts in the text threw serious doubt on the
legitimacy of the role assigned to the Negro elite. For example,
white leaders were urged in their own interest to stand behind the
rise of the Negro aristocracy. Yet it was doubtful, and at best
unproven, that a thriving Negro middle class, serving its race as
professional and business men, would have served the whites self-
interest. Indeed, such a Negro group might emerge as direct com
petitors who would impinge on white businesses and services with-
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE 39
out any compensating guarantee of diminishing the Negro prob
lem.
His advice to Negroes had pitfalls too. If the Negro elite in
duced Negroes to withdraw support from the city s corrupt po
litical machine, this act would have deprived Negroes of those
political jobs which, by DuBois s own account, came to them as
compensation for the support of corruption. The loss of jobs would
have been an immediate economic loss without any guarantee of
a compensating gain: the honesty of city fathers gave no assurance
of their friendliness to Negroes.
The two aspects of the workthe report on the research and the
conclusions were not essentially related. Empiricism wrestled with
research, and each scored one fall. Yet in this type of survey, the
author s "final word/ which is recognized as a frank statement of
his own views, is relatively unimportant. The factual evidence
stands on its own, inviting every reader to make an independent
appraisal. And here DuBois s great strength showed up. His block-
by-block survey was exhaustive and imaginative. His patience and
honesty are revealed on every page. It was undoubtedly this aspect
of the work which, forty-five years later, led Gunnar Myrdal, the
Swedish sociologist, to regard The Philadelphia Negro as a model
study of a Negro community. 8
Before and after the publication of The Philadelphia Negro,
DuBois was working toward a theory of sociology. He rejected Her
bert Spencer, whose "verbal jugglery," DuBois said, ultimately led
to enigmatic abstractions like "consciousness of kind." According
to DuBois s view, this school avoided real men and real things and
concentrated on a "mystical" whole full of "metaphysical lay fig
ures" which corresponded to its theories but bore little relation to
observable fact. 9
Schmoller had shown an alternative. In revolt against the
deductive method of the Manchester school of economics, Schmol
ler, the "authoritative exponent" of the "modernized historical
school," 10 wanted to collect historical and factual material from
which would emerge a science of economics which could point the
direction for national policy. According to DuBois s notes on
Schmoller s seminar, Schmoller assumed that the "observations of
different persons always lead to the same result." 11 Therefore em-
40 THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
piricism would eventually provide a concrete basis for policy: first
the facts, then a program based on those facts.
In his theoretical writings, DuBois applied these principles
to the Negro in America. Like Schmoller, he believed that re
search would reveal basic natural laws. Even chance, he thought,
could ultimately be explained in terms of law, though free will
might prove more recalcitrant. Since accurate research would
prepare for future social reform, the first step was to engage the
attention of scholars in systematic study of Negro life. This would
fill a conspicuous gap in America s knowledge and at the same
time serve as a specialized laboratory for study of man s social
development in a microcosm. Two premises he regarded as in
escapable in any analysis of the Negro problem: the existence of
variations within the race and the acknowledgment of the Negro s
ability to advance. To a Negro audience, he later added a third:
a denial of the degeneracy of mulattoes. From there on, he be
lieved in following the evidence. Even these premises, DuBois
claimed, he held undogmatically: in seeking truth, he would never
insist on them in the face of evidence to the contrary. He dis
tinguished sharply between pure research the accumulation of
facts and recommendations for reform, warning that any attempt
to give research a double aim, that is, pure science and reform as
an immediate rather than as an ultimate goal, would defeat both
objects. A convinced rationalist, confident from his Harvard days
of the congruity of reality and ethics, he never doubted the use
fulness of this task. As he told the American Academy of Political
and Social Science: "The sole aim of any society is to settle its
problems in accordance with its highest ideals, and the only
rational method of accomplishing this is to study those problems
in the light of the best scientific research." 12
In Philadelphia, and for thirteen years after his arrival at
Atlanta, DuBois attempted to conduct some of that research. His
best work achieved real excellence: for the 1910 census reports,
he prepared a reliable commentary on the Negro farmer; for the
Bulletin of the Department of Labor, he wrote an admirable short
social study of the Negroes of Farmville, Virginia; for a German
and for a Belgian publication, he prepared workman-like accounts
of the Negro question and of the Negro worker; in the American
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE 4!
Historical Review, he published a significant paper in 1910 which
suggested that, despite all the charges against Negroes in Recon
struction governments, "practically the whole new growth of the
South has been accomplished under laws which black men helped
to frame thirty years ago." 13 This last article appeared when Re
construction legislatures were being described almost exclusively
in terms of bribery, whiskey, and gold-plated spittoons. Later
scholars have confirmed that DuBois had the better of the argu
ment.
The Atlanta University Publications, the principal item in
DuBois s scholarly bibliography for this period, are somewhat
harder to appraise, for they have to be judged in the perspective
of fifty years ago. Looking toward a "Program of a Hundred
Years/ he proposed to investigate various categories of Negro life
artisans, businessmen, college alumni, and criminals; churches
and schools at the rate of one a year for ten years. When this
ten-year cycle had been repeated ten times, the accumulated mate
rial was to serve as an unerring guide to scholars, philanthropists,
and statesmen. Under DuBois s direction, this program continued
for sixteen years (he maintained a remote but active connection
with the project even after his departure from Atlanta in 1910).
Each volume included the resolutions of a conference held annu
ally at Atlanta; the transcript of speeches delivered at the confer
ence; and miscellaneous essays germane to the topic but not neces
sarily based on the year s research. The hard core of each volume,
the tabulation and summary of the year s investigation, suffered
from a method which, however unavoidable in view of DuBois s
tight budget, could hardly have yielded a substantial scholarly
report.
An analysis of one volume reveals the drawbacks of DuBois s
technique. For The Negro in Business (1899), DuBois asked in
vestigators (frequently his own former students) in various com
munities to list local businessmen. Questionnaires answered by
these men were returned to Atlanta along with an interpretation
by an "intelligent investigator of some experience." Of course,
the replies to DuBois s questionnaires came from a sifted group-
he felt lucky to get 150 replies out of 500 requests. Furthermore,
no one made under the circumstances, no one could make an
42 THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
adequate check on the accuracy of the information which did
come in. Still, this raw material was regarded as "substantially
accurate/ especially since doubtful estimates of capital invested
were omitted when discovered. From this survey DuBois con
cluded that the existing range of Negro business activity showed
a definite gain and attested to the Negro s progress in general. As
an outgrowth of this encouraging report, a committee on resolu
tions at the conference which terminated each year s study urged
other Negroes to enter business. The growth of a merchant class
would be a "far-sighted measure of self-defense" which would
make for wealth and mutual cooperation; but Negroes must be
careful to avoid already overcrowded trades, for one-sided devel
opment "puts the mass of the Negro people out of sympathy and
touch with the industrial and mercantile spirit of the age." The
Negro masses were urged to patronize Negro stores, but business
men were prudently warned not to count on that patronage. In
summary, the committee said: "We must cooperate or we are lost.
Ten million people who join in intelligent self-help can never be
long ignored or mistreated."
A later generation has doubts about this methodology, for
styles in scholarship change, and men see their grandfathers ways
as quaintly primitive. Yet the Atlanta Publications had impressive
value. For one thing, the factual information caught the attention
of the casual reader and led him on to DuBois s conclusions. Fur
thermore, as the reaction to DuBois s first two books had shown,
scholarly material from the pen of a Negro raised the reputation
of the race. In the Nation, the reviewer of The Suppression of the
African Slave-Trade noted that it was a matter of "profound sig
nificance and great encouragement" that a member of a race a
generation from being hunted could write a volume so creditabl e
to himself, to his university, and to American historical scholar
ship. 14 An anonymous reviewer of The Philadelphia Negro in
Outlook noted less special pleading in DuBois than in generously
inclined white writers. Finally, whatever their limitations, the
2,172 pages of the series provided the best information on the
Negro then available. In that era most writing about the Negro
was done by untrained observers who, looking out of a Pullman
window, saw pretty much what they expected to see; by writers
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE 43
who, in the solace of their libraries, had only their theories to
guide them; or by Southerners who, knowing Sam and Auntie
from the old days, spoke authoritatively about the whole race.
DuBois s pioneering idea of introducing organized facts into the
miasma of opinion and prejudice which passed for discussion of
the Negro was novel and arresting. Even Columbia and Chicago,
the great centers of academic sociology, were only a few years
ahead of DuBois in making empirical inquiries the basis of their
sociology. To be sure, a whole generation of American scholarship
was turning against what DuBois called "metaphysical subtleties"
in a search for fact which would give substance to theory, and the
"Chicago school/ in studying how group behavior resulted from
the pursuit of distinctive, characteristic interests, had methodo
logical refinements well beyond DuBois s Atlanta Publications.
DuBois s significance is that he was probably the first sociologist
in the South and certainly the first in the field of Negro studies
to make empirical evidence the fulcrum of his work. Writing in
1951, Howard W. Odum listed twelve of DuBois s titles at the
top of a chronological list of American sociological works in the
area of race, ethnic groups, and folk. 15
Educating White America
DuBois s scholarly reputation introduced him to popular audi
ences without shackling him by its demand for objectivity. His
facts could be aimed at immediate goals instead of being poured
into a reservoir that could be tapped only in some remote future.
More important, his articles reached an audience untouched by
his more scholarly work. In the pages of Dial, Collier s, Nation,
Booklover s Magazine, World Today, Outlook, Atlantic Monthly,
and Independent, DuBois spoke to just the educated element of
the white American population to which he looked for Negro im
provement. Usually he adapted historical or sociological material
to demonstrate Negro progress, or to show that the whites race
prejudice prevented Negro advancement. Once in a while, he
commented directly as a contemporary observer in defense of the
Negro. Occasionally he divorced himself entirely from sociology
44 THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
long enough to release his pent-up indignation at the conduct of
white America toward its black brothers.
Loyal to a theory of progress, DuBois interpreted the Negro s
history since emancipation as a steady climb upward. In popu
lar articles and lectures he ranged over Negro America, and the
accumulation of evidence showed a race rising against impressive
odds. From 1870 to 1900, he reported in 1904, illiteracy had de
clined almost 50 per cent, principally as a result of the Negro s own
efforts: in one generation, thirty thousand black teachers had
given two million children the rudiments of learning, and four-
fifths of the expense of the Negro schools had been borne by Ne
groes themselves through direct and indirect taxes. As a result
of education, the intelligence and efficiency of Negro workmen
had brought them three hundred million dollars worth of prop
erty. In Advance, he pointed out that since the Civil War the
Negro had established the principle of the monagamic home,
earned a living as a free laborer, and begun to develop the "Ex
ceptional Man the group leader."*
DuBois knew Georgia best. Almost half of Georgia s Negroes
were still farm laborers a condition closest to slavery, he ex
plainedbut above them was a small and growing 14 per cent
of independent landowners. At the economic and social peak,
20,000 artisans had freed themselves from rural tyranny, while
8,000 business and professional men enjoyed varying degrees of
prosperity substantially above the rest of their fellows. He esti
mated that Negroes in the state had by 1909 already saved fifty
million dollars, and that they had paid more in tax assessments
of various kinds designed to support schools than the state had
spent on Negro education the Negro, in effect, he said, was help
ing to bear the burden of white education.
Now and then, he came upon one of the dozen autonomous
Negro centers in Ohio and Indiana where in proud isolation a
black community defied the prejudices of the white world. Occa
sionally a Negro community, like that in Durham, North Caro
lina, achieved the same situation by developing an unusual inner
* The "exceptional men" included Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crum-
mel, William O. Tanner, Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and
Charles W. Chesnutt.
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE 45
organization, the closed circle of a group economy which made
only incidental contacts with the surrounding white world. Here
5,000 Negroes gathered their puny resources to develop five manu
facturing outlets and a loan association. DuBois reported on these
communities with pride: he was eager to show white America what
the Negro could accomplish by himself.
Even more important had been the spiritual uplift of the pe
riod. As he said in a fifty-year summary for the New York Times
in 1909: "From contempt and amusement they have passed to the
pity and perplexity of their neighbors, while within their own
souls they have arisen from apathy and timid complaint to open
protest and more and more manly assertion." Now the Negro was
ready to fight in the van of progress not only for himself, DuBois
said, but for the emancipation of women, universal peace, demo
cratic government, socialization of wealth, and human brother
hood. Here, he thought, was a momentous transformation: from
slavery to freedom, from four millions to ten millions, from denial
of citizenship to enfranchisement, from unorganized irresponsibil
ity to organized group life, "from being spoken for to speaking,
from contemptuous forgetfulness on the part of their neighbors
to uneasy and dawning respect, and from inarticulate complaint
to self-expression and dawning consciousness of manhood." 16
When the Negro lagged, DuBois was ready to blame the white
man. The persistently high Negro crime rate he blamed on the
economic effects of emancipation, the double standard of justice
in the courts, the convict lease system (which, he said, made crimi
nals of delinquents), the increasing brutality of white mobs which
shattered black faith in white justice, and the exaggerated and
unnatural separation of the best classes in both groups. It was only
natural that Negroes should pilfer in an industrial society in which
the earnings of thrift, efficiency, and genius were often stolen by
the strong and crafty; why should Negroes not steal in communi
ties where the "theft of truth" in newspapers and magazines drew
no effective protest from those who considered themselves good?
"A system which discouraged aspiration and endeavor encourages
crime and laziness." 17 Negro voters in Philadelphia were venal, he
admitted, but their petty bribes were merely bread and butter
compared to the large-scale graft which benefited Philadelphia s
46 THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
influential white citizens at the expense of public funds. When
DuBois acknowledged that, despite educational advances, Georgia
Negroes were still relatively ignorant, he placed the responsibility
on white men: the state had persistently starved its Negro schools,
and Atlanta had deprived Negroes of the use of its new Carnegie
Library. The South s policy of disfranchisement checked the Ne
gro at every point: in his education and his work, in the accumu
lation of property, in the elimination of crime and disease, and
in the inculcation of self-respect and ambition. A Southern Negro
peasant bound by the perpetual debt of the crop lien system had
little incentive to save or to work efficiently.
In 1903 DuBois collected a group of his fugitive essays and
some new material into The Souls of Black Folk, his most success
ful volume.* James Weldon Johnson has said that it "had a
greater effect upon and within the Negro race in America than
any other single book published in this country since Uncle Tom s
Cabin."-f In its judicious fairness, skillful writing, and resource
ful adaptation of scholarly material to a popular audience, it is
DuBois s best statement of the Negro s case to white America, and
despite a looseness of imagery which clouds meaning,^ it is a
minor American classic.
All of DuBois s techniques appear in the book. Reining in
his sense of personal loss, he welcomes the death of his infant son
as an escape from bondage: "Well sped, my boy, before the world
has dubbed your ambition insolence, has held your ideals un
attainable, and taught you to cringe and bow. Better far this
nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you."
He reprints an account of the Freedmen s Bureau from the At
lantic Monthly. His Atlanta conference reports provide the ma
terial for articles on the Negro church and on the Negro college
graduate. His essay on Alexander Crummell emphasizes the role
* The book went through more than twenty editions, and in 1940 DuBois
reported tha& it was "still selling." A new edition was published in 1953 by
the Blue Heron Press.
f Along This Way (New York, 1935), p. 203. In Tell Freedom: Memories
of Africa (New York, 1954), pp. 224-26, a young South African colored man,
Peter Abrahams, describes the sense of purpose he received from a first read
ing of The Souls of Black Folk.
J E.g.: "... rolling hills lie like passioned women wanton with harvest."
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE 47
of the individual leader on the progress and morale of the race.
He draws on his own experiences to describe back-country South
ern schools for Negroes. He even includes a short story, an exotic
cross-racial tale reminiscent of George Washington Cable. The
critical, but respectful, essay on Booker T. Washington, which
did much to influence DuBois s later career, appears here.* In
short, this is a cross section of the scholarly Dr. DuBois s appeal
to white America.
The most striking characteristic of the book is not its emo
tional intensity, but its calm balance, the absence of devils and
angels, the recognition of the genuine racial difficulties created by
three hundred years of precedent. He speaks tolerantly of the
Negro s slavery "not the worst slavery in the world, not a slavery
that made all life unbearable, rather a slavery that had here and
there something of kindliness, fidelity, and happiness, but withal
slavery, which, so far as human aspiration and desert were con
cerned, classed the black man and the ox together." He points
to the two major obstacles to Reconstruction the tyrannical slave
holder who "determined to perpetuate slavery under another
name," and the idler-freedman who "regarded freedom as per
petual rest." He recognizes "enough argument" on both sides to
support the stereotypes of the shiftless Negro and the tyrannical
white Southerner, enough certainly to create barriers to mutual
sympathy.
The fairness of his approach, however, does not rule out a
vigorous statement of the Negro s cause. DuBois might be "the
last to withhold sympathy from the white South in its efforts to
solve its intricate social problems," and he might acknowledge
that a partly developed people could profit by the guidance of
the best and strongest of their neighbors. But the best whites
in the South do not rule, he asserts, and therefore a Negro without
the ballot is left exposed to the "exploitation and debauchment
of the worst." The operation of the crop-lien system not only robs
the Negro of the fruits of his labor, but discourgages thrift and
ambition, though DuBois turns from occasional well-tended farms
"with a comfortable feeling that the Negro is rising." He thinks
* See below, pp. 68-69.
48 THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
that the physical isolation of Negro and white upper classes guar
antees that "both whites and blacks see commonly the worst o
each other." He states again his conviction that only through
education, of white as well as of black, can color prejudice be
conquered. At one point the tone of a threat enters his book: If
Negroes do not possess an educated leadership, will they be satis
fied with their lot, he asks the white South, or "will you not rather
transfer their leading from the hands of men trained to think to
the hands of untrained demagogues?"
Fairness, restraint, and scholarly reporting these qualities in
The Souls of Black Folk were useful as part of a long-range cam
paign to coax the white man into justice for the Negro. In mo
ments of crisis, however, that method was too slow, and the pres
sure of the color line on a sensitive Negro, proud and emotional,
led DuBois into direct statement of Negro demands, even into
direct attack on the Negro s enemies. He turned to trip-hammer
accusations accusations based on his knowledge as a sociologist,
to be sure, but drawn up by the hand of a propagandist.
In 1906, for instance, the Atlanta race riot, which in four days
of fighting led to five deaths, was defended by John Temple
Graves, editor of the Atlanta Georgian, as a spontaneous flare-up
of white Atlantans against black rapists. DuBois replied heatedly.
He blamed the riot on Hoke Smith and Clark Howell, two candi
dates for governor who, DuBois said, had spent two years trying
to outdo each other in vilifying the Negro. (Actually this was
truer of Smith, and of his backer Tom Watson, than of Howell.)
He thought that a disgraceful police force and penal system had
helped. When a lawless collection of white teen-age boys and
irresponsible leaders attacked the Negro community, he said, the
blacks broke the unwritten law forbidding Negro self-defense
against white aggression, and bloodshed resulted. The horror
of the outburst gave DuBois a chance of codify the Negro s pro
test against the South under the heading "lessons of the riot":
i. It was criminal procedure to stir up race hatred as a path to
political preferment. 2. The way to stop crime, among Negroes
and white men, was by just courts, an honest police force, and a
reforming (not a money-making) prison system. 3. The achieve
ment of a peaceful community was beyond hope when a half to a
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE 49
third of tie population was ignorant, and defenseless to the attack
of the worst elements of the city. 4. The only way a Negro could
be sure his property would be defended was to put a ballot in his
hand. 5. Radical action in the South was necessary to prevent
more outbreaks: reduce the representation in Congress of any state
which disfranchised one part of its population the Fourteenth
Amendment provided for this and grant federal aid to the South s
public schools in order to combat illiteracy and barbarism.
DuBois s treatment of the Atlanta riot showed a growing talent
for propaganda as distinguished from scholarship. The logic of
parts of his argument the arbitrary introduction of the issue of
federal aid to Southern education as a lesson of the riot, for ex
ampleindicated an advocate s sense of timing. After all, a reader
might accept Graves s explanation of the riot and reject DuBois s
without affecting, one way or the other, the value of DuBois s
recommendations.
The roles of scholar and advocate need not be incompatible,
especially when, as in DuBois s case, the scholar is convinced that
truth is itself the best advocate. Yet the temptation is always pres
ent to mix scholarship and propaganda, to merge research and
reform, drawing from research a recommendation for reform
which it does not produce by itself. How far DuBois yielded to
this temptation was revealed in an extreme form in his biography
of John Brown, the abolitionist, which appeared in 1909. Pub
lished as part of a historical series edited by E. P. Oberholtzer,
the book was largely a pastiche of quotations from earlier writ
ers; it added nothing new except DuBois s notion that Brown s
contacts with Negroes needed further analysis. Since few written
records were available, DuBois merely speculated: "Even in the
absence of special material the broad truths are clear." By the
end of the book, DuBois s commentary on the legacy of John
Brown to the twentieth century ("The cost of liberty is less than
the price of repression") served as a bridge to a critique of race
relations in 1909.
The biography, like the article on the Atlanta riot, illustrated
the tension in DuBois s plans as a scholar. The cumulative weight
of facts might eventually solve Negro problems, but waiting was
slow, and DuBois was not a patient man.
K O THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
Training the Negro
DuBois s burden behind the Veil was itself a full-time under
taking. His job at the university charged him with educating
young Negro students. Beyond that, DuBois felt impelled to
guide the thinking of the Negro masses and to hold high a more
sophisticated racial ideal to the select upper fraction, the "Tal
ented Tenth." This double life writing to reach an educated
white audience and guiding the intellectual life of the Negro-
involved DuBois in a continuous readjustment of his focus, for as
he himself observed in The Souls of Black Folk: "The would-be
black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge
his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors,
while the knowledge which would teach the white world was
Greek to his own flesh and blood."
Only the expense of traveling seems to have restrained Du
Bois s willingness to address Negro groups anywhere, anytime.
When he could not attend a meeting in person, he frequently
sent a statement to be read. In a week s extension course in At
lanta, he traced the history of the Negro race from Africa to the
present. He wrote a series of brief articles on a similar theme for
the Voice of the Negro, an able monthly published in Atlanta for
a small, but national, audience. After his return from Europe he
had prepared for an unidentified audience a talk on German
socialism and, for what seems to have been a Washington gather
ing, a commentary on Thomas Carlyle. His signed contributions
to his own magazine, Horizon, contained political analysis and
direct advice on elections.
To a group of school children in Indianapolis, he held up the
privilege of membership in a race which would lead world civil
ization: "In time we are going to be the greatest people in the
world, if only we do the work that is laid before us as it ought
to be done." 18 In a graduation address for Washington s colored
high schools in 1904, he denounced selfish slogans like "paddle
your own canoe" and "the devil take the hindmost" as false views.
Education, he said on a return visit the next year, communicated
the ideals of civilization and the methods for achieving good. He
warned that some men feared the Negro s manhood with its am
bition, power, and unconquerable resolution.
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE 51
To the Negro businessmen of Chicago in 1898 he urged inten
sive economic organization of the Negro market behind a tariff
wall of racial pride. Instead of wasting resources in "crowded
mobs called church picnics, in hideous clothes called fashionable,"
he demanded that Negroes stress thrift and business knowledge:
a crusade for a penny savings bank, he said, "would mean more to
us today than the right of suffrage." 19 To educated women he out
lined the functions of mothers ("not quantity, but quality"), of
homemakers, and of leaders in human intercourse. He even
found time to urge a Pennsylvania school girl who was inattentive
to her studies to meet her responsibilities to herself and to her
race.
To students enrolled in colleges he assigned a special function.
The Talented Tenth of the race, from whom the exceptional man
would rise, they must "leaven the lump" and "guide the Mass
away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their
own and other races," he said. 20 Somewhere, either at Harvard or
at Berlin, perhaps at both, DuBois had run across Carlyle. In this
British elitist DuBois found a text for young Negroes: disdain
for a money civilization and zealousness for cultural richness
among a choice band of heroes ready to lead the masses. He
told the students to heed this gospel according to Carlyle: "the
nobility of effort, long continued, wearying, never ending effort,
the imperativeness of eternal strife, the divinity of sweat." 21 Fresh
from inspirational training in colleges, they were to return to
their communities, leaders in business and the professions, and,
above all, leaders in bringing the blessings of civilization to the
Negro millions. Preparation for a trade, the industrial education
so sedulously pressed by Booker T. Washington, did not qualify
them for broad leadership as DuBois understood it: they required
a rich acquaintance with the heritage of civilization and a trained
intelligence. After DuBois s arrival at Wilberforce, his lecture,
"The Art and Art Galleries of Modern Europe," emphasized the
relevance of Western artistic treasures to the spiritual heritage of
Negro Americans.
At Atlanta DuBois gave the juniors and seniors a rigorous two-
year course, loosely tied together under "sociology and history,"
in economics, political science, and staitstics. The year after his
arrival, the university catalog, which spoke of making Atlanta the
52 THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
"center of an intelligent and thorough-going study of the Negro
problems/ indicated the breadth of its new professor s intention:
It is intended to develop this department not only for the sake
of the mental discipline but also in order to familiarize our
students with the history of nations and with the great eco
nomic and social problems of the world. It is hoped that thus
they may be able to apply broad and careful knowledge to the
solving of the many intricate social questions affecting their
own people. The department aims therefore at training in
good intelligent citizenship; at a thorough comprehension of
the chief problems of wealth, work and wages; and at a fair
knowledge of the objects and methods of social reform. 22
(It is the measure of the man that DuBois thought that he could
impart a "thorough comprehension" of the chief problems of
wealth, work, and wages.) College-bred men were needed "to
leaven the lump" not only as teachers and sociologists, but, as
DuBois told the graduating class at Fisk ten years after his own
commencement, as scientific farmers leading to an "aristocracy"
of "country gentlemen," as merchants rather than as mere money
makers, as doctors, artists, and scientists. The legal profession
seemed crowded, he said, and the ministry attracted too many
"sap-headed young fellows, without ability, and in some cases,
without character," though even there trained conscientious work
ers would find a place. 25
In his students DuBois looked for the missionary devotion of
his own youth. In a prayer at morning chapel, written, as he said
himself, more for man than for God, he said: "There is no God
but Love and Work is his prophet help us to realize this truth O
Father which thou so often in word and deed has taught us. Let
the knowledge temper our ambitions & our judgments. We would
not be great but busy not pious but sympathetic not merely rev
erent, but filled with the glory of our Life-Work. God is Love &
Work is His Revelation. Amen." 24
For the intellectual elite who met as the "American Negro
Academy," DuBois had a rather more sophisticated message. In
an address entitled "The Conservation of Races" which he de
livered in Washington soon after his appointment to Atlanta,
DuBois rejected the facile assumption of the unity of the human
THE SCHOLAR S ROLE 53
family and the American idea that it could through conglomera
tion cut across the racial determination of history. Racial dif
ferences mainly followed physical race lines, he argued, but mere
physical distinctions did not define the deeper spiritual, psychical
differences which, however much based on the physical, infinitely
transcended it. Actually, as physical differences lessened, he said,
the spiritual differences emerged with greater clarity: the English
revealed their capacity for constitutional liberty, the Germans for
science and philosophy, the "Romance" race for literature and art.
Negroes too, he went on, possessed the "cohesiveness and con
tinuity" of these racial groups, but their full spiritual message had
still not emerged. The civilization of Egypt had given a hint of
that message, he said, but the Negro race, like the yellow and
Slavic races, was just starting.
To deliver their message, DuBois thought, American Negroes
must stand not as individuals but as part of a race of two hundred
million which had an advance guard of eight million in America.
In DuBois s view, American Negroes could not reach this fruition
by absorption in white America; they had to stand as a unit pos
sessed of "stalwart originality which shall unswervingly follow
Negro ideals/
Was the Negro American a Negro or an American? DuBois
answered that he was American by birth, citizenship, political
ideals, language, and religion; thereafter, he was a Negro, part of
a half-sleeping race now awakening. Through racial organizations
colleges, newspapers, business groups, schools of literature and
art, intellectual clearinghouses like the American Negro Academy
we Negroes, DuBois said, must "conserve our physical powers,
our intellectual endowments, our spiritual ideals; as a race we must
strive by race organization, by race solidarity, by race unity to the
realization of that broader humanity which freely recognizes dif
ferences in men, but sternly deprecates inequality in their oppor
tunities of development." The Academy, he hoped, would stand
in the vanguard, a mouthpiece for scattered Negro leaders who
saw the need for progress through less whining and more dogged
work, through the conquest of disease, crime, and impurity vices
which, unless themselves conquered, would conquer the black race.
DuBois wanted the Academy to aim high for the best goals, a strong
54 THE SCHOLAR S ROLE
manhood and a pure womanhood, rearing a racial ideal for the
glory of God and the uplift of the Negro people. 25
Training Negroes and educating white Americathese tasks
made the scholar s role a busy one for DuBois for sixteen years,
the period from his late twenties to his early forties. The years
did not show: his hairline was now in almost full retreat, but the
swift, impatient movements and the trim, agile build were those
of a youthful man. If he was older than his years when he went to
Atlanta, he was younger when he left in 1910. Mrs. DuBois, whom
her husband saw as "beautifully dark-eyed" and thorough as a
German housewife, stayed at home while he traipsed around the
country. Basically a homemaker, she did not share her husband s
scholarly interests. They had had two children: the older, their
son Burghardt, who died while still an infant; their daughter Yo-
lande, who was in the early stages of growing into a comely
young lady and who was to present DuBois with a much-treasured
granddaughter. DuBois himself was not the type to stay much at
home. His travels took him away at frequent intervals, and when
he was in Atlanta, he spent long hours in his office. He rarely
ventured off the campus, for Southern custom closed much of
Atlanta s life to him, and he would not accept the rest on humilia
ting terms. He never entered a streetcar, never attended the theater
or concert hall. When white friends visited him in Atlanta, they
had to seek him out at his study. What social life he had was with
selected Negroes who taught at neighboring colleges one of these,
John Hope, became his closest friend over the years and eventually
gave him sanctuary from later troubles. His monthly gatherings
with these friends, generally stag affairs, gave DuBois a brief relief
from the intensity of living the Negro problem. The conversation
almost invariably came around to one aspect or another of the
color line, but at least the gathering created a moment of relaxation
among peers with whom DuBois could unbend. An alumnus of
Atlanta, James Weldon Johnson, was astonished in 1904 to find
that DuBois s brooding, intransigent public demeanor could dis
solve into joviality, even frivolity. But few white men, or women,
ever saw this DuBois. They saw only the vigorous sociologist-
cold, austere, dedicated.
Ill
FROM TOWER TO ARENA
Midway in his fourteen years at Atlanta, DuBois started to descend
from the tower to the arena. His program as a social scientist was
not working out as planned: his published work fell short of his
own standards and failed to influence the white world in any im
portant way. At the same time, he was convinced of the need for
immediate action. The social and economic condition of the black
man was retrogressing and, DuBois believed, Booker T. Washing
ton, feted and admired, was betraying the Negro into permanent
servility.
To meet the new situation, DuBois readjusted his program.
While still at his post in Atlanta, he increased the stridency of his
appeals to white America, organized the "Niagara Movement" to
mobilize aggressive Negro opinion, and started a magazine, Hori
zon, to instruct his people in the most effective political use of their
numbers. But his new program was unsuccessful. White journals
for the most part closed their pages to him, the Niagara Movement
crumbled, and Horizon became an unbearable expense. In the
meantime, his "radical"* activity compromised his position at
Atlanta.
In 1910, at the lowest point of DuBois s career, a group of white
liberals rescued him by summoning him to edit Crisis, the maga
zine of a new organization, the National Association for the Ad
vancement of Colored People (NAACP). The job promised noth
ing in the way of security, and it drew DuBois, by then past his
fortieth birthday, away from the work for which his years of train
ing and experience best suited him. Yet the challenge was more
than he could resist; the invitation was a welcome "Voice with
out reply." 1 With his acceptance of this position, DuBois entered
his great years.
* The word has no economic implications. The "radicals * were Negroes
who agitated for full social and political equality; the "conservatives" fell in
with Washington s accomrnodationist views.
Fj6 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
The Failure of Scholarship
DuBois s Program of a Hundred Years was the perfect symbol
of his goals. It embodied his almost blind faith in pure science as
a source of truth and as a technique for Negro advancement. It
attracted his ambition, for through it he would gain prestige in
the white world as a successful scientist, and in the Negro world,
he would be hailed as the prophet of his race.
But there were pitfalls in this program. White philanthropy
might be uninterested in supporting his work. His scholarly work
might not command prestige in the white world, and white schol
ars might appear less committed to science than to perpetuating
stereotypes about the Negro. Finally, in the Negro world DuBois s
role might not evoke respect and gratitude but hostility. All these
dangers were very real, and they eventually crippled his whole
program.
DuBois s great faith in humanity s allegiance to truth led him
to expect that many people would be eager to give financial sup
port for research on Negro problems. In 1900, the year of the
twelfth census, he proposed a federal appropriation of between
$250,000 and $500,000, to be supervised by a mixed committee of
Negroes and white men, to survey the Negro s occupations, wages,
land, property, taxation, and education; perhaps suffrage and
crime could be added. "For half the cost of an ironclad to sail
about the world and get us in trouble," he said, "we might know
instead of think about the Negro problems." 2 But this castle stayed
in the air, and the Atlanta study the next year survived on a paltry
$250. DuBois promised that twice the expenditure would double
the usefulness of his work, but the university could not, and the
nation did not, spring at the chance. President Bumstead might
on occasion grant DuBois an additional $100 and wish him well in
his attempt to raise more funds outside the college, but usually the
Atlanta administration was forced into retrenchment. As early as
1904 the executive and finance committee of the trustees delayed
publication of the previous conference report until a donation for
that specific purpose could be found. Discouraged, DuBois said
that he would be willing to settle for a mere ten-page report-
most reports ran well over a hundred pages. In 1908 Bumstead s
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 57
successor, Edward T. Ware, as sympathetic to DuBois s work as
Bumstead had been, suggested that the conference be discontinued.
Only a grant of $1,000 from the Slater Fund saved the work from
suspension.
When funds were hard to get, the administration became cau
tious: controversial material might antagonize a potential bene
factor. On one occasion, in 1907, Bumstead instructed DuBois
to submit future copy to the administration before publication,
and then three days later he urged a change in a sentence which
dealt with Southern laws against intermarriage: "In a matter of
such delicacy as this/ he said, "I do not think we ought to take any
risk, especially when by so slight a change all risk is averted and
nothing of value lost/ 3 The timidity of the administration was
even more striking when Ware asked: "Is there any controversy
connected with raising money for the purchase of Frederick Doug
lass s Home which would make it unwise for us to invite our stu
dents to participate?" 4 In short, even for his unique program,
DuBois found sparse support. Caution ruled editorial policy, and
chronic deficits threatened to end the series at any time.
The critical reception accorded to the Atlanta Publications
varied. Sometimes a perfunctory summary of the book appeared;
more often, especially in newspapers and nonscholarly magazines,
enough praise to adorn a subsequent report. Frank W. Taussig,
the economic historian, said apparently in answer to DuBois s
request for a testimonial that in his judgment no better work was
being done anywhere in the country and that "no better oppor
tunity is afforded for financial support on the part of those who
wish to further the understanding of the Negro problem/ 5 DuBois
himself was never under the illusion that his work met the most
exacting standards of pure science. He only insisted that it was as
thorough as limited resources permitted and "well worth the
doing," especially since aside from the Census Bureau and the De
partment of Labor, only Atlanta University seriously studied the
facts of the Negro s condition.* But other scholars had more
doubts. Reviewing The Negro Church for the Political Science
Quarterly, Walter L. Fleming, the historian, observed: "Mr.
* In 1940 DuBois asserted that every book on the American Negro pub
lished from 1910 to 1925 drew on the Atlanta studies for material.
5 8 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
DuBois s theories and opinions may be correct; they are certainly
worthy of attention; but they are not well supported by any known
facts, nor by the mass of valuable material here collected, . . .
Indeed the effect of this intermingling of facts and theories in this
monograph is somewhat confusing and contradictory."* A re
viewer of the Negro Artisan for the Yale Review commented that,
inevitably in such volumes, much appeared that was "miscella
neous, scrappy, unimportant, and dubious." With patronizing
archness, more galling because of the admixture of praise, he con
tinued: "Perhaps the volume, excellent as it is, illustrates the fact
that the characteristic gift of the author, as of the race he adorns,
lies rather in the field of literature than of exact science." Com
menting on the same report, another reviewer questioned DuBois s
crucial premise, the Negro s capacity to absorb modern civiliza
tion. DuBois, he said, did not give the "faintest suggestion" that
the Negro s inherited racial nature might present an "all-pervading
and fundamental" barrier to his adaptation to modern conditions. 6
A variation on this racial theme had appeared anonymously in the
Nation the previous year: "Mr. DuBois s thought and expression
are highly characteristic of his people, are cultivated varieties of
those emotional and imaginative qualities which are the prevail
ing traits of the uncultivated negro mind." 7
Part of the appeal of a scholarly career had been DuBois s ob
servation that educated men, or at least scholars, were above preju
dice on the Negro question. His discovery that this was not uni
versally true, that prejudice appeared even in men of apparent
good will, appalled him. He could forgive Thomas Nelson Page,
whose Southern background, according to DuBois, made it difficult
for him to shed prejudice. But DuBois found the same virus in
intelligent Northerners as well. Few persons in the United States,
he said, did more to retard the solution of the Negro problem than
Lyman Abbott, editor of the Outlook. Walter F. Willcox of Cor
nell s Department of Political Economy and Statistics told DuBois
in 1904 that he was "agnostic" about the relative importance of
* Review of Dubois, ed., The Negro Church (Atlanta, 1904), Political
Science Quarterly, XIX, 702-3 (December 1904). This judgment must be read
in the light of the anti-Negro bias in Fleming s own work.
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 59
persistent racial characteristics and of the pressures of the color
line in holding the Negro back. DuBois s blistering reply scoffed
at judgments based on observations from the window of a rail
road car and continued: "If you insist on writing about & pro
nouncing judgment on this problem why not study it? . . . There
is enough easily obtainable data to take you off the fence if you
will study it first hand and not thro prejudiced eyes/* 8 Later the
same year DuBois objected to a report of the Committee on the
Economic Position of the Negro, of which Willcox was chairman,
on the grounds that its statistics underestimated the number of
Negro servants who supported families of their own. DuBois con
ceded that he could not prove the error in Willcox s work, but he
was sure from his own knowledge that the report was wrong. As
DuBois saw it, science in the hands of white scholars was deserting
its calling: "It has made itself the handmaid of a miserable preju
dice. ... It has supprest evidence, misquoted authority, distorted
fact and deliberately lied." 9
While DuBois was losing rapport with white scholars, he was
also finding fewer outlets for his popular articles on the Negro
question. In his peak year he had placed articles in ten different
magazines.* But as early as 1904 Bliss Perry of the Atlantic urged
DuBois away from the race question. Collier s rejected DuBois s
bid for a regular column of commentary on the rise of the darker
nations, and when it printed one of his articles, it appeared above
an advertisement for Peerless Brand Evaporated Cream and across
from Sanitol Tooth Powder. When McClure s published what
DuBois called the "small narrow anti-Negro propaganda of
Thomas Nelson Page" and DuBois asked for a hearing from the
other side, S. S. McClure disclaimed any desire to open his pages
to controversy a rather anomalous statement for the most bril
liant of the muckraking editors. The following year he rejected
an article, "Black Social Equals," as "rather an unwise thing to
print." Among the magazines of general circulation, only the In
dependent remained hospitable. Yet in the very years of DuBois s
* They were the Atlantic Monthly, Dial, World s Work, Harper s Weekly,
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Independent,
Bulletin of the Department of Labor, Southern Workman, Outlook, Mission
ary Review of the World. He appeared twice in the Dial.
60 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
declining influence with white readers, Thomas Dixon was making
his fortune with his trilogy of white supremacy, The Leopard s
Spots, The Clansman, and The Traitor.
The accumulation of rebuffsfinancial difficulties at Atlanta,
differences with white scholars, and a declining market for his
articles gnawed at DuBois s earlier faith in the scholar s role. His
discouragement was deepened by events unrelated to himself, for
his stay at Atlanta coincided with the dark night of Negro freedom.
In 1890 Mississippi resorted to a cumulative poll tax and an "un-
derstanding-the-Constitution" provision in order to disfranchise
the Negro, and when the Supreme Court, in Williams v. Mississippi
(1898), raised no objection to these technically proper, "nondis-
criminatory" clauses, other states were encouraged to go and do
likewise or better. By 1910 the Negro was no longer a voting ele
ment in the South. After years of struggle, in which DuBois took
part through protest meetings and petitions to the legislature,
Georgia finally in 1908 passed the amendment which for all prac
tical purposes disfranchised Negroes. Even in the councils of the
Republican party, Southern Negroes were being frozen out; both
parties were to be the preserve of white Southerners. The Negro
was the victim of increasing violence. In 1906 there were two
major race riots, one in Atlanta and another in Brownsville, Texas.
Lynchings were decreasing in number, but, according to C. Vann
Woodward, the percentage of Negro victims was growing and, ac
cording to Walter White, the lynchings were increasing in brutality
and were reaching into the North. In 1908 a lynching occurred at
Springfield, Illinois, the capital of Abraham Lincoln s state.*
In their economic life the Negroes condition was hardly better.
Organized labor closed its ranks to Negroes and fought their strike
breaking activities. As early as 1903 DuBois s survey of the Negro
artisan, despite its optimism for the future, reported that the South
ern laborer and employer, having united to disfranchise the Negro,
had also united to hold him down economically. Even unorga
nized labor narrowed the vector of Negro jobs as much as it could;
when the Negro attempted to regain his job by working for less,
* An influential account it started the chain of events leading to the Na
tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People is William E.
Walling, "The Race War in the North," Independent, LXV, 5*9-34 (Septem
ber 3, 1908).
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 6l
he was rewarded by the white worker with hatred, and sometimes
with violence. Negroes seemed to be losing in one community the
progress achieved in another, and their permanent advance was
blocked off by the absence of an efficient apprentice system and by
the opposition o new unions. The industrial schools such as
Hampton and Tuskegee failed to prepare their students ade
quately: with little differentiation between what was taught to
teachers and to carpenters, the industrial schools followed the
patterns of an earlier age, unaware of either changing industrial
conditions or the presence of labor unions. Because of white con
trol of franchises and licenses, Negro tradesmen were frequently
denied the opportunity to serve even their own people. Negro
farmers still lived at the margin of existence, and the agrarian
grievances which gave rise to Populism were the beginning rather
than the sum of their troubles. DuBois had always looked to edu
cation as the way out of these problems, yet his own survey of Negro
public schools showed that they had deteriorated during the twenty
years before 1910.
In the first decade of the new century Negro disfranchisement
removed the votes in state legislatures and in city councils which
might have opposed a cavalcade of segregation ordinances gover-
ing transportation, state institutions, working conditions, resi
dencespractically any place in which the two races came in con
tact other than as master and servant. Color, it seemed, was being
transformed into caste.
The inescapable fact for DuBois was that apart from, in spite
of, or because of his work at Atlanta, the Negro was not making
any marked improvement in America. Neither optimism nor the
idea of progress could conceal stark events: disfranchisement, the
Atlanta riot, the lynching episodes.
To make matters worse, DuBois s reputation among Negroes
was suffering a partial eclipse. His defense of his ideas evoked scorn
in much of the Negro press. After seeing a review copy of The
Souls of Black Folk, with its moderate criticism of Washington s
ideas, the Colored American, previously respectful to DuBois,
warned that all his "vainglorious posturing and pompous attitud
inizing" would avail him nothing. 10 His criticism of industrial
education in The Negro Artisan led the Southern Workman, the
62 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
editorial spokesman for both Hampton and Tuskegee, to with
draw its respectful admiration of DuBois and to adopt a hostile
tone. Among prominent white men, DuBois s rank was subordi
nated to Washington s: DuBois s appeal to Jacob Schiff, a white
philanthropist, for support for a monthly magazine was apparently
referred to Washington at Tuskegee for clearance; the influential
Garrison-Villard family for years would hear no evil about Wash
ington; even Hart regretted DuBois s share in a controversy with
Washington. The contrast between the poverty at Atlanta and the
apparent opulence at Tuskegee dramatized the relative prestige
of DuBois and Washington.
Thus DuBois s program fell short of every purpose. As pure
science it failed to measure up to DuBois s own standards and drew
unfavorable notice from some white scholars. The retrogression
of the Negro s lot made the value of any learned contribution from
Atlanta seem negligible. On the personal level, the program had
gained attention for DuBois on both sides of the Veil, but his pres
tige was overshadowed by a competitor whom DuBois was bound
to despise.
The Fight Against Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington s vogue among influential white men
and his prestige among Negroes made an outspoken statement of
the Negro s cause urgent. As DuBois saw it, Washington was lead
ing his people into a blindjdle^ in exchange for paltry support
of industrial education, Washington was bartering away the claim
to political and civil rights; indeed he was even surrendering their
manhood. Every concession Washington won from the white man,
DuBois thought, yielded essential ground which would have to be
retaken by hard fighting.
Though nominally a debate over educational systems, the
Washington-DuBois controversy actually arose from DuBois s at
tack on Washington s whole program. Washington focussed on
the Negro masses. He favored industrial education because he
thought that technical skills would make Negroes invaluable and
therefore welcome in an industrial economy. In seeking support
for industrial education, Washington was willing to postpone po-
FROM TOWER TO ARENA g
litical and social rights, and in appealing to white philanthropy,
he maintained a friendly, accommoclating^attitude toward all white
men, Southerners and Northerners alike. He felt that the tempo
rary suspension of political and social rights was not too high a
price for the attainment of this economic shelf.
Washington first gained wide attention by a speech at the At
lanta Exposition in 1895. On that occasion Washington urged
members of his race to cast down their buckets among die friendly
white Southern people and to share the common purpose of rais
ing the South s economic level. He offered the white South a
peaceful reservoir of Negro labor for the burgeoning Southern in
dustries. In return he expected Southern support for industrial
education. Social equality, he rejected; political and civil rights,
he postponed. Many white leaders, North and South, hailed the
speech as a basis for a rapprochement between Negroes and whites,
and overnight Booker T. Washington became a national figure.
When his autobiography, Up from Slavery, was serialized in Out
look in 1900 and published in book form in 1901, his national posi
tion was confirmed.
In a subsequent autobiography, My Larger Education (1911),
Washington made explicit his acceptance of the dominant indus
trial movement of the age. With praise for industrialists like
Andrew Carnegie who were contributing generously to Tuskegee
and to similar schools, Washington repeated the familiar aphor
isms of nineteenth-century American progress : ? dvflp <-pm en t.
through self-help, thrift as a path to riches, the importance of re
sponsibilities over rights. In a speech to a Negro audience, Wash
ington even made Christianity the servant of industry: "Nothing
pays so well in producing efficient labor as Christianity." 11
Washington s soothing statements to white audiences won him
prestige as the spokesman of his race. Because of his influence with
white men and his access to white capital, prominent Negroes sup
ported him and sought his favor. Much of the NegrjD press fell into
line: it shouted down criticism of Tuskegee and its principal and
branded DuBois as a jealous upstart.
As J. Saunders Redding says:
From white America s point of view, the situation was ideal.
White America had raised this man [Washington] up because
64 1FROM TOWER TO ARENA
he espoused a policy which was intended to keep the Negro
docile and dumb in regard to civil, social and political rights
and privileges. Having raised him to power, it was in white
America s interest to keep him there. All race matters could be
referred to him, and all decisions affecting the race would seem
to come from him. In this there was much pretense and, plainly,
not a little cynicism. There was pretense, first, that Washing
ton was leader by sanction of the Negro people; and there was
the pretense, second, that speaking in the name of his people,
he spoke for them. 12
Washington s ideas did not go unchallenged. To educated
Negroes, particularly those who lived in cities outside the South,
the traditionally servile position of Negroes in America was ab
horrent. Some, whose skin was pale enough, passed over into the
white race and, by leaving the area where they were known, cut
themselves loose from their past. Others drew into their own tight
little group, avoiding contact with the poorer, less educated ele
ments which they thought were responsible for awakening anti-
Negro feelings, especially in the North. One articulate group, how
ever, the heirs of Frederick Douglass, channeled their resentment
at second-class citizenship into an active fight for equality. Some,
like Kelly Miller of Howard University and Charles W. Chesnutt,
the novelist, spoke with quiet voices. Some, like Harry C. Smith,
the editor of the Cleveland Gazette, were more insistent. A few,
like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the chairman of the Anti-Lynching
League, and William Monroe Trotter, who with George W. Forbes
edited the Boston Guardian, threw restraint to the winds in their
attacks on American discrimination and on Booker Washington s
soft words. (Trotter had been a contemporary of DuBois s at
Harvard, but they had hardly known each other.) In the early
years of the century, DuBois gradually moved into the position of
leader of this articulate group.
The notoriety of the Washington-DuBois controversy has ob
scured the similarity of their views for at least six or seven years
after the Atlanta speech. The picture of Washington created by
partisans of DuBois has shown him as toadying to the whites,
acknowledging Negro disfranchisement without a murmur, and
selling out Negro aspiration for a mess of economic pottage. Ac-
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 65
tually Kelly Miller was probably right in 1903 when he wrote that
Washington "would not disclaim, in distinct terms, a single plank
in the platform of Douglass."* Though he ordinarily spoke in
cautious diplomatic terms, he did on occasion take^ajgosition
against white prejudice, even wi&out ^
press. He spoke out boldly against the "grandfather" clause in the
Louisiana constitution of^iSgS, and though unwilling to associate
himself publicly with the move, he asked Francis J. Garrison, Wil
liam Lloyd Garrison s son, to help raise money to aid responsible
colored men in Louisiana in testing it in the courts. The previous
year, in Atlanta, he had condemned the violence which had cul
minated in the lynching of a Negro named Sam Hose, and, in
private, he had expressed his fear of associating on a public plat
form with a Negro whose reputation of toadying to the whites
might have compromised his own position. Off the record, he
offered to help DuBois to press an action against the Pullman Com
pany for alleged discrimination. In 1903, just before the publica
tion of The Souls of Black Folk, he joined DuBois in protesting
to the Rhodes Trust the exclusion of Negro candidates from con
sideration in the Atlanta area.f
Furthermore, until the publication of The Souls of Black Folk,
Washington maintained cordial personal relations with DuBois.
In 1900, Washington, apparently at DuBois s request, recom
mended him for a position as superintendent of the Negro schools
in Washington, D.C., and the following year, DuBois accepted a
social invitation to Washington s summer camp in West Virginia.
At the 1902 Atlanta conference, Washington praised DuBois s work
as a "monument to his ability, .wisdoiQ^ndLj^ithfulness." 13 Until
the break in 1903 Washington and his white bacEers continued to
* Kelly Miller ("Fair Play," pseud.), "Washington s Policy," Boston Eve
ning Transcript, September 19, 1903. Guy B. Johnson speaks aptly of Wash
ington as "in some respects a greater leader of white opinion than he was of
Negro opinion/ American Journal of Sociology, XLIII, 63 (July 1937).
f In an excellent article, August Meier uses his research in the Washington
papers as the basis for saying that "the Tuskegeean had for his goals full
equality and citizenship rights." "Booker T. Washington and the Rise of the
NAACP," Crisis, LXI, 70 (February 1954). He cites further evidence of Wash
ington s efforts against segregation and disfranchisement in his recent article,
"Toward a Reinterpretation of Booker T. Washington," Journal of Southern
History, XXIII, 220-27 (May 1957).
66 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
urge DuBois to join the staff of Tuskegee. Though Washington
equivocated, compromised, and frequently kept silent, he differed
with DuBois on method rather than on final goals. And even in
the choice of method, they shared some ground.
Conversely, DuBois had at various times moved closer to the
Tuskegee ideology than his partisans would admit. In a letter to
the New York Age, he had greeted Washington s Atlanta speech
as the basis for a real settlement if the South would open the doors
of economic activity to the Negroes and if the Negroes would co
operate with the white South in "political sympathy." 1 * (Such ac
cord was reminiscent of DuBois s talk to young Negro leaders at
Fisk.) In the mid-nineties, when Washington was telling a Brook
lyn audience that it was more important that the Negro be pre
pared for voting, office-holding, and the highest recognition than
that he vote, hold office, and be recognized, DuBois was scoffing at
the Negro s "wail" of complaint against his lack of privilege: "Bah
what of that! what does man who has the world in his grasp care
for the meteors that escape him and what does the monarch of the
sphere, of the 7 stars and solar years care if some little stars of the
universe shine not for him? Turn your back on evils you can not
right, & press to work that is calling so loudly and clearly." 15
JDuBois s speech on the "Meaning of Business" in 1898 reflected
the mercantile spirit of the age so characteristic of Washington s
teachings. Business organization and economic development must
claim the major energies of the people, he said. The task was there
fore to accumulate capital and to use it wisely: "The day the Negro
race courts and marries the savings-bank will be the day of its sal
vation." 16
On universal suffrage DuBois was no more outspoken than
Washington. When Georgia considered the Hardwick bill for ef
fective Negro disfranchisement in 1899, DuBois endorsed educa
tional and property qualifications for voting, thus protecting the
ballot for the few at the expense of the many. DuBois was more
insistent than Washington in applying the standard equally to
both races, but on the basic issue of universal suffrage, neither took
a particularly democratic view.
DuBois always regarded industrial education and college work
as complementary. About 1899 he outlined a plan of cooperation
* FROM TOWER TO ARENA 67
between the investigative conferences at Hampton and Atlanta.
In the same year he assured Washington of his "best sympathy for
the Tuskegee work" and predicted that eventually it would "un
doubtedly bear fruit." 17 In 1901, he publicly praised Tuskegee s
ten-year battle against the crop-lien system, one-room cabin, and
poor and short-termed public schools. The next year, in inviting
Washington to the annual Atlanta conference, DuBois emphasized
his anxiety to minimize the break between colleges and industrial
schools and to cooperate with Tuskegee. Even in The Negro Arti
san (1902), where his comments were more explicitly critical of
industrial education, he was also on record as a member of the
resolutions committee which stated: "We especially commend
Trades Schools as a means of imparting skill to Negroes, and
manual training as a means of general education. We believe the
movements in this line, especially in the last ten years, have been
of inestimable benefit to the freedmen s sons." 18
This atmosphere of mutual cordiality, however, was deceptive,
for the pressures which led to the explosion in 1903 had been
building up for three years. In 1900 DuBois spoke very generally
of the Negro who forgot too easily that "life is more than meat and
the body more than raiment." Such a person was likely to be
"a traitor to right and a coward before force." 19 The following
year, in reviewing Washington s autobiography for the Dial,
DuBois ascribed two great achievements to him: gaining the
sympathy and cooperation of the white South and learning so
thoroughly "the speech and thought of triumphant commercial
ism and the ideals of material prosperity" that he gained equal
consideration in the North. Opposition to his ideals of material
prosperity at the expense of social and political advance, DuBois
explained, arose from the "spiritual sons of the abolitionists" and
from a large and important group in Washington s own race "who,
without any single definite programme, and with complex aims,
seek nevertheless that self-development and self-realization in all
lines of human endeavor which they believe will eventually place
the Negro beside the other races. While these men respect the
Hampton-Tuskegee idea to a degree, they believe it falls short of
a complete programme. They believe, therefore, also in the higher
education of Fisk and Atlanta Universities; they believe in self-
68 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
assertion and ambition; they believe in the right of suffrage for
blacks on the same terms with whites/ These opponents were
silenced, he said, only by "Mr. Washington s very evident sincerity
of purpose. We forgive much to honest purpose which is achieving
something. We may not agree with the man at all points, but we
admire him and cooperate with him as far as we conscientiously
can. It is no ordinary tribute to this man s tact and power, that,
steering as he must amid so many diverse interests and opinions,
he to-day commands not simply the applause of those who believe
in his theories, but also the respect of those who do not." 20
The tone of the essay aligned DuBois with this latter group, in
which he included some of the most important Negro intellectuals
the educator Kelly Miller, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, the
physicist Henry O. Tanner, and the novelist Charles W. Chesnutt.
Even in the role of critic, DuBois remained fair: the criticisms o
Washington were vigorous, but Washington s own position was
presented with understanding.
The essay on Washington in The Souls of Black Folk the fol
lowing year still retained much of DuBois s balanced appraisal of
Washington respect for the "most distinguished Southerner since
Jefferson Davis" together with sharp criticism of his overemphasis
on industrial education. DuBois praised the Tuskegee leader s
achievements in forging bonds which linked the North, the South,
and the Negro and in making progress for the Negro possible in
education and industry. But he feared that Washington s success
made increasingly impossible the Negrc/s ultimate achievement of
full status as a citizen. Washington, DuBois said, asked the Negro
to give up, at least for the present, three things: politicaLpower,
insistence on civil rights^and higher education of Negro youth.
"As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the
return?" DuBois asked. In the ten years since this policy had been
"triumphant," DuBois said, three things had occurred: the dis-
franchisement of the Negro, the legal creation of a distinct status
of civil inferiority, and the steady withdrawal of aid from institu
tions for the higher training of the Negro. DuBois did not at
tribute these developments directly to Washington s teachings, but,
DuBois said, "his propaganda has, without a shadow of a doubt,
helped their speedier accomplishment/ However much Wash-
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 69
ington s program calmed the fears of the white South and com
manded the respect of Northern industrialists, DuBois opposed it
for committing the Negro to a hopelessly subordinate status. "So
far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial
Training for the masses," DuBois said, "we must hold up his hands
and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the
strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the head
less host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice,
North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of
voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinction, and
opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,
so far as he, the South, or the Nation does this, we must un
ceasingly and firmly oppose them."
A substantial gulf had come to separate the two men. But the
gulf was not new. Why did the differences develop into open war
fare at the time? It is hard to say. Perhaps the favorable reception
of DuBois s early work gave him sufficient security to challenge
the champion. Perhaps the hammering attacks on Washington by
Trotter in the Boston Guardian and the more restrained criticism
elsewhere appealed to DuBois s pride in his race. Perhaps Atlanta s
failure to share in the white philanthropy at Washington s com
mand convinced DuBois of the hostility behind Washington s
diplomatic cordiality. Perhaps DuBois already had suspicions that
his path of scholarship would not lead to advancement of the
Negro and that a more aggressive policy of agitation was required.
All these factors undoubtedly contributed in varying degrees to
the decision, and DuBois s publication of a collection of his fugi
tive essays seemed like the appropriate occasion for a firm chal
lenge.
Behind the conflict in ideas were two discordant personalities.
Both possessed titanic ambition. Washington, thick-set and slow
moving, had the assurance of a self-trained man. A shrewd, calcu
lating judge of people, he had the soft speech and the accommoda
ting manner that made him equally at home among sharecroppers
and at the President s table. A master of equivocation, he made
platitudes pass as earthy wisdom, and he could take back un
noticed with one hand what he had given with the other. DuBois,
slight, nervous in his movements, never forgot for a moment
fO FROM TOWER TO ARENA
his educational background. Proud and outspoken, he held aloof
from the Negro masses, but felt at home with a small company of
his peers with whom he could be witty and convivial. Washington
had the appearance of a sturdy farmer in his Sunday best; DuBois,
with his well-trimmed goatee, looked like a Spanish aristocrat.
Where Washington was accommodating, DuBois was fretful and
aggressive. The conflicting personalities of these two men supplied
the rallying points for two groups of articulate Negroes. James
Weldon Johnson observed years later that one unfamiliar with the
twelve-year period after 1903 could not imagine "the bitterness of
the antagonism between these two wings." 21
Once the fire had broken out within the race, it created its own
fuel. On the one hand, Washington was frightened by the attacks
and apprehensive for his role as leader. ^On the other hand, the
adverse criticism which greeted DuBois s moderate essay may well
have provoked his proud spirit. His comments against Washing
ton grew ever more vehement until mutual recriminations blocked
compromise. In the Negro press the partisans of both parties egged
DuBois into even blunter criticism. The Colored American chided
DuBois as a "hanger-on at a place created by white people"; seeing
little chance to sell The Souls of Black Folk on "its own bottom,"
DuBois tried to sell it by a sensational attack. 22 The Southern
Workman, noting that "pessimism is never helpful," found DuBois
unfair to Washington: the latter had his eye on the Negro masses,
DuBois on the few more favored than the rest yet shut out from
social and political equality with the white man. 23 At the same
time the Cleveland Gazette labeled DuBois s essay a "proper esti
mate," 24 and the Guardian, which had been singing DuBois s
praises even before the essay appeared, gladly welcomed its new
ally. DuBois responded to this last bit of adulation directly. After
the "Boston riot," a meeting in July 1903 at which heckling of
Washington led to Trotter s arrest for disorderly conduct, DuBois
wrote to Clement Morgan: "While I have not always agreed with
Mr. Trotter s methods, I have had the greatest admiration for his
singlehearted earnestness & devotion to a great cause and I am the
more minded to express this respect publicly when I see him the
object of petty persecution & dishonest attack." 25 DuBois thus
aligned himself with the "radicals."
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 71
Once committed to battle, DuBois continued to attack. Under
a thin veil of praising Washington as part of the "advance guard
of the race," he subordinated Washington s work as an educator
and moral leader to his skill in political maneuver. He referred to
the "marvelous facility" with which Washington "so manipulated
the forces of a strained political and social situation as to bring
about ... the greatest consensus of opinion in this country since
the Missouri Compromise." Washington, DuBois continued, "kept
his hand on the pulse of the North and South, advancing with every
sign of good will and generosity, and skillfully retreating to silence
or shrewd disclaimer at any sign of impatience or turmoil/ 26 Few
readers could miss the object of DuBois s remarks the following
year: What are personal humiliation and denial of civil rights
against a chance to earn a living, or filthy Jim Crow cars next to
bread and butter? he asked sarcastically. "Earn a living; get rich,
and all these things shall be added unto you. Moreover, con
ciliate your neighbors, because they are more powerfuFand wealth
ier, and the price you must pay to earn a living in America is /
that of humiliation and inferiority."? 7 One of his addresses to the
Washington, D.C., colored school children included a warning
against the humiliating program which sought "to train black boys
and girls forever to be hewers of wood and drawersBf water for the
cowardly people who seek to shackle our minds as they shackled
our hands yesterday." "Loose yourselves," he told them, "from
that greater temptation to curse and malign your own people and
surrender their rights for the sake of applause and popularity and
cash." 28 Moving directly into the camp of the enemy, he spoke at
Hampton in 1906 and attacked the "heresy" of industrial educa
tion: "Take the eyes of these millions off the stars and fasten them -
in the soil and if their young men will dream dreams, let them be
dreams of corn bread and molasses." He admitted the necessity
of training most men to provide the world s physical wants, but he
begged the teachers attending the summer session at Hampton to
release their most able students for higher education, "the training
of a self whose balanced trained assertion will mean as much as
possible for the great ends of civilization." 29
Even before The Souls of Black Folk appeared, Washington
had called a conference of outstanding Negroes to consider the
72 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
present condition and future of the race. The conference pur
portedly sought a reconciliation of views, but DuBois told Kelly
Miller that he was afraid the meeting would become a "B. T. W.
ratification meeting." 30 Yet DuBois accepted the opportunity to
confront Washington with his equivocal stands on such questions
as civil rights, and organized a caucus of the opposition. He pro
posed that these men stand on the following platform: full politi
cal rights on the same terms as other Americans; higher education
of selected Negro youth; industrial education for the masses; com
mon school training for every Negro child; stoppage of the cam
paign of self-deprecation; careful study of the real condition of
the Negro; a national Negro periodical; thorough and efficient
federation of Negro societies and activities; raising of a defense
fund; judicious fight in the courts for civil rights. "Finally the gen
eral watch word must be, not to put further dependence on the
help of the whites but to organize for self-help, encouraging man
liness without defiance, conciliation without servility. " 31 As the
meeting approached, a circular letter, probably put out by DuBois,
warned that "the main issue of this meeting is Washington, refuse
to be side-tracked." 32
Washington never lost mastery of the conference. He controlled
the invitations and travel allowances. Lyman Abbott and Andrew
Carnegie were on hand to praise him abundantly. After he and
DuBois had spoken, a committee of three was selected to appoint
a larger committee as the steering group for the Negro race in
America. The committee of three included both principals, and
the third member, Hugh M. Browne, was so responsive to Wash
ington that DuBois was overruled on every major point, including
the membership of the permanent Committee of Twelve for the
Advancement of the Interests of the Negro Race a sort of Negro
general staff. When Washington was named chairman of this
group, DuBois resigned to avoid responsibility for statements over
which he would have little personal control. 33
The failure of the 1904 conference solidified DuBois s opposi
tion to Washington. In January 1905, DuBois s article in The
Voice of the Negro, "Debit and Credit (The American Negro in
account with the Year of Grace 1904)" listed in its debit column
"$3,000 of hush money* used to subsidize the Negro press in 5 lead-
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 73
ing cities." 8 * This was the first open attack on the Tuskegee ma
chine," the elusive organization through which Washington in
fluenced Negro life in America by his power over appointments,
both political and educational, by his manipulation of white capi
tal, and by his control over a part of the Negro press. William H.
Ward of the Independent and Oswald Garrison Villard of the
New York Evening Post urged DuBois either to withdraw his state
ment or to substantiate it with factual proof. But though evidence
in the Booker T. Washington papers backs up DuBois s charge,
the charge could not be proved: advertisements from Tuskegee in
friendly journals were hard to brand as bribery, and proof of direct
bribery if it existedlay hidden in the files of givers and takers.
Privately, on a confidential basis, DuBois assembled a substantial
portfolio to convince Villard, but Villard legitimately rejected this
hearsay evidence as insufficient; he retained his faith in Washing
ton s "purity of purpose and absolute freedom from selfishness and
personal ambition," though he admitted that Emmett J. Scott,
Washington s confidential secretary, had been "extremely injudi
cious."*
Washington s program gave DuBois an anvil on which to ham
mer out his own ideas. At the core of DuBois s philosophy was the
role assigned to the Talented Tenth because, like all races, DuBois
said, the Negro race would Ee saved bylts exceptional men, drained
to the knowledge of the world and man s relation to it. As teach
ers, ministers, professional men, spokesmen, the exceptional few
must come first: "To attempt to establish any sort of system of
common and industrial school training, without first (and I say
first advisedly) without first providing for the higher training of
the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the winds."
DuBois did not deprecate the importance of industrial training,
* The list of charges and the correspondence relating to it are in the
Oswald Garrison Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
August Meier s article, "Booker T. Washington and the Negro Press: With
Special Reference to the Colored American Magazine" has put beyond his
torical question the fact that Washington attempted to buy support in the
Negro press. Journal of Negro History, XXXVIII, 67-90 (January 1953). In
a friendly biography of Washington, Samuel R. Spencer, Jr., acknowledges
that "in some cases" Washington and his staff encouraged the printing of
Tuskegee press releases "by occasional contributions* to Negro editors." Booker
T. Washington and the Negro s Place in American Life (Boston, 1955), p. 163.
74 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
but "it is industrialism drunk with its vision of success, to imagine
that its own work can be accomplished without providing for the
training of broadly cultured men and women to teach its own
teachers, and to teach the teachers of the public school." DuBois
pointed to the thirty college-trained teachers on Washington s own
staff as an effective argument for training in the liberal arts. 85
DuBois s theory of the Talented Tenth was the striking product
of his own total experience and training. It singled out a select
minority, enriched it with the finest education, and then bade it
lead the masses. They were to be the thinkers, educators, ministers,
lawyers, editors, political leaders. To the ears of DuBois s oppo
nents, this theory, from the mouth of one who was .undoubtedly
a member of the Talented Tenth, had a selfish, self-serving ring,
and its echoes of the heroic vitalism of Carlyle and Nietzsche do not
recommend it to modern ears. Booker Washington was able to
score constantly against DuBois by charging that DuBois was inter
ested only in a handful of Negroes, while Washington concerned
himself with the masses. There was some truth in Washington s
charge, but not much. An essential part of DuBois s idea was that
the tenth was to be trained as the servants of the other 90 per cent.
Their special privileges were justified by the benefits which they
could confer on their fellow men, and DuBois never asked for
special privileges on any other terms. DuBois himself had had as
fine an education as any man in America; was he not using his
entire energy to raise his people? With a thousand, or ten thou
sand, Negroes similarly trained, similarly devoted to duty, how
long would American Negroes remain in poverty and degradation?
The training of the Talented Tenth was a means to an end:
political and civil rights equal to those of other Americans. In
1899, DuBois had acknowledged the propriety of proscribing ig
norance and bribery; by 1901, skeptical of Georgia s avowed in
tention to disfranchise the ignorant, he asked in an unpublished
article: "Do you propose to disfranchise ignorant white peoplef
Do you propose to leave the ballot in the hands of intelligent
Negroes and protect them in its exercise? ** Three years later he
withdrew his acceptance of partial Negro disfranchisement and
argued in favor of universal suffrage free from arbitrary educa-
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 75
tional requirements, for, he said, in losing the ballot, Negro work-
ingmen faced a hostile South unprotected and powerless. In
March 1905, DuBois and four other Negroes petitioned President
Theodore Roosevelt to instruct his Attorney-General to help in
testing the validity of state constitutions which deprived the Negro
of his vote by constitutional trickery and to support the passage of
the Morrill bill, then pending, which forbade racial discrimina
tion of any kind in vehicles in interstate commerce.
To help in the fight to secure Negro rights, DuBois committed
himself to a program of direct agitation. He denounced Negro
silence during the previous decade: the absence of complaint had
permitted white America to assume that the Negro was satisfied.
If Negroes sat "in courteous and dumb self-forgetting silence" until
others came to their rescue, he said, degeneration and destruction
might come first. In a preoccupied world, people had to take care
of themselves. 37
Agitation and Organization
From 1903 until 1910, DuBois took some time from his duties
at the university to devote himself to his new program of direct
agitation. As professor of sociology, he continued to train part of
the Talented Tenth and to issue sociological reports. But as
spokesman for the "radical" wing of the Negro race, he took on
new responsibilities.
To mobilize articulate Negroes ready to fight for their rights,
DuBois in 1905 sent out a summons for the first convention of
what became known as the Niagara Movement. 88 Several of
DuBois s "radical" associates had for some time been urging him
to organize a national committee of Negroes representing their
views. Two of them, F. L. McGhee and C. G. Bentley, drew up a
plan for the new group: a nation-wide organization with com
mittees assigned to definite Negro problems, local organizations of
militant Negroes, and an annual convention to plan and to gener
ate enthusiasm. In response to DuBois s appeal, twenty-nine profes
sional men from thirteen states and the District of Columbia met
76 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
at Niagara Falls, Ontario. These were to be the nucleus of the
"very best class of Negro Americans." For DuBois, the movement s
executive officer, the Niagara Movement was to serve two func
tions: in the white world, its annual manifestoes would periodi
cally call attention to the Negro s complaint; among Negroes, the
movement would whip up indignation against the injustices of
white America. Both purposes hinged on Booker T. Washington:
the steady barrage of protest would contradict his soothing assur
ances to the whites, and the movement would offer dissident
Negroes a medium for opposition to him.
A "Declaration of Principles/ largely written by Trotter and
DuBois, was dramatically "submitted to the American people, and
Almighty God" after the first convention. It indicated the broad
sweep of the Negro "radical" protest with which DuBois now as
sociated himself. Demands for suffrage and civil rights headed the
list, followed by complaints against "peonage and virtual slavery"
in the rural South and against the prejudice "helped often by
iniquitous laws" that created difficulties in earning a decent living.
Two classes of men deserved public excoriation, it said: employ
ers who imported ignorant Negro American laborers in emergen
cies, and then afforded them "neither protection nor permanent
employment" (an elaborate circumlocution for "strike breakers");
and labor unions which excluded "their fellow toilers, simply be
cause they are black." Free and compulsory education through the
high-school level was set as a universal minimum, and college train
ing, instead of being the "monopoly" of any class or race, should,
the statement continued, be open to talent. Trade schools and
higher education were both listed as essential. In the courts the
Negro wanted upright judges, juries selected without reference to
color, and equal treatment both in punishment and in efforts at
reformation. Some of DuBois s old complaints appeared: "We
need orphanages and farm schools for dependent children, juvenile
reformatories for delinquents, and the abolition of the dehuman
izing convict-lease system." Any discrimination along the color
line was said to be a relic of "unreasoning human savagery of which
the world is and ought to be thoroughly ashamed." The Niagara
group expressed astonishment at the increase of prejudice in the
Christian church, and labeled the third-class accommodations of
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 77
Jim Crow cars as an attempt "to crucify wantonly our manhood,
womanhood, and self-respect." They pleaded for health the op
portunity to live in decent localities with a chance to raise children
in "physical and moral cleanliness."
To right the wrongs, the small band urged national aid to edu
cation, especially in the South, a return to the "faith of the fathers,"
and legislation to secure proper enforcement of the War Amend
ments. Rejecting the "cowardice and apology" of the current
Negro leadership, it called for "persistent manly agitation" as the
road to liberty, for "to ignore, overlook, or apologize for these
wrongs is to prove ourselves unworthy of freedom." To accomplish
its ends, the Niagara group appealed for the cooperation of men
of all races.
The past decade, the Niagara band said, had shown "un
doubted evidences of progress": the increase in intelligence and in
the ownership of property, the decrease in crime, the uplift in
home life, the advance in literature and art, and the demonstra
tion of executive ability in religious, economic, and educational
institutions. However, in the face of the "evident retrogression
of public opinion on human brotherhood," only loud and insistent
complaint could hold America to its professed ideals. 39
After its initial meeting, the organization gained membership
slowly for about two years. The original members tried to interest
their friends, and they in turn passed the word along. The 29 at
Niagara Falls in June increased to 150 from thirty states by De
cember; by April of 1907, 236 members and 144 associate members
were on the rolls. But the appearance of strength was deceptive,
for by November 1907, the membership owed $2,650 in back dues,
and the organization had hardly sufficient funds to pay postage,
much less to initiate court actions to protect Negro civil rights. In
1909 dues were lowered from five dollars a year to two in an attempt
to prevent the accounts from falling further into arrears, but still
the legal department pressed for funds, and the treasurer s report
for 1909 was glum.
The Niagara Movement never solved its basic organizational
problems. It had no headquarters. DuBois, as perennial execu
tive secretary, gave the group whatever continuity it had, but his
strenuous efforts to hold the membership together by mail never
78 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
caught up with the need. Committees and departments were lo
cated in their chairmen s heads perhaps a thousand miles from an
essential colleague. In larger Negro communities, like Boston,
members met fairly regularly for discussion or for a joint protest
against some local grievance. In smaller communities correspond
ence was a thin substitute for face-to-face contact. The annual con
vention was intended to rally esprit, but expense, inconvenience,
and unsteady interest held down attendance.
The narrow base of membership in the organization princi
pally educated Negroes from business and the professions, the self-
appointed spokesmen for the Negro masses diminished its gen
eral appeal. The elite character of the movement, a sort of ex
clusive club the present membership of which passed on new ap
plicants, was felt even by friendly contemporary observers: the
editor of the Jersey City (New Jersey) Appeal, a Niagara booster,
warned DuBois that he "would do well to get closer to the people,
I mean the masses as well as the classes." 40 Mary White Ovington,
a white New York social worker, whose account of the second con
vention at Harper s Ferry for the New York Evening Post in 1906
left little doubt of her partiality, urged DuBois to let her discuss
the Negro and the labor problem at the 1908 gathering: "I should
like to hammer that side of things into some of the aristocrats who
are in the membership." 41
Even within the narrow range of the Talented Tenth, the Ni
agara Movement could not command unanimous support. For
one thing, it faced the active hostility of Washington and those, re
sponsive to him. Just after the first Niagara coavention, Wash
ington urged Charles W. Anderson, Collector of Internal Revenue
in New York City and a Washington intimate, to secure a man
"who would get right into the inner circles of the Niagara move
ment through the Brooklyn crowd and keep us informed as [to]
their operations and plans." 42 Furthermore, the Niagara Move
ment competed with at least three other comparable organizations
the Afro-American Council, the Negro American Political
League, and the American Negro Academy and all effort to unify
the four groups led nowhere. Some fear of Niagara "radicalism"
held down membership: one member resigned when he moved to
the South. The white president of Storer College at Harper s
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 79
Ferry, the host to the second convention, although saying that he
did not think the Niagara convention had injured his institution,
withdrew his invitation to the movement to return another year
until his trustees had a chance to express themselves. That year
the movement went to Boston. A Springfield, Massachusetts, Con
gregational minister declined membership because, although in
"most hearty sympathy with the aims of the Niagara Movement,"
he was unable to bring himself into accord with its methods.
The tight directorate of Niagara leadership lost itself in a sea
of bickering. In 1907 the organization came near to dissolution
when a feud between Trotter and Morgan in Massachusetts grew
from a local coolness to a cause of nation-wide dissension and led
DuBois to threaten resignation when the executive committee
failed to support his decision between the two. DuBois contributed
little to internal amity, for he was likely to regard his own pro
gram as the only one worthy of acceptance. Years later a partici
pant in the 1906 convention recalled that "in the whole meeting
DuBois insisted on having his way and had it as usual." 43 The
presence of DuBois and Trotter in a single group was a fairly safe
insurance against amity.
In 1911 DuBois still wrote hopefully of making the Niagara
Movement an annual conference without fees, but by that time the
force of the movement had long since spent itself. The reaction of
the Negro press ranged from distrust to friendly indifference. The
New York Age, guided from Tuskegee, poured continual abuse on
DuBois and his colleagues,* while the Cleveland Gazette main
tained an amiable though reserved attitude. As Niagara s member
ship dwindled, even DuBois s own magazine, the Horizon, gave it
little space.
In the intervals between annual conventions, DuBois continued
the Negro s protest over his own name. While the World s Work
printed his analysis of the 1906 Atlanta riot and its five "lessons/
the Independent carried a frenzied clamor:
Doth not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God?
How long shall the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in
Thine ears and pound on our hearts for vengeance? Pile the
* See, for example, New York Age, October 15, 1908: "The pessimistic folly
of these senseless radicals does not reflect the sentiment of Negro brains."
80 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes, who do such deeds, high on
Thine Altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn it in hell forever and for
ever!
Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!
Bewildered we are and passion-tossed, mad with the mad
ness of a mobbed and mocked and murdered people; straining
at the armposts of Thy throne, we raise our shackled hands and
charge Thee, God, by the bones of our stolen fathers, by the
tears of our dead mothers, by the very blood of Thy crucified
Christ: What meaneth this? Tell us the plan; give us the sign!
Keep not thou silent, O God!
Sit not longer dumb, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and
dumb to our dumb suffering. Surely Thou, too, are not white,
O Lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing! 44
As DuBois warmed to this new form of protest, his tone became
more strident and waspish, indifferent to the resentment he might
create in white opinion. In an address on "Negro Ideals/ to the
Ethical Culture Society in New York, he spoke casually of the
Negro blood which made wonderful the genius of Lew Wallace,
Alexander Hamilton, and "many other Americans who may wish
to have it forgotten." 45 In "Black Social Equals," the article re
jected by McClure s, he added former Senator George H. Pendle-
ton of Ohio and Henry Timrod, and he traced the large American
mulatto population to the easy sexual mores of the slave period, a
taunt to the white South which had been passing laws against in
termarriage to maintain the purity of its race. As a defiant vale
dictory to his career at Atlanta, he wrote an article for the Inde
pendent defending the individual s right to marry without inter
ference. While he held that marriage between races was likely to
unite incompatible personalities, irreconcilable ideals, and dif
ferent grades of cultures, he branded legal prohibitions of inter
marriage as "wicked devices to make the seduction of women easy
and without penalty." There was no adequate scientific proof of
the "necessary physical degeneracy" of nonwhite races, he said,
"nor has the will of God in the matter of race purity been revealed
to persons whose credibility and scientific poise command general
respect" 46 He told an audience in Atlantic City that if he had
appeared anywhere but last on the program, he would have been
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 8l
too surprised to speak. He addressed a YMCA audience in New
York City "with no feeling of pleasure," because the segregated
policies of the YMCA did not square either with Christianity or
with manhood. 47
DuBois was turning away from his white neighbors, for what
he thought were sufficient reasons. In education, he felt that with
the older philanthropic generation of Cravaths and Wares and
Armstrongs passing, the Negro could no longer expect white allies
to give positive help to Negro advancement.* In society at large,
DuBois began to see that prejudice against the Negro was not
merely the result of ignorance but had real economic roots. The
conviction was growing in him that politicians and capitalists de
liberately cultivated race prejudice for their own ends. Politicians
out of job who attributed all the white man s problems to the pres
ence of the Negro, he said, consciously appealed to race prejudice
to restore themselves to power. The Atlanta riot he saw as "a sort
of first-fruits of this newer economic race danger/ At the same
time, unscrupulous capitalists were tempted to "transmute race
prejudice into the coin of the realm" by pitting black workers
against white: white workers being held to the depressed standards
of black labor, while black workers were kept in line by the threat
of replacement by the whites. Thus the workers of each race, re
garding the other as the chief cause of unfair treatment, were
trapped into mutual antipathy, and low wage scales in the South
held down labor all over the nation. Yet despite this analysis of
the problem, DuBois could not surrender his earlier faith in edu
cation. The obvious corrective, he said, was still trained intelli
gence, and he urged federal aid to public schools wherever literacy
fell below certain minimum standards. 48
DuBois s direct appeals to the white world through the Niagara
resolutions and his new agitative articles had little apparent ef
fect: the Niagara Movement was, by and large, ignored by the
white press, and the tone of DuBois s articles barred his work from
every major publication except the Independent. John Brown,
* A personal rebuff may have reinforced this view. In 1908 DuBois was
apparently accepted as a member of the Massachusetts chapter of the Sons of
the American Revolution, but the organization s national headquarters revoked
the membership on a technicality.
82 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
more a part of DuBois s propaganda than of his scholarship, sold
only 665 copies in the seven years after its publication in 1909.
To supplement the Niagara Movement, DuBois and two as
sociates, F. H. M. Murray and L. M. Hershaw, launched Horizon^
which appeared monthly from January 1 907 until July 1910. (Jus t
over a year before, DuBois had tried to publish a magazine, called
the Moon, by himself, but it had lasted only a few months.) Hori
zon ran to eight or ten pages, about the size of the Reader s Digest
but with larger type and cheaper paper. Expenses were held to a
minimum, for Hershaw owned a printing shop and the three part
ners produced the copy for the magazine by themselves, each in a
separate signed section. Yet the cost was heavy, and the magazine
attracted few advertisers and not enough subscribers to make ends
meet. Outlets through local dealers were a matter for individual
negotiation, an expensive and time-consuming procedure. The
magazine lasted three and a half years only because the partners,
and especially DuBois, were willing to make up the deficit out of
their own pockets.
Much of DuBois s section of the magazine served the purposes
of the Niagara group: publicity for its meetings, publication of the
texts of successive addresses to the nation, taunts directed at Wash
ington* and at discriminatory white groups such as the Episcopal
* One is worth quoting at length an anecdote entitled "Constructive
Work."
"The White Man looked contemptuously down upon the Black Leader
who smiled back affably. Get out of here/ yelled the White Man as he kicked
the Black Leader down stairs and tossed a quarter after him. The Black
Leader pirouetted and bumped and rolled until he landed sprawling in the
dirt. The dark and watching crowd were breathless, and one of them grasped
his club and bared his arm. Slowly the Black Leader arose and his Eager
Supporters assiduously brushed off his pants. Then the Black Leader squared
his shoulders and looked about him. He cleared his throat and the throng
hung upon his word breathless, eager, while the one man clutched his club
tighter.
" My friends/ said the Black Leader, the world demands constructive
work: it dislikes pessimists. I want to call your attention to the fact that this
White gem man I mean gentleman did not kick me nearly as hard as he
might have: again he wore soft kid boots, and finally I landed in the dirt and
not on the asphalt. Moreover/ continued the Black Leader as he stooped in
the dust, I am twenty-five cents in/ And he walked thoughtfully away, amid
the frantic plaudits of the crowd. Except one man. He dropped his club and
whispered:
" My Godl "
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 83
Church. Beyond that, as a token of the Negro s responsibility for
his own advancement, DuBois revived his appeal for Negro emanci
pation from the Republican party, not, as in his Fisk days, to unite
with Southern Democrats to produce a new South, but to ally the
Negro with the more radical Northern wing of the Democratic
party and to rebuke the Republicans.
As the election of 1908 approached, DuBois backed slowly into
the Democratic party and even campaigned for the Democrats in
Ohio. Previously when it had appeared that only national action
could prevent universal Negro disfranchisement in the South,
DuBois had entertained some hope for Republicans, as the peti
tion to President Roosevelt had indicated. In DuBois s estimate
of "Debit and Credit" for 1905, he praised the party s statement
opposing special discrimination in the election franchise. Indi
vidual Republicans attracted his favor. He sent Governor Robert
M. LaFollette of Wisconsin a cordial invitation to the 1905 At
lanta conference; he shared in the adulation, widespread among
Negroes, for Senator Joseph B. Foraker of Ohio, a persistent de
fender of the Negro s cause. As late as 1908, he wrote of himself as
a believer in Republican principles.
But DuBois never went the whole way with the Republicans.
The Democratic South having destroyed the basis for Negro-white
political cooperation, DuBois had watched Roosevelt hopefully.
By the end of 1906, he realized that he had hoped in vain. Roose
velt had made a few token concessions to the Negro, DuBois said,
but in general, he was trying to exclude the Negro from govern
mental service and was making a frantic effort to appease the white
South. After the discharge of the Negro soldiers involved in the
Brownsville riot in 1906, DuBois had repudiated Roosevelt and
later had extended this repudiation to William H. Taft, the heir
to presidential power, partly because of Taf t s role as Secretary of
War in the Brownsville affair and partly because he was nominated
at a Republican national convention which seated Southern "lily
white" delegations (delegations which excluded Negroes, who had
since the Civil War been a major element in the Republican party
in the South).
With the election of 1908 approaching, how could 300,000
Negro votes carry maximum political weight? Between the dis
franchising Democrats and the "lily white" Republicans, what
84 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
choice was there? Prohibitionists no longer attracted him, because
although he believed in local option, he regarded state prohibition
as undesirable and impossible to accomplish. A vote for the So
cialists was merely thrown away. All doors seemed closed. In Feb
ruary 1908, he urged his subscribers to stay home on election day if
their only choice was between Taf t and Bryan.
By April, however, he started a gradual move into the Demo
cratic camp: 49 Negroes should normally support Republican can
didates, but the Republicans, feeling assured of the Negro vote by
the payment of "six minor political offices thrown us as a sop at the
command of a traitorous and cringing Boss/* were, under the
leadership of Roosevelt and Taf t, acquiescing in the loss of Negro
rights. Then, from July to October, DuBois devoted his columns
in the Horizon to a series of "talks" frankly designed to lure the
Negro voter into the Democratic camp.
The Republican party, DuBois told his small audience, had
forfeited its claim to the Negro s vote. Never opposed to slavery,
the party had supported Negro enfranchisement in Reconstruc
tion times only to maintain itself in power. Later, when it no
longer needed black votes, it had deserted the Negro and had
"winked ponderously at the Crime of 76." Nor had its record im
proved: with full control of all branches of the national govern
ment, the Republican party tolerated Negro disfranchisement;
ignored discrimination in interstate commerce; acquiesced in the
punishment of alleged Negro criminals without due process of law,
under circumstances of unspeakable atrocity and barbarism; gave
formal sanction to "lily whitism"; urged Negroes to eschew higher
education in favor of education fitting them to be laborers, serv
ants, and menials; dismissed a Negro regiment from the army when
a "few blacks were suspected of treating the South as the South
treated them." In the fact of this record, "the Negro plank of the
Republican platform has become a standing joke," and Negro
voters were "looked upon as fools, too amiable to bolt, and too
venal to be feared."
So much for the Republicans. The Democratic party, accord
ing to DuBois, offered most to the race and to the nation. It stood
for the strict regulation of corporate wealth. It supported organ
ized labor which, DuBois thought, was embracing an increasing
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 85
proportion of the Negro working force. The Democrats stood for
freedom and independence for brown and black men in the West
Indies and the Philippines, a point on which DuBois (and other
Negroes) felt strongly because the racist appeals of American im
perialists were giving national currency to notions of inferior and
superior races which heretofore had been restricted largely to the
South. Democrats opposed a high tariff, which the Negro con
sumer paid without compensating advantages as a producer. Fi
nally, Democrats spoke against all special privilege, he said, and
"every influence and move toward greater democratic freedom,
wider popular power, and abolition of special privilege is, whether
intended or not, an inevitable step toward the emancipation of
black men as well as white."
DuBois insisted that the Democratic party deserved a trial, at
least a trial, as the evil containing the larger element of good. Since
the Civil War, he wrote, two irreconcilable elements, a "radical
socialist Democracy at the North" and an "aristocratic caste party
at the South," at opposite poles on free trade, imperialism, caste
privilege, and regulation of corporate wealth, had shared power in
the Democratic party. The South maintained the alliance, he said,
because while the Negro voted Republican solidly and blindly, the
only possible anti-Negro vote was Democratic; the North, because
it needed Southern votes to win a national election. "The Negro
voter today therefore has in his hand the tremendous power of
emancipating the Democratic Party from its enslavement to the
reactionary South," DuBois argued, for the Negro could deliver
New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to the Demo
crats "with ease" and could make their triumph possible in a dozen
other states.* As DuBois saw it, Democrats needed active Negro
support before they dared alienate the Solid South; votes thrown
to Bryan would symbolize Negro emancipation from vassalage to
the Republican party.
When election day came, however, there was no visible Negro
defection from the Republicans. Taft s easy victory over Bryan
disappointed DuBois, but hardly surprised him.
* When DuBois repeated this analysis four years later, the Indianapolis
Freeman warned: "Forget it. Balance of power is a [double]-edged sword/*
September 28, 1912.
86 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
DuBois s overtures to the Northern Democratic party indicated
a significant new direction to his thought. The scrappy evidence
available from his youth reveals DuBois as economically rather
conservative. Speaking of Populist radicalism after his return from
Europe, he had denied that "the conclusions of ages of conscien
tious research are to be cast away in a moment just because some
long beard from the wild & woolly west wants to shirk paying his
just debts." 50 In an essay he pointed to Schmoller s work in the
statistical bureau at Stuttgart and to the abrupt check that both
political and economic liberalism had received in Germany under
the rising Prussia as "fortunate" occurrences that had tamed
Schmoller s youthful radicalism. His discussion of German So
cialists led him to speak of "these two almost opposing arguments
of Democracy and Socialism."
Yet by the first decade of the twentieth century, perhaps under
the influence of Miss Ovington, DuBois veered toward the So
cialist party. As early as 1904 he admitted that, while not a So
cialist, he shared many Socialist beliefs. Three years later in the
Horizon, he tempted the Negro along the same path:
I do not believe in the complete socialization of the means
of production the entire abolition of private property in capi
talbut the Path of Progress and common sense certainly leads
to a far greater ownership of the public wealth for the public
good than is now the case. I do not believe that government
can carry on private business as well as private concerns, but I
do believe that most of the human business called private is
no more private than God s blue sky, and that we are approach
ing a time when railroads, coal mines, and many factories can
and ought to be run by the public for the public. . . .
In the socialist trend thus indicated lies the one great hope
of the Negro American. We have been thrown by strange his
toric reasons into the hands of the capitalists hitherto. We have
been objects of dole and charity, and despised accordingly. We
have been made tools of oppression against the workingman s
cause the puppets and playthings of the idle rich. Fools! We
must awake 1 Not in a renaissance among ourselves of the evils
of Get and Grab not in private hoarding, squeezing and cheat
ing, lies our salvation, but rather in that larger ideal of human
brotherhood, equality of opportunity and work not for wealth
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 87
but for Wealhere lies our shining goal. This goal tie Social
ists with all their extravagance and occasional foolishness have
more stoutly followed than any other class and thus far we must
follow them. Our natural friends are not the rich but the poor,
not the great but the masses, not the employers but the em
ployees. Our good is not wealth, power, oppression, and snob
bishness, but helpfulness, efficiency, service and self-respect
Watch the Socialists. We may not follow them and agree with
them in all things. I certainly do not. But in trend and ideal
they are the salt of this present earth. 51
In urging the Negro into the Northern Democratic party and
in praising socialism, DuBois was groping toward a new alliance.
The Democrats seemed to be moving in the right direction: in
dependence for American colonies, regulation of corporate wealth,
opposition to special privilege, a friendship for organized labor,
and a low tariff. Socialists had the right long-range goals. DuBois
wanted to emancipate black men from their traditional alliances
with rich philanthropists and with the Republican party two
alliances reinforced by Booker Washington and to turn the Negro
toward liberal and Socialist groups whose programs would serve
the Negro s own interest. In approaching these groups, the Negro,
DuBois thought, had to make a realistic use of his political
strength. Such alliances might in the end point a way for the
Negro.
The Low Ebb of a Career
Despite its apparent diversity, DuBois s program of agitation
from 1903 to 1910 possessed a remarkable unity. But by 1910 the
prospects for this program, and for DuBois, seemed dim. As a
matter of fact, both DuBois s careers as a scholar and as an agita
torcame to a dead end. As a result of criticism which he had
stirred up among white philanthropic sources, Atlanta University
faced continuing difficulties in finding outside support. Ware
would not suggest that DuBois leave, but DuBois could readily
recognize the burden which his presence imposed on the college.
His work in class yielded satisfaction, but teaching was not his
primary interest; as a scholar, he wrote primarily for the outside
88 FROM TOWER TO ARENA
world, not for the classroom. In the outside world, his brusque
handling of racial intermarriage, the traditional raw nerve of the
"Negro question," and his frankness in analyzing the economic
roots of race prejudice showed that he despaired of help from
richer white men. His attack on Washington (the figure of com
promise between the two races) and his angry reiteration of Negro
grievances deprived him of a substantial white audience. Toward
the end of the decade, he was working on a novel, The Quest of the
Silver Fleece, which tried to argue the Negro s case in fictional
form. But when it appeared in 1911 few read it. White America
would not listen; this group DuBois, in effect, surrendered to
Washington.
How then would the Negro rise? DuBois s general answer was:
through the intelligent use of his own resources a national racial
organization speaking with a single clear voice; a Negro vote skill
fully managed as a bargaining weapon among competing parties;
and an accurate appraisal of his own self-interest, which in con
crete terms meant receptivity to socialism and political friendli
ness to the Northern Democrats.
Yet his plan for Negro self-help fared badly too. DuBois led
an army in tatters. The Niagara Movement, the proposed defender
of the race, failed, indeed did not even provoke widespread op
position, and finally disintegrated. Unable to grow, it frustrated
DuBois s hope for an autonomous Negro organization standing on
its own feet to fight for Negro rights. Despite the movement s
brave words, the influence of Booker Washington showed no de
cline, though the steady pressure of Negro "radicals" had forced
Washington to speak out for Negro rights with more vigor than
was his wont. This was scant solace for the cause. DuBois s own
magazine, Horizon, faced chronic financial troubles. After the first
year its advertising rates were cut fifty per cent, but still the revenue
was insufficient to meet the cost of publication. In 1908 DuBois
appealed for a hundred "guarantors" to contribute $25 a year to
the cost of running the magazine. In April 1910, DuBois wrote
desperately to his partners urging them to help keep the magazine
-going at least until the summer meetings of the Niagara Movement.
But he acknowledged that even that might be impossible. The
magazine finally expired in July 1910. As DuBois saw it, Negro
FROM TOWER TO ARENA 89
America was unwilling to support a single uncompromising jour
nal. By the end of 1909, Scott, Washington s secretary, was gloat
ing: "One by one the old enemies are coming into camp. " 52
If the white liberals of the NAACP had not offered DuBois a
fresh start in 1910, he would presumably have remained at Atlanta.
He might have continued as a teacher, warmed by the excitement
of young minds and by the awkward gratitude which is the reward
of even ordinary teachers. He might have continued unobtrusively
to send forth college-trained men and women. But few outside the
university would have known about him. Already squeezed by
financial pressure, the Atlanta Publications would probably have
suffered a decline in quality already apparent in the contrast be
tween The Philadelphia Negro and John Brown. At Morehouse
College, DuBois s friend, John Hope, met similar financial pres
sure by capitulating to Washington and admitting him to the
board of trustees. A similar surrender at Atlanta, which DuBois
acknowledged as a possibility, 53 would have cut the ground from
under his whole professional life.
In Darkwater DuBois traced a steady parade of triumphs from
Great Barrington to New York, every stage the culmination of his
highest ambitions, every step forward a victorious battle against a
white world reluctant to recognize ability in a black skin. Actually
the facts do not bear out this account. DuBois s progress from
obscurity in the Berkshires to a position of national prominence
is an impressive tribute to his talent. The Negro race would
eventually come around to his views, and the editorial experience
on Horizon and the organizational trials of the Niagara Movement
would serve him well as background for his later years. Bu t in 1 9 1 o,
when he stepped from Atlanta to a new career in New York, it was
not a climax of triumphs, but a rescue from a series of recent fail
ures.
IV
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
gave DuBois an entente with white liberals who had enough money
to sustain an organ of protest and enough allegiance to American
democracy to tolerate the "radical" Negro point of view. With
the relatively secure financial backing that the Horizon lacked, the
Crisis, the Association s monthly magazine, gave DuBois a secure
editorial chair and an independent forum.
The initial inspiration for the Association came from a group
of whites outraged by the Springfield lynching in 1908. William
English Walling s denunciation of the outrage in the Independent
called for a "large and powerful body of citizens" to revive the
spirit of Lincoln and Lovejoy. In response to the article, a group
including Miss Ovington and Charles E. Russell, a prominent
Socialist writer, approached Oswald Garrison Villard to write a
"call" for a national conference on the Negro on the centennial
of Lincoln s birth, 1909. Villard complied, and a notable array
of fifty-three professional men and women summoned "all be
lievers in democracy to join in a national conference for the dis
cussion of present evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal
of the struggle for civil and political liberty." 1 The list of signers
included some leading white social reformers of the day: Jane
Addanis, John Dewey, William Dean Howells, John Haynes
Holmes, Hamilton Holt, Henry Moscowitz, Charles H. Parkhurst,
J. G. Phelps-Stokes, Lincoln Steffens, Stephen S. Wise, William
H. Ward, Lillian D. Wald, and Mary E. Woolley. Five Negroes
besides DuBois joined in the "call": William L. Buckley, a New
York school principal; the Reverend Francis J. Grimke, whom
DuBois had listed among the critics of Washington in 1903; Bishop
Alexander Walters of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,
the president of the Afro-American Council; Dr. J. Milton Wal-
dron, treasurer of the Niagara Movement; and Ida B. Wells-
Barnett, chairman of the Anti-Lynching League.
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS Ql
White influence predominated in the conferences and in the
organization that emerged. At the early meetings the presiding
officers were invariably white, and of the twenty-four published
speeches only five were given by Negroes. The Constitutional
League, primarily a white organization and in its fight for civil
rights a progenitor of the NAACP, was merged with the new
group, and John E. Milholland, its president, assumed the post
of vice-president of the Association. Although many prominent
Negroes were on the newly incorporated Association s "general
committee," only one Negro DuBois appeared on the first slate
of officers in May 1910. The excess of white influence made some
of the Negroes present wary. Two prominent "radicals," Trotter
and Mrs. Wells-Barnett, had little faith in their white allies, and
one woman (perhaps Mrs. Wells-Barnett) cried out in one meet
ing: "They are betraying us again these white friends of ours." 2
But DuBois, one of the original incorporators, was quietly en
couraged by the net results of the meetings: "The vision of future
cooperation, not simply as in the past, between giver and beggar
the older idea of charity but a new alliance between experi
enced social workers and reformers in touch on the one hand with
scientific philanthropy and on the other hand with the great
struggling mass of laborers of all kinds, whose conditions and
needs know no color line." 3
DuBois had been making contact with this group of liberals
for many years. Ward, the editor of the Independent, had regu
larly published even DuBois s most fiery tracts, such as "A Litany
at Atlanta." Miss Ovington had spoken at Atlanta in 1904, had
reported the second Niagara convention for Villard s Evening
Post, and may even have become a member of the Niagara Move
ment. DuBois had become a director of Milholland s Constitu
tional League in 1907. Jane Addams had brought DuBois to Chi
cago to speak at Hull House. In 1907 DuBois had supported
Moorfield Storey s Anti-Imperialist League.* DuBois s relations
* DuBois s private venture in "imperialism" never seems to have gotten
off the ground. The DuBois papers contain a prospectus for the "African
Development Company" with DuBois listed as secretary. Ten thousand shares
were to sell at a par of five dollars. The purpose of the company was to buy
and develop land in East Central Africa for the cultivation of coffee and other
92 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
with Villard continued to be more equivocal. A deep personal
hostility divided them, but by 1910 Villard s views on the race
question had moved close to DuBois s and to those of other lib
erals. An editorial in Villard s Evening Post criticized Washing
ton s role as "political boss of his race" and urged Negroes to fight
immediately against present discrimination to prevent the "tight
ening of chains that must some day be broken if this is to be a
republic in more than name." 4
The alliance of liberals who made up the new Association
gave breath to DuBois s stifled hopes at Atlanta. With support
for his scholarship dwindling, with the Horizon losing money on
each issue, and with the Niagara Movement collapsing, the offer
from the Association, then only several months old, opened up
white support previously denied to him. On the other side, the
Association turned to him because his record of agitation together
with his academic experience made him the ideal candidate for
editor of the Crisis and director of research. Legally the Crisis
was the property of the Association, and in the public eye it would
be regarded as the spokesman of the Association. Because of this
intimate relationship, DuBois s hostility to Washington aroused
the fears of some directors, but this obstacle was removed after
DuBois agreed not to make the Crisis the organ of attack on Tus-
kegee and promised to represent no clique and to "avoid personal
rancor of all sorts" 5 a pledge only partly kept.
Working with Progressives
In his inaugural address in 1913, a classic statement of pro-
gressivism, Woodrow Wilson spoke of returning America to its
first principles. The method was the spread of knowledge "sci
ence" he called itand the spirit was to be the "hearthfire of every
man s conscience and vision of the right." 6 Wilson was speaking
of the New Freedom; he could as easily have been talking about
the program of the Association.
products. The promoters assured investors that they already had contracts
with certain native chiefs for "valuable concessions of land." This venture is
mentioned nowhere else in DuBois s writings. It may have been just an
elaborate joke.
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 93
Though the initial statements of the Association were a bit
vague, they clearly aligned the new group with the Progressive
movement. Progressives were intent on removing hindrances to
the free development of the individual; the Association focussed
on the great impediment to Negro individuals discrimination,
especially segregation. To fight this discrimination, the Associa
tion proposed education, legal action, and organization: education
of the American people in their abuses of Negro rights; appeals
to courts and legislatures to remove obstacles blocking Negro
progress; and organization into a single articulate group of those
Americans, white and black, whose democratic faith abhorred the
color line. The new organization started simply as a national
office that released public statements on Negro matters. The board
of directors met monthly for policy decisions, and in the intervals
DuBois, Miss Ovington, Villard, and Joel E. Spingarn, a professor
at Columbia University, gave part of their time to routine matters.
As the membership grew, NAACP branches, first in the Northeast
and then all over the country, bridged the gap between the na
tional office and the members. The branches supplied the national
office with information and in turn served as rallying points and
distributing centers for material prepared in New York. A natural
division of labor developed, the New York office handling national
questions and the branches dealing with local matters. All con
centrated on the spread of information. The Association, like the
progressives, assumed that when Americans knew of injustice, their
intelligence and moral principles would demand reform from
legislatures and courts.
To this program DuBois gave ready assent. He wanted no
special treatment for the Negro, merely an equal chance. He was
glad to link the Negro s progress to progressivism, to free the Ne
gro from concentration on his own progress and unite him with
every cause of world uplift, with the "people who are revolution
izing the world." 7 Even before the first issue of the Crisis ap
peared, he called upon a Negro audience to escape its provincial
ism and to give moral and financial support to the new group.
The following year he mailed out a characteristic appeal to a
thousand of the most prominent Negroes in the United States, urg
ing them to join the Association and to secure three additional
94 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
subscribers to the Crisis in order to link colored people themselves
with the drive for their own freedom. 8 The Association and the
Crisis would speed the arrival of democratic justice: "Evolution
is evolving the millennium, but one of the unescapable factors
in evolution are [sic] the men who hate wickedness and oppres
sion with perfect hatred, who will not equivocate, will not excuse,
and will be heard/ 9 The lead editorial in the first issue of the
Crisis presented his apocalyptic vision: "Catholicity and tolerance,
reason and forebearance can to-day make the world-old dream of
human brotherhood approach realization; while bigotry and prej
udice, emphasized race prejudice and force can repeat the awful
history of the contact of nations and groups in the past. We
strive for this higher and broader vision of Peace and Good Will." 10
Though jealous of the Crisis independence, DuBois recorded
and supported the work of the Association. He joined in the
Association s campaign against lynching and suggested methods
other than publicity for fighting it: better administration of pres
ent laws, court action in all possible instances, new legislation,
and federal intervention when the states were incompetent to
deal with outrages. In 1910, when Chicago, Philadelphia, Colum
bus, and Atlantic City were considering the establishment of seg
regated public schools, he condemned the move as "an argument
against democracy and an attempt to shift public responsibility
from the shoulders of the public to the shoulders of some class
who are unable to defend themselves." 11 In 1913 he joined Storey
and Villard in a written protest to Wilson against the growing
practice of segregation in governmental agencies in Washington.
They condemned the humiliating stigma of segregation, especially
when inflicted by the federal government itself, and reminded
Wilson pointedly that the Negro also expected to share in the
New Freedom.
In politics DuBois continued to urge the Negro to use his
ballot with maximum effect in every election an uncommitted
vote, available to the highest legitimate bidder willing to pay, not
in the coin of the realm or in minor jobs, but in genuine effort for
Negro advancement. In 1916 DuBois, Spingarn, Villard, and
A. H. Grimke, president of the Washington, D.C., branch of the
Association, sent a letter to Charles Evans Hughes, the Republi-
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 95
can candidate for the presidency, asking for a specific statement on
lynching, disfranchisement, and appointments to office. (Hughes
never committed himself.) The following year, drawing on his
own experience, DuBois urged Negroes everywhere in the South
to register and vote on every possible occasion, even though the
white primary deprived their vote of its significance. He promised
that the Association planned to challenge the white primary
through the courts.
Occasionally DuBois extended his attack on segregation into
fields which the Association discreetly left alone. When a pro
posed reunion of the Methodist churches South and North pro
vided for a separate Negro branch with its own bishops, DuBois
questioned the relation of the church to the teachings of Jesus
Christ. He mocked two Baltimore churches which moved up
town to the "wealthy and exclusive and socially elect," where
learned prelates would ask the echoing pews how the church
could teach the working man. 12 Actually, though the ideals of
Christianity made discriminatory churches a favorite whipping
boy, DuBois really regarded them as too moribund to respond to
any appeal to a Christian ethic. In Billy Sunday and the tor
pedoed "Lusitania," he saw the depths to which white Christian
ity had fallen: Sunday approximating the "whirling dervish, the
snake dancer and devotee of Mumbo Jumbo ," the "Lusitania"
publicizing the cheapness with which a Christian nation regarded
human life.*
In spite of the parallels between DuBois s editorials and the
activities of the Association, his entente with progressivism never
ripened into an alliance. On the national front, both Theodore
Roosevelt and his Progressive party and Woodrow Wilson and
his progressive Democratic party failed to respond to Negro over
tures, and other reform groups held the Negro at arm s length.
In the Association, tension between DuBois and his white col
leagues developed almost immediately and never disappeared.
The hopes kindled by white reformers led DuBois first to the
Progressive party. In 1912, hoping to commit the Progressive party
* Crisis, X, 81 (June 1915). DuBois s hostility to Christian churches had
a long life. See, for example, his strictures on the Catholic hierarchy, Crisis,
XXX, 120-21 (July 1925).
g6 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
to Negro rights, DuBois drafted a tentative civil-rights plank which
Joel Spingarn presented to the platform committee. But Roose
velt, whose bid for Southern electoral votes required a "lily white"
party in the South to attract white support, adopted an equivocal
stand on the Negro recognition in the North and exclusion in the
Southand so the Progressive party as a whole remained silent.
DuBois turned reluctantly to Woodrow Wilson.
He found Wilson s background disquieting. Wilson, left to
himself, would welcome a "world inhabited by flaxen-haired wax
dolls with or without brains." But at least, DuBois thought, he
was a "cultivated scholar" who might treat the Negro with "far-
sighted fairness." 13 Thomas E. Watson s attack on Wilson as
"ravenously fond of the negro" 14 lent support to the hope that
Wilson might at least be as fair to Negroes as Cleveland had been.
When Democratic leaders actively solicited Negro votes in the
North, DuBois drafted a statement for Wilson s signature, but
when Villard presented it to the candidate, Wilson rejected it and
released a more moderately phrased letter which promised "abso
lute fair dealing" and "not mere grudging justice, but justice
executed with liberality and cordial good feeling." 15 With only
this general commitment, DuBois still urged Negroes to "take a
leap in the dark."*
When Wilson s administration was five months old, DuBois
praised Wilson s fiscal program, but warned that not all problems
were economic. As the administration grew older, neither Wilson s
"high purpose" nor the achievements of his first years compen
sated, in DuBois s judgment, for his "shifty and unmeaning plati
tudes" behind which segregation was introduced into the Post
Office and Treasury departments while lynching went unre-
buked. 16 Still unappeased in 1916, DuBois repudiated Wilson,
and when Hughes failed to make a specific statement during his
presidential campaign, DuBois urged a vote for Allan L. Benson,
the Socialist candidate, or no vote at all: if Negroes could not
make their political will felt positively, at least they could pre-
* Crisis, V, 29 (November 1912). Of DuBois s support for the Democrats,
William H. Hart of the Howard Law School commented: "Father, forgive him
for he knows not what he does." Washington Bee, October 12, 1912.
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 97
vent any single party from assuming that it had the black vote
tied up without compensation.
The rebuff from organized labor was discouraging, but less
final. At Atlanta DuBois had not taken a strong position on
unions. If anything, his attitude was mildly hostile; his com
ments in The Negro Artisan were neutral, but the following year,
he wrote to Walter Hines Page about the desirability of "curbing
the power of trade unions." 17 When he joined the Association s
staff, however, he seems to have raised his hopes. Though he
warned that when organized workers fought for an Irish or a
German clique which was content to let others starve, "they de
serve themselves the starvation which they plan for their darker
and poorer fellows," he carried the union label on the Crisis, even
though it meant that no Negro could print it. He knew that he
was somewhat eccentric in this stand; most Negro leaders opposed
unions, if only because of the extent to which unions discrimi
nated against black labor. He guessed that the mass of Negro
workers similarly regarded white workers as enemies rather than
as prospective friends. But since he believed that unions had been
responsible for all of labor s gains, he looked beyond present dis
crimination, beyond the Negro s immediate interest, to the mil
lennium when white workers would share their gains with their
black brothers. 18 But in this decade organized labor, as represented
by Samuel Gompers American Federation of Labor, kept the bar
riers against the Negro as high as it dared.
Other reform groups gave scarcely more reason for hope. At
Atlanta DuBois had avoided cooperation with the women s suf
frage movement lest his motives be misunderstood. Yet he put the
force of the Crisis behind the movement, for any great human
question concerned Negroes as well as whites, and this particular
one touched the Negro question even more closely: an argument
for female suffrage needed only slight revision to include all adults
regardless of race or sex. Furthermore, DuBois said, votes for
women meant votes for black women, who "are moving quietly
but forceably toward the intellectual leadership of the race." 19
But the color line kept cropping up in feminist discussions all
through the decade. In 1915 one feminist leader said that colored
98 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
women should have the vote on the same basis as colored men
hardly a stand calculated to command Negro applause. In 1911
DuBois s editorial, "Forward Backwards," said that the Prohibi
tionists ignored the Negro for eleven months, then demanded his
support under pain of further disfranchisement; when Negroes
refused, they were branded as "not worthy of the ballot." 20
A real barrier set Negro advancement apart from other social
reforms. Since each reform movement spoke for a minority seek
ing to gain majority support, it could hardly gamble for uncer
tain Negro support at the expense of certainly alienating one sec
tion of the nation, and probably more. Wilson had been elected
with Southern votes and depended on a Congressional majority
heavily buttressed by Southerners. In the election of 1912, when
Roosevelt had to break into the solidly Democratic South in order
to win the presidency, a forthright statement on the Negro would
have reduced the Southern section of his party to a shambles. The
advocates of women s suffrage propagandized in a nation largely
hostile or indifferent to Negro suffrage; to have hitched their pro
gram to the race question would have recklessly multiplied their
problems. In the labor movement, long-range policy might point
to the wisdom of Negro-white solidarity, but in the meantime
work voluntarily shared with Negroes would cost some white work
ers their daily bread. In almost every movement for social reform,
DuBois thus found the race question limiting his hopes for the
progressive alliance.
Even the Association itself never commanded his unequivocal
support. Almost a year after joining the Association s staff, on the
very day he urged the thousand "best colored people in the United
States" to join, he was planning to continue the Niagara Move
ment as an annual conference without fees. His relations with
the Association remained diplomatic rather than organizational,
and even as the Association passed from white dominance to joint
control and finally to Negro dominance, DuBois persisted in re
garding the Crisis as a continuation of the Horizon: a personal
journal, connected with the Association only slightly more inti
mately than the Horizon had been with the Niagara Movement.
When he received a bid to England to speak in behalf of African
natives, he reported the invitation in his magazine by saying that
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 99
the president of the African National Native Congress "wrote
THE CRISIS as follows. . . ." 21 When in 1915 his salary, previously
paid out of Association funds, came from the income of the maga
zine, he claimed that the Association had never spent a cent of its
funds for the magazine, and that he had assumed exclusive finan
cial responsibility though the Association had held legal owner
ship. His comment that "there is both precedent and moral right
that legal ownership rightly follow such financial risk" 22 indicated
clearly that in allowing the Crisis to remain in the Association s
hands, he felt that he was exercising restraint in dealing with an
ally. Miss Ovington even spoke of the Crisis as a "rival" to the
Association. 23
DuBois s failure to work in harness with his colleagues threat
ened to destroy the group in 1914. The previous year, after a
heated board meeting, DuBois wrote to Villard, then chairman of
the board, asking for "reasonable initiative and independence in
carrying out my part of the work." He admitted the right of any
member of the board to criticize his work, but he rejected the
notion that Villard was his superior and denied Villard s right "to
imply in his criticism that any independence of action is a breach
of discipline or a personal discourtesy." 24 Villard replied tartly,
not to DuBois but to Spingarn, who came to fill the uneasy role of
liaison officer. As executive of the Association, the chairman of
the board, he said, "must exercise certain authorities over the
paid employees of the Board, whether they be editors or clerks." 25
By the fall of 1914 the uncomfortable tension in the Associa
tion offices led DuBois to ask Spingarn for a frank explanation.
Spingarn replied with an unexpected broadside. As DuBois s
closest friend in the Association, Spingarn warned him that a
sharply antagonistic atmosphere surrounded DuBois not only at
the Association offices, but in the whole colored world as well: even
some of DuBois s closest friends felt resentment as well as affection
toward him. Spingarn conceded that part of this was caused by
DuBois s devotion to principle, but he noted that even men who
shared DuBois s principles could not escape the idea that DuBois
mistook obstinacy for strength of character: choosing to wreck the
cause rather than lose some preferred point, he magnified every
personal difference into a question of principle. On occasions
100 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
when DuBois thought he had won a point through strength of
character or successful argument, his white friend told him, he
had actually won for the same reason that parents capitulate to
spoiled children in company simply to avoid a scene. DuBois s
colleagues were less willing than he to wreck the cause. Many
people who wanted an end to this needless bickering, Spingarn
said frankly, saw DuBois as the only discordant element in what
was developing into a smoothly running organization and thought
that the elimination of DuBois was essential to the work of the
Association. Spingarn warned DuBois that he must either espouse
the cause wholeheartedly as his own or the alternative was un
stated but clearly implicit leave. 26
An unchastened DuBois acknowledged a temperament difficult
to endure, but he disclaimed responsibility for the friction. His
great and only ambition was to make the Crisis a spectacular
success, but to do so, he needed a free hand unfettered by the
slights and unkindnesses of Villard, who, DuBois had hinted to
a Boston audience, was trying to make the Association a one-man
organization. The real cause of the bickering, he told Spingarn,
was Villard s unconscious race prejudice which called for paternal
ism rather than cooperation in dealing with a Negro, even in the
same office. 27
This storm lowered the humidity but did not clear the air.
The board continued to debate the status of DuBois and of the
Crisis for most of the next year. In January 1916, Spingarn, now
chairman and always the peacemaker, worked out a compromise
statement: the Crisis, as the official organ of the Association,
should chronicle its progress, but the editorials, as the "expres
sion of the personality which gives them shape," could hardly
hope to satisfy all members. The board could only insist that
the editorials never sink to the "level of petty irritations, insult
ing personalities or vulgar recriminations/ 28 This nod in every
direction seems to have quieted, if not satisfied, all factions.
At the root of these disagreements was more than a clash of
personalities, though undoubtedly DuBois s stubbornness, arro
gance, and irascibility, bred by forty years of the color line, con
tributed their share. The Association was in many respects a
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 1O1
typical progressive cause: an attempt by men of good will to re
cover basic American democratic traditions through publicity,
legislation, and court action. Its laissez-faire bent required the
removal of barriers that held the individual back from his own
full development through his own powers. It knew no grouping
between the individual and the nation. It knew no color line.
Villard told one correspondent that the Association desired "to
help one race quite as much as the other." 29 If DuBois were to
join the Association s chorus, he had to sing this tune. Yet funda
mentally DuBois sang in a different key: he was a Negro, fighting
for Negroes, committed to Negro self-help in the Niagara Move
ment and the Horizon, distrusful of white men. His view had not
changed since his talk to the American Negro Academy in 1896:
Negroes must channel their physical powers, intellectual endow
ments, and spiritual ideals through the whole Negro group to
make their characteristic gift to civilization. Periodically his Ne
gro racism broke through: in 1913 he observed in the Crisis that
"the most ordinary Negro" is an instinctive gentleman, but "it
takes extraordinary training, gift and opportunity to make the
average white man anything but an overbearing hog." 80 DuBois
never came to a feeling of community with his associates. Though
as a practical matter he lent himself to the NAACP s program, he
never fully accepted it as his own. It took the Association a quarter
of a century to grasp the significance of their differences.
DuBois s own program, the main lines of which were drawn
together in 1915 in an article, "The Immediate Program of the
American Negro," 31 attested to the division between him and
the Association. One part paralleled the Association s program,
though DuBois was more explicit in condemning the barriers
created by the "oppression of shrewd capitalists," the "jealousy
of trade unions," and the "shackles on social intercourse from
the President and the so-called church of Christ down to boot
blacks." Yet this merely negative program of fighting obstructions
was not enough. Negroes needed to work out their own projects
for moving ahead, not assuming that "God or his vice-[regent] the
White Man" would do it for them. "Conscious self-realization
and self-direction," DuBois said, "is the watchword of modern
102 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
man, and the first article in the program o any group that will
survive must be the great aim, equality and power among men."
Negroes had to plan their own building and loan associations,
cooperatives for production and distribution, and blueprints for
systematic charity. They should embark on a planned migration
from "mob rule and robbery" in the South. In art and literature,
DuBois said, the black man must set loose the tremendous emo
tional wealth and "dramatic strength" of his problems; in politics,
he must organize the next year DuBois would speak of a Negro
party.
For all this, DuBois said, organization was essential. He
thanked God that most of the Association s support came from
black hands, but he called for a still larger proportion, and added:
"We must not only support but control this and similar organ
izations and hold them unswervingly to our objects, our aims, and
our ideals." Negro objects, Negro aims, Negro ideals not the
shared goals of a biracial group fighting for democratic equality.
The distinction was important, and would grow in importance.
Over the years DuBois had become aware of the dilemma of
Negro separatism. Striving for integration (a long-range goal)
and striving for security (a short-range goal) frequently drove
DuBois in opposite directions, and he tells in The Souls of Black
Folk how the conflict split his personality: "One feels ever his
two-ness an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two un
reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose
dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." He
made there what was perhaps his first reference to "that curious
double movement where real progress may be negative and actual
advance be relative retrogression." Three years later he pointed
out that Negroes were forcing their way into white labor markets,
but they were doing it at the price of increased anti-Negro preju
dice. He wondered if perhaps the Negro s "only path of escape"
was to organize a closed Negro business community this would
"provincialize" the Negro and perhaps also increase prejudice
against him, but it would produce income. 82 When the same
sentiment appeared in The Negro in the South a. book of four
lectures, two by DuBois and two by Washington E. H. Clement
of the editorial staff of the Boston Evening Transcript assumed
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 103
that DuBois had come to accept segregation. DuBois denied this
interpretation: he was opposed to physical segregation, but he was
"perfectly willing" to accept "spiritual segregation and an eco
nomic segregation on the spiritual side" that is, Negroes were
to live alongside their white fellow men, but were to trade at their
own stores and serve themselves. He was quite sure that this ar
rangement was "going to be the rule for some time." 38
From 1910 until after the first World War, DuBois continued
to pick his way through this thorny problem. Each decision re
flected an ad hoc, pragmatic test rather than a sustained point of
view. He accepted segregated YMCA branches, for example, be
cause the Negro s urgent need for social and recreational oppor
tunities overbalanced the endorsement of segregation implied by
the use of segregated facilities. In general, his alliance with white
progressives seems to have drawn him back briefly to the policy of
slow integration. In 191 1 he said that the absence of intense racial
separateness in the North gave more hope for a "slower but
larger integration" than the intense Negro self-consciousness and
cooperation in the South. 8 * The same year he warned that the
acceptance of separation indicated a willingness to "sacrifice the
foundations of democracy for peace." 85 On the other hand, he
could speak of "Blessed Discrimination" which provided concrete
economic advantage the Crisis, for example, was "capitalized
race prejudice." 36 Significantly, this last comment came latest:
DuBois moved irregularly toward the acceptance of segregation
which gave some economic compensation. In 1917 he told his
readers: "We see more and more clearly that economic survival
for the Negro in America means . . . that he must employ labor,
that he must organize industry, that he must enter American
industrial development as a group, capable of offensive and de
fensive action, and not simply as an individual, liable to be made
the victim of the white employer and of such of the white labor
unions as dare." American Negroes, he said, were singularly well
endowed to work out efficient industrial cooperation; they were
all in approximately the same economic group, and they shared
a mounting group loyalty and an imperative need for a change
in their industrial life. 37 Two years later his editorial, "Jim
Crow," suggested his indecision: he insisted that Negroes work
104 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
with their own people in art, industry, and social life to build
a "new and great Negro ethos," yet he condemned segregation
as impossible and impolitic. In these years DuBois avoided saying
right out that chance advantages justified approval of segrega
tion. For the present he preferred to speculate on both policies,
recognizing always a dilemma calling for "thought and forebear-
ance." 8&
To achieve his complex ends, an appeal to truth and to the
conscience of America were DuBois s familiar weapons, and he
continued to use them in this decade. In 1910, when Washington
gave Europe an unusually sanguine picture of Negro conditions
in the South, DuBois joined with thirty-one other Negro Ameri
cans in protesting Washington s report as a violation of truth:
"It is one thing to be optimistic, self-forgetful and forgiving, but
it is quite a different thing, consciously or unconsciously, to mis
represent the truth." 39 And the hard core of truth had to include
disfranchisement, 2,500 lynchings in the previous twenty-five years,
and unprotected women.
But the road to truth was far from smooth, and America s con
science seemed remarkably obdurate. DuBois was a sensitive
Negro in white America, where the experience of discrimination
touched the Negro at almost every facet of his life.* Caught in
the vise of his emotion, he could not respond directly to what
went on around him. He recorded the poignancy of being a Ne
gro in America: the "real tragedy" was "the inner degradation,
the hurt hound feeling" which caused joy "at the sheerest and
most negative decency." 40 A prejudiced white man confirmed the
Negro s expectation of American discrimination, but a non-
prejudiced white did not necessarily undo the damage, for far
from showing a brighter picture, he might by contrast merely point
up the gloom. Spingarn s ability to reach behind DuBois s wall of
reserve made him a "knight," but the occasion of Spingarn s ill
ness in 1918 led DuBois to lament how few were the men who
could work with Negroes as well as work for them. The tone of
DuBois s columns in the Crisis vacillated between hopefulness
* See Abram Kardiner and Lionel Ovesey, The Mark of Oppression (New-
York, 1951), for a psychiatric discussion of the extent to which the color line
affects Negro personality.
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 105
and despair, for he saw at the same time how far the Negro had
come and how far he still had to go in achieving an equal place
in American society. An editorial appointment, a philanthropic
gift, a biracial sociological meeting in the South would raise hopes
that in a month could be crushed by a lynching or by the spread
of prejudice into a new area. The resolutions of the Southern
Sociological Congress in 1913, which, according to DuBois, was
the first occasion in American history when Southern blacks and
whites had met under Southern auspices to discuss the race prob
lem, contained "scarcely a word" which the Crisis could not en
dorse. But even this small step forward was balanced by the
conduct of the Atlanta Georgian which, he said, tried to foment
a lynching. In an early issue of the new magazine DuBois had
hailed recent court decisions as the "glimmerings of a new dawn,"
but seven months later when the Newburyport, Massachusetts,
Herald, reprinted an editorial, "The Negro Vote as an Annoying
Factor," from the Nashville Tennessean and American, the Crisis
mourned that the soul of New England, as well as the Middle West,
was being poisoned by Negro haters in the South. DuBois was
convincedand the conviction weighed heavily on him that race
prejudice in the United States was a "deliberately cultivated and
encouraged state of mind." 41
Sometimes after recurrent exasperation, or under severe provo
cation, DuBois abandoned reason and cajolery and turned frankly
to a threat of force. After a bloody lynching at Coatesville, Penn
sylvania, in 1911, he warned that Negroes had had enough: they
had crawled and pleaded for justice, he said, and they had been
"cheerfully spit upon and murdered and burned." "If we are
to die," he went on, "in God s name let us perish like men and
not like bales of hay." 42 When Negroes in Gainesville, Florida,
failed to resist an attacking white mob in 1916, an editorial, "Cow
ardice," insisted that they should have fought in self-defense to
the last ditch if they killed every white man in the country and
were themselves killed in turn. A striking generalization followed:
lynching, he said, would stop in the South "when the cowardly
mob is faced by effective guns in the hands of people determined
to sell their souls dearly." 43 Later the same year, in reply to a
young woman who wanted more refinement and fewer overtones
10 6 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
of violence in the Crisis, DuBois reminded her that no human
group had "ever" achieved its freedom "without being compelled
to murder" thousands of oppressors. Though he hoped that this
would not be true for American Negroes, "it may be necessary."**
DuBois s threats of violence were only the most extreme mani
festations of his divergences from his white associates. While the
Association cautiously assailed legal barriers, DuBois s shots ranged
freely over the church, industrialists, labor unions, philanthropic
foundations, and even hit his white liberal colleagues. When he
went one step further and suggested the possibility of separate,
independent Negro development, perhaps through an Association
more tightly geared to "our objects, our aims, and our ideals," he
left white liberalism far behind. In DuBois s view, the path up
ward was blocked by hurdles uncleared by progressivism.
But though programs diverged and tempers wore thin, the
entente with the Association held. The Association could ill
afford to lose DuBois s superb editorial talents on a successful
magazine. His columns of editorials sparkled; his news columns
contained the fullest available record of information about col
ored men here and abroad. As the years went on, the Crisis,
largely because of DuBois s prestige, attracted young Negro writ
ers whose articles, short stories, and poems complemented his own
contributions. The Association could not afford to sacrifice the
prestige of his mounting reputation. When he appeared as a
principal speaker at the International Congress of Races in Lon
don in 1911, for example, his success there reflected credit back
on his organization. Conversely, the Crisis gave DuBois a secure
berth which, without hampering his writing and his nation-wide
lecturing, gave him both an opportunity and a continuing obli
gation to plan the emancipation of the Negro.
Joining the Great Crusade
After the first World War started, Wilsonian idealism and
wartime opportunities for the Negro caused a resurgence of
DuBois s hopes for his alliance with white progressives.
At the outbreak of the war in 1914, DuBois s support went
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 107
immediately to the Allies. Although the war occurred because
of the "wild quest for Imperial expansion among colored races,"
he said, Negro sympathy should go especially to England, since no
nation was fairer with darker people, and to France, the "most
kindly" of all European nations in personal relations. Departing
from the general American pattern of sympathy for invaded Bel
gium, DuBois, recalling the Belgian Congo, felt that Belgium
deserved every pang she got. Russia had never drawn the color
line, he thought, and Japan had created respect for the darker
races in the Russo-Japanese war. The triumph of the Allies,
DuBois thought, would leave things no worse, and perhaps it
could improve them, for the fighting skill of colored men might
bring new ideas of the essential equality of all men. Germany,
he said, in exalting race prejudice, made the prospect of its vic
tory seem like the "triumph of every force calculated to subordi
nate darker peoples." Hence, in DuBois s view, it was better for
Negroes to give sympathy to those nations that might postpone,
if not make unnecessary, a world war of races. 45
Six months later, his essay, "The African Roots of War," in the
Atlantic Monthly, mocked the "mere habit" of regarding the Bal
kans as the storm center of Europe and named Africa as a prime
cause of "this terrible overturning of civilization." In Europe,
DuBois said, the progressive democratization of wealth and of
political power was yielding a new "democratic despotism" an
alliance of exploiting capitalists and skilled workers who shared
the wealth wrung from backward nations. The rich grew richer,
he said, and although they permitted political democracy, they
also encouraged a deepening hatred toward the darker races. The
skilled white worker did not yet have his full share of the ex
ploited wealth, but that was a matter of negotiation, DuBois
explained; the loot was ample for all. The war, he charged, was
the result of the conflicting jealousies of "armed national asso
ciations of labor and capital whose aim is the exploitation of the
wealth of the world, mainly outside the European circle of na
tions." At home, where the worker was appeased by state social
ism and intimidated by public threats of colored labor, the fruits
of exploitation fell mainly to the aristocracy of labor, while the
ignorant and restless were forming a "large, threatening, and, to
108 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
a growing extent, revolutionary group in advanced countries/
DuBois could see some future threats to peace: a victors quarrel
over the spoils, a revolutionary protest of the lowliest workers,
and a colored revolt against foreign domination. To avert these
disasters, he said, racial prejudice and slander must end; "Stead
fast faith in humanity must come"; forceable economic expansion
over subject peoples and religious hypocrisy must stop; African
people must have land, modern education and civilization, and
home rule. 46
After America s entry into the war, DuBois s analysis touched
Wilson s concept of the Great Crusade at many points. Both
shared a faith in self-determination of peoples, both put substan
tial weight on the value of locally responsible democratic gov
ernment as a means of maintaining peace. Both saw the war as
a possible solution of the problem of war itself, provided that the
world could engage in a marked moral revolution.
More important for DuBois, perhaps, the war produced op
portunities for arguing the Negro s cause. Just after the American
declaration of war, Negro leaders, DuBois among them, gathered
in Washington to promise support, but also to demand the right
to train as fighting men under Negro officers, the end of lynching,
universal suffrage, universal and free common school training, the
abolition of the Jim Crow railroad car, repeal of segregation ordi
nances, and equal civil rights in public institutions. The follow
ing year thirty-one Negro editors echoed many of the same de
mands, and added a new one: acceptance of Negro help where
needed (a reference to restrictions set up both by employers and
unions).
DuBois warmed to the war slowly as he saw chances for the
Negro to move ahead. When talk of not drafting Negroes was
current, DuBois noted jubilantly that Negroes would take over
white jobs in factories, learning lucrative trades which would con
tribute to their security. Once in the front-line trenches, white
soldiers would never again become competitors because, DuBois
said ominously, "THEY WON T COME BACK."* T Later on, as the cata
log of Negro gains grew recognition of citizenship in the draft,
higher wages, better employment, appointment of Negro Red
Cross nurses, the overthrow of some segregation ordinances, a
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 1CX)
strong word from Wilson against lynching, Newton D. Baker s
cooperation in setting up Negro officer-training schools (segre
gated, but finally turning out a thousand Negro officers) he gave
more positive support to the war effort, for he regarded these gains
as the beginning of a permanent surge rather than as the crest of
a wave which would shortly spend itself and recede. By the end
of 1917 he had scarcely a doubt that after fifty-four years the tide
against the Negro had turned and that from then on the Negro
would see "the walls of prejudice crumble before the onslaught
of common sense and racial progress." 48 The darker races had
risen, and the Negro s progress was assured, not all at once per
haps, but certain. The death of "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman, one
of the most prominent Southern spokesman for white supremacy,
ended an era, DuBois thought, and gave hope for the coming of a
greater leader who would unify white labor and the small farmer,
and would welcome the Negro as an ally. Finally, in July and
August of 1918, more than a year after America s entry, he gave
unequivocal support to the war: this was the Day of Decision,
the time to put down the menace of German militarism and to
inaugurate the United States of the World. Though Negroes
had a special interest, he said, they forgot their grievances and
"closefd] ranks" with white fellow citizens and their allies abroad.
"We make no ordinary sacrifice," he said, "but we make it gladly
and willingly with our eyes lifted to the hills."* The following
month, in "A Philosophy in Time of War," he spoke unequivo
cally of "our war" and "our country" which, though not perfect,
was at least better than Germany: "The survival of the Best against
the threats of the Worst." The Negro s first duty, he said, was to
fight the war without hesitation or protest; to send soldiers and
* Crisis, XVI, 111 (July 1918). In the Negro press one read the charge
that DuBois s conversion to the war effort was not unrelated to the War De
partment s tentative consideration of commissioning him as a captain attached
to the General Staff to advise on Negro matters. DuBois rejected this notion
of a "corrupt bargain." The Messenger, a radical journal, had suggested earlier
that DuBois and others like him go to France if they were so anxious to make
the world safe for democracy. "We would rather make Georgia safe for the
Negro." Now it said that "Close Ranks" would "rank in shame and reeking
disgrace" with the Atlanta compromise. Even the Washington branch of the
NAACP did not like it. Cf. Crisis, XVI, 216, 218 (September 1918); Messenger,
I, 31 (November 1917) and III, 9-10 (May- June 1919).
110 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
stand behind them. By this support Negroes were to serve both
patriotism and interest, for by serving their country they would
gain justice from a grateful America. 49
After the war, the very height of DuBois s hopes set the measure
of his disillusionment. His Easter editorial in 1919 asked for the
payoff for the Negro s loyalty: Negroes had helped to save the
world; they could have "wrought mischief and confusion, pattern
ing themselves after the I.W.W. and the pro-Germans." But not
one Negro, he said, was arrested as a traitor or "even" as a con
scientious objector. With clean hands the Negroes looked for
the fair play which they had given. 50 Instead, race riots, mounting
discrimination by trade unions, and shameless treatment of Negro
soldiers abroad rewarded Negro loyalty. Shocked, hurt, angry,
DuBois raised again the threat of violence, and when his rage sub
sided, little was left of his alliance with white liberalism.
Sent by the Association to France, primarily to gather material
for a history of the Negro in the war, DuBois returned steaming
with wrath both at the Army s discrimination and at his own race
leaders like Emmett Scott and Robert Russa Moton, Washing
ton s successor at Tuskegee who failed to protest. DuBois has
never published the full results of his investigation, but he has
said enough about assignment to labor battalions, contemptuous
white officers, systematic undermining of Negro relations with the
native French population, and slow promotions to indicate the
nature of his protest.
The conduct of the AFL during the war ended for DuBois the
chimera of solidarity with organized labor. He directly charged
Gompers with engineering the East St. Louis race riot in i9i7. 51
Though he still believed that trade unions had advanced the
worker from chattel slavery to the threshold of industrial free
dom, he warned that white philanthropy s whole scheme for set
tling the labor problem in the previous twenty years had rested
on playing black against white, a "mischievous and dangerous
program" which had received additional impetus from the unions
themselves. In the present labor movement as represented by the
federation, he asserted, "there is absolutely no hope of justice for
an American of Negro descent." Still he held back the full force
of his attack, separating his assault on the AFL from a rejection
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 111
of all white workers: one could not expect workers stunted by
heredity and century-long lack of opportunity to possess the larger
sense of justice which could be expected from the privileged classes.
But this easy judgment on the masses did not apply to the leader
ship: the recent AFL convention, labeling Negro labor as "scab,"
he said, showed that the AFL yielded the Negro his status as a
man reluctantly, denying him every privilege it dared. 52 DuBois s
tone suggested almost an ultimatum to organized labor: it must
grant the Negro worker full equality, or suffer the full force of
DuBois s disfavor.
Nothing did more to contribute to the depths of DuBois s de
spair than the "Red Summer" of 1919, which "ushered in the great
est period of interracial strife the nation has ever witnessed." John
Hope Franklin has counted about twenty-five urban race riots in
the United States from June to the end of the year, the most seri
ous in Chicago where a reign of terror, a "miniature war," follow
ing the murder of two Negroes led to a casualty list of thirty-eight
killed, five hundred and thirty-seven injured. 58
In May, before the Chicago riot, DuBois had returned to his
old strident tone: the Crisis and thousands of Negroes, having been
"drafted" into a great struggle, now returned to call a spade a
spade in a land still shameful. Right in having fought to save
democracy abroad, the Negroes were "cowards and jackasses"
if they settled for less at home, he said. "Make way for Democ
racy. We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will
save it in the United States or know the reason why." 54 In Sep
tember, after the riot, he warned Negroes that it might be neces
sary to raise the terrible weapon of self-defense and added that
the line between aggression and self-defense was hard to draw. 65
While this latter issue was in press, Representative James F.
Byrnes of South Carolina, speaking on the floor of the House of
Representatives, deplored Negro "incendiary utterances," particu
larly from a leader like DuBois, who had been "heretofore re
garded as conservative" and whose position among his people had
enlarged his "capacity for evil." Since recent issues of the Crisis
had been so full of prejudices and appeals to passion that they
could have "no other result" than to incite to deeds of violence,
Byrnes said, the Justice Department should consider the editorials
112 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
carefully under the terms of the Espionage Act.* Though at first
DuBois s answer to Byrnes was simply thanks for allowing seventy-
five million people to read what normally would have reached
only a million, the following month, perhaps under pressure from
the board of the Association, he said flatly in a "Statement" that
although Negroes did not countenance violence except in self-
defense, still they foughtan equivocation left for each to inter
pret as he wished. 56
By 1920, when the idealism of the war years and the anger of
the months following had both burned themselves out, a disillu
sioned DuBois commented: "Fools, yes that s it. Fools. All of us
fools fought a long, cruel, bloody and unnecessary war and we not
only killed our boys we killed Faith and Hope." 57 As he surveyed
the position of American Negroes, he found them still in bonds
after the high hopes of the war. But at least they had gained "Self
Knowledge" and "Self Control"; they had learned that there was
"no royal road" to their emancipation. "It lies rather in grim,
determined, everyday strife." 58
The Loudest Voice in the Race
During the decade from 1910 to 1920 the balance of power
among Negro leaders shifted from the "conservative" to the "radi-
* As a matter of fact, the Department of Justice had warned DuBois the
previous year against the "tone" of some of the articles in the Crisis. As a
result of the warning, the Association board added the chairman of the legal
committee to the Crisis board and ordered all material, "of whatever nature,"
to be read by him before publication. It stated its policy that during the war
the Crisis was "to confine itself to facts and to constructive criticism." In a
report the following year, the Justice Department cited "Returning Soldiers"
in the May 1919 issue as "objectionable," but reported that it had found
"nothing of a radical nature" since July, 1919. In 1920 New York s Lusk Com
mittee cited the Crisis in a report on revolutionary radicalism, though it cer
tainly selected some surprising editorials as the basis for its charge. See Con
gressional Record, LVIII, part 5, 4303 (August 25, 1919); NAACP board min
utes, May 13, 1918, June 10, 1918; Investigation Activities of the Department
of Justice (66th Congress, ist Session, Senate Documents, XII, No. 153) (Wash
ington 1919), p. 185; New York State Legislature, Report of the Joint Com
mittee Investigating Seditious Activity (Lusk Committee), Revolutionary Radi
calism (4 vols.; Albany, 1920), II, 1318-21.
EN1ENTO WITH WHITE LIBERALS 113
cal" wing, and as the most articulate "radical," DuBois stood at
the head of a conquering legion. The terrain had changed: 1915
was not 1895; DuBois had acquired some heavy artillery in the
Crisis and the Association; and the death of Washington gave the
"conservatives" a chance to capitulate gracefully.
In 1895 the typical Negro was a Southern farmer, working a
small acreage on shares, remote from urban influence and proper
educational facilities. Both in law and in practice, the position
of the Negro was slipping. The disfranchisement movement was
spreading that very year from Mississippi to South Carolina, and
an average of 141 Negroes had been lynched each year for the
previous four years. Always the philosopher of the possible, Wash
ington formulated his Atlanta compromise in the context of 1895.
His method of conciliation, along with his annual Tuskegee
conferences and his pilgrimages to fanners meetings, was de
signed to soothe racial tensions by allaying white apprehension
of aggressive Negro demands, by guaranteeing a stable Negro labor
force in the South, and by bargaining for security and education
for the Negro.
By 1915 Washington s world had changed and was about to
change even more rapidly. The Negro was leaving the farm and
going to the city; more important, he was moving North in sub
stantial numbers. He was impelled to these migrations both by
the "push" of Southern agriculture and the "pull" of Northern
industry: the failure of Southern farms, because of crop losses,
floods, and the boll weevil, forced tenant farmers to seek new
means of support; industrial opportunities in the North, espe
cially during the war when the abrupt end to immigration cut
off the foreign supply of unskilled labor, invited Southern Ne
groes to a new life. 59 From 1910 to 1920, when the increase of
Negro population in the South was negligible, the northeastern
states gained by 40 per cent and the north central states by 46 per
cent. The number of Negroes in Detroit multiplied seven times
in the period, and in Chicago, which in 1910 already had a sub
stantial Negro group of 44,000, went up to 109,000. Philadelphia,
one of the great Northern Negro centers, had to find room for
almost 60 per cent more. For this sizable group, Washington s
ideas no longer had meaning: these Negroes had turned their
I ^ ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
backs on farming and on handicraft industry, and instead of pru
dently casting down their buckets where they were, as Washing
ton had suggested, they had snatched their pails and run to a new
life. Gathered in urban ghettoes, especially Northern ghettoes,
they had strength of numbers and the right to vote powerful
weapons for their own defense. Significantly enough, the protest
against Washington s philosophy had come from educated North
ern urban Negroes DuBois, Trotter, Morgan, Forbes, Chesnutt,
Mrs. Wells-Barnett.
While these changes were occurring, Washington s position in
the race had altered. Respected, even at the height of his power,
as a bearer of "good gifts rather than glad tidings," 60 he had suf
fered a stunning defeat in 1912 when his friends were turned out
at the White House, depriving Washington of his position of de
cisive influence over Negro governmental appointments. Other
elements of control also slipped away: the administration of the
Julius Rosenwald Foundation funds for advancing rural elemen
tary education for Southern Negroes was transferred from the
Tuskegee staff to a separate office of administration in Nashville.
The Negro press, long a bulwark of Washington s influence,
showed signs of kicking over the traces. Harry C. Smith of the
Cleveland Gazette had always been independent, but apparently
even Fred Moore of the New York Age became recalcitrant in
yielding to the Republican orientation of the Tuskegee machine.
As the decade advanced, metropolitan newspapers could count on
circulation and advertising for the income which ten years before
had come from Tuskegee.
More important, the pressures of discrimination were induc
ing Washington himself to speak out bluntly. His optimistic
statements in Europe in 1910 and his advice to Negroes as late
at 1914 to "quit thinking" of the parts of the city where they
could not live and beautify the sections in which they did live
showed the persistence of the accommodationist role. But in
1912 Washington protested privately to President Taft against
the drive for "lily white" Republicanism in the South; 61 and in an
article in the Century magazine, he answered the question "Is the
Negro Having a Fair Chance?" with a shuffling, but still unmis-
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 1 1 5
takable No.* A statement for the New Republic in 1915, to which
Washington s death gave the appearance of a valedictory, con
demned segregation as an injustice inviting other injustices, em
bittering the Negro, and dissolving the moral fiber of the white
man 62 quite a departure from his statement in 1895 that whites
and blacks could in social matters be as separate as the fingers of
one hand. By the time of his death Washington had moved sub
stantially toward "radicalism."
He also appears to have tempered the force of his attack on
DuBois and the "radicals." Writing to Villard in 1911, Washing
ton seemed ready for peace: he spoke of a discussion with Storey
in which they planned together for the cooperation of all forces
for racial uplift. He added that he had had "several frank talks"
with the editor of the New York Age, and that the Age would
modify its tone in speaking of the Association.! Washington also
promised to use his influence with other colored papers. 63 This
gesture showed Washington s willingness to grapple at least with
the advance demands of the "radicals" and, in effect, to bring him
self closer to their views.
The changing conditions of Negro life which diminished
Washington s power enhanced DuBois s position. As Negroes left
the rural South, residence in Northern cities made them receptive
to more advanced views. While maintaining their own independ
ence, the Cleveland Gazette and the Chicago Defender did locally,
or in several cities, what the Crisis was doing for a national audi
ence, and their soaring constituencies were prepared to absorb
uncompromising statements of the Negro position. DuBois caught
the significance of these new areas in supporting "radical" thought.
After a trip to the West Coast in 1913, he speculated on the notion
* Washington, "Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance?" Century, LXXXV,
46-55 (November 1912). On the basis of this article, the Chicago Defender
assumed that Washington had reversed his previous position and congratulated
him on his conversion. November 9, 1912.
f The Age had said of a forthcoming Association convention: "The big
pow-wow, called the National Association, etc., having pow-wowed out in New
York, that is fortunately impatient of whining problem solvers, will be held
this year up Boston way, where the people like big talk from empty heads."
Reprinted in Crisis, II, 16 (May 1911).
Il6 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
that the state of Washington might become a major Negro area,
for already the four thousand Negroes in Tacoma and Seattle
meant "much more to themselves and the world" than a hundred
thousand in Alabama and Georgia because they had education
and ambition. 64 (The admiration was reciprocated: the Seattle
Searchlight and, further south, the Los Angeles Liberator and
New Age gave DuBois unusually favorable press notices.)
The Crisis and the Association gave DuBois a springboard to
power. In the Negro world DuBois was the symbol of the Asso
ciation and of its work. White officers came and went. Before
1920, when James Weldon Johnson joined the staff, the Associa
tion never had an executive secretary who made his will felt as
an independent force. As a result, local branches all over the
nation identified the work of the Association with the personality
of the vigorous editor whose views they received every month.
Unaware of frictions in New York, they saw behind the Crisis
and the Association a single figure the austere, uncompromising,
scholarly Dr. DuBois, unapproachable and unafraid. Even in
1910, the Cleveland Gazette said that "all loyal and intelligent
Afro-Americans" recognize DuBois as the real leader of the race. 65
His connection with the NAACP gave him the local contacts use
ful for national speaking tours. In the seven months ending April,
1911, he reached 21,000 people in fifty-eight lectures. His 1913
trip carried him seven thousand miles in thirty states, and he re
turned in a glow. Having found the urban Negro (significantly,
the urban Negro) "pulsing and alive with a new ambition and
determinedness," he "thanked God for this the kindliest race on
his green earth, for whom I had the privilege of working and to
whom I had the pride of belonging." 66
The mounting circulation of the Crisis was a tribute to his
influence, and with each gain he set his goals higher. In April
1911, his 10,000 subscribers made him anxious for 25,000; a year
later he had reached 22,000, and another three years later 35,000.
In 1919, when the Association had seventy thousand members
from thirty-four states, the Crisis reached its pinnacle of 104,000
subscribers.
DuBois moved confidently into his position of leadership. In
deed he could hardly resist a Messianic interpretation of his own
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 117
role. Occasionally he voiced it quite explicitly: his attack on
Indianapolis schools should not produce resentment against him,
he said, for he was not attacking, but merely making "straight the
way of the Lord." 67 In a Thanksgiving proclamation, mimicking
the form of executive declarations, he announced: "We, THE
CRISIS, By the grace of God, Guardian of the Liberties of ten
dark millions in this land and of countless millions over seas/
established a day of rest and thanksgiving. 68 Aloof from the
throng, DuBois equated his monthly judgments with truth, not
vulnerable to attack from others whom he presumed to be less
informed. With urbane superiority, he urged three unnamed Ne
gro monthlies in 1913 to stop throwing mud, for the Negro had
enough to fight about without engaging in unseemly squabbling.
The following year DuBois engaged in some squabbling of his
own: an almost blanket attack on the whole Negro press as de
ficient in facts, wretched in English, and soft in the defense of
freedom. Yet when this produced a torrent of rage from insulted
editors, he calmly denied any partisan role: "Here as in so many
other cases THE CRISIS has but frankly voiced current criticism and
the personality of the editor has little to do with it." 69 And, in
credibly enough, he probably believed it.
The early issues of the Crisis gave startling confirmation to the
charge from "conservatives" that DuBois s concern for Negro
rights touched the upper classes more intimately than the lower,
that he was more interested in the few than in the many. Three
striking examples appeared in the first fifteen months of publica
tion. In the opening issue he noted that when discrimination
comes, "it comes with crushing weight upon those other Negroes
to whom the reasons for discrimination do not apply in the slight
est respect, and thus they are made to bear a double burden." 70
Sometimes the unstated implications went far beyond what DuBois
meant to say: "To treat all Negroes alike is treating evil as good
and good as evil." 71 In 1912 he published a two-page photograph
of the colored midwinter assembly in Baltimore in which he ap
peared prominently in a large gathering of Negroes in evening
clothes. Even as DuBois later recognized the rise to social re
spectability of more and more of his people, he undermined his
praise by patronizing tolerance: "Many a colored man in our day
Il8 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
called to conference with his own and rather dreading the contact
with uncultivated people even though they were of his own blood
has been astonished and deeply gratified at the kind of people
he has met at the evidence of good manners and thoughtfulness
among his own." 72
The role of a "brown Brahmin" 73 came as no new departure
for DuBois. The more surprising fact is that from this super
cilious podium he succeeded in making himself the loudest voice
in the Negro race. The Great Barrington observer and the Bos
ton outsider now had a national forum from which to lash and
encourage his people. Month by month the Crisis bestowed praise
or let loose its wrath. A Negro audience was chided for laughing
as Othello strangled Desdemona. Young college graduates were
urged to take on the mantle of leadership slowly lest they lose it
in an overwrap of self-importance DuBois had changed his views
since his own college days. He gave counsel, unsolicited, to busi
nesses and colleges. The Negro church was a favorite whipping
boy: its undue premium on "finesse and personal influence," he
said, made the way of "upright and businesslike" candidates for
higher positions difficult. Still choked with pretentious, ill-trained
men, many dishonest and otherwise immoral, it needed an over
whelming reform, he said, in order to create a place "where col
ored men and women of education and energy can work for the
best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant
dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds." 74 DuBois s estimate of
the bankruptcy of white Christianity made this program seem
especially urgent.
The spectrum of moods from month to month gave variety not
only in the subject matter of the Crisis, but even to its point of
view. Yet DuBois s thought remained consistent on one point:
his insistence on full Negro rights left him continuously opposed
to the Tuskegee philosophy of compromise and retreat. While
Washington lived, it would have been difficult to argue that
DuBois had eclipsed him. After DuBois left Atlanta, the contest
went on for five years until Washington s death in 1915, and
finally the balance tipped in DuBois s favor, for Washington s
successor lacked the personal appeal on which the Tuskegee
founder had capitalized.
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 119
DuBois s restraint over the five-year period had been, for him,
remarkable. On several occasions he prodded Washington a bit,
but this was nothing like the monthly peppering that he and his
partners on the Horizon had delivered. But when Washington
finally died in 1915, the Crisis obituary gave DuBois the last word
in the long battle. He called his dead opponent the greatest leader
since Douglass and the most distinguished man to come out of the
South since the Civil War. He listed his achievements: alerting
the American Negro to the necessity of economic development,
emphasizing technical education, paving the way for black-white
understanding. But at the same time DuBois punctured each item
of praise: Washington never recognized the links between indus
try and politics, he did not understand the "deeper foundations
of human training," and his program for Negro-white relations
rested on caste. Negroes acknowledged a debt, DuBois said, but
"in stern justice, we must lay on the soul of this man a heavy
responsibility for the consummation of Negro disfranchisement,
the decline of the Negro college and public school, and the firmer
establishment of color caste in this land." 75
With the death of the chief protagonist, the famous battle lost
much of its point. The time had come for reconciliation, espe
cially since so much of the conflict had centered on personality
rather than on policy. Washington s position had demanded that
he dominate any Negro group in which he took an overt part, and
the 1904 meeting had shown that he could keep the initiative from
passing even to a well-organized opposition. At his death the "con
servatives" were left without a comparable leader; Moton, the new
principal of Tuskegee, had to grow into rather than step into the
shoes of the master, and, in any case, Moton was moderate in his
views. 76 Sensing the moment for tact, DuBois urged the Associa
tion s officers to call off a meeting scheduled for Lincoln s birth
day, 1916, to avoid the appearance of staging a counterattraction
the day after a memorial service that had been arranged in Wash
ington s memory. The same year, with Moton still uncommitted,
the Association called a conference of Negro leaders of all views,
from Trotter to Scott for a frank discussion of the principal Ne
gro goals. Though conducted under the auspices of the Associa
tion, the Amenia conference (1916) was carefully dissociated from
12O ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
the NAACP s official policy. With a minimum of oratory it arrived
at generally acceptable resolutions: that all forms of education
were desirable for the Negro and should be encouraged, that po
litical freedom was necessary to achieve highest development, that
Negro advancement needed an organization and the practical
working understanding of Negro leaders, and that old contro
versies were best forgotten. Finally, the conference "realizes the
peculiar difficulties ... in the South. ... It has learned to
understand and respect the good faith, methods and ideals of
those who are working for the solution of the problem in vari
ous sections of the country." 77 The unanimity of the conference
stood as a real victory for DuBois s wing of the race, a victory
achieved by respecting necessary methodological differences in the
South. Ironically, the resolutions contained little which would
have evoked Washington s criticism in the last years of his life.
The achievement of this unity through the initiative of Du
Bois s organization left him as the new major voice of the race.
After America s entry into the war, the extent of his victory be
came apparent when both the Washington conference of leaders
in 1917 and the statement of the thirty-one Negro editors the fol
lowing year repeated the principal items on DuBois s program
and even used his words to express the will of the whole Negro
people. DuBois wrote the second manifesto, and may have writ
ten the first as well. The program of the "radicals" had now been
accepted as the dominant philosophy of the articulate race leaders.
By the end of the decade DuBois could feel confident of his
own position. The Crisis, though it fell off from its peak postwar
circulation, exercised a notable month-to-month influence, espe
cially among Negroes. His position was recognized by the white
world as well. His pen was feared, and even quoted in the Con
gressional Record. The New York Sun called him the "leading
factor in the race question" since Washington s death, 78 and Cur
rent Opinion said he was regarded as the principal Negro spokes
man in America. 79 The "note of lyric intensity" in The Souls of
Black Folk gained mention in the Cambridge History of American
Literature. DuBois had reached the pinnacle of his power, exer
cising the influence which made him worthy to be ranked with
Douglass and Washington.
ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS 121
Yet DuBois never became the race s leader, even in the sense in
which Washington had filled that role. His voice carried farther
than any single contemporary Negro s, but it never could ring
with command. It was more like the loudest voice in a large, and
sometimes quite dissonant, chorus. In a pluralist society it is
doubtful that any single person may be said to be the leader. In
the same period, who could speak for white America, Wilson or
Warren G. Harding? Henry Ford or John Dewey? Though Negro
life had not yet approached the variety of the white world, enough
differentiation had long since occurred to make impossible the
acceptance of one voice for ten millions.
Furthermore, at the moment when DuBois s influence reached
its apex, other Negro leaders, even those who shared his general
point of view, were competing for power. However much DuBois
attempted to keep in touch with Negro life, other "functional
leaders" reached the masses of Negroes with more immediacy: in
religion, social welfare, politics, and labor, local leaders ac
quainted with a limited constituency and its problems carried
more weight than a distant editor. DuBois s ideas might reach
these leaders and affect them, but, to reach the masses, his ideas
passed through local filters. DuBois might write the Washington
manifesto of the Negro editors, but the measure of its influence
depended on its local reception, and that was in the hands of
local editors. He might address himself to labor problems, but
labor leaders, such as A. Philip Randolph, were to hold the reins
on policy. If DuBois set himself against the bulk of Negro leader
ship, it was he and not they who would fall.
Even within the region of his influence DuBois handicapped
himself by righteous, tempestuous arrogance. His self-assured com
ments on the Negro press and the Negro church needled the precise
group through which his influence would be felt. He could be
repaid in kind. In 1918, when DuBois was tentatively offered a
captaincy the month after his "Close Ranks" editorial, the Wash
ington Eagle noted that a storm of protest among Negroes in that
city swelled into a "cyclone of wrath and denunciation." Though
it wished him well in the Army, the Eagle explicitly refused to
console him in his time of trouble since he never had any sympathy
for those similarly misfortuned. 81 This was the "mingled affection
122 ENTENTE WITH WHITE LIBERALS
and resentment* against which Spingarn had warned him. The
years did not mellow him. In 1925, when Kelly Miller, long on
the fringes of "radical" thought, paid a tribute to the Association s
work, DuBois said petulantly that he had wondered for years how
long it would take Miller to come around to such a statement. The
less educated elements of the Negro population might put up with
DuBois s arrogance as the concomitant of his intellectual emi
nence. But men of comparable intelligence and trainingAlain
Locke was a Rhodes scholar were not ready to accept DuBois s
conception of himself at its face value,
One final reservation must be made. DuBois s ideas carried less
influence in the South than outside. Despite the agreement at
Amenia, the uncompromising aggressiveness of DuBois s program
was unacceptable to Southern mores, and therefore not an expedi
ent technique for Southern Negro leaders. Gunnar Myrdal has
documented the extent to which the "peculiar difficulties" in the
South color the race s program there. 82 Enormous variations may
be hidden under "methodological differences" after all, both An
glicans and Lutherans are trying to get to heaven.
Even with all these reservations the inability of one leader to
represent the entire race, the competition with other functional
leaders, the handicap of his personality, and the inappropriateness
of his philosophy in the South the essential fact remains that no
other Negro in 1920 spoke with as much authority or influence.
In limited areas a local leader s role might eclipse DuBois s. But
no one else could speak so effectively to a national audience.
The irony was that though he spoke with authority, the com
plexity of Negro progress made a consistent policy all but im
possible.
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
As DuBois lost touch "with white American liberals, he sensed
other forces at work in the world. Dark-skinned men growing res
tive under white domination, workers weary of an economic sys
tem which gave them slavery and their masters luxury such dis
contented groups, he thought, would challenge American and Eu
ropean capitalists. Alert to opportunity, he urged Negroes to at
tune their aspirations to the struggle of the oppressed everywhere.
To lose their self-centered provincialism, he said, Negroes must
learn about Indian nationalism, about public ownership of utili
ties, and about the North Dakota Non-Partisan League; they must
become acquainted with the "one new idea of the World War"
the Bolsheviks notion that only those who work shall vote and
eat. 1 As a first step, he said, some people in every colored com
munity should learn French or Spanish. Then to acquaint them
selves with the oppressed everywhere, Negroes must travel abroad,
or at least send their best minds and most interesting personalities,
by public subscription if necessary. Men everywhere were break
ing their shackles; the Negro must join them to help and be
helped. For more than ten years, this conviction pushed its way
to the front of DuBois s thought.
Writing month after month on current events, he did not, of
course, abruptly end one period of intellectual change and begin
another. He might drop a hint, then wait twenty years before
picking it up for further development. His praise of self-sufficient,
segregated Negro communities came at the flood tide of the Ni
agara Movement. He was making advances to socialism in 1907,
although in early 1908 he affirmed his attachment to the prin
ciples of the Republican party. Africa had an almost mystical
fascination for him even on his twenty-fifth birthday, but thirty
years elapsed before the fascination produced a program of action.
Even as the hope for alliance with workers and colored men domi
nated his thought in the 1920*5, a minor theme, self-sufficiency for
ihe Negro community, was rising in a crescendo which by the early
124 PAN- AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
igjo s would make it dominant. Conversely, as new ideas came
to prominence after the World War, the old ones did not disap
pear: the essence of his lecture, "Race Relations in the United
States," for the American Academy of Political and Social Science
in 1928 could have been written twenty-five years before. His
ideas changed constantly, but the major changes came gradually,
with a considerable overlap.
Throughout this diversity, however, the failure of the Great
Crusade to emancipate the Negro produced one relative constant
in DuBois s thought: a sour view of the white world. Once or
twice, he wrote in praise of cooperation and courtesy. He respected
the efforts of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation at At
lanta. He would on occasion admit that conditions had improved:
the search for decent homes in the 1920 $ was a form of "higher
friction," a real advance over the campaign against lynching from
1910 to 1920. But he admitted that he was "one of the greatest
sinners" in feeling intense prejudice against white men. Expecting
prejudice, he anticipated it and, he admitted quite frankly, per
haps even caused it. 2 As he grew older, a white face was "a sign
of inherent distrust and suspicion." 3 In Darkwater, published in
1921, he wrote, almost as a boast, that since an incident in Nash
ville during his college days, he had never knowingly raised his hat
to a Southern white woman. Occasionally he could laugh at preju
dice, as when a steamship line listed him as Colonel DuBois be
cause it misinterpreted its agent s symbol for colored. But more
often his reaction to white America took the form of sardonic
humor, and even of cruelty. He listed ten cliches recommended to
white students in Southern colleges as "quite sufficient for all pos
sible discussions of the race problem."* He took what he himself
called a "mean, almost criminal and utterly indefensible joy" in
hearing of a mob that lynched a white man. "We re sorry we re
glad," he said. "We wish we were big enough to be dissolved in
* Crisis, XXIV, 107 (July 1922). These are the ten phrases: "i. The South
erner is the Negro s Best Friend. 2. Slavery was Beneficial to the Negro. 3. The
Races will Never Mix. 4.. All Negro Leaders Are Mulattoes. 5. The Place for
the Negro is in the South. 6. 1 Love My Black Mammy. 7. Do you want your
sister to marry a Nigger? 8. Do not disturb the friendly relations between the
races. 9. The Negro must be kept in his place. 10. Lynching is the defense of
Southern womanhood."
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
tears. . . . But we re not; we re just plain tickled at this blood-
soaked land." 4 If more needed saying, he said it in Dark-water.
The white world s vermin and filth:
All the dirt of London,
All the scum of New York;
Valiant despoilers of women
And conquerors of unarmed men;
Shameless breeders of bastards,
Drunk with the greed of gold,
Baiting their blood-stained hooks
With cant for the souls of the simple;
Bearing the white man s burden
Of liquor and lust and lies! . . .
I hate them, Oh!
I hate them well,
I hate them, Christ!
As I hate hell!
If I were God
I d sound their knell
This day!*
The scholarly world did not escape his scorn. In the course of
his research for Black Reconstruction, he condemned the persist
ent historical tradition about the Civil War which whitewashed
the South and smeared the Negro with lies. The conspiracy was
so strong, he said, that the occasional book with a contrary thesis
-such as Charles E. Russell s Elaine of Mame-was invariably
railed at or ignored. The conclusions of Edward B. Reuter s
*Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (New York, 1921), pp. 53-54-
In reviewing Dark-water for the Nation, Villard concluded his essay with these
words- "If time can but mellow him; if the personal bitterness which so often
mars his work can disappear; if a truer Christian spirit than now shines through
his writings can guide him; if he desists from his recent dangerous advocacy
of meeting force with force, and can bring himself to walk more in the manner
of the Nakrene-the possibilities of his future usefulness seem great indeed.
Nation, CX, 727 (May 29, i9*>). Privately Villard wrote: "I think I pity
Dr Diiois almost more than any man in America, but I do not want to work
with him; nor do I believe in his editing of The Crisis" In this letter Villard
refused to review Darkwater for the Crisis. If the review were unfavorable,
he feared, it would subject him to abuse and attack by Dr. DuBois: I have
had experience and I know" (Villard to Jessie Fauset, February 24, 1920,
Villard papers).
126 PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
widely read book, The American Race Problem, fit in with "domi
nating prejudices, correctly pessimistic," DuBois noted, because
Reuter was not a human being and was not acquainted with
human beings. 5 Six years after praising Thomas J. Woofter s
study, The Basis of Racial Adjustment, as singularly fair and
thoughtful, DuBois coined a new term, "Woofterism," to describe
the technique of a later work: a collection of facts, themselves
accurate, which tells only part of the truth. 6 In all this rancor,
the Association escaped and escaped with praise only because
in its membership, its board of directors, and its executive officers,
the Negro had come to predominate.
A few select friends knew another DuBois, the jovial DuBois
whom Johnson had seen at Atlanta, happy and witty among his
own. Once in a while DuBois lifted tie Veil long enough for
white America to see and be ashamed. White men, he said in
a column in the Crisis in 1923, have the "impudence" to think
that Negroes gaze hungrily at white society, yearning to enter.
Where could white men find a group of people "more utterly
beautiful, and filled with the joy of living and sweetness of spirit"
than the "coterie," a group of upper-class New York Negroes with
whom he had just spent an evening? "They were black, brown,
yellow, orange, mauve, pink, and white; their hair wavered from
gold to midnight in waves and curls and masses of every conceiv
able intricacy. Their limbs curved and moved with a grace well
nigh inimitable and their soft and laughing eyes and voices held
a fineness of love and beauty that I doubt if any group of white
folks ever surpasses. I sat and feasted my eyes." 7
The "coterie" might see a genial DuBois; his secretaries might
too. But not white men: even Spingarn saw only the formal ex
terior. Even when DuBois showed his genial side to white Amer
ica, it was to show "blithering idiots" how little he wanted "then-
drab and artificial company." 8
No Response from Colored Peoples
Years of observation had made DuBois responsive to the prob
lems of oppressed peoples everywhere. Abroad for graduate work,
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM 127
he had seen the Poles divided under three alien rulers. In The
Souls of Black Folk he had spoken of the color line as the basic
problem of the twentieth century. In 1907 he had predicted a
day of reckoning for Belgian overlords in the Congo. He had
joined in American anti-imperialist sentiment and had exulted
in retrospect about yellow Japan s victory over white Russia. In
1912 China s revolution had appeared to him as a symbol of the
world s enlarged color problem, and after a lecture tour to the
West Coast the following year he had regretted that colored Cali-
fornians did not recognize the Japanese as protagonists in the
"silly but awful" world-wide fight of color against color.
DuBois s view of imperialism as the prime cause of the World
War convinced him that peace could come only by removing the
cause of war, that is, by granting land, modern education, and
home rule to native populations in a "new peace and new democ
racy of all races: a great humanity of equal man." To help in
that transformation, awakened Japanese, awakening Chinese, and
young European-trained Indians were already working. Who
would speak for Africa? Who better, DuBois asked, than the
grandchildren of the African slaves, especially the ten million
blacks in the United States? 9
For about a decade after World War I, DuBois sought to pro
vide that voice. After the peace conference in 1919, he withdrew
his earlier approval of England and predicted that unless England
cut free her dependencies, the world would have to meet a tyranny
"as portentous as the God-defying dreams of Germany." 10 At the
beginning of 1920, he welcomed insurrections in Jamaica, the new
"Ethiopia of the Isles," as a response to the same sentiments which
were giving rise to Pan- Africanism. 11 In April 1920, he con
demned the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, for "illegal
and unjust seizure" of Haiti, and set "Freedom for Haiti" as the
greatest single question in the presidential election that fall. 12
When Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Assistant Secretary, spoke of
holding Haiti s vote in the League and of having written the
Haitian constitution himself, DuBois hoped for the disappear
ance of the "impossible Wilson and his lackeys." 18 America s hold
on the Philippines, Haiti, and Puerto Rico made him think that
perhaps it was "safer inside a beast and next his vitals than out-
128 PAN- AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
side and under his hands and feet." 14 Only the Negro vote of
America, he warned, could prevent Liberian concessions to the
Firestone Plantations Company from leading to "all the hell that
white imperialism has perpetrated heretofore in Africa and Asia." 15
He told the 1930 convention of the Association that the end of
extraterritoriality in China, Egypt s political independence and
India s demand for it, and Ethiopia s entry into the League formed
part of that world movement of colored men to which the Asso
ciation s program was related. 16
DuBois s concern for Africa was not merely a tactical gambit.
A deep racial kinship bound him to the Dark Continent. He
revered the "essence of Africa," its "initial strife" which had begun
all culture: the development of the village unit in religion, in
dustry, and government; the realization of beauty in folklore,
sculpture, and music. 17 He cited Franz Boas, the white anthro
pologist, as his authority for saying that Africa possessed the art
of smelting iron while Europe was still using stone tools. 18 Africa
could teach the West the great truth that efficiency and happiness
did not necessarily go together in modern culture. Though Africa
might be behind in specific cultural areas, he argued, its over-all
line of development was contemporary, not prehistoric. Africa
needed modern communication systems, but its knowledge of
human souls had been deepened by its isolation. Its children were
courteous and happy, alien to the impudence on Broadway, or
Lenox Avenue. 19
His sentiment for Africa needed no empirical evidence: "The
spell of Africa is upon me. The ancient witchery of her medicine
is burning my drowsy, dreamy blood. This is not a country, it
is a world a universe of itself and for itself, a thing Different,
Immense, Menacing, Alluring. It is a great black bosom where
the Spirit longs to die. It is a life so burning, so fire encircled that
one bursts with terrible soul inflaming life. One longs to leap
against the sun, and then calls, like some great hand of fate, the
slow, silent, crushing power of almighty sleep of Silence, of im
movable Power beyond, within, around. Then comes the calm.
The dreamless beat of midday stillness, at dusk, at dawn, at noon,
always. . . . Africa is the Spiritual Frontier of human kind." 20
This was the language of enchantment, even of mysticism. Nor
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM 129
was it a casual fancy. Almost a decade later he affirmed that in
some respects the Negro was drawn closer to dark men outside
America than to his white fellow citizens. 21
If ten million American Negroes were to speak for this Africa,
DuBois, as the recognized leader of the American Negro, was pre
pared to speak for ten million American Negroes. In 1917 he sug
gested a new African state formed from German possessions and
from the Belgian Congo; the following year he wanted to include,
if possible, Uganda, French Equatorial Africa, Angola, and Mo
zambique. Before the peace conference assembled, the Association
had adopted DuBois s platform, which proposed three goals: first,
internationalization of the former German colonies looking to
ward partial self-government under the "guidance of organized
civilization"; second, creation of a program for these colonies
based on public opinion as represented by the chiefs and intelli
gent Negroes in German Africa, other educated African Negroes,
American Negroes, and educated Negroes in the West Indies and
South America, all of whom would speak through a proposed Pan-
African conference; third, the merging of modern cultural advan
tagesscience, education, communications, philanthropy with
the "curiously efficient African institutions of local self-govern
ment through the family and the tribe." Such a program, the plat
form concluded, would inspire a "last great crusade for humanity.
With Africa redeemed, Asia would be safe and Europe indeed
triumphant/ 22
When the Association sent DuBois to Europe on the press ship
"Orizaba," primarily to collect material for a Negro war history,
it also authorized his call for a "Pan-African Congress" to stimu
late popular support for this program. DuBois s statement in the
Crisis that such a congress would "focus the attention of the peace
delegates and the civilized world on the just claims of the Negro
everywhere" suggested that the agitation of the African question
could cut two ways: it could help the natives, to be sure, but it
could also provide a forum for Negro propaganda. 28
DuBois s Pan-African movement, however, did not aim at po
litical or geographical unity. He specifically disavowed separatist
sentiment: Negro Americans were Americans, indeed few Ameri
cans were more indigenous. When Marcus Garvey built up mass
1O PAN- AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
Negro support for a back-to- Africa movement in the early 1920*5,
DuBois, after two years of hot-and-cold appraisal of various as
pects of the movement, totally rejected its "spiritual bankruptcy
and futility." 24 He likened Pan-Africanism to Zionism, "the cen
tralization of race effort and the recognition of a racial fount." 25
The Pan-African movement that emerged in Paris 26 was a
curious international revival of the Niagara Movement: a handful
of self-appointed spokesmen challenged a staggering problem by
passing resolutions. Even the principal techniques were similar:
the periodic conferences to recodify the platform, refresh personal
contacts, and exchange enthusiasm and information, and the mani
festoes designed to rally colored support and to convert white
opinion. In the end the congresses accomplished, if anything, less
than Niagara.
Faced by European indifference tinged with hostility, the first
congress met in Paris in February, 1919, through the influence of
Blaise Diagne, a Senegalese member of the Chamber of Deputies
who badgered Premier Georges Clemenceau for permission. Fifty-
seven delegates including sixteen Americans, twenty West In
dians, and only twelve Africans attended the meeting. Le Temps
of Paris reported some of its resolutions, which on the whole en
dorsed DuBois s program for Africa, although they were somewhat
less specific on the retention of tribal organization.
DuBois returned home exuberant. The congress, he said, had
passed resolutions applauded by the press of the world despite
the inclusion of a paragraph on racial equality; representatives
of the conference had been heard by Clemenceau, by David Lloyd
George, the British Prime Minister, by Colonel Edward M. House,
Wilson s confidential adviser, and by ministers of Belgium and
Portugal. He added that "if the Negroes of the world could have
maintained in Paris during the entire sitting of the Peace Con
ference a central headquarters with experts, clerks, and helpers,
they could have settled the future of Africa at a cost of less than
$io,ooo." 27 As this statement suggests, the Pan-African congresses
were to be for DuBois an exercise in self-deception.
DuBois continued to organize congresses all through the 1920*5,
but with no more success. At the 1921 sessions, when DuBois pro
posed the same program, he faced not only white indifference but
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM Igl
the opposition of a segment of those very native blacks whom he
wanted to redeem. The London meeting passed strong resolutions.
But when the congress reconvened in Brussels, DuBois s reading
of the London resolutions led to cries of "Bolshevik," and in Paris
Diagne, who put loyalty to France above allegiance to race, re
fused to join in condemnation of French colonial power. This
led DuBois to warn of the "crying danger" to black France that
educated leaders of the blacks would take part in the industrial
robbery of Africa rather than lead the masses to education and
culture. Jessie Fauset s account of the congress in the Crisis con
demned Diagne as guilty of "bad faith," and sometime after,
DuBois expressed regret that educated colored Frenchmen held
to the "ordinary European attitude of the classes toward the
masses." 28 The congress could, however, record one specific
achievement: it asked the League of Nations to include a section
on Negro labor in its International Bureau of Labor, and this
section was later set up.
The second congress brought DuBois some favorable European
press notices, but beyond that, very little. He listed three accom
plishments of the congress, 29 but under examination they prove
to have little substance. First, he said, the congress brought into
personal contact educated Negroes "of the calibre that might lead
black men to emancipation in the modern world." This face-to-
face meeting was undoubtedly pleasant, and perhaps stimulating,
but the attitude of Diagne, certainly a prominent spokesman for
educated Negro opinion, gave little hope for a unified world race
movement. The high caliber of conversation simply gave heat to
disagreement. Second, DuBois went on, the congress uncovered
more points of agreement than of disagreement. Yet agreement
on general principles meant little if their application resulted in
violent and irreconcilable differences. Third, DuBois said, the
congress agreed on the need for further meetings and for a strength
ened permanent organization. The alternatives to this agreement
were either an admission of total failure or a claim of total success.
Agreement to further meetings came cheap.
After the second congress, the Pan-African movement had little
besides DuBois s enthusiasm to sustain it. Even at the second
meeting, European newspapers spoke of DuBois as the "soul" of
132
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
the conference. The Association had already refused to under
write the expenses of congress meetings. By the time of the next
conference, in 1923, three Americans DuBois, Rayford W. Logan,
and Ida Gibbs Huntmade up the executive committee, and only
thirteen countries, compared with thirty in 1921, were represented.
As France gave further recognition to its black citizens, the French
delegation became increasingly inactive. Ever hopeful, DuBois
reported for the New Republic that the congresses had "weathered
a natural crisis of growth in a time of universal industrial crisis." 30
The fourth congress, which met in New York in 1927 and which
DuBois hoped would "settle for all time the question as to whether
Negroes are to lead in the rise of Africa or whether they must
always and everywhere follow the guidance of white folk/ re
peated the substance of previous platforms; it was somewhat more
specific in opposing American intervention in Haiti. One new
note was added: "We thank the Soviet Government of Russia for
its liberal atittude toward the colored races and for the help which
it has extended to them from time to time/ 31 (DuBois, the gen
eral chairman, had visited Russia two years before.) The fifth
congress, scheduled for 1929 or 1930, did not meet.
DuBois blamed the failure of Pan-Africa on the opposition
of governments, the failure of philanthropy, a deliberate boycott
by white men determined to act for Africa without consulting
black men, and the lack of understanding by educated and think
ing Negroes. He also thought that the excesses of Garvey s Back-
to-Africa drive muddied the waters of Pan-Africanism beyond re
covery.
Actually there was another cause as well. DuBois limited his
vision in international politics to white exploitation of colored
peoples. He assumed that the foreign policies of white nations
were directed primarily toward imperial gains, and that colored
peoples thought primarily in terms of anti-imperialism. Certain
corollaries followed: Since "white" was the criterion of evil, "col
ored" (especially "black") became the criterion of good. Since
colored peoples were oppressed, they could not be oppressors.
Indeed, since imperialism was white exploitation of colored labor
based on the assumption of racial superiority, colored nations
could not be imperialistic. The trouble lay in DuBois s premise,
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM Igg
for many forces other than imperialism motivated the foreign
offices of white nations, and, even more important, the color line
was not a monomania among all colored peoples. If this racial
chauvinism had been the dominating force in world politics,
DuBois might have headed an epic movement, and American
Negroes would have had a billion new allies, perhaps even a bil
lion followers. As it was, his captivity within his own racial phi
losophy blocked his recognition that a colored man could act
from nationalistic or economic, as well as racial, motives.
This captivity may have been voluntary and tacticalthe call
to arms of a militant leader for whom clearly defined moral issues
were more urgent than many-sided analysis. If so, it was scarcely
a success, for few heard his call to action.
DuBois s chronicle of the expansion of Japanese power sug
gests the extent to which racial ideas colored his view of world
events. After the Washington Conference in 1922, he wrote that
the "Anglo-Saxon Entente" which had attempted to drive a wedge
between Japan and China had failed, and that "the day is in sight
when they will present an unbroken front to the aggression of
the whites/ 32 Five years later he noted regretfully that although
Japan was the logical leader of Asia, she ranked among China s
oppressors. He hoped that the current financial crisis would bring
a change and align Japan with the colored races "where she be
longs." 33 In 1929 he reported that the refusal by the League of
Nations to endorse racial equality had helped Japan realize that
its future lay in the development of the colored world. He assumed
that as the national government of China grew in strength and
the basis of democracy in Japan broadened, mutual understanding
would increase because much of their antagonism had been fos
tered by Europe, especially by Great Britain. 34 After the Man-
churian incident, he warned Japan and China against white arbi
tration: "Did you ever hear of the Spider who arbitrated between
two flies on the basis of World Peace?" 35 His analysis of the in
vasion was typical: Japan was seizing the "dismembered parts of
China nearest to her" before European nations could stop her.
Japan knew that China could not have been saved from Europe
and America unless Japan "made Manchuria Asiatic by force."
England, France, and the United States, he said, cry shame on
JJ4 PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM:
Japan, whom they forced to choose between militarism and sui
cide. 30 When no other argument carried conviction, he fell back
on the defense that what was right for England in the nineteenth
century was right for Japan in the twentieth. 37 In 1933 he was
"extremely pleased" by the report of an Ethiopian concession of
sixteen million acres of land for Japanese exploitation. Here was
a "rapprochement between Asia and Africa which foreshadows
closer union between yellow and black people"; it was a thrust
at the "impossible domination of one mad race." 88 DuBois could
not escape this notion of the unity of the colored races. In a fan
tasy he wrote when Haile Selassie was crowned emperor of Ethi
opia, Japan and Turkey were silent as Europe and America angled
for financial control, but their eyes gleamed as Abyssinian horse
men, wild mountaineers with machine guns and modern rifles,
rode past the emperor. DuBois was sure that he could perceive
Japan s pleasure in seeing this armed strength in colored hands. 39
DuBois s myopia toward Liberia was both more incorrigible
and more understandable. Here were real kinfolk not only were
they black men, but the ruling class in Liberia was descended from
American Negroes repatriated in the midnineteenth century. Like
DuBois, whose family had been free since the Revolution, Liberia s
rulers could look back to families of freemen for at least three
generations. DuBois reported, with evident sympathy, that Li-
berians were bitter when "descendants of slaves who meekly sub
mitted to their slavery presume to ladle out loads of obvious advice
to people who for a hundred tremendous years have dared to be
free." 40 DuBois had established personal contact with them. As
envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, by designation
of President Calvin Coolidge, to the inauguration of President
C. D. B. King of Liberia, he said he was sure that President
Coolidge would want him to hail the ability of Negroes to rule
in Africa as a "great and encouraging reenforcement" in the great
battle against color caste in America. 41 But when Liberia was
guilty of practices that would have outraged his Negro sensibilities
if performed by white nations, DuBois was tolerant and under
standing. When an American-born Liberian was burned to death
in a building as he was being arrested, DuBois excused the action
as being merely the result of bad judgment. Several years later
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM 135
he acknowledged the existence of slavery in Liberia and urged its
abolition, but for the time being he tolerated "pawning" a form
of compulsory labor little removed from slavery as a way of rais
ing the ignorant into an educated status; and anyway, he added,
the British had only just released two hundred thousand slaves
in Sierra Leone. When he continued to defend Liberia even after
George S. Schuyler published Slaves Today, a vigorous attack on
Liberian rulers, Schuyler commented that DuBois s "belligerent
and commendable Negrophilism" warped his vision.* 2
The judgment contained a good deal of truth. DuBois had
trapped himself in what Margaret Halsey has called the "myth
of the Wonderful Oppressed" 43 the notion that because a group
suffers from persecution, it automatically encompasses all virtue
and is purged of all faults. Blinded by this myth, DuBois had
to explain away Japanese imperialism and Liberian pawning, or
at least to excuse them as the products of white exploitation. This
process gave DuBois a coherent point of view, but it led him some
distance from the real world of the 1920*5.
But not from the real world of the 1940*5 and after. Ironically,
his vision of racial nationalism led nowhere after the first World
War but was vividly prophetic of the world created by the second
World Wan His analysis of Japan s attack on China was way off
the mark; but his view of Japan as the leader of the colored world
in revolt against its white overlords was stunningly confirmed by
Japan s success in interpreting the second World War to Asians
as a campaign to win "Asia for the Asiatics." The postwar move
ments for independence in India, Indochina, and Indonesia to
mention only three of the revolts against three of the principal
colonial powers took place in a nationalistic atmosphere remark
ably similar to the one DuBois sought to encourage. He was wrong
about the time, but he was right about the locations and about
the intensity of the revolutions. Diagne held aloof from DuBois s
charges against French colonialism; would Diagne s constituency
have elected him to the Chamber of Deputies forty years later?
The cooperation between Ethiopia and Japan seemed anomalous
in 1933; after the Asian-African conference at Bandung in 1955,
who had the last laugh, DuBois or his critics? DuBois was a gen
eration ahead of his time. The leaders of at least two of the new
!^6 PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
African nations, Eastern Nigeria and Ghana, have publicly made
explicit acknowledgment of their debt to DuBois s inspiration.
DuBois never surrendered his interest in Pan-Africanism. There
was always the hope that a turn in world events would provide
the Negro with an ally from another part of the nonwhite world.
In the meantime, the association of the American Negro with other
rising colored peoples might help to impress white America with
the urgency of racial justice. In any case, the existence of an
American spokesman for the darker races was itself an indication
of American Negro progress: the Negro had come far enough to
supply leadership for the whole colored world. DuBois visualized
himself at the apex of this double movement in the United States
and in the world directing both campaigns from his editorial
chair at the Crisis. If the Pan-African movement had caught fire,
DuBois might have stepped from his position with the Association
into the higher role of director of the Pan-African movement and
editor of its proposed journal, the international Black Review.
Jan Christian Smuts of the Union of South Africa apparently
sensed a self-serving aspect in DuBois s Pan-African activities, for,
challenged by DuBois to a joint debate in New York City in 1930,
Smuts replied archly that he had not come to America "to adver
tise Dr. DuBois." 44
The collapse of the planned fifth congress in 1929 before it met
closed one door of Negro amelioration for the next decade and a
half. As DuBois said, "We are not yet Pan-African-minded." 45
Thereafter he continued to follow the activities of the nonwhite
world as an observer rather than as an organizer, as a propagandist
looking for new clubs with which to bludgeon the white world
and white America rather than as a prospective leader.
Rebuff From White Workers and Their Spokesmen
"The African Roots of the War" had pointed to a second pos
sible ally, the great masses of labor excluded from the fruits of
modern industry. "Democratic despotism" might ally some work
ers with their employers by sharing both political power and the
economic spoils wrenched from backward nations and from colo-
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM 1$7
nies, but the employers were senior partners and kept labor in line
with the carrot and the stick: the benefits of state socialism and
public threats of black competition. Furthermore, not all work
ers shared in the spoils. Below the aristocracy of skilled labor, an
ignorant unskilled mass, including the overwhelming majority of
Negro workers, threatened to revolt from its oppressed position.
In the next decade DuBois added a new dimension to this
analysis. In an essay significantly entitled "The Negro Mind
Reaches Out," he warned that the color problem and the labor
problem were two sides of the same tangle. White labor, ignorant,
and captivated by its share of the profits of exploitation, served
the capitalists purposes by discriminating against black workers;
white capitalists used the antipathy between the two races to con
trol the entire world labor supply. Colored labor knew this; white
workers were only beginning to see it dimly. As colored men grew
in organization and intelligence he pointed hopefully to a quick
ened India, the South African and West African congresses, the
Pan-African Movement, the Association, a rising China, a risen
Japan they would counter the ceaseless propaganda of inferiority
with a "gradual but inevitable spread of knowledge." 46
Because DuBois saw socialism as the voice of these depressed
masses, black and white, he welcomed the spread of Socialist
power in the postwar world. Just after the war he was delighted
because he thought he saw Socialists ruling in Russia, Germany,
Czechoslovakia, Italy, France, and Belgium; Socialists were strong,
he said, in every other leading nation except Japan and the United
States. Even in America their strength was growing rapidly, he
said, despite the attempt to "fasten on Socialism every crazy scheme
that any radical ever advocated." 47 The English general strike of
1926 was a "second step behind Russia for realizing industrial
democracy in the world." 48 DuBois s definition of socialism "the
assertion by the community of its right to control business and in
dustry; the denial of the old assumption that public business can
ever be a private enterprise" 49 was so broad that it was a meager
month when he could not find some evidence of its advance some
where.
Receptivity to socialism was not, of course, a new departure
for DuBois. While still at Atlanta, he had endorsed many socialist
1S}8 PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
views in the Horizon, and in 1911 he had briefly joined New York
Local No. i of the Socialist party. What was new was his specific
attempt to link Negro advancement with the world-wide socialist
current.
The revolution in Russia in the name of socialism made Du-
Bois watch the Soviet Union. Though excited by the Bolsheviks,
he was not ready to jump too quickly. In the course of an Associa
tion membership drive in 1921, he mocked the "horde of scoun
drels and bubble-blowers, ready to conquer Africa, join the Rus
sian revolution, and vote in the Kingdom of God tomorrow." 50
Two months later, in response to a sharp protest from Claude Mc
Kay, a frequent contributor to the radical magazine, the Liberator,
DuBois refined his position. He denied that he had intentionally
sneered at the Russian revolution; it might be the greatest event
of two centuries and its leaders the "most unselfish prophets." But
the Crisis could not be sure, and despite DuBois s sympathy with
the Third International s statement on race, he saw that the im
mediate problem of the American Negro was in America, Two
questions concerned him: What form would socialism take? Du
Bois held back from embracing either state socialism or the dic
tatorship of the proletariat. The larger question was more dis
turbing to him: Could the colored world trust the white working
classes, especially when history gave so little assurance that work
ers would welcome Negroes when Negroes accepted the workers
program? American Socialists discriminated against Negroes, he
continued, and European Socialists against Asiatics; the AFL dis
criminated against black workers, and the "unlettered and sup
pressed masses of white workers" lacked the clearness of thought
and the sense of brotherhood necessary for joint action. Until
labor solidarity was accepted on both sides of the color line, he
said, Negroes should espouse the cause of white labor only when
it did not conflict with their own interests. Black men must have
bread. If white workers drove Negroes from their jobs, Negroes
had no choice but to accept indecent wages at the danger of being
branded scabs. Until this situation clarified, it was foolish, he
concluded, to give up the Association s program "to join a revolu
tion which we do not at present understand." 61
From this starting pointincidentally, one of his clearest
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM 139
pieces of expository writing DuBois debated the possibility of an
alliance with world socialism as led by the new Communist govern
ment in Russia. Gradually all his doubts were resolved in favor
of Russia. In 1922 he called it "the most amazing and most hope
ful phenomenon" in the postwar period. 52 The following year he
published two articles by McKay on "Soviet Russia and the Negro"
which argued that while the growing influence of American cap
italism in Europe increased anti-Negro propaganda, the American
Negro s kinship to the rising proletariat in Russia became ever
more apparent. After the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik coup
against the Kerensky government, he criticized the American press
for not giving the "Russian experiment" a decent hearing; he
hoped that the past ten years had been only the first decade of a
Bolshevik century. 53 The previous year, 1926, two months in the
land of the Soviets had impressed him deeply.
An anonymous American of Russian descent, whom he charac
terized in his autobiography as probably a "clandestine" agent of
the "communist dictatorship," paid for the trip, accepting Du-
Bois s condition that he obligate himself to no particular conclu
sion or course of action and that he be allowed to see the situation
with his own eyes.* The Russian Foreign Bureau made no overt
signs of directing his trip, and his interpreter, he told his Crisis
readers, was known to him before he went to Russia. Like Lincoln
Steffens, who reported that he had "seen the future; and it works/*
DuBois returned to the United States in awe. "I stand in astonish
ment and wonder at the revelation of Russia that has come to me.
I may be partially deceived and half-informed. But if what I have
seen with my own eyes and heard with my ears in Russia is Bol
shevism, I am a Bolshevik." 54 The following year he explained
further: if Bolshevik means people striving with partial success to
organize industry for public service rather than for private profit,
he was proud to fit the description. Russian education aimed at
creating workingmen of skill and intelligence and at preparing
future rulers; "this is what the Russian Dictatorship of the Pro
letariat means." Since the workers were not yet sufficiently skilled
* William A. Nolan suggests that paid trips to Russia may have been
arranged for other Negroes as well. He mentions Claude McKay as an example.
Nolan, Communism versus the Negro (Chicago, 1951), p. 27.
IAQ PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
or intelligent to assume their responsibilities, he went on, the Com
munist party was "directing" them until they could assume power
on their own. This, he commented, paralleled the United States
where "we have elaborate and many-sided arrangements for ruling
the rulers." The difference was that Russia was "really preparing
future rulers"; the United States was not. He noted limitations:
the hotels lacked the "savoir-faire" of London and Paris, some dis
sidents resented the regime, dishonest officials and inefficient poli
ticians held back the revolution. As long as organized capital in
America, England, France, and Germany used every weapon to
crush Russia, he said, only a minimum of free discussion and dem
ocratic difference of opinion could be tolerated in the Soviet
Union. But Russia was creating a "workingman s psychology/
and the real question in Russia was: "Can you make the worker
and not the millionaire the center of modern power and culture?
If you can, the Russian Revolution will sweep the world." 55
Like Pan-Africa, Russia seemed to offer a glimpse of the future,
especially because of its "workingman s psychology" and its free
dom from a color line. Negatively, Russia gained by the hatred of
those white powers which bore the special brunt of DuBois s dis
approval.
Yet the paragon existed only at a distance. However right Rus
sia might be, the acid test of the Negro s alliance with world social
ism would take place in America, more specifically among Amer
ican workers. In America DuBois s hopes floundered, because
white labor, skilled and unskilled, stayed in the vanguard of dis
crimination against the Negro, third parties remained equivocal,
and even the American spokesmen for the Bolshevik dictatorship
failed to convince DuBois that they would support the Negro
worker if they had any chance of capturing the white.
In 1919, even as the Association reported that trade unions
seemed to be relaxing their ban on Negroes, DuBois warned that
they did so only because Negroes would underbid them if they did
not As if to give point to his words, Negroes played a major role
in breaking the steel strike in the same year. His tolerance of white
labor was wearing thin: in 1921 he wished defeat and smashed
unions to the railroad workers, the "head and foot" of the "con-
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM 141
temptible monopoly of labor" which openly excluded any disad-
vantaged group including Jews and Italians as well as Negroes
and built "their own high wages and exclusive privileges on the
starvation, unemployment, sickness and destitution of the common
laborer." 56 Only when unions surrendered "monopoly and aris
tocracy as methods of social uplift" could a unified labor move
ment achieve justice for all. 57 The fact that white laborers dis
criminated with less conscious intent than their imperialist mas
ters, DuBois said, diminished their guilt; but no longer was he
willing to excuse them from responsibility.
In working for labor solidarity, DuBois opposed influential
spokesmen within the race. The Negro Press Association in 1924
vigorously condemned unionism at almost the same time that the
Association was making formal overtures to the AFL for a joint
interracial labor commission to propagandize against disunion and
prejudice. Kelly Miller, a perennial spokesman for moderation,
admitted that logic placed Negro labor more in line with white
labor than with capital, but insisted that Negro opportunities lay
outside the organized labor movement. The National Urban
League even engaged in strikebreaking.
For a while DuBois held stubbornly to his hopes, returning
always to the basic theme that unions had given workers whatever
they had. William Green s "reactionary" control was no excuse
for blanket condemnation. But continued rebuffs frayed his hopes.
A perfunctory reply from the AFL ended the Association s pro
posal for a joint commission, and union walls seemed as impene
trable as ever. In DuBois s mind the war between hope and
stubborn fact led him into a belief in miracles, almost an attitude
of credo quia absurdum. Negro and white workers, separated by
the "width of the world," hated and despised each other, lynched
and murdered body and soul, he said. "And yet and yet, stranger
things have happened under the sun than understanding between
those who were born blind." 58 There the matter rested. For five
years the Crisis remained silent on organized labor except to sup
port A, Philip Randolph s successful organization of the Pullman
car porters, to set the record straight on the Association s advances
to the AFL, and to cite William Doak, president of the Brother-
14*
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
hood of Railway Trainmen, as a terse explanation of the Negro s
hostility to organized labor. Then in May, 1930, a comment tucked
in the letter column of the Crisis told of the end of the dream.
After advocating the trade-union movement for years, DuBois
announced that he was through with it "until the trade union
movement stands heartily and unequivocally at the side of Negro
workers." 59 It was a tragic moment after ten years of trying to
ally himself with the future, he was no further along than Kelly
Miller and Booker T. Washington.
DuBois s hopes for a third party as a spokesman for socialism
hit the same obstacle. Socialist fervor and a strong affection for
trade unionism did not, to be sure, necessarily go hand in hand.
Still, since any third party with a hope of success needed over
whelming labor support, the very attempt to appeal to organized
laborand to unorganized labor as well, in all probability vetoed
a forthright stand on the Negro question. But DuBois s despair
of the two major parties forced him to try: "May God write us
down as asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either
the Republican or the Democratic Parties." 60 In 1924 the Pro
gressive party s platform put DuBois in a dilemma: as a Socialist
he welcomed the most advanced proposals ever offered by a serious
national party; as a "race man," how could he ignore the party s
silence on Negro rights? Even Wilson had spoken brave words
before the election. How could one be sure of Robert M. LaFol-
lette, the Progressive s presidential candidate? There was no cer
tainty, but before the election LaFollette condemned the Klan and
promised to free Haiti. The gesture won DuBois s vote, especially
since he apparently was permitted to write the statement on the
Negro in the party s political handbook.
Four years later he urged a protest vote for any third-party
candidate. He recognized that no third party had a chance. While
the South cast a solid electoral bloc for the Democrats, a third party,
in order to win, had to capture most of the North, and if it failed
to do so, but succeeded in winning some electoral votes, it handed
the election to the Democrats, the "least liberal of the two old
parties." But he could not abandon his planning. The month
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM 143
after the 1928 election, following a campaign so abusive in its
racist appeal that colored leaders of all persuasions joined to pro
test in an "Appeal to America,"* DuBois told his readers that the
Negro must in the future throw his political weight to a single
third party. The Negro s price was enforcement of the war amend
ments, federal supervision of federal elections, allotment of seats
in the House of Representatives on the basis of votes cast rather
than on population, socialization of wealth and income to protect
the interests of the poor laborer against the political power of the
rich investor. To this banner he hoped to rally other politically
"homeless" groups women, liberal white Southerners, organized
labor, farmers, pacifists. 61 Bunching up unhappy minorities gave
this program a deceptive plausibility, but it could not overcome
two fatal obstacles: First, DuBois s pre-election analysis of the
difficulties facing a third party shrewdly and accurately appraised
the facts, and no third party could escape the same fatal political
logic. Herbert Hoover s inroads into the South, DuBois admitted,
offered no support for progressive hopes; it had occurred because
of religious bigotry, fear of the Negro, hatred of the domination
of the Democratic party by New York, and prohibition. The
Southern electoral votes, he said himself, could always be counted
on to "keep reaction and plutocracy in power." Second, within
fifteen months of this analysis, DuBois s repudiation of the AFL,
still the backbone of organized labor, left little substance to his
hope for a rapprochement with labor inside a third party. Labor s
influence had kept LaFollette from making a firm statement on
the Negro. Organized labor had not become friendlier in the
intervening years.
The answer forced upon DuBois was that national politics did
* The "Appeal" complained that the Negro had been slandered more in
this campaign than in any since the Civil War, and, what was more alarming,
the calumny had drawn no rebuke from the leading candidates and spokesmen
for both parties, and from few religious leaders and social reformers. The
Negro leaders asked for a public repudiation of the campaign by white America,
especially by the candidates and the church. "Is there in truth any issue in
this campaign, either religious tolerance, liquor, water power, tariff or farm
relief, that touches in weight the transcendent and fundamental question of
the open, loyal and unchallenged recognition of the essential humanity of
twelve million Americans who happen to be dark skinned?"
144
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
not offer a way out for the Negro. His programs for national
political action were as fruitless as his hopes for labor solidarity.
The self-appointed spokesmen for world socialism in the
United States, the Communist party, inspired little more hope.
As a friend of Russia, DuBois defended the right of American
Communists to study and to sympathize with Russian and English
socialism. He opened the pages of the Crisis to McKay and to Will
Herberg, managing editor of the Revolutionary Age, a weekly
Communist paper. He commented on the striking parallels-
more apparent to him than to others between the Association s
program and that of the American Negro Labor Congress. But he
choked on American Communists ideology and tactics.
At the beginning of the decade DuBois warned that the ready-
made Marxist analysis of the class struggle could not be indiscrim
inately applied to Negro America. Although Negroes were theo
retically part of the world proletariat, the exploited class of cheap
laborers, practically they were not recognized by the white prole
tariat. In fact, Negroes were victims of "physical oppression, social
ostracism, economic exclusion and personal hatred on the part of
the white proletariat." Furthermore, the small group of affluent
Negroes Negro capitalists had achieved their wealth through
manual toil and were "never physically or mentally separated from
the toilers/ He warned the Negro to look carefully at proletarian
movements before joining them. 62
The Communists attack on the Association and on DuBois
himself for the next fifteen years did little to endear them to him.
One Communist writer dismissed the Association as "an organiza
tion resembling in its pattern the ancient abolition society and
breathing the spirit of white philanthropists in benign collabora
tion with colored bishops and lawyers, and, of course, the white
Republican politician [s] of the border states and other parts
where Negroes can vote and where anti-lynching speeches can be
made."* 3 Rejecting reformist activities, the Communist party
listed DuBois among the "betrayers of the Negro people" and in
cluded him in a list of faithful followers of Booker T. Washington
who were attempting "to chain the Negro people to the chariot of
American imperialism, to perpetuate and build further the dis-
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM 145
trust and antagonism toward white workers of the country." 6 * In
1932 the New Masses published a cartoon of the "Scottsboro Legal
Lynching" in which white bosses hid behind a mask of the Asso
ciation while they lynched the nine Scottsboro boys. 65 Later the
Daily Worker joined the chorus: "Negro bourgeois reformism" as
represented by the Association was the "main social bulwark of
imperialist Jim Crow reaction among the Negro masses." 66
DuBois persistently rejected the Communist characterization
of the Association as an upper-class minority opposed to the work
ers stand. The charge, he said, was a criticism not of what had
happened, but of "what might be expected to happen according
to the formula of Marxian socialism." The Communists, he said,
were captives of a rigid ideology created with little direct knowl
edge of the Negro problem in America; as a result, they were
blinded to the facts of the Negro s true condition in America. 67
DuBois was not willing to attach himself to this blind ideology:
while aligning himself with those who sought to correct the abuses
of capitalism, he wanted to "preserve its tremendous possibilities
for good," and he did not believe in violence as the method of
reform. 68
The Communists bull-in-the-china-shop intervention in the
Scottsboro case provoked DuBois into a long denunciation of
them. In 1931 nine Negro youths were arrested in Alabama,
charged with raping two white girls. The National Association
went to their defense, but the accused turned their cases over to
the International Labor Defense, a Communist group. The Com
munists then organized mass meetings all over the country to
protest the indictment and trial and made the case an interna
tional issue. The nine were convicted. In the course of successive
appeals, the Communists withdrew, and a committee headed by
Allan Knight Chalmers and supported by the Association took
charge. Defending the Association s orderly method of "hiring
bourgeois lawyers and appealing to bourgeois judges," DuBois, in
a Crisis editorial condemned the sensational tactics of the Com
munists: "If the Communists want these boys murdered, then
their tactics of threatening judges and yelling for mass action on
the part of white Southern workers is calculated to insure this."
1^6 PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
He asserted and in this opinion he was not alone* that the Com
munists ultimate object was to make the case a center of agitation
to prove that nothing less than the Communist program could
emancipate the Negro. To accomplish this, they were intensifying
white prejudices, terrifying white capitalists, and leaving the
Negro helpless. While white workers were in a lynching mood and
capitalists were terrified of mob violence, he said, "the Com
munists, seizing leadership of the poorest and most ignorant
blacks, head them toward inevitable slaughter and jail-slavery,
while they [the Communists] hide safely in Chattanooga and
Harlem. American Negroes do not propose to be the shock troops
of the Communist Revolution, driven out in front to death, cruelty
and humiliation in order to win victories for white workers. They
are picking no chestnuts from the fire, neither for capital nor white
labor."
Moving from this particular attack to the party s general on
slaught against the Association, DuBois denounced as "fantastic"
the Communist charge that Negro Americans had a petit bour
geoisie which dominated a helpless proletariat and then surren
dered to white profiteers. That notion, he said, had died with
Booker T. Washington. Actually, he went on, there were few
Negro capitalists of any size, and while a full-fledged capitalist
system might develop, no such tendency was then apparent, espe
cially in the Association the leaders of which shared a "common
cause" with the lowest members of the race. As a matter of fact,
he continued, the foresight and sacrifice of educated Negro Amer
icans, "and these alone," had saved the American freedman from
annihilation and degradation. The "quintessence and final ex
pression" of this leadership was the Association, which "deserves
from Russia something better than a kick in the back from the
young jackasses who are leading Communism in America today."
The attempt by Socialists and Communists to unite Negroes
with white labor was a "red rag to a bull," he continued, for the
Negro had had no honest advocate in the ranks of white labor
* A restrained statement of this view appears in Allan K. Chalmers, They
Shall Be Free (New York, 1951), especially p. 202. Somewhat more heat is gen
erated hi Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense (Garden City, 1943),
P- 497-
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM 147
since Terence Powderly. (DuBois s repudiation of the AFL had
come sixteen months before.) The more intellectual white work
ers became and the higher they rose, the more determined they
became to hold the Negro down: "Whatever ideals white labor
today strives for in America, it would surrender nearly every one
before it would recognize the Negro as a man." Norman Thomas
became "vague and incoherent" only when he touched upon the
black man; his attitude was that if the emancipation of white labor
did not help the Negro, let him remain in slavery. The Com
munists, DuBois said, younger, largely of foreign extraction,
bound by an alien ideology, ignored the "dead blank wall" of
white prejudice and blamed Negroes for their failure to back
white unionism, forgetting that not labor but American wealth
had educated forty thousand Negro leaders and had opened up
a million jobs to them in the previous ten years. Though white
capital had done this for profit, the Negro would have been crazy
to have refused the gift. DuBois said that the Negro still saw that
the real interest of white and black labor was identical, but he
declined to invite black labor to be the "sacrificial goat" when
white labor did not share that recognition. "Negroes owe much
to white labor," DuBois observed, "but it is not all, or mostly, on
the credit side of the ledger." He pointed out grimly that it was
white proletarians who were trying to lynch the Scottsboro boys.
After this analysis by far the longest editorial which DuBois
ever published in the Crisis what was left of his alliance with
world socialism? At the end of the editorial, DuBois picked up
the pieces: the Negro that is, DuBois was sympathetic to Rus
sia, "hopeful for its ultimate success in establishing a Socialist
state"; sympathetic to the American workingman s attempt to se
cure democratic control of industry; certain that the Negro s in
terests were with labor. But he would accept no ground except
equality with white labor, and the first steps had to come from
white labor. 69
As the depression deepened after 1929, prospects for unity
dimmed. After black construction workers were forced off the job
on the new British embassy in Washington by a direct appeal from
white workers to Ramsey MacDonald, the former British Labour
ite Prime Minister, DuBois sneered: "Black brothers, how would
1^8 PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM
you welcome a dictatorship of this proletariat?" 70 Little indeed
remained of his alliance with the rising tide of socialism except
his uninterrupted respect for the Soviet Union, and a fresh ac
quaintanceperhaps his initial first-hand acquaintance with the
writings of Karl Marx.* (He conducted a seminar, "Karl Marx
and the Negro/ on a visiting professorship at Atlanta in 1933.)
White labor had rebuffed the Negro. National political action had
yielded little and showed no prospect of yielding more: neither
major party had adapted itself to the Negro vote, and no third
party could wrest enough votes to make a dent in what he re
garded as a jointly held monopoly. Socialists had nothing special
to offer to the Negro; and, as DuBois said, with "American com
munism led by a group of pitiable mental equipment, who give
no thought to the intricacies of the American situation, the ver
tical and horizontal divisions of the American working classes;
and who plan simply to raise hell on any and all occasions, with
Negroes as shock troops, these offer in reality nothing to us ex-
* DuBois had not previously read Marx at any length. At Atlanta, a list
of books he recommended to Horizon readers (Horizon, Vol. i, No. 6, June
1907) suggests that he was drawing his socialist inspiration from American
sources such as John Spargo, Jack London, Jane Addams, W. J. Ghent, Richard
T. Ely, Henry George, and Jacob Riis. Though he mentioned Marx along with
twenty or thirty other economists in a college essay (XYZ [pseud.], "A Con
structive Critique of Wage Theory: An Essay on the Present State of Economic
Theory in Regard to Wages," 1891, Harvard Archives), and though he made
passing reference to him in an occasional essay or editorial, these references
do not appear to have been based on firsthand knowledge. And, in all candor,
it must be said that even his essay "Marxism and the Negro Problem" (Crisis,
XL, 103-4, ll $ [May iQSS]) had the once-over-lightly form of an undigested
summary of Capital and the Communist Manifesto.
Sterling D. Spero, in reviewing Black Reconstruction, seems to share this
view: he speaks of the book as the "child of this strange intellectual marriage"
between racial loyalty and Marx, and he implies that DuBois read Marx for
the first time as an old man. (Sterling D. Spero, "The Negro s Role," Nation,
CXL, 108-9 [July 24, 1935].) George Streator, who was managing editor of the
Crisis under DuBois and was DuBois s candidate for editor of the Crisis after
the break in 1934, wrote in 1941 that he doubted that "with all his talents
DuBois ever did more than turn to those vivid pages where Marx hammered
with telling effect against the English society that gained its wealth through
the African slave trade. All the rest to DuBois was just so much Hegel, and
I doubt that DuBois did much to Hegel when he was a student in Germany"
(George Streator, "A Negro Scholar," Commonweal, XXXIV, 31-34 (May 2,
194*)-
PAN-AFRICA AND SOCIALISM 149
cept social equality in jail/ 71 The depression made the Negro s
position even more difficult, for in a traditional pattern of last
hired, first fired, the Negro felt acutely the impact of unemploy
ment, which rose from less than three million in 1929 to more
than eleven million in 1932.
DuBois could not escape the conviction that American Negro
policy had to take a new direction. An alliance with the colored
races of the world had produced a few unheeded manifestoes;
when the Pan-African Congress failed to meet in 1929, even the
manifestoes stopped. And though the Russian revolution might
point the way to a future industrial order based on justice for all
workingmen, the color line gave it little immediate relevance in
the United States.
His people facing disaster, DuBois turned to the only allies on
whom he felt the Negro could count: his twelve million Negro
fellow Americans.
VI
NEGRO CHAUVINISM
Racial exclusiveness had tinted DuBois s thought since boy
hood. Now in the late 1920*5 and the 1930*5, after rebuffs from
white liberals, colored people elsewhere, and the Socialist move
ment made him despair of alliances with outsiders, DuBois re
treated. He drew back into the protective shell of his own race
until he found himself accepting, even welcoming, a largely self-
sufficient Negro culture stretching across state and class lines. The
virus of racial nationalism appeared earliest in his comments on
literature and the arts and then spread to politics, to education,
and, most important, to business and industry.
The "Jim Crow" editorial in 1919* had shown him at the cross
roads: since a separate Negro America inside America was im
practical, the relations between the races had to be based on
knowledge and on the sympathy of long contact; on the other
hand, if Negroes were to develop their own gifts and powers not
only to fight prejudice successfully but to unite "for ideals higher
than the world has realized in art and industry and social life,"
then they must work together to build a "new and great Negro
ethos." By 1934 the quest for a separate Negro ethos and culture
dominated his thought.
The new spirit appeared almost everywhere in DuBois s work:
in asserting that the work of the Association was "our work and
we must do it"; 2 in demanding Negro aid for black men accused
of crimes; even in accepting the word "Negro," not only as "ety-
mologically and phonetically good," but as the symbol of "all those
spiritual ideals, those inner bonds, those group ideals and forward
strivings of this mighty army of 12 million. . . . They are our
most precious heritage." 8
For DuBois, those "inner bonds" became ever stronger and
more comprehensive.
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 151
An Autonomous Negro Community
At the dawn of the postwar Negro literary renaissance the
"New Negro" movement DuBois warned that the white man s
caricature of Negroes had sunk into their half-conscious thought
so deeply that "we shun in print and paint that which we love in
life." These "thought-chains and inchoate soul-shrinkings," blind
ing Negroes to the beauty of a black skin, he said, made them in
stinctively abhor portraits in darker shades.* What was worse, the
Negro public shrank from the truth about itself; Negro writers
deliberately passed over their own experience lest they draw criti
cism on the race and rebuke to themselves. When white writers,
such as Eugene O Neill in The Emperor Jones, caught the Negro
temper, he said, they became "great benefactors" as forerunners
of Negro artists yet unseen. But even O Neill, Dubois reported,
drew condemnation from educated Negroes; his soul "must be
lame with the enthusiasm of the blows rained upon him." 5 This
squeamishness, DuBois argued, was nonsense, for the Negro stood
secure enough in accomplishment to "lend the whole stern human
truth to the transforming hand of the artist." DuBois was sure
that it was better in the long run to face the "Truth of Art" than
to bend art to propaganda. 6
Development of art and appreciation of beauty were, DuBois
insisted, the peculiar mission of the modern Negro. Even as early
as 1913 he had spoken of the Negro as "primarily an artist" The
race which had held the tropics at bay had gained thereby a sen
sitivity to sound and color, he said; the Negro blood in the Pha
raohs had accounted for much of Egyptian art, and Negroes had
brought music to America. Economic stress and bitter persecution
still consumed the "leisure and poise for which literature calls,"
yet DuBois was sure that Negroes had an abundance of material
and that they were developing the technical skill to use it. 7
By the 1920 $ they were ready, and DuBois set aside modest
claims for recognition in order to claim a monopoly: "We are the
only American artists." Even in the "dull brain of America," he
added later, the Negro was clearly becoming the "most virile future
force in this land, certainly in art, probably in economics, and
15*
NEGRO CHAUVINISM
possibly in science." Even the age of Pericles and the fifteenth
century, he believed, could not compete with the fertility of the
Negroes material "tragedy such as the modern world has seldom
surpassed, comedy of exquisite depth and appeal, new and unusual
beauty in contrast, color and tone." 8
More than a critic, DuBois contributed directly to this creative
renaissance. He published the Brownies Book, a monthly maga
zine for children which lasted two years. A short story on a cross-
racial theme had appeared in The Souls of Black Folk; the Hori
zon had published several of his short stories and poems; he occa
sionally used the Christmas or Easter issue of the Crisis for para
bles toying with traditional Christian stories, which he adapted to
the color line. He produced a pageant, "The Star of Ethiopia," in
1913, and revived it successfully with a cast of three hundred and
fifty actors in 1925. Delighted and encouraged, he hailed this new
art form in which education and race pride could deck themselves.
Race pride was certainly served, for this tale of the "eldest and
strongest races of mankind" made quite a list of the Negro s gifts
to the world: the gifts of iron, of freedom and laughter, of hope
and faith and humility. Together with the Semite, the Negro had
made Egypt the first nation of the world, DuBois asserted, and the
Negro by himself had spread Mohammedanism over half the world.
After such glories, George Washington s recognition, in a later
pageant, of Phyllis Wheatley, Benjamin Bannecker, and Crispus
Attucks Negroes from the period of the Revolution seemed tame
indeed. But the pageant as an art form, unable to compete with
the mounting popularity of the movies, did not flourish.
All DuBois s fiction dealt with the Negro problem, and for
the most part it appeared in publications he controlled rather than
in magazines of general circulation. In the potpourri published
as Darkwater in 1921, he reprinted some selections from his earlier
work along with some new fiction and poems. The quality of his
work varies, but never achieves distinction. "The Litany at At
lanta" undoubtedly packs a wallop, but much of its strength comes
from the shock of sacrilege "Surely Thou, too, art not white, O
Lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing" rather than from any
striking or new association of words or ideas. Indeed the same
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 153
may be said of his parables, one of which comes close to a bur
lesque of Christ s life. The plot of his stories can usually create
suspense: when a Negro man and a white woman think themselves
the sole survivors of a collision of the earth with a comet, the reader
is impelled to read further. (As it turned out, they were wrong.)
But his people rarely move, they are pushed. With predictable
monotony, the actions of his characters depend on social position:
the white bishop is pompous and worldly, the young Southerner
urbane and haughty, the poor white Southern woman merciful
but unheeded; and the mysterious dark-hued stranger usually
turns out to be some variant on the "Jesus Christ in Texas" who
appears in one of his short stories.
DuBois s first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece, published
in 1911, however, had received less critical attention than it de
served. In form a love story, it traces the courtship of Blessed Al-
wyn and Zora, the daughter of a Negro conjurer. The story begins
in an Alabama school run by a Wellesley graduate, but before the
wedding day, it works its way through white high society, colored
political machinations in Republican Washington, and a lynch
ing party back in Alabama. The schoolmarm s Northern indus
trialist family makes an alliance with Southern crop-lien landlords,
both groups depending on starved, ignorant Negro labor forced
into competition with poor white farmers. The tension becomes
even greater when the industrialist s factory is transferred to the
South; the competition between black and white workers leads to
the lynching. But by the last page the tension is eased, the Bour
bon patriarch endows the school for Negroes, and Bles and Zora
are married.
As even this brief outline suggests, The Quest of the Silver
Fleece, gave DuBois a chance to work over a wide variety of Negro
problems. In his autobiography he characterized the book as
"really an economic study of some merit," but actually its range
made it much more. Its economic theme was certainly important
the image of Northern capital and Southern planters plotting for
profit wrung from a peasantry enslaved by the crop-lien system.
However, other themes, related to economics yet important in
themselves, appeared: the thirst for knowledge among young Ne-
154 NEGRO CHAUVINISM
groes; the persistent slave mentality among older ones; the reac
tionary ignorance of Negro preachers; the Southerners picture of
the Negroes as the "lowest-down, orneriest . . . good-for-nothing
loafers" who had to be cared for like children; and the Negroes
reciprocal picture of the Southerners as cruel fools duped by cun
ning black men who "fly right through them." The easy seduction
of Negro women by white men provided the motive for moving
the story to Washington. The presence of the school for Negroes
allowed DuBois to retell his analysis of the Negro industrial
schools supported by white men desperate to keep a tractable labor
supply. The trip to Washington opened the door for criticism of
the alliance between white industry and politics. Even more re
vealing was the picture of Negro politicians serving the Repub
licans in exchange for governmental jobs and of Negro newspapers
yielding to Republican domination at the bidding of an influen
tialunnamedNegro.
William S. Braithwaite s review compared the Quest favorably
with Frank Norris s trilogy on wheat. The comparison was not
without merit, and the book also suggested the documentary range
of Theodore Dreiser s trilogy, in scope if not in technique, for by
the end of the book, most of the "radical" Negro s picture of Amer
ica had been forced into its pages. At the same time, however,
Blessed, Zora, and the schoolmarm were shuttled back and forth
to Washington like river ferries, and accidental meetings and a
death-bed conversion borrowed the dramatic license of melo
drama. Much of the conversation was stilted "Bles, almost thou
persuadest me to be a fool" and white society matrons talked in
caricature. But one character at least, Zora, developed within the
book, changing from an elflike girl into a mature, self-possessed
woman. If not enough to justify the novel as a work of art, she at
least raised it steps above an economic tract.
Not so much could be said for DuBois s second novel, Dark
Princess, which appeared in 1928 after almost a decade of the
Negro literary renaissance. Published as a "romance," presumably
to license its diffuseness, it won DuBois s enduring affection "my
favorite book/ he calls it without evoking any comparable en
thusiasm elsewhere.
Matthew Towns, a Negro barred from an obstetrics course es-
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 155
sential to complete his medical degree at a New York City uni
versity, goes to Europe to finish his work. There, having fallen
in with an international conspiracy of the colored elite seeking to
replace the dominant world-wide white aristocracy, he accepts a
commission to survey the American Negro s competence to join in
such a project. As part of his research, he becomes a Pullman
porter, but soon goes to jail for his share in an attempt to dynamite
a special Ku Klux Klan train on its way to a Chicago convention.
When paroled through political influence, he enters politics him
self. Seduced by political ambition, he is about to sell out to the
local machine when Kautilya, Maharanee of Bwodpur and a leader
of the world colored group, appears, converts him to an honest
career as a laborer, and finally marries him, thus giving Bwodpur
its heir.
Towns s varied careermedical student, traveler, Pullman por
ter, secret diplomat for the colored races, politician, and finally
laborer gave DuBois a chance to cover two continents; and his
reports to the colored conspirators gave a plausible excuse for
including what Alain Locke called "rich deposits of sociology." 9
DuBois s handling of the material ranged from photographic real
ism so precise that a reviewer for the Chicago Defender obligingly
identified one character, 10 to personal fantasy so obtuse as to be
meaningful only to the author. For example, he dedicated the
novel "To Her High Loveliness, TITANIA xxvn, by her own grace
Queen of Fairie, Commander of the Bath; Grand Medallion of
Merit; Litterarum Humanarum Doctor, Fidei Extensor, etc. etc.,
of whose faith and fond affection this romance was surely born."
He constantly paraded his cultural breadth by irrelevant refer
ences to Croce, Proust, Picasso. For the most part, his characters
were static spokesmen for particular points of view. Towns was
an exception: he was so volatile that he could move from the
idealism of pan-colored revolution to the cynicism of Chicago
machine politics and back again with scarcely a ruffle to his psyche.
Kautilya herself changed from maharanee to waitress and later to
union organizer with equal aplomb. Here again, however, a
woman almost came to life: Sara Andrews, the secretary to a
Negro politician and for a while Towns s wife, who bears some re
semblance to Sadie Burke in Robert Penn Warren s All the Kings
156 NEGRO CHAUVINISM
Men. But a single character, a minor one at that, was hardly
enough to redeem the novel. Except for DuBois s surprisingly
sensitive treatment of the Negro common laborer, the same ma
terial was handled in a more satisfactory way in the pages of the
Crisis.
In his poetry and novels, DuBois s style fell between socio
logical prose and vague grandiloquence. In the field of belles
lettres, he strained so hard for effect that, at its extreme, he ended
up with the exalted nonsense of his dedication in Dark Princess,
or with labored, obtuse metaphors"the panting blindness of our
ears." His characters talked in set speeches, and his plots went
beyond even the limits of fantasy. The tone of his writing changed
constantly as the sociologist interrupted the novelist.
DuBois s real strength was in the emotional prose of propa
ganda. For example, he concluded The Gift of Black Folk, a has
tily written survey of the Negro s contribution to America, pub
lished in 1924, with this passage:
Listen to the Winds, O God the Reader, that wail across the
whipcords stretched taut on broken human hearts; listen to the
Bones, the bare bleached bones of slaves, that line the lanes of
Seven Seas and beat eternal tom-toms on the forests of the
laboring deep; listen to the Blood, the cold thick blood that
spills its filth across the fields and flowers of the Free; listen to
the Souls that wing and thrill and weep and scream and sob
and sing above it all. What shall these things mean, O God the
Reader? You know. You know. 11
The reference to the "laboring deep" remains cloudy, but the
remainder of the passage has unmistakable strength: its meta
phors stand up to a second reading, its oblique historical refer
ences draw skillfully on the material of the previous pages, and
the appeal to the readers 1 emotions makes the volume a useful
servant of propaganda as well as a handbook of analysis. This
passage could be matched by "Of the Passing of the First Born"
in The Souls of Black Folk in which the pathos inherent in the
loss of DuBois s only son carries emotional intensity without an
overlay of highly charged words. Most of his best writing appeared
in his monthly editorials in which he clothed his facts with wit,
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 157
paradox, indignation, and a call to arms. His editorials, with their
brevity, luster, and punch, are his lasting literary monument.
It was in commentary on Negro artists rather than in his own
creative output that DuBois found his true role in the Negro
renaissance. He was proud of the achievement of Florence Tal-
bert, Marian Anderson, and Roland Hayes, who, he said, had
better voices than the Metropolitan Opera could buy, but were
kept out by racial prejudice. He greeted Richard Harrison s por
trayal of De Lawd in Marc Connelly s Green Pastures as a triumph
of interpretation, and praised Nathaniel Dett s "epoch-making"
choir at Hampton. In 1926 and 1927 he worked hard to get the
Krigwa Players Little Negro Theater on the boards as a going
concern. He organized the Crisis book club, awarded the annual
DuBois literary prizes, and goaded his readers into helping Negro
poets. He pledged the support of the Crisis to Negro writers,
prudently adding some time later that this did not commit him
to "cheap flattery and misspent kindliness" 12 never for DuBois a
real danger. By 1926 he reported in the Encyclopedia Britannica
that the extent of the Negro renaissance was apparent in the fifteen
volumes of the Crisis, a "compendium of occurrences, thoughts
and expression among American Negroes," in which, he said with
some exaggeration, most of the newer Negro writers had first pub
lished their work.
As he watched the Negro renaissanceboth what Negro writers
were turning out and what white authors were saying about life
behind the Veil his pride in the race turned him away from the
"Truth of Art"; he finally announced bluntly: "I do not care a
damn for any art that is not used for propaganda." 18 Month after
month he reviewed books which portrayed the dregs of Negro
society, and the total picture affronted his image of the race. Carl
Van Vechten s Nigger Heaven he condemned as an insult to "the
hospitality of black folk," for both the title and the novel s sordid
material amounted to caricature, even though every event de
scribed might have happened. 1 * The atmosphere of Julia Peter-
kin s Black April, a "veritable cesspool of incest, adultery, fighting
and poverty," he said, illustrated a fact about white Americans:
they thrill to read "gleefully and with sparkling eyes" about "some
poor devils" with whom they had no sympathy, all the while af-
158 NEGRO CHAUVINISM
firming a stand for freedom of art. 15 Even DuBose Heyward s
Porgy, which, DuBois acknowledged, portrayed the black man
with unusual sympathy and understanding, could not escape
damning criticism because it limited its vision to the lowest level
of Negro society. When Heyward followed with Mamba s Daugh
ters, the roots of DuBois s complaint became clearer: the book was
excellent, artistically successful, he said, but he did not like it-
par tly because he recoiled at feeling the hands of strangers on the
heart of his problem, partly because he resented the portrayal of
the "debauched tenth" as characteristic of the whole race. Catfish
Alley and the "trite old tale" of the white Charleston aristocracy
did not meet DuBois s demand for a picture of "real, ordinary
people/ 16
This discomfort in alien hands extended even to McKay, a
West Indian. Home to Harlem was dismissed as a resourceful at
tempt "to paint drunkenness, fighting, lascivious sexual promis
cuity and utter absence of restraint" with bright color and with
out a "well-conceived plot." Only its variations on the theme of
the loveliness of the colored skin gave it a glimpse of beauty. 17
Banjo three years later, DuBois said, was better; but "with the
characteristic reaction of the West Indian who does not thoroughly
know his America," McKay failed to understand the upper-class
Negro and pictured Negro "society" as a cheap imitation of its
white counterpart. 18
As the hardest blow of all, even American Negro writers gave
themselves over to what Redding calls "brooding pessimism." Of
Rudolph Fisher s Walls of Jericho, DuBois could only say that it
was a step up from Van Vechten and McKay. Taylor Gordon s
Born To Be was the "dregs," its rambling, anecdotal style un
worthy of the name of literature. Gordon was simply "cutting up
for white folks," even criticizing Dett s choir as a "sop to his [Gor
don s] literary gods." 19 When Arna Bontemps published God
Sends Sunday, DuBois dismissed it as a mate to Home To Harlem,
and then turned criticism into sentimentality: "Somehow, I can
not fail to see the open, fine, brown face of Bontemps himself. I
know of his comely wife and I can imagine a mother and father
for each of these, who were at least striving and ambitious. I read
with ever recurring wonder Bontemps noble Nocturne at Beth-
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 159
esda "; 20 but here in this novel, nothing of that other side is
hinted.* Occasionally guarded praise broke into the chorus of
condemnation. He greeted George Schuyler s Black No More as
rollicking good fun (an astonishing judgment, incidentally, since
the book is a vicious caricature of Negro leadership "the humor
scalds like burning tar," Redding says 21 and the portrait of Du-
Bois as Dr. Agamemnon Shakespeare Beard was hardly meant as
flattery). Walter White s Fire in the Flint won approval for its
narrative and for the strength of its propaganda against white
Klansmen and black "pussyfooters," even though its characters
were "labelled figures on a chess board/ 22 Though DuBois said
he did not understand some of Jean Toomer s Cane and com
plained of its "objective" emotion, he praised the book s "strange
flashes of power, their numerous messages and numberless reasons
for being." 23 Among the poets, Langston Hughes and Countee
Cullen won approval. Hughes s "Song for a Banjo" had "the ex
quisite abandon of a new day," DuBois said, and in the "Ballad
of the Brown Girl," Cullen "achieves eight lyric lines that are as
true as life itself." 24 But the occasional snippets of praise merely
highlighted DuBois s disapproval of the direction which the Negro
renaissance was taking. As he drew more into his own race, he
became insistent that the Negro artist serve not art, but morale.
A doctrine was emerging in his analysis: the white world wanted
to hear only about the dregs of Negro society. White writers like
Van Vechten and Heyward played up to this taste, and by 1931
DuBois was ready to imply that Connelly intended Green Pastures
as slapstick. Negro writers followed suit because white publishers
would accept nothing else.f If American magazines devoted an
issue to the American Negro, DuBois noted in 1925, Harper s and
Scribnefs would turn it into a minstrel show, the Atlantic and
Century would make a "timid adventure in spiritual swamps,"
* More than twenty years later Bontemps gave a striking indication of the
impact of DuBois s reviews: "I know by heart that review of God Sends Sunday,
and I have forgiven it completely because the motive was pure." Bontemps to
author, April 28, 1953.
f James Weldon Johnson promptly rejected this contention as "not in
consonance with the facts," pointing out, to the contrary, what had been pub
lished in the preceding years. Johnson, "Negro Authors and White Publishers/*
Crisis, XXXVI, 229 (July 1929).
l6o NEGRO CHAUVINISM
and most of the rest would undertake a "statistical study in rape." 25
What was worse, Negro artists were themselves reproducing the
white man s picture of the Negro, not just to attract a publisher,
but because their own vision was still blurred by the lenses of
white America. The Negro artist, he told the 1926 Association
convention, must turn his art into conscious propaganda, because
for the Negro, though not for white America, art and propaganda
were unified by their common devotion to truth, beauty, and
right. 26 When Locke argued in The New Negro for beauty, not
propaganda, as the goal, DuBois twitted him by saying that his
own book disproved his point: The New Negro was full of propa
ganda. Locke s thesis pushed too far would turn the renaissance
into decadence, DuBois warned, because if the Negro ignored
the fight and tried to do pretty things, he would kill the beauty in
his art. DuBois s prescription for short stories in the Crisis showed
the gulf between him and Locke: he demanded fiction "clear,
realistic and frank, and yet fiction which shows the possible if not
the actual triumph of good and true and beautiful things. We do
not want stories which picture Negro blood as a crime calling for
lynching and suicide. We are quite fed up with filth and de
featism." 27
In short, DuBois was calling for a literature of uplift in the
genteel tradition. The date of this last statement, 1931, was itself
significant: as DuBois moved toward the ideal of a closed Negro
civilization, he expected all Negro artists to serve as its heralds,
vibrant and hopeful. They had to serve the race, and he would
judge them on a racial, not on an artistic, standard. The review
which rejected Mamba s Daughters endorsed the pretty innocuous-
ness of Jessie Fauset s Plum Bun. Such standards were racial, not
literary, and all DuBois s platitudes about truth, beauty, and right
could not conceal his insistence that Negro artists refuse to submit
to the "passing fancy of the really unimportant critics and publish
ers" 28 and that they use their talent in the direct service of the race.
Down that road lay cultural separatism.
By its nature, political activity did not lend itself to the same
type of separatism. Long habit, nurtured by decades of emotional
NEGRO CHAUVINISM l6l
struggle for the ballot as a symbol of deliverance, made it difficult
to abandon hope in national politics, and, as a matter of fact,
DuBois did support Warren G. Harding in 1920, LaFollette in
1924, and any third-party candidate in 1928. Though he sup
ported no candidate in 1932, he vigorously repudiated Herbert C.
Hoover because of an "unanswerable" list of charges against his
administration: lily whitism, race hatred in the 1928 campaign,
the failure to make any significant Negro appointments, policy in
Haiti and Liberia, a forgotten Negro general. Yet as early as 1920,
DuBois had urged Negroes to concentrate on Congress and state
legislatures, on aldermen rather than on presidential hopefuls.
They must work not through parties, but through individual
politicians and through friendly local political machines. Long-
range campaigns for Negro advancement through politics no
longer had relevance, he told an Association convention in 1928;
in the face of the postwar reaction, the rule of an oligarchy, the
Negro had to struggle to consolidate what he had already won.
The two political devices which DuBois endorsed indicated
the distance he had traveled since the days of The Philadelphia
Negro. For the South, where the white primary effectively ruled
out the Negro s vote on candidates, he approved the action of the
Atlanta branch of the Association in solidly voting down munici
pal bond issues for new schools until it received assurances of an
equitable share for colored children. After pursuing this cam
paign for three years, Atlanta Negroes were rewarded with the
Booker T. Washington High School and four elementary schools.
In the North, DuBois frankly accepted a Negro alliance with
corrupt political machines. Faced with a choice between corrup
tion and segregation, was the Negro to blame, DuBois asked, "if
he votes for the worst, when it is only in this sort of alliance that
he can receive the semblance of decent treatment?" 29 In coupling
the Negro with Tammany Hall in New York City and with the
Thompson machine in Chicago, DuBois was sacrificing the un
certain friendship of white liberals for concrete political gains.
The exchange did not please one s ethical sense, but it paid off.
The twenty or more Negro policemen on New York City s force
in 1922 gave visible evidence of racial gains won by support of the
i62 NEGRO CHAUVINISM
local Democratic party; could the American intelligentsia outbid
Tammany? Even after Charles F. Murphy no longer headed Tam
many, the alliance continued, gradually admitting Negroes into
the inner circle of leadership in accordance with the traditional
pattern of assimilating immigrant and minority groups into full
political partnership. In 1925, DuBois did an article for the Crisis
on Frederick Q. Morton, Exeter- and Harvard-trained Democratic
boss of Harlem and a Civil Service commissioner. Morton, DuBois
reported, "is neither demi-god nor demagogue. He is just a strong,
skillful, courageous man, cynical surely, but honest and sound;
and he deserves respect/ 30 When Mayor James J. Walker faced
a tough campaign for reelection in 1929, DuBois rewarded Tam
many for its recognition of Negroes by supporting Walker even
though DuBois regarded Norman Thomas as the better candidate.
Walker had paid off; Thomas would not commit himself.
When Chicago s singularly unsavory Republican machine sent
Oscar DePriest to Congress in 1928 the first Negro Representa
tive from the North and the first Negro in Congress in almost a
generation DuBois refused to stand on high moral ground.
DePriest stood for Negro causes: the War Amendments, the Dyer
antilynching bill, the abolition of Jim Crow in interstate com
merce. DuBois wished that DePriest also stood for the destruction
of a political alliance with big business, bootleggers, and crim
inals, but he "acknowledges with bowed head" that if DePriest
had stood for virtue, he would never have been elected, for the
only organized interests which would support a Negro for Congress
were allied with the rule of crime and wealth. For the Negro, De-
Priest s racial platform was more vital than prohibition, crime, and
privilege.
By 1932, politics thus offered concessions, not solutions. Gone
were the whole issues of the Horizon devoted to careful appraisals
of presidential candidates an alderman meant more to New
York s Negroes than a President: a President might denounce
lynching, as Harding did, but an alderman could logroll for new
schools, better street lighting, more appointments in the school
system and on the police force. Teaspoons of patronage to an in
creasingly isolated Negro community in payment for political sup
port represented the practical limit of white largesse.
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 163
A field as important as education could not safely be left out
side the racial community. Despite the long tradition of white
philanthropy, of which DuBois had repeatedly been a beneficiary,
he determined that only Negro support and control of their own
universities could make them effective servants of the new Negro
life.
Just after the war, DuBois devoted an editorial to the decrease
of "White Charity" to Negro colleges. Part of the loss, he said, was
unavoidable, since the older fortunes were declining, and the new
rich were ignorant of charity. But some white men were with
holding contributions because they had exaggerated notions of
Negro wealth or, even worse, because they resented insistent Negro
demands. DuBois warned this latter group that nothing bound
poor Negroes to the rich and powerful except strings of charity;
could the rich afford to break that leash? "Is it wise for white folk
to forget that no amount of almsgiving on their part will half
repay the 300 years of unpaid toil and the fifty years of serfdom
by which the black man has piled up wealth and comfort for
white America?" On the other hand, he added, the sooner the
Negro rose above charity, the sooner he would be free. 81 Shortly
thereafter, DuBois applauded Moton at Tuskegee for standing up
to a white mob which tried to keep Negro doctors and nurses off
the staff of a new veterans hospital at Tuskegee. When the en
dowments at Tuskegee and Hampton were sharply increased, Du
Bois told their principals to stop running their schools for the
benefit of Southern whites: "Your new wealth is New Freedom/* 32
His plea fell on the deaf ears of college presidents. At Fisk,
Lincoln, and Howard universities, he reported anxious timidity
in administrators more concerned with not offending white con
tributors than with educating Negro students. Lincoln, he said,
was run only to suit its "rich Presbyterian donors." Fisk, his own
university, he assailed in 1924 for curbing Negro vision, humiliat
ing its students to attract white support, hiring white teachers to
replace Negroes, restricting student self-expression, and governing
them by a reign of terror.
But the students seem to have heard him. When three quar
ters of the students left Fisk shortly after DuBois s attack, he was
ecstatic:
164 NEGRO CHAUVINISM
I am uplifted by the student martyrs at Fisk. At last we have
real radicalism of the youngradicalism that costs, that is not
mere words and foam. . . . Here is the real radical, the man
who hits power in high places, white power, backed by unlim
ited wealth; hits it and hates it openly and between the eyes;
talks face to face and not down "at the big gate"! God speed the
breed! Suppose we do lose Fisk; suppose we lose every cent
that entrenched millionaires have set aside to buy our freedom
and stifle our complaints. They have the power, they have the
wealth, but glory to God we still own our own souls and led by
young men like these, let us neither flinch nor falter but fight
and fight and fight again. Let us never forget that the arch
enemy of the Negro race is the false philanthropist who kicks
us in the mouth when we cry out in honest and justifiable
protest. 33
Within two years the virus of student revolt spread to Howard
and Lincoln as well, and when it hit Hampton, DuBois said that
the limit of Negro endurance of the "insult of impudent Alms
giving" had surely been reached.
The revolts appeared to fail when parents for the most part
sent their children back to largely unchastened schools. Yet the
spirit of the revolt seeped into faculties, administrations, and
trustees, and DuBois s "pilgrimage" around Negro colleges two
years later, in 1929, satisfied him that the students uprisings,
though quelled, had eventually led to enough reform to prepare
the offending institutions for his next demand: after a thorough
reconstruction, Negro colleges were to serve as planning headquar
ters for a new Negro economy.
Addressing the Howard commencement in 1930, DuBois made
a fresh appraisal of his half-forgotten educational feud with
Booker Washington. Washington, in stressing the primacy of
making a living, had the right goal but the wrong method, DuBois
said, for his handicraft industries had been already out of date
when he built his Institute on them. The colleges, on the other
hand, had the correct general method setting no limits to the
educational and cultural horizons of its students but they lacked
a definite objective, for in turning their students away from eco
nomic problems, they failed to equip them for the modern world.
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 165
The colleges had produced leaders empty of real culture and igno
rant of the impact of organized industrial power on government,
religion, and social philosophy. Now as the two extremes were
converging, as Negro colleges were introducing vocational training
and industrial institutes were adding work of college caliber, he
said, the new united college-vocational school had to train indus
trial technicians and men aware of the world s problems, for "Ours
is the double and dynamic function of timing in with a machine
in action so as neither to wreck the machine nor be crushed or
maimed by it." If the task were impossible, so was the Negro s
future economic survival. But DuBois would not face that possi
bility; instead he looked to the colleges for unselfish planners for
a group in whose hands lay the economic and social destiny of the
darker peoples of the world, and by that token, of the world itself. 34
A "General Staff of Negro Economic Guidance," stationed in a
large university, he said, could in a generation find opportunities
which, by dovetailing with American industry, could transform
the economic outlook of Negroes throughout the world,
DuBois was gradually drawing the Negro college into his orbit
of Negro self-sufficiency. Its graduates were to be race men wedded
to poverty, eager for work, thirsty for knowledge, thriving on sac
rifice. Three years of the depression made clearer that his program
of "education and work" led to the acceptance of segregation. In
1933 he told his Crisis readers that no college for Negroes could
fail to be a "Negro college," a "center of applied knowledge and
guide of action," inspired by "unhampered spiritual expression in
art and literature." Facing enforced segregation for "centuries to
come," the Negro college had to deal with the reality of 1933 and
not fall into the older pitfall of broad cultural training which erred
in starting from where the Negro wanted to be rather than where
he was. If this was a change from his own former ideas, DuBois
said, the American public s step backward in caste intolerance,
mob law, and racial hatred had made it necessary. 35
In no other field was the revolution in DuBois s public state
ments as marked. From almost the beginning of his public career,
certainly for thirty years, his defense of college training paralleling
the curricula of white universities had been the hallmark of his
thinking. It had been the focal point of his struggle with Wash-
l66 NEGRO CHAUVINISM
ington. On it he had based his hopes for Negro advancement
under the leadership of the Talented Tenth. Now, when the in
dustrial schools were acknowledging the importance of college
work, DuBois scoffed at die "growing mass of stupidity and in
difference" being turned out by the colleges and defended tech
nical training as essential for the economic security of the race. 86
In so doing, he bowed to a condition which he did not shrink
from calling "segregation." "Either we do this or we die/ he said.
"There is no alternative." 37
The depression of 1929 provided the fillip required to make
cultural separation explicit in economic terms. Already intensely
critical of American capitalism for its racial overtones and its class
exploitation, DuBois regarded the stock market crash as a more
revealing condemnation than anything Socialists could say or do.
More important, he expected the crash to undermine America s
faith in all private capitalistic enterprise. As the depression deep
ened, he scoffed at Hoover s confidence in the fundamental sound
ness of business. The whole system, DuBois said, rested on the
basic fallacy that private profit would produce the best social re
sult automatically. DuBois looked hopefully for production con
trolled through wider industrial democracy and for distribution
based on social ethics.
Yet socialism alone was not enough, he thought, for color dis
crimination took on new forms in the poverty of the depression.
When bank failures brought on by the crash of 1929 came to
include two Negro banks in Chicago, DuBois blamed not the crisis
in credit, but the determination of white men to frustrate Negro
advancement. One bank closed, he said, because its president,
Jesse Binga, was an aggressive Negro, resented by the whites; the
other, the Douglass National Bank, was allowed to stay open a
year longer only to keep Negroes out of the Loop.
Yet, however depressing the failure of Negro banks may have
been for Negro morale, the Negro was primarily a workingman,
and the Negro problem primarily the problem of the Negro
workingman. The depression made urgent a solution to the prob
lem of Negro unemployment, of economic insecurity in a dis
criminatory America.
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 167
Even before the depression DuBois had been exploring the
possibility of Negro progress through manufacturing and con
sumers cooperatives. In industry, he said in 1928, Negroes almost
never rose above unskilled jobs where, underpaid, they ousted
white competitors and deepened racial hatred. In small shops,
they courted economic suicide by competing against chain stores.
In personal service, they received wages inadequate to support
either themselves or the professional men who depended upon
their patronage. In agriculture, thirty years of Tuskegee and
Hampton had failed to increase the proportion of farmers in the
Negro population, and the general failure of farming in America
was unrelieved for Negroes, for farm credit and farm relief never
found their way to Negro pockets. Only the careful reorganiza
tion of manufacturers and consumers cooperatives could offer
economic salvation. Starting slowly and growing on a careful plan,
cooperatives could win prosperity for the whole race. Raw mate
rials drawn from Negro farmers, transported by Negro trucks and
turned into finished products in Negro factories, would eventually
find their way to intelligent and loyal Negro customers who pa
tronized Negro cooperative stores. Such an organization, "beyond
race prejudice and trust competition," would, he said, insure the
Negro s economic independence for all time, and would, through
credit systems, even bring the Negro into cooperation with the
West Indies, South America, and West and South Africa.
The depression gave urgency to DuBois s hopes. In a "Pre-
Script, 1932," he promised that the Crisis would study Negro un
employment as its "paramount" problem. Though Negroes felt
helpless because the Machine had fallen apart, he said, all was not
lost. The prevalent economic philosophy in the United States
began with the problem of production, he said, but actually the
economic cycle began with consumption, and twelve million
Negroes spending seven hundred and fifty million dollars a year
were not helpless. This was the economic resource on which the
Negro could build: let bed sheets be ordered from Tuskegee, and
let amusement be provided in Negro theaters, and the wealth of
the Negro would serve his own community.
DuBois also suggested a second gambit: pressure to force con
cessions from white entrepreneurs. In 1929 and 1930, the Chicago
l68 NEGRO CHAUVINISM
Whip led a vigorous threat of boycott to compel firms catering to
Negro trade to hire Negro clerks. Here was a new weapon, Du-
Bois said, a weapon of great initial importance because of the ease
with which it could be put into operation. If the Whip could
make it succeed at Woolworth s, he said, it could work elsewhere
and would prove to be "one of the paths leading out of our eco
nomic wilderness." 38
Yet a handful of jobs in white stores was like the piddling gains
of politics attractive morale-builders but irrelevant to the long-
range problem. When these small gnawings at the wilderness of
poverty did little to clear the road to economic security, DuBois
went back to the ideal of an internal Negro economy. He turned
to his history books to recall Robert Owen and Fourier; he roamed
geographically to draw confirmation from Denmark and Russia.
And always the logic of cooperatives seemed even more applicable
to the American Negro not only economic common sense but
racial pride dictated an escape from insult and "social death."
Caught up by his own vision of the Negro s future, DuBois was
prepared to advocate even social ostracism against individual
Negroes who refused to adhere to the racial goal.
More than ostracism was necessary for the new ideal. DuBois
called for a revolutionary change in Negro attitudes not merely
a reconstruction in economics, but a revolution in ideas: a "spirit
ual" disclaimer of the profit motive and a new concept of service.
He was inviting Negroes to a crusade. The path of Negro advance
ment in the past twenty-five years, he said, indicated that it would
be a crusade in isolation, for the only Negro progress in that
period had been in segregated efforts and institutions and not in
effective entry into American life. The Negro had to do it alone,
DuBois said, for "there seems no hope that America in our day
will yield in its color or race hatred any substantial ground and
we have no physical nor economic power, nor any alliance with
other social or economic classes that will force compliance with
decent civilized ideals in Church, State, industry or art." 39 This
statement effectively wrote off all plans for Negro amelioration
which DuBois had been pursuing since the World War.
The racist undercurrent now became the main stream. Now
when the depression made his hopes for integration seemed uto-
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 169
pian, he turned easily to the secondary program which had always
lurked just below the surface of his thought.
By his acceptance of segregation, DuBois completed the walls
of Negro separatism. Without hope in white America, despairing
of allies, he turned to his own people to challenge their capacity
for self-sacrifice. Ennobled by his artists and guided by his col
leges, the Negro would withdraw into secure autonomy with only
petty gains from white politics to remind him that he was an
American.
The Break with the Association
DuBois worked out his plan for Negro self-sufficiency inde
pendently of the Association. When in 1934 he defended his pro
gram as nondiscriminatory segregation, his use of the word "seg
regation" put the flame to the Association s combustible internal
tensionan open secret in the Negro world for years and set off
the blaze which led to DuBois s resignation and ended his second
career. 40
DuBois s difficulty with the Association was partly semantic.
The word "segregation" meant to him primarily the development
of a separate Negro culture within white America. This program
might incidentally involve residential separation, for the Negro
community could function most efficiently if it was united phys
ically. But residential segregation was a by-product of DuBois s
program, not its conscious end. The Association, on the other
hand, had fought for years against segregation enforced by legal
and administrative agencies and by nongovernmental groups like
churches and trade unions. DuBois used the word "segregation"
in connection with his total program. When the officers of the
Association saw it in the Crisis, they could interpret it only as a
direct attack on the Association s primary reason for existence.
The segregation issue filled the Crisis editorial page for the
six months beginning in January 1934. In that month DuBois
warned colored people against being stampeded by a word; Ne
groes had never opposed segregation as such living and working
among their own people but merely the discrimination which
l^O NEGRO CHAUVINISM
was its partner in America. Segregation without discrimination,
that is, voluntary segregation, should, he said, evoke no opposi
tion. The next month, after pointing out that his editorials, ap
pearing over his own signature in a "free forum," were not the
responsibility of the Association, he argued that the Association
had never explicitly denounced segregation, but, facing facts and
not a theory, had accepted it when other roads to Negro advance
ment had been blocked. The acceptance of Negro officers train
ing camps during the World War had been an example.
In March the officers of the Association responded in the Crisis.
Spingarn, then chairman of the board, said that the Association s
position "squarely opposed to segregation" had always been so
clear that no explicit statement had ever been necessary; the offi
cers of the Association had individually stated this for years with
out rebuke. Though occasionally segregation had been accepted
as a necessary evil, that was a far cry from regarding it as a positive
good. Walter White, the executive secretary, reported that Du
Bois s editorial was being used to delay Negro admission to gov
ernmental relief projects. The fight for full integration, White
said, was longer, but was essential both for the Negro s welfare
and for America. DuBois s January editorial, therefore, repre
sented only his own view. DuBois s rebuttal came the following
month. He said White s Caucasian appearance disqualified him
from really understanding the Negro problem. And he told Spin
garn that if the Association had, as Spingarn thought, opposed
segregation for a quarter of a century, its net gain had been "a little
less than nothing." The Negro people "can not base their salva
tion upon the empty reiteration of a slogan."
While DuBois kept up his barrage in the Crisis, the battle
moved to the room of the board of directors. At the April meet
ing, the board affirmed its opposition to the principle and practice
of enforced segregation. In May, after DuBois reported this reso
lution in a critical manner in the Crisis, the board filled a loop
hole in its statement: its opposition to "enforced segregation" did
not imply acceptance of other forms, for all forms of segregation,
in origin if not in their essential nature, were enforced. The board
opposed them all. Furthermore, it rebuked DuBois for violating
the strict confidence of board meetings and made it a matter of
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 17 x
record that the Crisis was the organ of the Association and that
no salaried officer was permitted to criticize the work, policy, and
officers of the Association in the pages of the Crisis. DuBois re
plied to the board that he refused to be limited in his expression
and therefore was unwilling to comply with the resolution. The
Crisis, he insisted, "never was and never was intended to be an
organ of the Association in the sense of simply reflecting its official
position/ Therefore, he resigned. The July issue of the Crisis
still listed him as editor, but when a committee on reconciliation
failed to reach an agreement with DuBois, the August issue re
ported his final resignation.
DuBois s second and final letter of resignation, released to the
press eight days before the board to which it was addressed met,
made public the depth of the rift which separated him from his
long-time colleagues. He discounted the segregation issue as a
minor point of difference open to amicable negotiation. But he
would not yield when the board "peremptorily" forbade criticism,
for, he said, the organization in 1934 found itself in a time of
crisis without a program, without effective organization, and with
out executive officers able or disposed to guide the Association in
a right direction. A program which had been imperative and ef
fective in 1910 was no longer adequate, he went on; the Associa
tion needed a new "positive program of construction and inspira
tion/ His own efforts toward revivifying the organization had
been "absolutely unsuccessful," his program for readjustment "to
tally ignored/ His demands for a change in personnel were la
beled petty jealousy, his protests against blunders were seen as
disloyalty, his criticism went unheeded. If he remained, he shared
responsibility by quiet consent Hence, he had to make the "su
preme sacrifice" of withdrawing, hoping that the shock would
rekindle the Association s initial fervor. He would applaud the
Association when it rescued itself from "its present Impossible
position" and reorganized itself to meet the "demands of the pres
ent crisis/
The board released for publication its acceptance, with regret,
o his resignation. It paid tribute to his leadership: he had been
useful because of his independent judgment, fearless expression,
and acute intelligence. But in the privacy of the minutes of the
1^2 NEGRO CHAUVINISM
board, it rejected his "excuses" for leaving. For years, the board
asserted, the Crisis committee had supervised what appeared in the
pages of the magazine, and even DuBois had accepted as "self-
evident" that his editorial utterances were subject to the board s
approval. Furthermore, the board scoffed at his charge that his
program had fallen on deaf ears. As a matter of fact, DuBois had
attended only two board meetings in the previous eighteen
months, and none in the previous ten.
After his departure, even his old friend, Miss Ovington, was
relieved; she wrote to Villard: "Now [that] we are rid of our octo
pus, for of late he has been draining our strength, I hope we shall
do better work." 41
DuBois s resignation climaxed a long struggle with the Asso
ciation on two issues: a program for Negro advancement, and con
trol of the Crisis, However much DuBois s departure shocked the
Negro world, it was less remarkable than the longevity of the part
nership, because the Association had turned its back on every new
direction DuBois s program had taken after the World War. It
withdrew its financial support from the Pan-African movement
even before the second congress. After the failure of the Associa
tion s overture to the AFL in 1924, its conference of executives
reported to the board that the matter of Negroes and labor unions
"does not come exactly within the scope of the Association s activi
ties." 42 (The National Urban League took over this responsibil
ity.) When DuBois supported LaFollette in the pages of the Crisis
in 1924, despite the gamut of party loyalties among the Associa
tion s officers and directors, one Republican director resigned in
protest against what he called the Association s endeavor "to lead
the Negro into the meshes of the democratic and so-called progres
sive or socialist parties." 43 The Association had indeed, as Du
Bois charged, ignored his drift toward Negro self-sufficiency dur
ing the 1920*5 and 1930 $ and when his acceptance of voluntary
segregation finally provoked them into explicit disagreement, it
was merely the end of a long trail of cross-purposes. DuBois had
criticized the Association publicly. In 1932 he even used the
forum of an Association conference to criticize the centralization
of power in the national office and to demand a positive program
to replace the "mere negative attempt" to avoid segregation and
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 173
discrimination.* The next year he asked in the Crisis what the
Association had published on the present problems of the Negro,
especially of recent college graduates, and replied, "Nothing."
The conflict affected DuBois more intimately when it touched
on the control and finances of the Crisis. In 1924 the board af
firmed that the Crisis, as the property of the Association, was as
sumed to be its spokesman. The directors, although leaving the
editor "all reasonable freedom" to defend his principles, set up
techniques of control, the most significant of which required that
editorials and other material which might lead to criticism be sent
to members of the Crisis subcommittee at least five days before the
magazine went to press. Even at this early date, the board com
plained of the treatment of Association news. Four years later,
the president of the District of Columbia branch made the criti
cism more explicit: when the Washington branch sought more
publicity for its fight against segregation, DuBois had used about
four full pages of pictures and text in one issue to report his
daughter s marriage to Countee Cullen. Charles E. Russell, a
member of the Crisis committee, was already on record as wanting
the magazine "less obviously" devoted to propaganda.
The independence which the Crisis financial success had
brought in its earlier years dwindled as the approach of the depres
sion made the magazine a financial liability. (Its circulation was
down to 21,000 in 1932.) At a special meeting of the board held
in 1929 to consider the magazine s finances, DuBois broached the
possibility that the Crisis might need an annual subvention of
$5,000 "indefinitely." Later the same year, he asked for |io,ooo
to adjust to "post-war conditions." In 1930, the board recognized
the necessity for a regular subsidy and added that because of the
"new financial conditions," full power over editorial and business
* Ralph J. Bunche echoed this criticism eight years later: "The escape that
the Negro mass seeks is one from economic deprivation, from destitution and
imminent starvation. To these people, appealing for livelihood, the NAA.G.P.
answers: give them educational facilities, let them sit next to whites in street
cars, restaurants, and theaters. They cry for bread and are offered political
cake." "Extended Memorandum on the Programs, Ideologies, Tactics and
Achievements of Negro Betterment and Interracial Organizations" (typescript,
1940), p. 144. This memorandum, prepared for MyrdaTs An American Di
lemma, is in the Schomburg Collection.
174
NEGRO CHAUVINISM
policy was to be exercised by a committee of four including Du-
Bois and two paid executive officers of the Association. DuBois
accepted this arrangement, not without distaste. The matter, how
ever, was never really settled. When the board urged DuBois to
give more time to his job and less to independent lecturing, the
resolution created the necessity for a new committee to explore
the whole question of DuBois s relation to the Association. The
next year, 1933, DuBois recommended that publication of the
Crisis be suspended.
The strain within the Association crystallized into a personal
feud between DuBois and the executive secretary, Walter White.
In 1929, the board approved a motion by Spingarn that the secre
tary was the executive officer of the Association and that all officers
and salaried employees "shall be subject to his authority/ After
White replaced Johnson as secretary, DuBois, in a private letter
to Spingarn, threatened to resign unless the Crisis editorial board
was changed he made no secret of the fact that White was his
target. Two months later, the offending minute passed in 1929
was repealed. In 1931, DuBois used a directors meeting as an oc
casion to question the disbursement of funds in the national office,
a direct affront to White. The two engaged in a periodic tug of
war over prospective appointees to the staff of the Association and
of the Crisis. When DuBois was making his plans for a visiting
professorship at Atlanta, he told Spingarn that he would not work
under any editorial board of which White was a member if that
board had more than advisory authority. His departure for At
lanta left the Crisis in the hands of two managing editors, one his
appointee, one from White s camp, though DuBois was to make
whatever contributions he felt were appropriate. By that time,
DuBois s independent editorship had become only a memory.
DuBois s absence from New York cushioned his resignation.
Urged by John Hope, then president of Atlanta, to accept a per
manent academic appointment in a familiar and well-loved place,
DuBois could look back on New York without enthusiasm. De
spite numerous "Save the Crisis" campaigns, the magazine faced a
bleak economic future, and its loss of solvency insured increasing
control by the unfriendly officers of the Association. At Atlanta,
in a Negro university headed by a Negro president, he had the
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 175
setting in which to implement his project for a Negro general
staff exercising its leadership from a university milieu. In New
York his program was unheeded, and the organization of which
he had been a part for twenty-five years was, in his view, moribund.
In Atlanta he was respected, even revered. He stayed.
A Leader Without Followers
The road back to Atlanta was a lonely one. Twenty-four years
before, DuBois had come North to win the Negro from Washing
ton s patient gradualism, and by 1920, he had stood as a prophet
preaching a successful gospeL But by 1934, the times had passed
him by, and the "deaf ears" on which his new program fell be
longed to many outside the Association s executive offices. When
he defiantly returned to Atlanta, a prophet still breathing fire,
few followed in his train.
DuBois had, in a sense, outlived his usefulness. He would be
remembered as the pioneer who won his battle to commit Negro
America to an uncompromising struggle for full equality. Even
Washington before his death had come part way. When in 1932,
Moton s book, What the Negro Thinks, won him the Spingarn
medal, awarded annually by the Association for outstanding Negro
achievement, the victory of the older Negro "radicals" needed
little further documentation. For DuBois, this victory was a tre
mendous personal success. Few would have questioned Walter
White s assertion in 1932 that DuBois was "beyond all doubt" one
of the "chief molders of modem thought regarding the Negro,"
the individual chiefly responsible for the militant school of Negro
thought. 4 *
This achievement, however, was the prelude to battle rather
than the battle itself. It did not guarantee DuBois a role of con
tinuing importance. New proposals had to win in a market
crowded with leaders who, though ready to canonize DuBois, were
unwilling to surrender to him their independent power in specific
areas of Negro life.
DuBois never really grasped this new situation. Coming to
full maturity in the era of Booker T. Washington, DuBois in-
1^6 NEGRO CHAUVINISM
herited an image of the all-embracing leader, the universal pundit
creating total solutions for the Negro problems. He thought that
his victory over Washington made him lead dog in a pack, when
actually it made him one caravan leader on a very broad frontier.
Such an attitude led him into two errors fatal to his continuing
leadership: First, it teased him into explorations of universal
movements like Pan-Africanism and world socialism so remote
from the Negro s humdrum day-to-day struggle for existence that
they commanded neither attention nor support. Second, it for
bade deviation from DuBois s views under pain of anathema.
Robert Vann of the Pittsburgh Courier, for years an influential
fighter for Negro rights, was abused by DuBois on more than one
occasion for his allegiance to the Republican party. DuBois said
that the Courier one of the best Negro newspapers then and now
had had "mental and physical dyspepsia" ever since Coolidge
failed to reward Vann. The Courier and other newspapers were
dismissed as croaking toads. 45 When a Negro Non-Partisan Con
ference met in Washington in 1932, DuBois gave thin praise to
its platform and then pounced upon its plank on economics (his
own resolution had been rejected) as "economic flap-doodle"
which should have seemed unnecessary "even to the jaded diges
tive system of Kelly Miller." 46 Even Schuyler, so often praised in
the Crisis for his work with cooperatives, was opposed as not the
right type for an Association job after he had been recommended
by White. DuBois s difficulty was neatly summarized by his obitu
ary of Trotter, who had been a prominent "radical" back in the
days when DuBois was still equivocating with Washington: Trot
ter had been a free lance at a time when the mailed fist of the
twelve million Negroes had to be clenched. DuBois felt that the
arm of that fist must be his. But that was no longer possible, not
on any conceivable program. As Schuyler said in the Nation in
1955, thousands of intelligent Negroes agreed with neither the
Washington nor the DuBois school; in a race with hundreds of
leaders, one or two men could not speak for the entire group.
Yet DuBois had to try, for he felt that the persistence, perhaps
even the growth, of anti-Negro discrimination reflected on his own
leadership. From 1928 to 1930, his frustration, created by fear of
failure, showed through in the snobbisms which appeared in the
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 177
Crisis with unusual offensiveness and frequency. Annoyed by un
announced visitors, he excused his brusqueness by saying: "I often
discount human facts in comparison with divine thoughts." 47 His
column in the Grists, "As the Crow Flies," was for sophisticated
people, he said, not for fools and illiterates. Presumably it was
these sophisticates who would find useful his formula for enter
taining: "Good food well cooked and a lot of it, served on excellent
china, with good linen and good silver." 48 The Crisis, written for
the "Seldom Sort," was not adapted to morons and idiots; DuBois
was speaking to the "aristocracy." Impatient with failure, he ap
peared to be petulantly narrowing the already thin vector of his
influence.
The comprehensive plan for Negro self-sufficiency changed all
this. Again the prophet of a new gospel, he lost his irritation in
impatient fervor. He found anew the Negro workingman, and
dedicated the Crisis to a restudy of all principal areas of Negro
activity. From defense he turned to a striking offense through
which the race, like the communitarian colonies of the nineteenth
century, would try to gain security for itself and to show the way
to the rest of the world. If gradual gains were impossible, he
would jump directly to the millennium. But, as his friend of many
years, Francis J. Grimke, said, if DuBois thought he could lead
Negroes back into segregation, his leadership was at an end. The
Negro had followed too long the old DuBois, uncompromising
fighter for full equality, to turn to a new DuBois who sounded like
Booker T. Washington.
Yet the conditioning of a lifetime would allow DuBois nothing
less than a final effort at an over-all solution for the Negro. Failure
in other directions had left Negro self-sufficiency as the only ap
parent possibility. With a neat rational unity, it provided a role
for every Negro American, drew on the reservoir of racial pride
and talent, and left ample room for the exercise of leadership. The
size of the venture, its complexity, and even its implausibility only
made it the more challenging. If it doubled back on the path of
Negro progress to the point at which Washington had left the race,
DuBois felt that the Negro would have to face that retreat with
courage, confident that Negro gains thereafter would be perma
nent because they were based on Negro unity. DuBois s new pro-
1^8 NEGRO CHAUVINISM
gram, like the Program of a Hundred Years, was the characteristic
product of the man: impatient with small projects, he sought sal
vation for the Negro in a grandiose scheme which would be mag
nificent even if it failed.
Failure was almost inevitable. Like Pan-Africa, Negro self-
sufficiency built on a racial chauvinism which the race would not
sustain. It called for unselfish, dedicated leaders, but in 1933, Du-
Bois himself was mourning that even then educated leaders were
trying to sidestep Negro problems by aloofness and by escape into
the white community. Negro autonomy required its artists to act
like heralds, but DuBois s Crisis reviews of the Negro renaissance
indicated how little they would meet his demand. Langston
Hughes had spoken for many in his race when he said, in what
Locke has called the "young Negro s spiritual declaration of in
dependence":
We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express
our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If
white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it does
not matter. We know that we are beautiful. And ugly too.
The tomtom cries and the tomtom laughs. If colored people
are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure
doesn t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow,
strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain,
free within ourselves. 49
The colleges were to produce young Negro radicals, yet, in
1929, of the 127 Negro students at Lincoln University 81 opposed
having a colored professor, a poll which DuBois characterized as
the "most astonishing blow" which Negro education had sus
tained in years. Negro self-sufficiency called for businessmen
willing to be racial servants unmoved by personal profit. Yet
studies of class structure and capitalists in the Negro world by
E. Franklin Frazier and Abram L. Harris were leaving little doubt
that Negro capitalists behaved like capitalists and not like Ne
groes. Even as DuBois called for all-Negro trade unions, the Na
tional Urban League and younger Negro leaders were making new
approaches to the white labor movement. Harris s article on the
Negro worker, which urged renewed efforts toward joint Negro-
white cooperation, had appeared in the Crisis almost simultane-
NEGRO CHAUVINISM 1 79
ously with DuBois s final rejection of organized labor. The rising
current of Negro thought on labor was running against DuBois,
and the formation of the Committee on Industrial Organization
the year after he left the Association confirmed hopes for a better
deal from organized labor.
Just as three conferences of Negro leaders during the decade
of the first World War testified to DuBois s prominence, three
more in 1932 and 1933, by rejecting his program, chronicled the
eclipse of his influence. The Non-Partisan Conference in 1932 and
the Rosenwald Fund Conference in 1933 gave respectful hearing
to his economic plans, but passed over them. At the second Amenia
conference the first, in 1916, had practically established DuBois s
right of succession to Washingtonthe young Negro intellectuals
present only thinly masked their impatience with some of their
elders for having ignored the economic roots of the Negro prob
lem, and with others like DuBois, for having "completely failed in
facing a necessary adjustment between black and white labor." 50
Unlike the NAACP, DuBois had explored the economics of dis
crimination; as Bunche points out, DuBois was well aware of the
deficiencies of the Association s program. But his solution went
down the road of reaction. Young Negroes looked forward to
integration.
His old programs frustrated, his new plan rejected, DuBois
retired to Atlanta virtually alone. He knew in his soul, he said,
that the time had come for a clean break with the Association.
It was hard dissolving the bonds of twenty-five years. Yet there
was really no choice. 51
The Chicago Defender published his epitaph. Over a picture
of Booker T. Washington, it asked mournfully: "WAS HE RIGHT
AFTER ALL?"; over a picture of W. E. B. DuBois: "is HE A
QUITTER?" 52
VII
THE TIME OF HESITATION
Atlanta offered not a pasture for declining years, but a base for
new activity. New York and the tensions of the Association s home
office were finished chapters, and, except in autobiographical
pieces, DuBois rarely wrote about either during the next decade.
He had left Atlanta with his reputation in eclipse; he returned
with his great years behind him, his program no longer command
ing organizational or popular support. But he returned with dig
nity and with prestige. Atlanta, now headed by John Hope an
old friend, perhaps DuBois s closest friend in a long life welcomed
him as an elder statesman well qualified to direct its sociology
department and to undertake new scholarly projects. No longer
a controversial figure at the center of Negro agitation, DuBois
won new honors: a ceremonial homage on his seventieth birth
day; honorary degrees from Atlanta, Fisk, and Wilberforce; mem
bership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In these ten
years he wrote two books and contributed to a third, made prog
ress on the preparatory volume for a Negro encyclopedia, wrote a
weekly newspaper column, organized a regional conference on
Negro land-grant colleges, appeared as guest lecturer at some lead
ing Northern universities, and founded Phylon, a quarterly "Re
view of Race and Culture." When his contract at Atlanta was
abruptly ended in 1944, he still had enough vigor for another new
career, one so controversial that it invited criminal prosecution in
the United States courts.
A decade so busy points to a diffusion of DuBois s talents: the
classroom teacher trained a new generation for leadership, the his
torian built up the race s past and investigated its present, the
journalist picked his way through the swift changes of the New
Deal and puzzled over the world-wide significance of the color
line as the second World War approached. His annual lecture
tour continued, and in 1936-1937, he added a trip around the
world. The schedule was crowded, the obligations many, and as
THE TIME OF HESITATION l8l
a result the quality of DuBois s work suffered. Yet, buoyant with
self-confidence which the years never sapped, he took on many
tasks with energy best hoarded for one.
In referring to the ambiguities of the early Roosevelt era, Du-
Bois called these years a "Time of Hesitation." The phrase also
describes his own withdrawal during the long moment between
his fall from power in 1934 and his reemergence in 1944.
A Second Round of Scholarship
In his academic work DuBois picked up familiar threads laid
down years before. Black Reconstruction, the scholarly book for
which he will probably be remembered longest, spun out a point
which he had suggested to the American Historical Association in
1909; Black Folk Then and Now expanded his thin older work,
The Negro; and even the preparatory work for the ambitious En
cyclopedia of the Negro recalled an earlier notion for a multina
tional Encyclopedia Africana. In launching Phylon, he made the
identification with his younger days even more explicit by speak
ing of the new quarterly as "in a sense" a revival of the Atlanta
University Publications. When he hailed the "First Phylon In
stitute" as the twenty-fifth Atlanta University conference and
started again a familiar refrain, the duty of the Talented Tenth,
his older readers must have felt themselves moving through deeply
grooved roads. In 1941 and 1942, the echoes of The Philadelphia
Negro and of DuBois s early statements on sociological technique
rang all through his lectures and reports on the conferences of
Negro land-grant colleges: he analyzed the distinct social classes
among Negroes; he looked for leaders trained to sacrifice and
equipped to bring forward a whole people; he promised to search
for truth through the scientific method and for laws, based on
regularities and change, which would serve as hypotheses for future
investigation. When he reported to the General Education Board
in 1943 on his progress in planning a continually refreshed "total
study of a complete situation as a contribution to the Negro race,
America, the world, and social science," 1 he might just as well
have called it a Program of a Hundred Years.
182 THE TIME OF HESITATION
Retiring from the arena, DuBois felt that his return to socio
logical research would open decades of useful work which would
guarantee the solvency of his claim to leadership. The support
of President Hope made his plans plausible, and his own self-
confidence, strengthened by thirty years of repute as the scholarly
Dr. DuBois, gave them an air of inevitability.
Black Reconstruction (1935) mocked these hopes. A major
work, supported by grants from the Rosenwald Fund and the Car
negie Foundation, it was a model of DuBois s strengths and weak
nesses as a scholar. At the core of the book were his defense of
Reconstruction governments and his economic interpretation of
the North s desertion of the Negro. He covered a wider period
as well, at every point emphasizing the special significance of the
Negro. The "black worker" was the "underlying cause" of the
conflict, he said, and Negroes played the crucial role in the North s
victory, both by providing willing fighters for freedom to replace
reluctant Northern soldiers and by abandoning their Southern
masters in a widespread cessation of work which DuBois called a
"general strike." As novices in freedom, the Negroes extended
American democracy by supporting the carpetbag constitutions,
which spread the franchise, instituted a system of public educa
tion, and explored the use of the taxing power to redress social
inequities. DuBois discounted the traditional picture of carpet
bag corruption either by pointing to parallel excesses in Northern
states the Tweed ring in New York or by minimizing the Negro s
actual role in Reconstruction capitals or by showing that the loot
went mainly to white men. The overthrow of Reconstruction gov
ernments he blamed on a "new feudalism based on monopoly"
which suppressed labor governments in both North and South and
made the national government its servant.
Stated thus simply, DuBois s theme had plausibility. His vig
orous defense of Reconstruction governments, though based on
existing monographic studies, brought together in one place an
impressive case and gave the book its enduring value. His eco
nomic interpretation of the North s desertion of the Negro was
strikingly argued. But the faults of the book could be listed more
readily: its bulk passing for scholarly weight; its reliance on sec
ondary works, and a relatively small number at that; its argu-
THE TIME OF HESITATION log
mentativeness and special pleading; its fragments of unrelated in
formation. Sprouts of useful material had to struggle for survival
among dreary weeds of racial apologetics, emotional outbursts
more suited to a revival meeting than to a historical survey, and
Marxist terminology bordering on burlesque. At one point, his
half-assimilated and misapplied Marxist terminology produced
the fantastic dictum that "the record of the Negro worker during
Reconstruction presents an opportunity to study inductively the
Marxian theory of the state/ *
His account could not be sustained historically, for all modern
history was brought to focus on the Negro. Black labor was the
foundation stone not only of the Southern social structure, but
of Northern and English manufacturing and of European and
world-wide commerce. The problems of white workers everywhere
in 1935 were "directly traceable to Negro slavery in America."
In the Civil War the Negro s support of the North and defection
from the South "decided the war." When "labor" government
failed in the South and earned the Negro back toward slavery,
triumphant capital was prepared for its world-wide "exploitation
of white, yellow, brown and black labor, in lesser lands and breeds
without the law/ " Furthermore, Negroes were good men. A
white man bribing or bribed was corrupt; a Negro "convicted of
technical bribery" was just "not a strong man," but his voice was
"sincere." In general, Negroes were bribed and misled because
they were poor and ignorant; they were poor and ignorant because
of slavery. In any case, they never accepted bribes against their
beliefs: on measures affecting land and education, they were pure;
only on "things connected with government and its technical de
tails" did they succumb. All this was a far cry from DuBois s
preface where the Negro was assumed to be an average and ordi
nary human being subject to his environment.
DuBois s eccentric notions of Marxian phraseology blockaded
clarity. Negro plantation workers emerged as a black proletariat.
Reconstruction governments, sustained by the military force of
* Howard K. Beak s summary gives a fair picture: the book presents "a
mass of material, formerly ignored, that every future historian must reckon
with," but it is also "wordy" and "distorted." "On Rewriting Reconstruction
History," American Historical Review, XLV, 809 (July 1940).
184 THE TIME OF HESITATION
the United States, were held up as "one of the most extraordinary
experiments of Marxism" that the world, before the Russian revo
lution, had seen. He backed off from calling the Reconstruction
government of South Carolina "the dictatorship of the proletariat"
only because someone had warned him that universal suffrage did
not lead to real dictatorship "until workers use their votes con
sciously to rid themselves of the dominion of private capital"
confusion twice compounded. Negro desertions from plantations
during the war, which Villard in reviewing DuBois s book charac
terized quite reasonably as "the natural, unconscious, unorganized
drift of embattled and endangered masses in the direction of free
dom and safety," were, in DuBois s lexicon, part of a "general
strike against slavery." He assumed that leaders such as Charles
Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens looked toward a government which,
without their knowing it, would lead "necessarily" to a dictator
ship of labor over capital and industry in the South. The West
followed the abolitionists, he said, until it was "seduced by the
kulak psychology of land ownership" and emerged as a "petty bour
geoisie." When Reconstruction governments were overthrown in
the "counter-revolution of property," the old agrarian feudalism
was replaced by a new "monarchical dictatorship that displaced
democracy in the United States in 1876." Though Marxian
thought can suggest sharp insights into the Reconstruction period,
DuBois s unsure hold on Marx s ideas and his misuse of Marx s
vocabulary led him into slippery distortions. As Sterling D. Spero
said in the Nation, when DuBois equated Negro and proletarian,
his racial consciousness distorted his Marxism, producing more
confusion than light.
The book was a long morality tale based on historical material:
good men triumphed for a while but were crushed by bad men.
Yet the good men would succeed in the end because they had to
in order that the world should achieve peace. In such a tale, it
was legitimate for the storyteller to be on the side of the angels
and to report periodically that God wept or laughed. His list of
references became not a critical bibliography, but a division be
tween goats (anti-Negro historians) and sheep (fair and sympa
thetic writers). A devil Andrew Johnson was an asset. Flames
in time for the last curtain supplied the appropriate dramatic
THE TIME OF HESITATION 185
touch: DuBois pictured Professor John W. Burgess of Columbia
telling his students that Republican administrations would never
again work for the political equality of man. "Immediately in
Africa, a black back runs red with the blood of the lash; in India,
a brown girl is raped; in China, a coolie starves; in Alabama, seven
darkies are more than lynched; while in London, the white limbs
of a prostitute are hung with jewels and silk. Flames of jealous
murder sweep the earth, while brains of little children smear the
hills."
Though passable as polemic or melodrama, this was not history.
The preface of DuBois s next book, Black Folk Then and Now
(1939), pointed up his dilemma. He liked to affirm that "the truth
of history lies not in the mouth of partisans but rather in the calm
Science that sits between. Her cause I seel to serve," he said, "and
wherever I fail, I am at least paying the Truth the respect of earnest
effort." He recognized the shortcomings in this volume especially
his pro-Negro bias. Though the kernel of the book was a "body
of fairly well-ascertained truth," he said, it also contained areas
"of conjecture and even of guesswork" -which he would hesitate
to publish under other circumstances. But fearful lest the rising
American curiosity about the Negro be satisfied by the "champions
of white folks" who have long left the Negro "the clown of history;
the football of anthropology; and the slave of industry," he wrote
a rebuttal in anticipation of misrepresentations on the other side.
This candor isolated his difficulty: he paid lip service to truth,
but the times needed his talent for argumentation. History, like
art, had to serve in a larger cause.
The same pressure was at work in his editing of Phylon. In
the first issue he restated his familiar goal, a factual study of one
racial group; he said he would lay a special emphasis on economics.
By the beginning of the fifth volume, however, the tone had
changed: the Negro migration to America had been the "greatest
social event of modern history," for it had founded modern capi
talism in industry, and it had tested modern democracy, forcing
it to new heights. Although Negro development was "the greatest
controlled laboratory test of the science of human action in the
world," he said, it had been neglected, smeared, forgotten. If bal
ancing this distortion was propaganda, "we re propagandists." 2
l86 THE TIME OF HESITATION
(Two issues later, he was gone, the editorship passing into the
able hands o Ira DeA. Reid, trained in a different generation of
scholarship.)
Characteristically for DuBois, autobiography became an inte
gral part of his sketches of the Negro s past. Each new venture
invited public reminiscence; and a newspaper column could be
filled with memories without research. The celebration of his sev
entieth birthday at Atlanta provided the occasion for a protracted
review of his life decade by decade, and, much revised and ex
panded, this appeared in 1940 as Dusk of Dawn, a pretentious
volume which identified the Negro race problem with his own
development. Four years later this identification became even
more explicit. When Rayford W. Logan assembled a wartime
anthology of fourteen statements by leading Negroes on the sub
ject What the Negro Wants, DuBois blandly contributed more
autobiography, entitled "My Evolving Program for Negro Free
dom." The Negro Digest asked for an article; DuBois rearranged
some memories "Reading, Writing and Real Estate." If he sought
truth, he looked within, for, as he said in the week of his seventy-
fifth birthday, "I think I have felt particularly in the last twenty-
five years a certainty of judgment and depth of knowledge con
cerning the world which is new, inspiring and astonishing. I began
to realize what an omniscient God who has lived a million years
must have accumulated in the shape of knowledge, and how near
that knowledge may make him omniscient." 8
A propagandist so long, DuBois could not be anything else.
His clipped monologues might make his classes inspirational; but
he was too far along in his career for small research projects to
satisfy him; and for the larger projects, he had neither time nor
temperament.
A Voice Not Silent but Unheard
The momentum of the controversy with the Association carried
DuRois s notion of Negro separatism into his weekly newspaper
columns, first in the Pittsburgh Courier and then in the New York
Amsterdam News. Even as the New Deal renewed his expectations
THE TIME OF HESITATION 187
from the white community, he never repudiated this notion. But
as the reforming years moved toward the war years, he continually
shaded the meaning of Negro autonomy until it became sufficiently
equivocal to lose significance as part of his general plan for Negro
advancement.
An article for the Journal of Negro Education the year follow
ing his departure from the Crisis argued the need for separate
colored schools. White schools discriminated against Negroes and
covered up the Negro s past by the "legerdemain and metaphysics
of nomenclature," he said. There was only one solution: distinct
schools which could offer Negro history, Negro sociology, and
"even physical science taught by men who understand their audi
ence and are not afraid of the truth."* During his first month on
the Courier staff, he spoke hopefully of a "closed economic circle"
planned by a Negro "brain trust," and shortly thereafter he said
that long centuries of race segregation and compulsory degrada
tion had given birth to a new loyalty welding Negroes into a nation
within a nation. Cooperatives still seemed the tool of economic
emancipation. They promised more than "idiotic" complaints or
civil suits, he said, for the Negro was now in the position of the
pig who climbed the tree because he had to. And if wholesalers
sabotaged consumers cooperatives, then Negroes would move into
manufacturing. Even when the Congress of Industrial Organiza
tions disavowed the color line, he warned that race prejudice was
still too strong for the realization of the Marxian dogma of labor s
class consciousness. At the summit of this plan, his perennial cap
stone, the Talented Tenth, had to "subject" Negro labor to its
guidance, just as Russia s economic salvation "involves vast regi
mentation, unquestioning obedience until the cumbersome super
human economic machine can run in rhythmic order." 5 As late
as 1941, Phylon, in its report on the "twenty-fifth Atlanta Univer
sity Conference," still carried the same old pack of ideas.
DuBois never formally repudiated this program: it appeared
again in summary form in his autobiography in 1940. In a sense
he could not repudiate it. On it he had staked his reputation;
because of it he had broken with attachments of twenty-five years;
from it he drew the psychic warmth of courage and independence.
Yet his columns during the decade hinted that it no longer com-
l88 THE TIME OF HESITATION
manded his full allegiance. Behind the Veil, he found that groups
essential to the program s success avoided their responsibilities.
Too many cooperatives turned to frankly capitalistic plans for
investment and profit; Negro enterprises, such as the successful
Mme. C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, which with a "little
broader knowledge and far-seeing advice" could have moved
toward cooperation as part of a socialist mass movement, con
tinued to behave like businesses run for profit. Though few Ne
groes were bourgeois, he found "bourgeois thinking" all too widely
spread among the race, and Negroes, unaware of the "new eco
nomic morality," aped the business ethics of the worst whites.
Negroes as a whole were, like his own grandfather, guilty of "racial
provincialism," but, even more fatal to DuBois s now traditional
hopes, the upper classes, the talented and educated tenth, scorned
racial nationalism and tried to escape into the white world, while
the clear pattern of social strata in Negro colleges betrayed heresy
even in the seminaries of racial leadership.
Meanwhile white America gave cause for hope. After two and
a half years of the New Deal, DuBois told a convention of Negro
Baptists that the administration had given Negro labor a due
share of recognition; it had implanted the idea of the general
welfare as the object of industry, and it regarded a decent living
for the masses as a more important goal than the protection of
land and property. He insisted upon the government s right to
tax (preferably by a graduated income tax) and spend to the limit
for the job which needed to be done. If Franklin D. Roosevelt,
his Haitian adventure overlooked, found it necessary to employ
a "dictatorship which did not depend upon democratic control"
to achieve ends variously defined by DuBois as fascism and so
cialism, he must be defended. If his reforms failed, there would
follow a "Counsel of Despair," a Communist revolution. 6 At the
beginning of Roosevelt s second term, DuBois affirmed his faith
in the "slow and even discouraging method of reform without
revolution," even though sometimes this method "seems utterly
to fail." 7 In 1940 DuBois scorned the Republican possibilities
and rejected Norman Thomas; Roosevelt, now engaged in foreign
maneuvers of which DuBois disapproved, apparently won DuBois s
half-hearted vote on the Democrats domestic record.
THE TIME OF HESITATION 189
Outside the government, the Courier column noted tentatively,
the new industrial unions (CIO) were welcoming Negroes, but a
union card could not prevent discrimination in wages, treatment,
or promotion, nor could it guarantee jobs. Therefore, DuBois
thought, Negroes still had to form their own unions and through
competition to induce white workers to adopt a genuinely non-
racial membership policy.* Yet the CIO s official stand was en
couraging. In the South he found more reason for hope, for the
"slow but undoubted advance toward democracy" there was ob
vious.
The long night of hostility, running from the late igao s into
the middle 1930*5, seemed to be ending. In 1940, at the "dusk
of dawn," DuBois recalled that his two earlier autobiographical
essays had been written in tears and blood; a new one he set down
"determinedly but yet with wider hope in some more benign
fluid." 8 As the second World War galvanized America, Negro
advances both in industry and in the armed forces overcame his
initial misgivings as the war broke out. Even the horror of race
riots was pared somewhat for him by "almost invariably decent"
newspaper and periodical comment, white and black, North and
South.
The uncertainty of the evidencehope for the white world,
faltering in the coloredled DuBois to equivocate on his own posi
tion. Almost two years after his reference to a Negro "closed eco
nomic circle," he rejected autarchy as a description of his plans,
for Negroes, he said, could not build a complete economic nation
within a nation. Some time before, he was urging Negroes to move
with dignity and caution into the surrounding civilization. The
confusion percolated into Dusk of Dawn: on some pages he argued
that Negro enterprise could cover only the "smaller part" of
Negro economic activity, in the "interstices" of a collapsing in
dustrial machine, but as his enthusiasm warmed further to the
topic, wholesale and manufacturing cooperatives reappeared.
* The path to labor solidarity could only come, he said, through "a perfect
Hegelian category: the thesis of Negro race consciousness; the antithesis, the
union of all labor across racial, national, and color lines; and the synthesis, a
universal labor solidarity arising through the expansion of race consciousness
in the most exploited class to all labor."
igo
THE TIME OF HESITATION
Actually the confusion did not matter. Few were listening, for
his ideas failed to mesh with his era. He had broken with the
fighters for integration and with his own great past just as the
struggle for integration was about to register real gains. Galloping
after a chimera of Negro separatism, he found himself far from
the battlefield when his side started winning, and that part of his
make-up which may be called either tenacity or stubbornness pre
vented his easy return. As he returned unsurely, he made peace
with his old foes. In the early months of the war, he acknowledged
that different areas required different attitudes toward Negro prob
lems, that a man who stood straight and suffered in Mississippi
deserved as much credit as a Harlem gesturer. Shortly thereafter
he praised Tuskegee for several reasons, the most striking being
that its industrial training anticipated available opportunities for
work, such as service in dining cars and hotels. Two years before,
he had spoken of Booker Washington as the "greatest Negro leader
of his day" without all the usual reservations and amendments.
But the truce was taking place on the wrong plain; the war had
moved. In his reconciliations DuBois had made his peace with
the past. But he still had not come to terms with the present.
A younger generation was indifferent to him. When Benjamin
Stolberg attacked DuBois s racial chauvinism and lumped Wash
ington s and DuBois s ideas together as two aspects of the same
program "Today [1935] DuBois winds up pretty much where
Booker T. Washington started" 9 four of the brightest young
Negro intellectuals commended Stolberg s "brilliant and sound
analysis of the tragic predicament of the American Negro today/ *
DuBois felt a part of this isolation. In an early column in the
Courier, he was defensive about his role as leader, and five years
later (1941) he commented sardonically on his isolation: if you
want to lose friends and jobs, then oppose wars, defend strikes,
and say that even Communists have rights. In the fall of 1943 he
complained that national Negro organizations were not demo
cratic and never really discussed anything. That winter he de
nounced a joint program issued by twenty of these groups. Seven
* Letter to the Editor, Nation, CXLI, 17 (July 3, 1935). The four were
Sterling A, Brown, Ralph J. Bunche, Emmett E. Borsey, and E. Franklin Frazier.
THE TIME OF HESITATION 1Q1
of the eight points, he said, were the old stuff of two generations,
and the vagueness of the eighth made it meaningless.
Out of touch, out of sympathy with current Negro planning
on domestic matters, DuBois turned more and more to the world
picture.
The World Crisis and a New Function
DuBois s analysis of the foreign policy of his own and other
nations started with two questions: Had the nation moved toward
a socialistic organization of society? Was it nonimperialistic, that
is, was it a white nation free of the taint of extending political or
economic control over a darker people? Russia, answering "yes"
to both questions, was highly favored; England, and the United
States as well, answering "no," felt the brunt of his attack. Of the
two principles, the requirement of nonimperialism was the more
important. The Japanese, as advance agents of the rising colored
races, received favored treatment because the color of their skin
saved them from the charge of imperialism even when they were
taking over as much of China as their armies could capture. On
occasion there was a strain in fitting events into his principles. The
Soviet-German pact of 1939 created embarrassment; but at other
times his preconceptions could guide him into striking prophecy.
At the beginning of 1944 he predicted that after the war China
would call out to Russia for help. (He expected India to do the
same.)
In the Ethiopian crisis of 1935-1936, the facts were ready-made
for his interpretation a white nation invading a backward black
kingdom, relatively defenseless. The rest of the white world raised
no hand in opposition, DuBois said, for "economic exploitation
based on the excuse of race prejudice is the program of the white
world." 10 Benito Mussolini "killed the faith of all black folk in
white men." 11 DuBois expected the impact of the war to ramify
among colored peoples: If Italy won, the colored world would
agree with Japan that force was the only way to freedom and
equality. Then China and Japan would agree to resist white
aggression in Asia, and India would no longer postpone open
1Q2 THE TIME OF HESITATION
rebellion. If Italy lost, the spell of Europe would be broken by
a blow to white prestige comparable to the Russo-Japanese war.
China would have to follow Japan or fall into chaos. The black
world saw this crisis as the last European effort to subjugate black
men, DuBois said; if Haile Selassie were anything but brown, the
white world would have fought in his defense.
He expected that the British, as unrepentant imperialists, and,
to a lesser extent, the French would repeat the errors which led to
the first World War. England, he said, nearly always had a "pow
erful group of selfish interests, working silently and correctly, with
decorum and respectability" to hold "her profoundly selfish grasp
ing course." The British government and people, he thought,
genuinely wanted to help the black kingdom, but investors and
aristocrats forced the government to sacrifice it. 12 As Germany
rose to power, he predicted that England would offer the labor of
black Africa in return for security in white Europe. France s tra
ditional policy of recognition to its colored citizens won it gentler
treatment: France was not a champion of the Negro race, he said,
but she was friendly and fair; realistically she could not risk her
national life for Ethiopia.
A round-the-world tour in 1936-1937, with special attention
to Germany, Russia, and Japan, reinforced DuBois s authority to
comment on world affairs as the war years approached. Of Nazi
Germany he had a mixed view. He deeply admired the efficient
totalitarian planning of German industry "a splendid accom
plishment" and the national control of German capital, and he
welcomed the new German state as the greatest exemplar of
Marxian socialism outside Russia, a characterization which might
have surprised his German hosts. A visit with a German bureau
crat with the eyes and deep earnestness of the German idealist
moved him deeply, and the following week he referred nostal
gically to the sense of fellowship there. On the other hand, the
Nazis treatment of the Jews reminded him of the American treat
ment of the Negro, and he charged that German persecutions set
civilization back a hundred years. Adolf Hitler, whose rise to
power he blamed on the confusion in Germany caused by Amer
ican, British, and French capitalists, he labeled a "paranoia" After
the war started in 1939, he warned Negroes that Nazi racism struck
THE TIME OF HESITATION 193
at yellow, brown, and black races. A German victory, he said,
would force colored people to ally themselves with conquered
white nations against the new white master of the world; a stale
mate would help darker nations to reach freedom. So far as Hitler
stood for a denial of a people s voice in its own government, in
conditions of work, in the distribution of wealth and for a racial
theory with no basis in science, philanthropy, or common decency,
DuBois hoped for his defeat.
Russia and Japanthe fountain of socialism and the first-born
of budding "colored" world powers were generally given the ben
efit of every doubt. During the Ethiopian crisis DuBois noted
Russia s "frank and open airaigmnent of colonial exploitation/
though he recognized that it was "nullified" because she had no
colonies and because she had to align herself with imperialist
powers. 18 As Russia s world-wide Communist parties adopted the
tactic of the Popular Front, he restated his confidence in the Rus
sian experiment; and on the occasion of his visit to Russia, he
said that Russia would deserve the gratitude of the world if it
could substitute public welfare for private profit as the motive
for industry. He loved the victim Karl Radek more than the tyrant
Josef Stalin, and he deplored the murder of Leon Trotsky, but
he insisted that the Communists had accomplished more than
they had destroyed. After the Soviet-German pact stunned the
Western powers in August 1939, he clearly felt himself on the
defensive. The pact was no more inexplicable, he told himself,
than was the alignment of Japan, Russia, and France against Ger
many, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States in their respec
tive attitudes toward the color line. As for Finland, Latvia, Es
tonia, and Lithuaniawhich Russia had just invaded they had
been stolen from Russia after the first World War and were ready
to gang up with England, France, and Germany against the new
Russia. And anyway, the West had stolen too. The following
year Russia still seemed to him the "greatest single hope for future
industrial democracy" despite its pact with Hitler, and he justi
fied Russian neutrality as the best assurance for that hope. 14 When
Hitler obligingly attacked Russia in the summer of 1941, it cleared
DuBois s thinking considerably: he had seen the war as "inevi
table" in 1936 and had been amazed by the Soviet-German pact.
194 THE TIME OF HESITATION
Good and evil were sorted out: Germany, having laid aside its
camouflage, was now leading Europe against communism, trying
to halt the spread of the idea that the state must control capital
to achieve the well-being of the working masses. Though England
and France recognized the fact only dimly, Russia s "industrial
democracy" held the hopes of the modern world; if this idea were
crushed, modern culture must fail. Since the great democracies
had forced Stalin into the arms of Hitler, not magnanimity but
"expiation for sins" required them to give full aid to their new
Russian ally.
Japan, in its expansion in Asia, could always count on sympa
thetic understanding, and even defense. In 1936 DuBois observed
that Europe and America screamed when Japan stole Western
techniques of imperialism because the West felt that only its own
imperialism could be benevolent. He was confident that the com
mon race consciousness of China and Japan vis-a-vis the British
Empire would keep Japan from extending its holdings in China;
in any case, Japan offered "infinitely greater" chances for economic
reform than any European power except Russia. During his world
tour he took special notice that in Manchuria Japan imposed less
of a caste system than any other occupying power. Though he was
appalled by the Chinese hatred of Japan, he continued to regard
Japan as the savior of the East against white domination and to
blame England for Japanese action against the mainland: Eng
lish colonialism stimulated Japanese fears, and only expansion
could allay them. His visit to the island empire, where he was
much feted, created some doubts in his mind on Japanese enlight
enment, for he reported that Japan was thinking in terms of cap
italist culture, a formula causing acute hostility to Russia. Yet
when the Sino-Japanese war broke out again in 1937, DuBois had
a pat explanation: Japan was fighting Europe by attacking China;
Japan was forced to annex northern China because of the avail
ability there of raw materials which Europe refused to sell to
Japan. When China truckled to England, when it refused to
organize itself against Europe, he said, Japan "undertook this duty
herself." Four years later he noted that "to Japan alone is due the
fact that the whole continent of Asia is not today in hopeless serf
dom to Europe." 15 Even ten months after the attack on Pearl
THE TIME OF HESITATION 195
Harbor he still hoped for a miracle to overthrow Japan s govern
ing imperialist elements which, wincing under imputations of
inferiority, had learned too much from nineteenth-century Euro
pean standards. Perhaps he could recall the assurance of Yosuke
Matsuoka at the time of DuBois s visit to Japan that "within and
essentially" Japan was communistic, the only possible leader of a
democratic movement without a color line.
DuBois was profoundly suspicious of American policy. In 1936
he wondered whom Americans feared when they passed their
greatest peace-time budget for war equipment. When the war
started in 1939, he gave his readers little direction. Where, he
asked, was the Negro s stake when he was allied to colonial peo
ples? Did it depend on the victory or defeat of the controlling
empires? Imperial England had never given the world democracy,
neither would imperial Germany "So what?" In January 1941,
he formally identified himself with nonintervention. The United
States should defend itself against attack, but no one was attack
ing. England had in the past, Germany might in the future, but
her hands were fairly full at the moment. Were we afraid of Hit
ler s racial theories? he asked. We practiced them in the United
States, he replied, and we applied them to Asians and Africans.
If the United States were preparing for self-defense, why did it
have a fleet in Asia, where it owned nothing not stolen? Were we
protecting China from Japan, or hoarding China as our private
preserve for exploitation? Already he had scoffed at Henry L.
Stimson s appeal for a strong policy in China: Asia had good
reason to fear Americans bearing gifts, he said, and he did not
recall Stimson s public protests against Italy s attack on Ethiopia.
Stimson, Cordell Hull, and Roosevelt had driven Japan into an
alliance with Hitler. Joseph C. Grew had been ordered back to
Japan to stir up a Japanese-American war. The Atlantic Charter
seemed hollow to DuBois because it avoided mention of colonial
peoples; while we put pressure on Russia to change its religious
policy as the price of "dribbles of aid," he said, billions could not
make England promise to give up India. Americans could justify
English and Russian seizure of Persia as self-protection, but when
Japan took Indochina, they condemned it as aggression. The root
of all this seemed quite clear: Americans could agree on war
ig6 THE TIME OF HESITATION
against Japan because she was colored. "For Japan to seize Bor
neo oil when we refuse to sell her this life blood of the nations, is
cause for a white crusade against yellow presumption." 16 In 1943,
when Congress was considering a bill to eliminate discrimination
against the Chinese in immigration policy, DuBois commented
that its passage would show that "the war with Japan was unneces
sary, since a similar yielding to Japan would have avoided the
chief cause of the war." 17
DuBois was judging world powers by two criteria: their sym
pathy for colored colonial peoples and their aversion to capital
ism. Of the two, the first was the more important. Russia, rated
high on both counts, was forgiven its tyranny and murders. Japan s
role in fighting Western imperial powers made up for its affection
for capitalism and for its expansion in Asia. Germany s rational
ization of industry won praise, but its racial doctrines and its at
tack on Russia damned it. England was the ancient sanctimonious
imperialist; when the Luftwaffe buffeted the English homeland,
DuBois scoffed at the notion of Britain as a "suffering saint" and
said that what it received was no worse than what it had imposed:
the British Empire had caused more human misery than Hitler
could in a hundred years. France was only slightly better. And
the United States tagged behind British policy in Europe and
exported racial discrimination to Asia.
Yet when war came to the United States, DuBois recalled his
loyal slogan of 1918, "Close Ranks," and said that Negroes would
fight, now as then, for "democracy not only for white folks but
for yellow, brown and black." 18 Here was the hint for DuBois s
later thought: he would test the Allies performance in rebuild
ing the world after the war by the fidelity to democratic principles.
Would the United States and Great Britain guarantee self-deter
mination and democracy to Asia and Africa?
Freedom for colonial peoples was the crucial issue. When
President Roosevelt sought a name for the war, DuBois suggested
"War for Racial Equality." In reviewing Jawaharlal Nehru s
autobiography, DuBois made a single package of the world s racial
problems: all were primarily matters of economic exploitation,
racial arrogance, and utter failure to recognize the essential hu
manity of people of different appearance. As the war years ad-
THE TIME OF HESITATION 197
vanced, he found little in British or American policy to approve.*
He charged that the silence on Africa was "determined and de
liberate," and that the mission of Leo T. Crowley, Foreign Eco
nomic Administrator of the United States, to Ethiopia in 1944 was
more concerned with investments for America than with the re
covery of Ethiopia. An article in Foreign Affairs defined the crux
of the African question: "European profit or Negro develop
ment?" He feared that Europe would snatch Africa s resources to
help pay the cost of the war and to reestablish prosperity. As early
as 1943 he saw signs that after the war England and the United
States would continue to oppose communism in Russia and to
keep Africa down.
Just as DuBois s decade at Atlanta was coming to a close, he
summarized the "Prospects of a World Without Race Conflict" in
the American Journal of Sociology. By that time he expected the
doctrine of biological differences to persist after the war, for there
was little evidence of willingness to change: India was not eman
cipated, Asia and Africa were not treated as equals. The Allied
attitude (except for Russia) toward postwar problems, he thought,
provided for Europe and America without a thought of the darker
races. Russia, which was showing sympathy for the Chinese coolie
but no sympathy for Chiang Kai-shek, he said, might challenge the
Allies plans. But the colored peoples themselves offered little
hope, for their economic inexperience and their false leaders
"willing instruments of European economic oppression" made
it essential that someone act for them. DuBois suggested a solu
tion: "A union of economic liberals across the race line, with the
object of driving exploiting investors from their hideout behind
race discrimination, by freeing thought and action in colonial
areas is the only realistic path to permanent peace today." 19
Shortly thereafter, DuBois s contract at Atlanta was abruptly
terminated. The cause of this rupture has not been discussed pub
licly, but internal evidence in Phylon suggests that DuBois s public
criticism of Atlanta s educational policy, together with the uni
versity s alarm that Phylon was becoming too much an instrument
of propaganda, contributed to the decision. With magnanimity
* The similar fears felt by white liberals are discussed in Eric F. Goldman,
Rendezvous with Destiny (New York, 1952), pp. 385-98.
198 THE TIME OF HESITATION
unwarranted by DuBois s persistent discourtesy a decade before,
Walter White recalled DuBois s contribution to "straight thinking
by the Negro" and immediately initiated a move among the As
sociation s directors to bring DuBois back to the Association to
direct work on a Committee to Present the Cause of the Negro at
the Next Peace Conference. On the understanding that his con
nection with the Association would continue for the rest of his
working days, DuBois accepted the post and returned to New York.
In August 1944 his column in the Amsterdam News closed out
his decade at Atlanta and opened the new and probably final-
era. The greatest question before the world, he said, was whether
democracy in Europe and America could survive as long as the
majority of the people of the world was kept in colonial status,
poor, ignorant, and diseased, for the profit of the civilized nations
of the world. "This is the problem to which I propose to devote
the remaining years of my active life." 20
The time of hesitation had passed.
VIII
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
The calm interlude at Atlanta left DuBois out of practice for
the rigors of his next eight years, 1944-1952. Back at the Associa
tion s offices where once he had thundered, he found his influence
narrowed to postwar colonial policy and "special research/ while
other hands to DuBois, cold hands wove the fibers of policy. For
four years, tensions about organization, administration, and pol
icy taxed the patience of both sides. By the end of 1948 the Asso
ciation decided on a clean break and discharged DuBois with a
pension. The Council on African Affairs, of which Paul Robeson
was chairman, quickly welcomed him as a nonsalaried vice-chair
man; his office there was a headquarters for his travels, lectures,
and writing. In the spring of 1950 he became chairman of the
Peace Information Center, organized to spread sentiment for peace
and to secure American signatures to the "Stockholm Appeal";
and in the fall, he ran for the United States Senate against Her
bert H. Lehman and Joe R. Hanley. The following year, in time
for his eighty-third birthday, he and four associates at the Peace
Center were indicted by a federal grand jury for failing to register
the Peace Information Center as the American agent of a foreign
principal.
The troubled postwar world which landed DuBois in a crim
inal court changed basically the direction of his thought. The
struggle for power between the United States and Russia made
DuBois increasingly critical of American foreign policy, which he
conceived to be directed by American imperialists, and ever more
cordial to the "peace" movements spurred by the Soviet Union
and, as he thought, by the masses of people everywhere. Against
this background, the trauma of his trial led him in 1952 to cast
off race action as a guiding philosophy and to turn to "a World
conception of human uplift . . . one centering about the work
and income of the working class." 1
200 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
The Fight Against "American Imperialism"
Shortly after his return to the Association in 1944, DuBois told
a radio audience that unless colonial peoples received a share of
power, their masters were inviting future wars among themselves
and against subject peoples in revolt. He regretted that the pre
liminary conferences of the United Nations Organization at Dum
barton Oaks had provided no direct representation for the billion
people in colored colonial areas. Did the slight mean that colonial
powers would recoup their wartime losses by more vigorous ex
ploitation of backward areas? Workers, he feared, would be bribed
by government aid at home into supporting imperialism "democ
racy in Europe will continue to impede and nullify democracy in
Asia and Africa." 2
As long as the outline of the peace remained unclear, DuBois
balanced a modicum of hope against his fears. In a timely book,
Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace, published in 1945, he
heralded the dawn of a new day.* But the evidence in his own
book did not sustain his optimism. He noted that the discussion
on international organization at Bretton Woods turned on the
stabilization of currencies and on loans for reconstruction, ignor
ing investments in colonial cheap labor and raw materials. China,
on hand at Dumbarton Oaks to represent colored peoples every
where, was hardly consulted on plans for the UNO, he said, and
in any case, China s status was suspect. Was China being built up
as one of the five great powers, with a permanent seat on the Se
curity Council, as the Asian cat s paw for European and American
dominance? The Netherlands had made some tentative gestures
toward greater freedom in Indonesia, he reported, but "much de
pends on how far the poverty and destruction in Holland will
allow political freedom and industrial planning for the Natives
to proceed in East Asia at the expense of Dutch investors." Eng
land s rule in India was still "totalitarian," he said; he wondered
if pressure from the Labour party could break down Winston
* "The day has dawned when above a wounded tired earth unselfish sacri
fice, without sin and hell, may join thorough technique, shorn of ruthless greed,
and make a new religion, one with new knowledge, to shout from the old hills
of heaven: Go down, Moses!"
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE 2O1
Churchill s stubborn determination to maintain the power of the
privileged British aristocracy. The United States was a constant
puzzle, he went on, because the provincialism of the Senate and
the Negro problem predisposed the Americans to empire and to
disfranchisement for a majority of the people in the world. Even
Russia s future was uncertain, for although its record on colonial
ism and race prejudice gave grounds for hope, plans were already
apparent for establishing spheres of influence in the Balkans.
The San Francisco Conference in 1945 left him without hope.
As an associate consultant to the American delegation, DuBois
drafted a "first statute of international law" which forbade every
nation to deprive any group of a voice in its own government. It
was rejected, and the United Nations Charter left the interna
tional organization without power to interfere in "domestic"
matters like colonies. As a result, DuBois said in an interview,
750,000,000 people were unrepresented in the new world order.
The wordy promise to recognize the interests of colonials as para
mount over investors and civil servants, he added later, was in
adequate without machinery to compel dilatory powers to keep
their word. He hoped that he was wrong, but he feared that
American expansion in the Pacific strategic area had cost the
United States its chance to vote with Russia and China in a great-
power majority against colonialism. He feared that Americans
would take on the task of holding Asia and Africa in subjugation
while voting with the two powers bitterly opposed to Russia s eco
nomic program. Organized business in England, France, and the
United States, he said, was ready to fight Russia. This was the
meaning of the "continual pinpricks" of Russia during the con
ference. DuBois felt sure that the third World War was taking
shape around the suppression of Asia and the strangulation of
Russia.
Disappointed at San Francisco, DuBois returned to familiar
ideas: England and the United States were imperialist and dis
criminatory, Russia was neither. The simple clarity of this bal
ance gave order in a complex world.
The Labour victory in England in 1945 led to a few months
of renewed optimism, for DuBois felt that it put England in the
procession of socialism behind Russia, leaving the United States
202 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
as the only reactionary power. (Chiang s China was only "par
tially progressive.") But a visit to London the same year suggested
that tie Socialist movement, carrying on with imperialism "from
sheer momentum," had not yet learned that Asia, Africa, and the
Balkans needed democratic socialism as much as Great Britain.
On his return he condemned Labour s colonial policy as even
worse than that of the Tories. The following year he doubted
that the Labourites would ever learn. If Clement Attlee swallowed
Churchill s domestic policy as he had accepted his imperialism,
and if Americans were "beguiled by this siren song of the British
aristocracy," civilization would hopelessly plunge into war after
war and "go down to hell to the beat of drums and display of
military pageantry." 3 When Burma and India gained their inde
pendence, England won no credit, for both dependent nations,
DuBois said, had forced the issue. The continued British control
in Kenya as late at 1948 and the spectacle of Smuts speaking in
favor of the United Nations Charter of Human Rights while he
maintained white supremacy in South Africa seemed to DuBois
visible evidence of "the hypocrisy, double-dealing and coldly-cal
culated cruelty of the modern world." 4
By DuBois s standards the United States was worse: concilia
tion having died with Roosevelt, the American government had
aligned itself with the forces of reaction determined to hold Russia
in check and to maintain colonialism. DuBois claimed that busi
ness interests controlled American policy. Fearful that peacetime
use of atomic energy would make its investments obsolete, he said,
business hid behind the Baruch plan while Russia sought effec
tive control of atomic energy; the Truman Doctrine was a device
to arm Greece against Russia for the benefit of Great Britain;
the Marshall Plan promised large profits to American investors
and aimed at reestablishing European wealth at the expense of
the colonies. At the United Nations John Foster Dulles, an Ameri
can delegate, was conspicuously silent as Nehru s sister, Mrs. Vijaya
Lakshmi Pandit, spoke against the exploitation of native labor.
For DuBois, America s sins were retroactive: captains of indus
try had seduced the government into sympathy toward Germany
and Italy until the unreasonableness of the fascist demands and
popular pressure forced the government to enter the war in self-
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE 2 03
defense. Elsewhere he declared that Japan, in attacking America,
had "furnished the one reason, based on race prejudice, which
brought America immediately into the war." 5 The war itself had
been "due . . . principally to American greed," the attempt to
make money out of the distress of the world. 6 Since this same
concentration of economic and industrial power ruled the United
States in 1947, he said, any other nation which did not fear
America s imperial power lacked common sense.
While the British and Americans were viewed as plotting for
war, DuBois could see no evil in the Soviet Union. Russia was
right in keeping the Poles behind the Curzon line, he said, for the
Poles had to learn to govern themselves before they ruled over an
alien people. He reported in his column in the Chicago Defender
that Molotov was the "one statesman at San Francisco who stood
up for human rights and the emancipation of colonies." 7 DuBois
liked Stalin s "straight talk" in listing the second World War as
the "inevitable result" of the economic and political expansion of
monopoly capitalism. While the American press whitewashed
the British Empire, DuBois said, the Soviet delegation negotiated
for the withdrawal of Western troops from Greece and the Middle
East, for Indonesian independence, and for immediate trustee
ships. DuBois admired Russia s accomplishment in abolishing race
hatred. Russian atomic proposals were more realistic than the
Baruch plan. He praised the Soviet delegation for favoring a hear
ing for the Association s petition before the U.N. Subcommission
on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minor
itiesany assertion that Russian support was politically motivated,
he said, was "wholly gratuitous." Always looming behind DuBois s
cordiality to Russia was his conviction held now for more than
twenty-five years that communism embraced the goals of every
unselfish thinker of the previous century: abolition of poverty and
illiteracy, production for consumption not profit, social control of
nature s riches, and abolition of unemployment. Against this
statement of the ideal, mortal men in capitalist nations were hard
pressed to compete.
As always with DuBois, analysis led to a program. He took
up again the mantle of universal pundit, and his advice to this
group and to that seemed at times a review of his career. In a
204 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
speech to a national Negro fraternity, the Talented Tenth re-
emerged, decked with twentieth-century garlands, as a "Guiding
Hundredth"; less than a month before his dismissal from the
Association, he urged onward its legal fight against discrimination;
he demanded that Negroes pay for and control their own univer
sities; and he revived his insistence on consumer s cooperatives.
To a Southern Negro youth conference he recommended that
young Negroes stay in the South and fight their battle for justice
in the section of the world which, he said, was matched only by
South Africa in reactionary discrimination. Most important of
all, he suggested two new courses of action: first, working through
the United Nations where friendly voices, like Russia and India,
could take up the Negro s plea, and, second, supporting forces
favoring peace and friendship for Russia.
The San Francisco Conference had barely adjourned when
DuBois revived old notions for a Pan-African movement. Pre
mature in 1919, the idea now had more plausibility, for the second
World War had stirred every continent, and colored peoples in
different to Sarajevo felt the impact of the fall of Singapore. Major
colonial powers like Great Britain and France were sufficiently
drained by the war to give hopes to a determined colonial people,
and Russia was always willing to applaud any disintegration of its
Allies empires. Airplanes and cheap cables replacing slow ships
and uncertain mail had created one world. And finally, the char
ter of the United Nations lent the prestige of world sentiment to
the improvement of colonial conditions. Ebullient as ever, DuBois
issued a call for a Pan-African Conference in London for October
*945- Frantically organizing the conference by mail and cable
gram, DuBois felt confident that the meeting, if properly guided,
could become "the real movement for the emancipation of Africa."
The meeting was a great triumph, attended by representatives
from sixty nations and colonies, among them Kwame Nkrumah,
later the first premier of Ghana. Returning from the conference,
DuBois reported jubilantly that the mood of colored peoples had
changed and that Britain would have to extend self-government
in Africa and the West Indies "or face open revolt." The future
of the world and of democracy, he stated early the next year, now
depended principally on Asia and Africa; the twentieth century
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE 205
spelled the end of European domination of the world. Small loss,
according to his next book, The World and Africa, because the
science of our civilization had come from Africa, the religion
from Asia, and nothing constructive from Britain and America.
(DuBois characteristically said it with less reserve: "Africa saw
the stars of God; Asia saw the soul of man; Europe saw and sees
only man s body, which it feeds and polishes until it is fat, gross,
and cruel/ )
The next step was to mobilize American Negro opinion be
hind a direct protest to the United Nations. At DuBois s behest,
representatives of twenty organizations met in October 1946 at the
Schomburg Collection, a branch of the New York Public Library,
but the responsibility for the petition fell finally to the NAACP,
more specifically to DuBois. His strategy became clear in an
unscheduled appearance before the Association s convention in
Washington in 1947. Since socialism and the United Nations of
fered the principal hopes for backward races, American Negroes,
who by their economic position were closely allied to these colonial
groups, should look to the United Nations and to social reformers
everywhere. After all, was not the American Negro in "quasi-
colonial status"?
The petition to the United Nations, "An Appeal to the World"
(1947), invoked world power against American discrimination.
It took the form of six essays by separate authors: DuBois s intro
duction, two essays by Earl B. Dickerson and Milton R. Konvitz
reviewing the history of the Negro s legal rights since 1787, two
by William R. Ming, Jr., and Leslie S. Perry commenting on pres
ent discriminatory patterns, and one by Rayford W. Logan, ex-
aming the legal basis for U.N. action in protecting a minority. In
his essay DuBois argued that the United States, as part of an
imperialist bloc of private investors defying the wishes of their
peoples, had withdrawn its sympathy from colored peoples and
from small nations. At home it had been deaf to Negro appeals
for equal rights; Mississippi offered more of a threat to America
than Russia. Though the Negro question was "without doubt
primarily an internal and national question," DuBois argued that
as nations drew closer together, it would became a matter of
international concern. Already United Nations delegates were
206 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
suffering affronts when they were mistaken for Negroes. Further
more, thirteen million Negroes were by numbers "one of the con
siderable nations of the world," as populous as Scandinavia, and
larger than Canada. If smaller nations had a direct voice in the
United Nations, then American Negroes had at least the right to
be heard.
A hearing on the appeal was favored by the Soviet Union and
successfully opposed by the United States. This reinforced Du-
Bois s estimate of the Negro s friends and foes. Despite the rebuff,
DuBois continued to support the United Nations because its char
ter provided cogent authority for individual as well as colonial
rights.
Yet, however useful as polemical reinforcement, the United
Nations Charterlike Christianity and American democracy was
not self-enforcing. DuBois was again in the position he had oc
cupied at Atlanta from 1905 to 1910: an argumentative brief made
the Negro s intellectual position stronger, but in action it seemed
curiously irrelevant and had to be backed up by organization and
agitation. After 1946, and especially after the failure of the pe
tition to the United Nations, DuBois directed his support to those
groups in the United States which campaigned in the name of
peace and of friendship for Russia.
Politically this carried DuBois into the new Progressive party.
As the elections of 1946 approached, DuBois argued that the two
major parties gave no opportunity to vote on six essential ques
tions: labor unions, imperialist control of colonial areas, Great
Britain or Russia as an ally, rotten boroughs in the South, lynch
ing, and job discrimination. While Secretary of State Byrnes told
Germany and Russia about American democracy, DuBois said,
both Democrats and Republicans agreed on private greed, graft,
and theft. In such a dilemma DuBois fully endorsed the "excel
lent" platform of the newly formed Progressive Citizens of Amer
ica (and incidentally condemned a "parallel movement," presum
ably the Americans for Democratic Action, for placing its first
emphasis on fighting Communists). At the beginning of 1948, he
called upon his newspaper readers to urge Henry Wallace to run
for President even though his chances for winning were negligible:
better to throw away votes on a great man than to allow other
nations to think that all America could be deceived by the lies
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
of reactionary Republicans and Southern-supported Democrats.
DuBois supported Wallace in part because of his uncompromising
stand on Negro questions, but even more because of his advocacy
of peace and his friendship for Russia. DuBois refused to be di
verted by the charge that communists, socialists, and New Deal
ersgroups indiscriminately regarded by some as subversive-
would support Wallace. On the contrary, DuBois saw that sup
port as an omen encouraging hope, not suspicion. Certainly it
was no more suspicious than support by reaction and militarism. 8
DuBois carried his campaigning even into meetings of the Associ
ation. In June 1948 he told a gathering in Philadelphia that Wal
lace deserved its support because of his courage and because his at
titude toward Negro problems was "satisfactory in every respect."
Wallace s defeat in November ended this gambit. A year and a
half later, when Wallace approved America s armed support of
the Republic of Korea, DuBois wrote off Wallace the crusader
as "Wallace the Weasel." 9 (As vice-chairman of the Council on
African Affairs, DuBois denounced American aid as "foreign inter
vention.")
Two months before the election, DuBois had been dismissed
from his post at the Association. The break came after the press
secured a copy of a memorandum in which DuBois stated that the
Association was abandoning its efforts to ease the world plight of
the Negro in order to serve the interests of the Truman adminis
tration. DuBois attacked Walter White s appointment as a con
sultant to the American delegation to the United Nations General
Assembly in Paris as a political act; White s acceptance of such a
position without making a clear, open public declaration of his
position on Truman s foreign policy, DuBois said, would "in the
long run, align the association with the reactionary, war-monger-
ing colonial imperialism of the present Administration." 10 No
matter who was at fault in allowing this memorandum to slip
out to the newspapers, White would not tolerate this public attack
from a member of his own organization. He asked the Associa
tion s board of directors to dismiss DuBois, and the board did.
Almost immediately DuBois found refuge with the Council on
African Affairs, which gave him an office and a secretary and left
him alone.
208 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
Beginning in March 1949, DuBois took an active part in the
series of international meetings known as the "peace crusade."
Operating outside the usual diplomatic channels, these meetings
were designed to alert world opinion to the dangers of a third
World War and to enroll millions as active "partisans for peace/
Its supporters regarded the crusade as a spontaneous demonstra
tion by millions of people all over the world for whom peace was
the overriding issue of the day; its critics saw it as an oblique
Communist-inspired attack on American foreign policy. Favoring
peace and believing that the United States offered the greatest
threat to it, DuBois had no hesitation in attaching himself to the
movement. Once again an announced pacifist, he hoped that an
international chorus for peace would exorcise the war clouds
present since the defeat of Japan. His peace pilgrimages took him
from a New York meeting in March 1949 to Pa ^is in April and
to Moscow in August. Then in August of the following year he
journeyed to Prague as the guest of the Bureau of the World Con
gress of the Defenders of Peace. At all the meetings he was invari
ably given a place of honor.
The New York meeting, called the Cultural and Scientific
Conference for World Peace, brought together an international
galaxy including two major Russian figures, Dimitri Shostakovich
and Alexander A. Fadeyev. DuBois said later that the conference
"marked an era in the cultural history of the United States." In
a formal address at the conference, DuBois delivered a short but
freshly thought-out statement, "The Nature of Intellectual Free
dom," in which, without accusation or partisanship, he warned
against encroachments on the "gray borderland" between the
necessities of natural law and the legitimate area of fantasy. At
the closing rally at Madison Square Garden, however, he caught
the spirit of the occasion and denounced the United States for
systematic distortion of the purposes of the conference, for lies
about Russia and communism, and for failure to enact civil-rights
legislation. Russia, on the other hand, alone of all modern na
tions, he said, wrote a prohibition of race and color discrimination
into its fundamental law and then enforced it.
At the Paris meeting of the World Congress of the Defenders
of Peace, which he described as "the greatest meeting of men ever
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE 2OQ
assembled in modern times to advance the progress of all men,"
he denounced colonialism as one of the chief causes of war and
as the arch-opponent of the spread of socialism. Of the United
States, he said: "Drunk with power we are leading the world to
hell in a new colonialism with the same old human slavery which
once ruined us, and to a third World War which will ruin the
world." 11 At the All-Russian Peace Congress in Moscow, where
DuBois was the only American present, he summarized his life
time s reading in a brief history of the Negro s relation to indus
try in the United States. The summary was, on the whole, an
optimistic one, for he closed by stressing the gradual advance of
social planning in the United States and the intensity of the de
sire for peace among millions of Americans.
By the time of the Prague meeting of 1950, however, the Ko
rean War had started, and DuBois showed no forebearance. Not
in the fifty years of his experience, DuBois said, had "organized
reaction" in the United States wielded comparable power. By
control of the press and radio, by curtailment of free speech, and
by imprisonment of liberal thinkers, the controlling interests were
inducing Americans to believe in an "imminent danger of aggres
sion from communism, socialism and liberalism" cloaked by the
peace movement. The overwhelming majority of Americans still
hated murder as a means of progress, he said, but it would take
"guts and the willingness to jeopardize jobs and respectability" in
order to "win the peace in America." 12
As a result of these activities for peace DuBois had, by the time
of the Prague conference, already accepted the chairmanship of
the Peace Information Center with headquarters in New York
City. The Center concentrated on two projects: publishing a
periodic "peacegram" telling Americans what other nations were
doing and thinking about war and peace, and collecting signa
tures for the "Stockholm Appeal," an eighty-word petition that
demanded the absolute banning of atomic weapons and strict con
trols for enforcement of the ban. The statement had been origi
nally adopted at a meeting of the World Partisans for Peace in
Stockholm on March 15, 1950. After circulation of the petition
was well under way in the United States, Dean Acheson, then
Secretary of State, denounced it in a public statement as a "propa-
210 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
ganda trick in the spurious peace offensive* of the Soviet Union."
He labeled the Partisans of Peace as a Communist organization,
and he said that the American campaign was being actively pro
moted by the Communist party. DuBois replied immediately by
announcing that 1,000,000 Americans in forty states had signed
the petition, 400,000 since the outbreak of the Korean War. The
following day the House Un-American Activities Committee called
the petition "Communist chicanery/ Three days later DuBois
released a full statement in rebuttal. The Secretary s statement,
DuBois wrote, invited the impression that Americans would use
the atomic bomb in Korea and that the American government felt
no desire for peace. He asked pointedly if a Russian policy of
peace made necessary American insistence on war. He interpreted
the Secretary s statement as meaning that "there is no possibility
of mediating our differences with Russia/ 13 Meanwhile the Cen
ter s director, Abbott Simon, told the New York Times that since
the Center was not affiliated with the World Congress of the De
fenders of Peace, which was circulating the petition elsewhere in
the world, it had no obligation to register with the Attorney-
General. The Center continued its activities until October 12,
and then, probably because of pressure from the Department of
Justice, started to disband.
Meanwhile DuBois had agreed to run for the Senate from New
York on the American Labor party ticket. Despite his eighty-two
years, he welcomed the chance to pursue his campaign for peace
and to help strengthen the ticket on which Vito Marcantonio was
running for the House of Representatives. DuBois ran his cam
paign on two rails: peace and civil rights.* He criticized both
major parties for their unwillingness to enact civil-rights legisla
tion, but spent most of his ten campaign speeches hammering on a
now familiar theme: Hanley and Lehman were both fronts for big
business, which was driving the United States to war. At home,
he said, Americans were bidden to hate Russia when they should
hate war; they were denounced as subversives when they thought
for themselves and as traitors when they attacked segregation in
the Army. Abroad, while the Korean War shook our resources,
* The Times covered DuBois s speeches faithfully rather better, in fact,
than did the Daily Worker.
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE 211
the conspiracy of Big Business and Big Brass looked for ways of
conquering China, Russia, India, and the Balkans; American aid
programs had already opened the door to exploitation of the wage
earners of Greece, Korea, and other nations. Big Business, DuBois
said in perhaps his most violent thrust, "would rather have your
sons dying in Korea than studying in America and asking advanced
questions/ 14 The American spokesman at the United Nations,
former Senator Warren Austin, was "a neurotic, hysterical man,
without self-control or logic"; it was a "disaster" to have him at
that post. The Daily Worker, the Communists New York news
paper, gave DuBois full support in what it called his campaign
against Winthrop W. Aldrich, the chairman of the Chase National
Bank. Even with this backing, DuBois polled less than 4 per cent
of the Senatorial vote; he even fell behind the American Labor
party s candidate for governor.
Always a fighter, DuBois enjoyed the campaign. A resilient
octogenarian, he had lost little of the passion for controversy
which had become a Negro legend. But the focus of his ideas
had by now narrowed. If he was anything, he was a "functional"
leader in foreign policya leader, be it said, whose peace crusades
and sharp words for America brought him relatively few Negro
adherents.
The Extreme "Left" Woos DuBois
DuBois s postwar views drew a curtain over his old feud with
American Communists. In the early iggo s, tempers had been hot.
DuBois s view of American Communist "jackasses" was warmly
reciprocated. A writer in the New Masses noted DuBois s valuable
early scholarly work, but roasted him as a "typical careerist full
of vacillations, hatreds, and pettyfogging," whose accomplish
ments were outweighed by his "high-hat demeanor, his disdain for
the mass, his stewardship of the elite, his reformist-nationalist
darker-race program and his latter-day segregationism." 15 Later
the same year, moderation set in, for the Communists moved into
the era of the Popular Front. Prominent Negro leaders ceased be
ing lickspittles of capitalism and Judases to their race and were
welcomed as allies in the "progressive" fight. In any case, DuBois s
212 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
seclusion in Atlanta absented him from public notice, and there
was no occasion to abuse him. A tardy observer of Black Recon
struction even noted in Science and Society that DuBois had been
the first to break through the traditional interpretation of Re
construction, though J. S. Allen s Marxist volume on the period
was preferred.
DuBois s attitude remained firm. He approved of the Russian
revolution as he always had, but he continued to view cautiously
the tactics and program of the American Communists. In 1936
he welcomed the Popular Front, and the following year he praised
the National Negro Congress as a good outfit lined up with labor
and not with capital. He hoped it would eventually fill a role
comparable to the Indian National Congress. In 1940, when the
Popular Front lost Communist support because of the Nazi-Soviet
Pact, however, the Communists program seemed "fundamentally
wrong" to DuBois, its suggestions for a Negro party "arrant non
sense." Yet when Earl Browder, the Communist leader, was in
dicted for making false statements in connection with a passport,
DuBois condoned Browder s offense as harmless and charged that
Browder was being sent to jail not for lying but for being a Com
munist. One might disagree with Browder s beliefs, DuBois said,
but it was "cowardly evasion" to call them a crime. The issue
was not communism, he insisted, it was the right to free speech and
to free belief, even in communism. The next year DuBois joined a
Citizens Committee to Free Earl Browder.
The second thoughts on both sides paved the way for postwar
amity as Marxist and Communist groups started to woo DuBois.
First, in 1945, the New Masses published DuBois s tribute to Roose
velt s "superb" accomplishments. Then Benjamin J. Davis, Jr.,
reviewed Color and Democracy. He regretted DuBois s "some
what careless and abstract comparison" of the German and Soviet
dictatorships, but he approved as "on the whole correct" DuBois s
central thesis that peace and security were inseparable from colo
nial rights. The book, Davis said, was the best on the colonial
question to come out of the war. The next year, in 1946, the pace
was stepped up. In January DuBois was honored at the New
Masses Annual Awards Dinner; in May the magazine appointed
him as a contributing editor; in September it resurrected his
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
twenty-year-old article on Georgia and headed it with an intro
duction by Herbert Aptheker, who said that future historians
would refer to the recent period of Negro history as "The Age of
DuBois." The Southern Negro Youth Congress followed in Oc
tober by preparing a "book of reverence" signed by all its dele
gates and presenting it to DuBois, the "senior statesman of the
American Negro s liberation struggle," in a ceremony almost re
ligious in tone. During the next year the New Masses continued to
publish articles by DuBois: "Behold the Land," his talk to the
Southern Negro Youth Congress; an attack on Smuts; and a
critique of England s policy in Egypt and the Sudan.
After DuBois s break with the Association in September 1948,
the political left was indignant.* The National Council of the
Arts, Sciences, and Professions denounced the dismissal as "per
secution." Shirley Graham (who later married DuBois) asked
indignantly in Masses and Mainstream how the Association dared
to insult the Negro s "most eminent statesman for half a century,"
and the Daily Worker, terming his dismissal a "reprisal" for hav
ing opposed White, asked editorially if the dismissal meant that
the Association s leaders were turning their backs on the fight for
freedom. Abner W. Perry, a regular columnist for the Worker,
hinted at some "striking [though unspecified] indications" that
the leak to the press of DuBois s memorandum had been engi
neered by his enemies.
DuBois s later career led to new levels of praise. In an article
in 1949 in the National Guardian^ a "progressive" weekly, Ap
theker reviewed DuBois s "half century of distinguished service
to humanity" in which "the promises of youth are the records
of history." Aptheker noted that the unity of theory and practice
in the life of DuBois had led him to praise Marx as the "greatest
of modern philosophers." 16 The Guardian praised DuBois s can
didacy for the Senate in 1950, and the Worker saluted him as the
leader of the "Negro people s movement in this nation" and noted
* According to Wilson Record, the Communist party was anxious to have
a "valuable and safe" man in the Association s national office. "Whether or not
he would have lent himself completely to its purposes inside the NAACP is a
matter for conjecture/ The Negro and the Communist Party (Chapel Hill,
1951), p. 265 n.
214
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
that his candidacy had created a "nationwide stir" despite the slurs
in the New York newspapers, the "reactionary spokesmen of Wall
Street s political stooges." 17 In time for the election the Worker
observed that this "Giant of a Man" gave the voters a chance to
register a strong vote against war parties and for peace and civil
rights a handy condensation of DuBois s campaign speeches.
After DuBois was indicted for his role in the Peace Center, Davis
thundered that the arrest was an attempt to terrorize the Negro,
to take malicious revenge for DuBois s American Labor party
candidacy, and (somewhat anticlimatically) to break up his eighty-
third birthday party. This birthday dinner had been conceived
by DuBois s associates at the Council on African Affairs as a fund-
raising device to maintain the Council and DuBois s connection
with it, and also to set up a publication fund for DuBois s col
lected works. In time for the dinner Aptheker praised DuBois as
the "greatest living American scholar." Meanwhile, in the Na
tional Guardian, Marcantonio called the forthcoming arraign
ment of DuBois the "last outrage against freedom," and Albert E.
Kahn was shocked by the "shameful" treatment of "one of the
greatest living Americans." The final accolade came from Doxey
A. Wilkerson the next year: DuBois was the "recognized Dean of
American Letters/ "
The rapport between DuBois and the extreme left clearly
served the purposes of both. For "Progressives" and Communists,
DuBois s international reputation lent prestige to unpopular pro
grams and gave the impression of support from underprivileged
groups.* In return they gave him responsive audiences, enthusias
tic about his ideas. At a time when the Negro movement in the
United States seemed to have passed far out of his hands, when
even the Negro press was closing its columns, the fine clean print
of well-edited magazines and the applause of approving audi
ences revivified a career that had appeared to be at an end. In
* Aptheker, for example, caught on to DuBois s incidental reference to
American Negroes as "one of the considerable nations of the world" (see p. 206,
above) and used it to demonstrate a "high point in national consciousness
among American Negroes." American Communists, Aptheker said, regarded
this expression as support for their argument that the Negro question was
essentially a question of a minority "nation."
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE 215
1946, for example, he wrote in his Defender column: "Nothing
I have experienced in past years has touched me more deeply"
than the "fire and homage" of the Southern Negro Youth Con
gress. 18 By the time of his dismissal from the Association in 1948,
and in part because of it, DuBois had lost contact with the audi
ences which had once listened. Even before his dismissal, his
column in the Defender had been discontinued with ill feeling
on both sides. His dismissal from the Association closed the pages
of the Crisis and ruled him off the platform at Association conven
tions. Journals of general circulation turned to him infrequently.
His showing in the 1950 Senatorial race, especially his showing in
Harlem, betrayed his weakness; indeed, the fact that he ran be
hind his ticket lent color to the guess that he was the beneficiary
of a hard core of ALP votes in New York City and that he added
few votes on his own. To this fading career his new friends offered
new life.
DuBois, however, appears to have remained master of his own
thoughts; the Party did not set them for him. The alliance con
tinued, at least until 1951, on DuBois s own terms. On major
issues control of atomic energy, civil rights, the Korean War, the
Marshall Plan DuBois s voice sounded like an echo of the party s.
Yet in all probability, DuBois cooperated with Communists be
cause on major issues they agreed with his independent views. As
he said at the four-hour "welcome-home" rally for Paul Robeson
on June 19, 1949, he would be a "fellow-traveler with Communist
or capitalist, with white man or black," as long as "he walks toward
the truth." 19 After all, DuBois had been wary of white imperial
ism before the Russian revolution of 1917; he had been thinking
favorably about socialism at least as early as 1907; he had gone on
record as a pacifist many times.
DuBois made his deviations quite explicit. At the New Masses
Annual Awards Dinner in 1946 he defended the Negro s concern
for the color line in preference to common problems of labor and
poverty: "Our problems are so fundamentally human that they
often underlie the broader but more abstract social problems." 20
His speech at the Moscow peace parley attacked American policy,
but in relatively moderate phrases which actually concluded with
2l6 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
an optimistic forecast. Though he joined Paul Robeson and others
in denouncing the "hysteria-breeding" arrest of the top leaders of
the Communist party, he stubbornly rebuffed Communist efforts
to induce him to testify at their trial.* Even at the burial service
for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the convicted atomic spies, DuBois
limited his participation to a reading of the Twenty-third Psalm.
On the crucial theoretical definition of socialism, DuBois never
approached Marxist orthodoxy. He told the Association s conven
tion in 1947 that the New Deal was just another name for social
ism, and when DuBois s definition in his latest book, In Battle for
Peace, remained similarly clouded, the reviewer for Masses and
Mainstream objected on Marxist grounds. Following current
Communist doctrine, he also took exception to some of DuBois s
remarks about the Negro middle class.
Ententes were an old habit with DuBois; they were tempo
rary attachments, not permanent commitments. As he said in
1948, "With my particular type of thinking and impulse to action,
it was impossible for me to be a party man/ 21 He could be as
irascible with radicals as with liberals at the offices of the Coun
cil on African Affairs, personal contact was about as formal, ten
sion almost as acute, DuBois equally aloof as at the Association.
A kind fate had always made tenacity to conviction possible for
DuBois. At the age of eighty he was not likely to change.
Turning His Back on Race
DuBois s trial gave him an exciting nine months. 22 The indict
ment was handed down by a Washington grand jury on February
9, 1951. The Peace Information Center was charged with failure
to register as an "agent of a foreign principal" as required by the
Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended in 1942;
DuBois and four others were indicted for "failing to cause the
organization" to register. The "foreign principal" involved was
the Committee of the World Congress of the Defenders of Peace
and its successor, the World Peace Council; the bill of particulars
* According to a person close to DuBois, two emissaries from the party
spent most of a day soliciting DuBois s aid as a witness. He refused.
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE 3} 17
made clear that the circulation of the "Stockholm Peace Appeal"
was the main offense.
The indictment stunned the eighty-three-year-old man, whose
only previous brush with the law had been a speeding ticket. As
the news broke, DuBois was planning his marriage to Shirley
Graham his first wife had died the previous yearand complet
ing arrangements for the elaborate birthday dinner planned by
the Council on African Affairs for February 23. Yet though
stunned, he could not have been surprised. For the previous six
months the Justice Department had been urging the Center to
register in order to comply with the law; the Department ex
plicitly avowed that registration was "in no way intended to inter
fere with the operation of the Peace Information Center in its
present program." But DuBois and his associates took the posi
tion that the Center was an American group conceived and op
erated by American citizens "apprehensive lest the growing tension
among the governments of the world burst into a terrible con
flagration which might well snuff out civilization as we know it."
The fact that people elsewhere in the world expressed similar
ideas, the Center held, merely demonstrated that "the minds and
desires of men have always transcended national barriers." A
statement issued by Attorney-General J. Howard McGrath on the
day of the indictment indicated that the Justice Department took
a different view. The Stockholm Appeal was said to serve a two
fold purpose: to promote the "unenforceable" Soviet proposals
concerning atomic energy and to divert attention from Commu
nist "aggression in other forms" by centering attention on the
use of atomic weapons. When the Center s officers persisted in
their refusal to register, the Justice Department turned to the
courts. If convicted, each of the defendants faced a maximum
penalty of a $10,000 fine and five years imprisonment.
The arraignment took place on February 16. The trial date
was set for April 2, but at the request of the defense was repeat
edly deferred. A delay was particularly important to allow both
government and defense attorneys to take a deposition from Jean
LafEtte, secretary of the World Congress of the Defenders of
Peace, the alleged foreign principal. (Though this testimony was
never introduced at the trial, Laffitte denied any connection with
2l8 TOE ECLIPSE OF RACE
the Peace Center: it was not an agent, his organization was not
the principal.)
Meanwhile, DuBois and his new wife made a cross-country
tour to raise funds for the defense. Unintimidated by the gov
ernment s charges, DuBois continued to preach his familiar gospel:
big business was paralyzing democracy by creating a military dic
tatorship; only some form of socialism could preserve the ideals
of a democratic America; nothing could stop communism but
something better than communism; and if disliking the present
state of affairs in America was communism, "then by the living
God, no force of arms, nor power of wealth, nor smartness of in
tellect will ever stop it." Deliberately DuBois avoided softening
his line no compromises, no equivocation, for "I wanted to dispel
in the minds of the government and of the public any lingering
doubt as to my determination to think and speak freely on the
economic foundations of the wars and frustrations of the twen
tieth century/
The trial began on November 8, with Federal Judge Matthew
F. McGuire presiding and with eight Negroes and four whites in
the jury box. Vito Marcantonio served without fee as chief de
fense counsel. After five days in court, Judge McGuire entered a
verdict of acquittal for all five defendants and for the Center. The
prosecution disclaimed any intention of showing that the Soviet
Union was operating behind the Paris committee, but it succeeded
in establishing the parallels between the Center s activities and
those of the World Council for Peace in Paris. Marcantonio in
sisted that parallelism did not establish agency, and on this crucial
point Judge McGuire agreed. The court told the prosecution
that it had to establish a "nexus" beyond a reasonable doubt.
When it failed to establish a direct link between the Peace Center
and the Paris committee, McGuire made his ruling without hear
ing any of the defense. DuBois was free. Poorer, but free.
It is difficult to generalize on the public response to DuBois s
indictment. He could find some support in the Negro press, but
he complained that the Talented Tenth of business and profes
sional men was "either silent or actually antagonistic." An at
tempt to secure the signatures of prominent Negroes to a fairly
mild statement of support did not attract enough signers to war-
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
rant its publication.* The directors of the Association avoided
passing on the merits of the indictment, but noted that it "lends
color to the charge that efforts are being made to silence spokes
men for full equality of Negroes."f The annual convention spun
this theme out at greater length, but took no more definite stand.
Essentially DuBois s support came from American peace groups,
from self-styled "progressive" spokesmen such as the Daily Worker,
the New York Daily Compass, and the National Guardian, and
from "progressive" organizations such as the National Council
of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions. A few labor unions, such
as the Fur and Leather Workers and some locals of the United
Electrical Workers, helped. The greater response came from
abroad: from African and Asian organizations and from Euro
pean spokesmen most likely to support the peace crusades. Du
Bois s own analysis shows the predominance of leftist sympathy:
"clearly my support . . . came from Eastern European Commu
nists, from western European Socialists, from Communist Asia,
from Progressives, Socialists and Communists in the United States,
and from the Left in India and South America. To this would be
appended the colored peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and the
United States, many of whom are conservative."
Almost as soon as the decision was announced, the DuBoises
were at work on a new essay in autobiography, In Battle for Peace,
published in book form nine months later by Masses and Main
stream. The trial had obviously affected DuBois very deeply.
Mulling over the postwar years and his own trial, sorting out
friends and enemies, sifting forces of progress and reaction, he
cut himself loose from the struggle for Negro equality. In the
*In one appeal for signatures P. L. Prattis, editor of the Pittsburgh
Courier, is quoted as saying: "The handcuffs on DuBois are meant to serve
as a GAG on any Negro leadership that is disposed to shoot the works for
freedom." Copies of the appeals issued by the "Friends of Dr. W. E. B. DuBois"
are in the Howard University Library.
f The full resolution read: "Without passing on the merits of the recent
indictment of Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, the board of directors of the NAA.CJ*.
expresses the opinion that this action against one of the great champions of
civil rights lends color to the charge that efforts are being made to silence
spokesmen for full equality of Negroes. The board also reaffirms its determi
nation to continue its aggressive fight for full citizenship rights for all Ameri
cans/
220 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
man s career it was an epochal moment. The last of the great
triumvirate of Negro leaders, the heir to Douglass and successor
to Washington, he abandoned race and aligned his hopes with
the world forces that he saw to be fighting for peace and for the
working classes. In DuBois s view these world forces were best
represented by Russia.
Since DuBois has not assembled the reasons for this change in
a consecutive account, it is necessary to piece them together from
developments of the previous five years. In all probability nothing
contributed as much as DuBois s view that colored leaders, in
America and elsewhere, had abandoned the Negro s cause. In
India poverty and religion were two major barriers to progress;
the third was Indian capitalists "representing the tuition and the
capital of Europe." 23 Liberians were subjected to the "overlord-
ship of a small educated and well-to-do portion of the population,"
and Liberia, he said, was "part of American foreign policy, com
pletely silenced." 24 England shut Ethiopia s mouth, and Haiti
feared the enmity of the United States. DuBois felt that the ma
jority of the American Negro intelligentsia, along with much of
the West Indian and West African leadership, showed "symptoms
of following in the footsteps of western acquisitive society, with its
exploitation of labor, monopoly of land and its resources, and
with private profit for the smart and unscrupulous in a world of
poverty, disease and ignorance, as the natural end of human cul
ture." 25 Four years before, he had publicly begged Jewish for
giveness for the "apparent apostasy" of Ralph J. Bunche (who
won the Nobel Peace Prize for achieving a truce between Israel
and the Arab states) for making the Negro an unwitting partner
to the betrayal of democracy in Israel. Bunche should have "stood
firm against vacillation, compromise, and betrayal by our De
partment of State." 28
The more immediate catalyst which produced DuBois s new
view came from the attitude of Negro leaders to his trial. He
quoted with obvious approval the public comment of another
Negro that "the important Negroes of this country, the headliners,
the highly positioned, the degreed Negroes , . . Negroes who claim
to be race champions and crusaders and fighters and leaders and
uncompromisers to the last ditch actually deserted Dr. DuBois
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE 221
in the hour of his greatest trial. 1 27 The trial, DuBois thought,
made clear the "distinct cleavage" in Negro opinion between the
masses and the Talented Tenth: the latter had become fully
American in defending exploitation, imitating "conspicuous ex
penditure/ and hating communism and socialism. The relaxa
tion of discriminatory pressures had left the Negro free to move
in the wrong direction. More freedom had not led Negroes into
a cemented cultural group helping to create a new haven in
America, he said; it had freed them to ape the worst chauvinism
and "social climbing" of the Anglo-Saxons. Therefore the hope
for the future of the race "lies far more among its workers than
among its college graduates, until the time that our higher train
ing is rescued from its sycophantic and cowardly leadership of to
day, almost wholly dependent as it is on Big Business either in
politics or philanthropy." 28
DuBois s reference to the relaxation of discriminatory pres
sures suggests a second reason for his new view. In his own life
time Negroes had made such tremendous advances in America
that it now seemed a matter of time, not of principle, which sepa
rated them from full equality. Even in this last book, so hostile to
America, he acknowledged what the United States had done "to
contradict and atone for its sins against Negroes," and he ex
pressed the belief that this nation would become a democracy
without a color line. Over the previous few years he had expressed
the same notion to a wide variety of audiences. On the question
"Can the Negro Expect Freedom by 1965?" he predicted in the
Negro Digest that although discrimination would persist in jobs,
Negroes by that time would be well on their way to economic
emancipation.* In a speech delivered just before his dismissal
from the Association in 1948, he reviewed Negro improvement
over the past forty years and praised the Association s share in it.
Later that year much of the same material went into a "progress
report" for the New York Times Magazine, in which DuBois
argued that if the pace of Negro advancement for the past thirty
years could be maintained for another generation, the goal of
* On the other hand, he came to a gloomier conclusion about the same
time in Phylon. The old seesaw: seeing how far the Negro had come, or seeing
how much remained to be done.
222 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
democracy in America would be in sight. In short, the road to
Negro equality was so well laid that it no longer required the ag
gressive supervision which had been DuBois s habit for more than
forty years.
In all these statements, however, there was one reservationa
young Negro could look forward to equality in his lifetime if, and
only if, the United States averted war and moved forward in the
direction of social justice set by the New Deal. These conditions,
DuBois asserted, America was not meeting. The catalog of charges
against a business-dominated government adamant against social
progress and anxious for an anti-Communist war was familiar to
anyone who had followed DuBois through his peace crusades and
his campaign for Senator. Yet in a lucid and relatively temperate
manner, DuBois drew them all together again for his book, In
Battle for Peace. He thought that the boast of equitable distribu
tion of wealth collapsed in the face of the "paradox" that most
laborers got less than was necessary for a decent life, while capital
ists received more than they needed, more than they could spend.
Science and education, two special objects of American pride, were,
he said, being channeled to serve business interests: history was
becoming propaganda, economics was hiding in higher mathe
matics, social study was limited by military objectives, while sci
ence was encouraged mainly for private profit, "thus killing future
scholarship." In short, "The nation was ruled by the National
Association of Manufacturers, the United States Chamber of Com
merce, and like affiliated organizations."
DuBois saw these same conspirators at work in his indictment
and trial. The State Department, he believed, started the prose
cution in order to quell Communists and retard the peace move
ment, which was bothering the Pentagon. The "Military" wel
comed a chance to give a "needed warning to complaining Ne
groes." Actually his belief that the indictment sought to silence
those who spoke for peace (as represented by the Stockholm Ap
peal) had plausibility. Though the judge did not even have to
hear the defense in order to dismiss the indictment, the case had
kept DuBois and associates occupied for the better part of a year,
and their indictment served as a warning to others who might take
up the same cause. To the extent that the United States govern-
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE 223
ment, or the Truman administration, used the machinery of law
either to implement cold-war foreign policy or to harass individ
uals whose unpopular opinions could not be silenced in any other
way, this was a politically motivated indictment.
DuBois s account of the trial itself, however, strains the credu
lity of those whose minds are not similarly grooved. He and his
associates had been duly arraigned after indictment by a grand
jury. They had been released on bail. They had received a delay
to allow essential testimony to be taken in Paris. The case was
heard by a jury of eight Negroes and four whites before a judge
who rigorously excluded testimony about Russia s foreign policy
and decided the case on the narrow grounds of the law concerning
agency. Yet DuBois was amazed to have Negroes on the jury and
"puzzled by the fairness of the judge" who "held the scales of jus
tice absolutely level." His final "considered opinion" was that
Judge McGuire at the last minute freed himself from political
pressures of the moment when he and the State Department real
ized that the eyes of the world centered on this case. Continuous
appeals to President Truman and to the Attorney-General by
private citizens here and abroad were "ignored at the insistence
of the State Department," DuBois said, until the volume of pro
test compelled attention, centered emphasis on the Negro ques
tion, and frightened the Catholic Church. Catholics were fright
ened, DuBois argued, because their proselyting among Negroes
might have suffered since the Attorney-General was a Catholic and
since Marcantonio, the chief defense counsel, had a large Catho
lic constituency.
One looks in vain for direct evidence of this epic in which all
the elements of the reactionary ruling class coordinated their ef
forts in order to persecute DuBois. By 1952 DuBois did not need
proof. Indeed he even spurned proof, for his beliefs had hardened
into dogmas. The sense of personal outrage created by the trial
gave dogma an emotional intensity impervious to the rules of
evidence. As DuBois said while his trial was pending: "Perhaps
you do not realize just the kind of reign of terror under which
anyone who dares to speak for peace or who does not hate Russia
is placed." 29 In such a state of mind, fears appeared everywhere:
DuBois was convinced that he had risked prison by running on
224 TOE ECLIPSE OF RACE
the American Labor party ticket. So had the thousands who had
voted for him. The corruption of American life by a conspiracy
of American capitalists had become DuBois s consuming theme.
He was their victim, and he gave them a victim s hatred.
The blocks for his new program are now almost all in place.
Negro "leaders" no longer lead; they ape the white man s worst
traits. Class structure among Negroes will increase in rigidity as
discrimination decreases. No hope for future progress there. The
course upward is, however, well set. If the line of progress of the
previous fifty years were projected into the future undisturbed,
the Negro would see equality. But that projection is being dis
turbedby American capitalist-imperialists hell-bent on curbing
social welfare and destroying Russia. They are the new enemy.
They have to be fought in an open battle for socialism and for
peace.
In this final development of DuBois s ideas, the trial played a
crucial role, for it made the evil of American "imperialists" very
personal to him. At the same time, the indictment set off an inter
national reaction a very limited reaction in fact, but a world
wide "crusade" in DuBois s view. "Without the help of trade
unionists, white and black, without the Progressives and radicals,
without Socialists and Communists and lovers of peace all over
the world, my voice would now be stilled forever." These groups,
he thought, were fighting for the future, because socialism was the
"one great road to progress," and the first step toward settling the
world s problems was "Peace on Earth."
DuBois knew that people who spoke for peace and socialism
were thought to be friendlier to Russia, the principal enemy of
American foreign policy, than to the United States. No matter:
"I utterly refuse to be stampeded into opposition to my own pro
gram by intimations of dire and hidden motives among those who
offer me support." He was and expected to remain a loyal citizen
of the United States, he said, but he respected and admired the
Soviet Union. He denied that it was traitorous to follow the peace
movement which arose in Russia and found there its chief sup
port; "by the same token," he fought the "war movement in the
United States which is transforming this traditionally peaceful
nation into the greatest warmonger of all history." He singled
THE ECLIPSE OF RACE 225
out for special praise the Russian educational system which in a
generation, he said, had "raised hundreds of millions of debased
serfs out of illiteracy, superstition and poverty to self-respecting,
hard-working manhood." He did not believe the evidence offered
to show that Russia was a nation of slavery, an imperialist ex
ploiting unwilling peoples, a nation faithless to its international
commitments. On essential points peace, socialism, education,
race prejudice Russia, in DuBois s view had no peer. The United
States could expect his loyalty, but Russia won his hopes.
In the years after the trial, however, his hopes for Russia were
entertained fairly privately, for the old man sank into the anonym
ity of retirement. So far he has enjoyed eight more birthdays
without disturbance. The Journal of Negro History reported that
he was searching in Haiti for evidences of his ancestors, and the
public press has occasionally noted his activities. He delivered the
eulogy, a fiery message reminiscent of forty years before, at the
funeral of Vito Marcantonio. He was mentioned in the New York
Times when the Council on African Affairs disbanded. He tried
without success to speak on desegregation at Leavittown, New
York, and invited (also without success) William Faulkner to
debate desegregation with him. He had his say in the Nation on
Democrats and Republicans in the 1956 election: a plague on
both your imperialist houses. He was one of the sponsors of the
American Forum for Socialist Education. When the Schomburg
Collection unveiled a bust of DuBois in the spring of 1957, Kwame
Nkrumah, the first premier of Ghana, gave him a most generous
tribute. Recalling that for over fifty years DuBois had been in the
front rank of those who fought against imperialism and against
notions of white supremacy, Nkrumah called attention to the
debt which Africans and their descendants owed their American
friend. 30 On the occasion of Ghana s independence celebration in
May 1957, Nkrumah invited DuBois as an official guest, but Du
Bois could not attend because the State Department denied him a
passport when he refused to sign a non-Communist affidavit. Re
cently, in his ninetieth year he published the first volume of a
trilogy, The Black Flame, an extended fictional work interpret
ing Negro history from Reconstruction times to the present. In
his late eighties he appeared to have discovered the elixir of life.
226 THE ECLIPSE OF RACE
The celebration of his ninetieth birthday was the occasion for a
testimonial dinner in New York and for lecture engagements else
where. The venerable old fighter went through this demanding
program with the vigor of a man thirty years younger. The clipped
speech, the carefully prepared manuscript, and the deadly invec
tive, long his trademarks, were still much in evidence, and he was
careful not to take back a word of what he had been preaching
for over a decade. If anything, he sharpened his barbs and spoke
with new vigor, confident that history would vindicate him. His
audiences paid him the deference due to a distinguished pioneer,
but showed little disposition to follow his lead. The old spirit is
there, but not a shadow of the old influence.
IX
THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH
In his own lifetime DuBois has become an almost mythical
figure, and no one has contributed to this myth more sedulously
than DuBois himself. In one autobiographical essay after another,
he has reconstructed the heroic figure of an austere man of prin
ciple fighting a universal battle for the right against an ignorant
or hostile world. Darkwater lists a parade of triumphs culminat
ing in his appointment to the editorial chair at the Crisis. Dusk
of Dawn sets DuBois s life in a setting of world history: "Crucified
on the vast wheel of time," he "flew round and round with the
Zeitgeist." His review of his career on his seventieth birthday pays
tribute to the clarity of his own thought: he was "proud of a
straightforward clearness of reason, in part the gift of the gods,
but also to no little degree due to scientific training and inner
discipline." 1 One of his columns in the Defender refers to his
program in 1900 as "an absolutely correct scientific procedure,
foolproof." 2 In his angry book, In Battle for Peace, no less than
a regiment of influential Americans attempt to destroy him. All
battles become titanic struggles, all disagreements monstrous con
spiracies, all successes epochal contributions. His flimsiest work
John Brown and Dark Princess must be especially defended lest
the master appear to have moments of failure. Myth heroes are
not permitted to know failure. If they meet defeat, it must be
a cosmic defeat, a twilight of the gods.
DuBois s own view of himself reappears in the accounts by
others. For those to whom his name has any meaning he is the
great Negro scholar and writer, the uncompromising lonely pio
neer for Negro rights who inexplicably deserted the fight in 1934,
the race s great spokesman after the death of Booker T. Washing
ton and perhaps for twelve years before. The political left has
exalted his position for its own purposes: Aptheker referring to
"The Age of DuBois" and commenting: "How few are those of
one may say, after sixty years, that the promises of youth
228 THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH
are the records of history!"; 3 Shirley Graham speaking of the
DuBois of 1912 as a voice "crying in the wilderness"; 4 Wilkerson
promoting him to "Dean of American Letters/ 5 But even writers
without an ax to grind have served the myth. Van Wyck Brooks
passes along DuBois s account of himself as James s favorite pupil; 6
the first edition of John Gunther s Inside U.S.A. compares Du-
Bois s position "the most venerable and distinguished of lead
ers in his field" to that of Albert Einstein and George Bernard
Shaw. 7 (This was deleted from the revised edition.) Edwin R.
Embree s sketch in 75 Against the Odds draws heavily on DuBois s
own view of himself in Darkwater and Dusk of Dawn. Even Henry
Steele Commager in 1948 states that DuBois "today perhaps best
represents the aspirations of the American Negro" 8 this at a time
when DuBois was moving steadily away from the main stream of
Negro thought and action. Redding says that "only Carlyle stands
comparison" with DuBois s "combination of scholarship and emo
tional power woven into bolts of symbolism." 9 A young Negro
scholar, Youra Quails, finds the universality of A Pilgrim s Progress
in Dusk of Dawn. And William Stanley Braithwaite, the critic
and anthologist, predicts that "The career of W. E. Burghardt
DuBois will reflect a light across the memory of man as long as
man seeks and reveres the ideals of Justice and Liberty, of In
telligence and Beauty." 11
These appraisals need revision. The bulk of DuBois s scholarly
articles and books commands attention, but no single work, ex
cept The Philadelphia Negro, is first-class. The diffusion of his
talents thereafter prevented DuBois from focusing his energy on a
single coherent work carried through to a successful conclusion.
Black Reconstruction will be remembered, but more because of
its eccentric racist-Marxist interpretations than because of its as
semblage of new material. The Negro, Black Folk Then and Now,
The World and Africa all possess some information, but nothing
which indicates the mind or hand of an original scholar. A judg
ment on DuBois s qualities as a writer moves into the difficult area
where judgment can not rise much above the level of taste, but it
seems unlikely that DuBois will be remembered as a literary artist.
Indeed when he is being most consciously literary in his random
THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH
poems and short stories and in his two novels he is least success
ful. He is at his best writing the language of analysis and of con
troversy, when trip-hammer sentences could be suddenly broken
by a graphic metaphor: The Negro s task in 1930 "is the double
and dynamic function of timing in with a machine in action so as
neither to wreck the machine nor be crushed or maimed by it."
As a writer DuBois never surpassed the month-to-month prose of
his editorials on social, political, and economic topics in the Crisis.
His reputation as a writer will rest more on the Crisis than on his
forays into belles lettres.
A review of DuBois s career also suggests that 1934 was less
surprising a turning point than is generally assumed. When
DuBois broke with the Association and recommended Negro
separatism, he was carrying to their logical conclusion racist tend
encies apparent in his thought since his days in Great Barrington.
The depression, coming after DuBois s disaffection from white
liberals and his failure to locate colored and working-class allies,
provided the catalyst for an explicit acceptance of voluntary segre
gation, but the roots of separatism went deep, and racial national
ism was never far from the surface of his philosophy. If there was
a sharp break in DuBois s ideas, it came not in 1934, when he
separated from the Association, but in 1952, when he abandoned
the struggle for Negro rights to concentrate on world movements
for peace and socialism.
Finally, the nature of DuBois s leadership must be redefined
Longevity and productivity have given him a quantitative claim
hard to match. Because there is a written record, of substantial
size, of what he has thought, he has an advantage over other, less
prolix, Negro leaders who have left a less traceable trail. It is im
portant to remember that DuBois s position was less that of a
pioneer than that of the first among equals: Trotter preceded him
in fighting Washington, as did Ida Wells-Barnett; the Association
brought Negroes and white men together in an entente in which
DuBois shared influence with others, first with Villard and Spin-
garn, later with Johnson and White. By the time of the second
Amenia conference in 1933, DuBois was being rejected, by-passed
by a new generation with ideas of its own. Furthermore, as
230 THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH
Bunche has pointed out, Negroes were rather less conscious of
their leaders than the pronunciamentoes of those leaders would
lead others to believe.
DuBois s significance will emerge more clearly if the extrava
gant claims made by him and for him are scuttled. His position
depends not on his scholarly and literary work; it does not require
a consistent thirty-year record of working for integration against
rapacious "Uncle Tom" Negroes and stubborn whites; it does not
need an omnivorous concept of leadership which makes Negro
history hinge on one man.
DuBois s importance to the Negro s history in American so
ciety lies in two achievements: First, for thirty years he made him
self the loudest voice in demanding equal rights for the Negro and
in turning Negro opinion away from the acceptance of anything
less. Whatever private racist notions may have contradicted this
line of thought, DuBois s principal public statements from the
publication of The Souls of Black Folk until 1933 hammered away
at America s conscience and at the Negro s pride, arguing, cajoling,
threatening, retreating when necessary, advancing when possible.
Many weapons came to his hands history, fact, fiction, invective,
even humor. They all served one central purpose. His conceit
and arrogance gave him cushions against abuse: he could ignore
it, or relish it. From his pen came the arguments for others. When
he left the road which he had done so much to pave, many other
Negroes were well enough trained in his tradition to continue the
work. One cannot say that the Negro s progress since 1903 is a
result of DuBois s agitation DuBois s ideas belonged to others as
well, and many forces other than agitation have contributed to
the Negro s advance in fifty years. But it is fair to say that DuBois
in these years pointed the way for the Negro, not by his futile
searches for extranational allies, but by steady refusal to accept
or to allow the Negro to accept less than his full rights as an
American.
DuBois s second achievement lies in his service to the Negro s
morale. When Washington was training Negro youth for manual
work, DuBois held high the ideal of a liberal education. When
Washington measured civilization in material terms, DuBois re
minded his people of Socrates and Saint Francis. As a younger
THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH 231
generation grew up, it matured in the atmosphere which DuBois
helped to create: it could not ignore and it frequently had to sup
port his insistence on the ideal of full citizenship. At home, and
abroad as well, his writings gave colored men courage for their
fight. His monthly editorials held up the strong, recharged the
wavering, and flayed the compromisers. The Crisis became the
record of Negro achievement; its columns gave recognition to
success in every field, and young artists could find there a place
for their creations. In this context, even DuBois s aloofness be
came an asset; it removed him in Negro eyes from everyday life
and, by giving him a transcendent quality, it raised the goal of
aspiration. The austere Dr. DuBois reminded Negro intellectuals
that courage and talent could carry a man and a race far.
In performing these two functions, propagandizing for equal
ity and inspiring younger Negroes, DuBois achieved enough sig
nificance for one lifetime. It is not necessary to gild the lily with
myths.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The two most important sources for the study of W. E. B. DuBois
are his collected papers and his published work. His papers, which
are in his own possession, are now closed to outside students and
presumably will remain so until his wife, Shirley Graham DuBois,
completes her authorized biography of him. His published work
is extensive: 18 books, more than 20 long pamphlets, hundreds of
editorials in Horizon and Crisis, hundreds of columns in Negro
newspapers, and an even larger number of articles in learned jour
nals, periodicals of general circulation, and magazines under his
own control. A partial bibliography of his published work up to
1952 is available at the Widener Library, Harvard University, and
at the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library.
The Schomburg Collection has a handful of DuBois letters, a
folder of his speeches given from 1947 to 1949, several volumes of
newspaper clippings on DuBois, and a substantial vertical file of
miscellaneous references to him. It also has some letters to and
from Francis J. Garrison in which there is relevant material on
DuBois and on Booker T. Washington; the John Edward Bruce
Papers and the Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, which touch on
DuBois in his post-Germany period; and a few Washington letters.
At Harvard University, the sources listed on p. 238 give informa
tion about his student days. At Yale University, two DuBois
manuscripts and a file of correspondence with Joel Spingarn are
available in the James Weldon Johnson Collection. The Spingarn
letters throw light on DuBois s relations with the National As
sociation for the Advancement of Colored People. Further in
formation on this topic appears in the well-organized Oswald
Garrison Villard Papers at the Houghton Library, Harvard Uni
versity; see, for example, his correspondence with Mary White
Ovington. The annual reports of the NAACP, the minutes of its
board of directors, and its correspondence files, all available at
234 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
the national headquarters in New York, are surprisingly en
lightening.
The conflict with Washington is best approached through the
Booker T. Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, a vast
collection now well catalogued and very rewarding. Samuel R.
Spencer, Jr., Booker T. Washington and the Negro s Place in
American Life (Boston, 1955), is the best biography of Washing
ton, fair to both Washington and DuBois. August Meier, who has
done intensive work in the Washington papers, has opened a new
era of understanding Washington with his three articles: "Booker
T. Washington and the Negro Press: With Special Reference to
the Colored American Magazine," Journal of Negro History,
XXXVIII, 67-90 (January 1953); "Booker T. Washington and
the Rise of the NAACP," Crisis, LXI, 69-76, 117-23 (February
1954); and "Toward a Reinterpretation of Booker T. Washing
ton," Journal of Southern History, XXIII, 220-27 (May 1957).
The Ray Stannard Baker Papers at the Library of Congress have
much to say on the Negro question in general, and on DuBois
and Washington in particular.
Elliott M. Rudwick s thoughtful manuscript study of DuBois,
"W. E. B. DuBois: A Study in Minority Group Leadership" (type
script Ph.D. dissertation, 1956, University of Pennsylvania), is
based on research in manuscript materials and quotes extensively
from them. L. M. Collins, "W. E. B. DuBois s Views on Educa
tion" (Master s essay, Fisk University, 1937), and Mary M. Drake,
"W. E. Burghardt DuBois as a Man of Letters" (Master s essay,
Fisk University, 1934), summarize their topics uncritically.
Among the general studies, none compares in range and in
quantity of information with Gunnar Myrdal, An American Di
lemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (2 vols.;
New York, 1944). Ralph J. Bunche prepared two splendid study
papers for the Myrdal study in 1940: "Extended Memorandum
on the Programs, Ideologies, Tactics and Achievements of Negro
Betterment and Interracial Organizations" and "A Brief and Ten-
ative Analysis of Negro Leadership"; both are available in type
script at the Schomburg Collection. John Hope Franklin, From
Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes (New York,
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 335
1947); Benjamin Brawley, The Negro in Literature and Art in
the United States (gd ed.; New York, 1929); Sterling D. Spero
and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker: The Negro and the
Labor Movement (New York, 1931); Herbert R. Northrup, Or
ganized Labor and the Negro (New York, 1944); E. Franklin
Frazier, The Negro in the United States (New York, 1949); and,
for the earlier period of DuBois s career, Rayford W. Logan, The
Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, iSjj-iyoi
(New York, 1954), are the standard works in their fields. Abram
Kardiner and Lionel Ovesey, The Mark of Oppression: A Psycho-
social Study of the American Negro (New York, 1951), and Frazier,
The Black Bourgeoisie (Glencoe, Illinois, 1957), are incisive works
with important implications for my study. Herbert Aptheker, A
Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States
(New York, 1951), is a well edited and valuable collection; Du
Bois s twenty-fifth birthday dedication and the "Declaration of
Principles" of the Niagara Movement are both reprinted there in
full. Several articles and books may be mentioned as giving views
of DuBois not available elsewhere: Aptheker, "The Washington-
DuBois Meeting of 1904," Science and Society, XIII, 344-51 (fall,
i949)-an article based on research in the DuBois papers; John
Henry Adams, "Rough Sketches: William Edward Burghardt
DuBois/ Voice of the Negro, II, 176-81 (March 1905); Ray Stan-
nard Baker, Following the Color Line (Garden City, 1908); V. F.
Calverton, "The New Negro/ Current History, XXIII, 694-98
(February 1926); Roger Didier, "The Ordeal of DuBois," Pitts
burgh Courier Magazine Section, May 25, 1957, pp. 4-6; James
Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (New York, 1933); J. Saunders
Redding, "Portrait: W. E. Burghardt DuBois," American Scholar,
XVIII, 93-96 (winter, 1948); T. G. Standing, "Nationalism in
Negro Leadership," American Journal of Sociology, XL, 180-92
(September 1934); George Streator, "A Negro Scholar," Common
weal, XXXIV, 31-34 (May 2, 1941); Ridgely Torrence, The Story
of John Hope (New York, 1948).
Finally the Negro press, which must be consulted regularly at
all points. In the early period, for example, the Boston Guardian
on one side and the New York Age and the Southern Workman
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
on the other give insight into the Washington-DuBois controversy,
and after 1910 the more popular national newspapers like the Pitts
burgh Courier, the Chicago Defender, and the Cleveland Gazette
supply a running chronicle of Negro life.
A substantial part of my own notes on DuBois, on file at the
Schomburg Collection, are available to other scholars with no re
strictions other than those imposed by my sources.
NOTES
Chapter I
1. This account of DuBois s early life is based on unpublished material in
the W. E. B. DuBois papers in Dr. DuBois s possession, and on his published
autobiographical accounts, especially Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an
Autobiography of a Race Concept (New York, 1940); The Souls of Black Folk:
Essays and Sketches (Chicago, 1903), especially Chapter VI; Darkwater: Voices
From Within the Veil (New York, 1921), pp. 5-23; "My Evolving Program for
Negro Freedom," in Rayford W. Logan, ed., What the Negro Wants (Chapel
Hill, 1944), pp. 31-70; A Pageant in Seven Decades, 1868-1938, pamphlet, n.p.,
n.d.; "From McKinley to Wallace: My Fifty Years as a Political Independent,"
Masses and Mainstream, I, vi, 3-13 (August 1948); and various newspaper col
umns written during the course of a long life.
2. DuBois, "My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom," p. 32.
3. DuBois, Darkwater, p. 10; "Harvard and Democracy/ typescript of
speech, n.d., DuBois papers.
4. DuBois, A Pageant in Seven Decades, 1868-1938, p. 2.
5. DuBois, Darkwater, p. 17.
6. Crisis (New York), XXIII (April 1922), 248.
7. New York Globe, April 12, 1884, October 20, 1883, May 17, 1884, May 3,
1883, June 2, 1883; New York Freeman, December 27, 1884, January 10, 1885;
New York Globe, April 14, 1883, September 29, 1883.
8. DuBois, "My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom," p. 35.
9. New York Globe, September 8, 1883.
10. New York Globe, October 18, 1884.
11. DuBois, "My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom," p. 36.
12. Ibid., p. 36; Dusk of Dawn, p. 24.
13. DuBois, ms. of untitled, undated oration at Fisk, DuBois paper.
14. DuBois, "My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom," p. 37.
15. Catalogue of . . . Fisk University . . . 1884-1885, Nashville, 1885, p. 5.
16. Catalogue of . . . Fisk University . . . 1887-1888, Nashville, 1888, p. 42.
17. DuBois, "Diuturni Silenti," ms. of speech, 1924, DuBois papers; re
printed in the Fisk Herald, XXXHI (1924), 1-12.
18. These letters are in the "W. E. B. DuBois, Class of 1810" folder in the
Harvard University Archives.
19. DuBois, "What the Negro Will Do," ms. of unpublished article, Feb
ruary 4, 1889, DuBois papers; written in reply to George Washington Cable, "A
Simpler Southern Question," Forum, VI, 392-403 (December 1888).
20. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York,
*955)> P- 30-
2g8 NOTES TO CHAPTER I
21. DuBois, "Political Serfdom," ms. of speech at Fisk, ca. 1887, DuBois
papers.
22. Quoted in Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Washington, D.C.,
1948), P. 335-
23. DuBois, "Harvard and Democracy."
24. "W. E. B. DuBois, Class of 1890," folder.
25. DuBois to Evarts Scudder, February 3, 1886, DuBois papers.
26. DuBois, Dusk of Dawn, p. 33.
27. DuBois, "What the Negro Will Do."
28. DuBois, "The Renaissance of Ethics: a critical comparison of scholastic
and modern ethics," ms., 1899, James Weldon Johnson Collection, Yale Univer
sity Library.
29. DuBois, account book and diary, 1888-90, and scrapbook fragment, ca.
1891, DuBois papers.
30. This discussion of DuBois s academic work at Harvard is derived from
successive issues of the Harvard University Catalogue, Cambridge, 1888-92;
Registrar s Records, "Record of the Class of 1890," p. 314; the "Record of the
Graduate Department, 1888 [sic] 9 at the office of the Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences; and the "W. E. B. DuBois, Class of 1890," folder.
31. DuBois, Dusk of Dawn , p. 39.
32. DuBois, "Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization," ms., 1890,
DuBois papers; Nation, LI (July 3, 1890), 15.
33. DuBois, "Harvard and the South," ms. of commencement "part," June
1891, DuBois papers.
34. Herbert B. Adams, "The American Historical Association in Washing
ton," Independent, XLIV (January 7, 1892), 10.
35. DuBois, A Pageant in Seven Decades, 1868-1938, p. 8.
36. Cleveland Gazette, November 4, 1893.
37. Instructor s note on DuBois, "Hunted Mouse/ December 11, 1890,
DuBois papers.
38. Robert Morss Lovett, "DuBois," Phylon, II (third quarter, 1941), 214.
39. DuBois, "What the Negro Will Do."
40. DuBois, "A Vacation Unique," ms. dated June 1889, DuBois papers.
41. DuBois, account book and diary, 1888-1890.
42. DuBois, "A Vacation Unique."
43. DuBois, "Comments on My Life," typescript, ca. 1943, DuBois papers;
Dusk of Dawn, p. 38; A Pageant in Seven Decades, 1868-1938, p. 7.
44. The comment is on the paper, "The Renaissance of Ethics."
45. DuBois, "Harvard and Democracy."
46. DuBois, "My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom," p. 33.
47. DuBois, "Comments on My Life."
48. DuBois, A Pageant in Seven Decades, 1868-1938, p. 10.
49. DuBois, "Harvard in Berlin," diary fragment, November-December,
1892, DuBois papers.
NOTES TO CHAPTER II
50. DuBois, diary, February 23, 1893, DuBois papers.
51. DuBois to the Slater Fund Trustees, undated, ca. April 1893, DuBois
papers.
52. These comments are all written on the paper, "The Renaissance of
Ethics."
53. See note 52, above.
54. DuBois, Dark-water, p. 20.
Chapter II
1. DuBois to John A. W. Dollar, ca. 1896, DuBois papers.
2. DuBois, Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil (New York, 1921),
p. 18.
3. Catalogue of Wilberforce University, 1894-189$ (Jefferson, Ohio, 1895),
p. 20; Frederick A. McGinnis, A History and an Interpretation of Wilberforce
University (Wilberforce, Ohio, 1941), p. 162.
4. DuBois, diary, February 23, 1896, DuBois papers.
5. DuBois, ms. fragment of a short story about a young professor at "Burg-
hardt University," ca. 1895, DuBois papers.
6. DuBois, "The Enforcement of the Slave-Trade Laws," Annual Report
of the American Historical Association -for the Year 1891 (52d Congress, ist
Session, Senate Miscellaneous Document f no. 173), Washington, D.C., 1892, p.
174.
7. Herbert B. Adams, "The American Historical Association in Washing
ton," Independent, XLIV (January 7, 1892), 10.
8. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Mod
ern Democracy (New York, 1944), p. 1132.
9. DuBois, "Sociology Hesitant/* ms. of speech, ca. 1904, DuBois papers.
10. Thorstein Veblen, "Gustav Schmoller," Quarterly Journal of Eco
nomics, XVI (November 1901), 70.
11. DuBois, "Schmoller u. Wagner Notebook," 1893-94, DuBois papers,
12. DuBois, "The Study of Negro Problems," Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science } XI (January 1898), 16.
13. DuBois, "Reconstruction and Its Benefits," American Historical Re
view, XV (July 1910), 799.
14. Anon., "DuBois s Slave-Trade," Nation, LXIH (December 31, 1896),
499-500.
15. Howard W. Odum, American Sociology (New York, 1951), pp. 339-40.
16. DuBois, "Fifty Years Among the Black Folk," New York Times, De
cember 12, 1909, 6:4.
17. DuBois, "The Negro South and North," Bibliotheca Sacra, LXII (July
1905)* 5"-
18. DuBois to the school children of Indianapolis, April 7, 1908, DuBois
papers.
240 NOTES TO CHAPTER III
19. DuBois, "The Meaning of Business," ms. of speech, Chicago, 1898,
DuBois papers.
20. DuBois, "The Talented Tenth," in Booker T. Washington et al. t The
Negro Problem (New York, 1903), pp. 63, 33.
21. DuBois, "Carlyle," ms. of speech, undated, ca. 1895, DuBois papers.
22. Catalogue of Atlanta University . . . 1898-1899, Atlanta, 1899, pp. 7, 13.
23. DuBois, "Careers Open to College-Bred Negroes," in Two Addresses
Delivered by Alumni of Fisk University . . . , pamphlet, Nashville, 1898, pp.
7-12.
24. These prayers, undated, are in the DuBois papers.
25. DuBois, The Conservation of Races (American Negro Academy, Occa
sional Papers, II), pamphlet, Washington, 1897, passim.
Chapter III
1. DuBois, Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil (New York, 1921),
P- *3-
2. DuBois, "The Twelfth Census and the Negro Problems," Southern
Workman, XXIX (May 1900), 307-9.
3. Horace Bumstead to DuBois, April 6, 1907, DuBois papers.
4. Edward T. Ware to DuBois, January 28, 1909, DuBois papers.
5. Frank W. Taussig to DuBois, May 10, 1907, DuBois papers.
6. William Fremont Blackman, review of DuBois, ed., The Negro Artisan
(Atlanta, 1902), in Yale Review, XII (August 1903), 221-22; J. A. TilHnghast,
in Political Science Quarterly, XIX (December 1904), 701.
7. Anon., review of DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, 1903), in
Nation, LXXVL (June 11, 1903), 481.
8. Walter F. Willcox to DuBois, March 13, 1904; DuBois to Willcox, March
29, 1904, DuBois papers.
9. DuBois, "The Souls of White Folk," Independent, LXIX (August 18,
1910), 342.
10. Washington [D.C.] Colored American, February 21, 1903.
11. Washington to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Conference, Char
lotte, N.C., May 9, 1912; quoted in E. Davidson Washington, ed., Selected
Speeches of Booker T. Washington (Garden City, N.Y., 1932), pp. 208-12.
12. J. Saunders Redding, They Came in Chains (The Peoples of America
Series) (Philadelphia, 1950), p. 197.
13. Quoted in DuBois, ed., The Negro Artisan, p. 5.
14. DuBois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race
Concept (New York, 1940), p. 55.
15. Washington speech is reprinted in E. D. Washington, ed., Selected
Speeches of Booker T. Washington, pp. 60-77; DuBois, "Carlyle," ms. of speech,
undated, ca. 1895, DuBois papers.
16. See p. 51, above.
NOTES TO CHAPTER III 241
17. DuBois to Washington, July 12, 1899, Booker T. Washington Papers,
Library of Congress; DuBois, ed., The Negro in Business (Atlanta, 1899), p. 11.
18. DuBois, ed., The Negro Artisan, p. 8.
19. DuBois, "The Religion of the American Negro," New World, IX (De
cember 1900), 622-23.
20. DuBois, "The Evolution of Negro Leadership/ Dial, XXXI (July i,
54-55-
21. James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (New York, 1935), p. 203.
22. Colored American, February 21, 1903.
23. Southern Workman,XXXL (June 1903), 262-65.
24. Cleveland Gazette, May 16, 1903.
25. DuBois to Clement Morgan, October 19, 1903, DuBois papers.
26. DuBois, "Possibilities of the Negro: The Advance Guard of the Race/
Booklover s Magazine, II (July 1903), 7.
27. DuBois, "The Negro Problem From the Negro Point of View: V. The
Parting of the Ways," World Today, VI (April 1904), 522.
28. DuBois, "The Joy of Living," ms. of speech in Washington, June 1904,
DuBois papers.
29. DuBois, "The Hampton Idea," Voice of the Negro, in (September
1906), 632-35 and passim.
30. DuBois to Miller, November 2, 1903, DuBois papers.
3*. DuBois to Miller, February 25, 1903, DuBois papers.
32. The circular is in the DuBois papers.
33. For a view of this conference favorable to DuBois, see Aptheker, "The
Washington-DuBois Conference of 1904," Science and Society, XIII (fall, 1949),
344-5*.
34. DuBois, "Debit and Credit," Voice of the Negro, II (January 1905), 677.
35. DuBois, "The Talented Tenth," in Booker T. Washington et al., The
Negro Problem (New York, 1903), pp. 58-59, 61, 73-74.
36. DuBois, "The Case for the Negro," ms. of unpublished article, 1901,
DuBois papers.
37. DuBois, "The Value of Agitation," Voice of the Negro, IV (March
1907), no.
38. Elliott M. Rudwick, "The Niagara Movement," Journal of Negro His
tory, XLIII (July 1957), 177-200, is steeped in manuscript and newspaper ma
terial.
39. The Niagara Movement, Declaration of Principles, 1905, pamphlet,
n.p., n.d., Schomburg Collection, New York Public Library. The text of the
declaration is reprinted in Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the
Negro People in the United States (New York, 1951), pp. 901-4.
40. Joseph Summers to DuBois, August 4, 1909, DuBois papers.
41. Mary White Ovington to DuBois, April 24, 1908, DuBois papers.
42. Washington to Charles W. Anderson, December 30, 1905, Washington
papers.
242 NOTES TO CHAPTER IV
43. J. B. Watson, "Recalling 1906," Crisis, XLI (April 1934), 100.
44. DuBois, "A Litany at Atlanta," Independent, LXI (October 11, 1906),
856-58.
45. DuBois, "Negro Ideals," ms. of speech, 1907, DuBois papers.
46. DuBois, "Marrying of Black Folk/ Independent, LXIX (October 13,
1910), 812-13.
47. DuBois, "The Negro and the YMCA," Horizon, V (March 1910), v, 3.
48. DuBois, "The Economic Aspects of Race Prejudice," Editorial Review,
II (May 1910), 48^-93.
49. This account summarizes DuBois s articles in Horizon, IV (July-Octo
ber 1908), i-iv.
50. DuBois, "The Free Coinage Controversy Today," ms. of speech, ca.
1896, DuBois papers.
51. Horizon, I (February 1907), ii, 7-8.
52. Emmett J. Scott to Washington, November 30, 1909, Washington
papers.
53. Ridgely Torrence, The Story of John Hope (New York, 1948), p. 162.
Chapter IV
1. The call is reprinted in its entirety in Ovington, How the National Asso~
elation -for the Advancement of Colored People Began, pamphlet, New York,
1914, pp. 3-4.
2. DuBois, "National Committee on the Negro/ Survey, XXII (June 12,
1909), 409.
3. Ibid.
4. New York Evening Post, April i, 1910.
5. DuBois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race
Concept (New York, 1940), p. 225; ms. of A Pageant in Seven Decades, 1868-
1938, pamphlet, n.p., n.d.; Crisis, I (November 1910), i, 10.
6. Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd, eds., The Public Papers of
Woodrow Wilson (3 vols., New York, 1926), II, 5.
7. DuBois, "The Forward Movement," ms. of speech, October 1910, DuBois
papers.
8. DuBois to John E. Bruce, September 27, 1911, John Edward Bruce Pa
pers, Schomburg Collection.
9. Crisis, VIII (May 1914), 26.
10. Ibid., I (November 1910), i, 10.
11. 7&iVf., 10-11.
12. Ibid. (January 1911), iii, 21.
13. Ibid^IV (August 1912), 181.
14. C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (New York, 1938),
p. 426.
15. Quoted in Alexander Walters, My Life and Work (New York, 1917),
P- 195-
NOTES TO CHAPTER IV 243
16. Crisis, JX (February 1915), 181.
17. DuBois to Walter Hines Page, March 18, 1903, DuBois papers.
18. Crisis, IV (July 1912), 131.
19. Ibid. (September 1912), 234.
20. Ibid., II (October 1911), 243-44.
21. Ibid., VIII (July 1914), 124.
22. Ibid.,XI (November 1915), 28.
23. Mary White Ovington, The Walls Came Tumbling Down (New York,
1947), p. 108.
24. DuBois to Villard, March 18, 1913, Villard papers.
25. Villard to Joel Spingarn, March 20, 1913, Villard papers.
26. Spingarn to DuBois, October 24, 1914, Johnson Collection. This copy
in the Spingarn papers is a first draft corrected from memory somewhat later.
27. DuBois to Spingarn, October 28, 1914, Johnson Collection.
28. Minutes of the Board of Directors of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, January 3, 1916. The minutes are at the
NAACP office hi New York. Hereafter cited "NAACP Board minutes."
29. Quoted in Crisis, III (March 1912), 202.
30. DuBois, "The Great Northwest," ibid., VI (September 1913), 238.
31. DuBois, "The Immediate Program of the American Negro," ibid,., IX
(April 1915), 310-12.
32. DuBois, "The Economic Future of the Negro/ Publications of the
American Economic Association, 3d series, VII (February 1906), 230, 239.
33. E. H. Clement to DuBois, December 18, 1907; DuBois to Clement, De
cember 30, 1907, DuBois papers.
34. DuBois, "The Social Evolution of the Black South," American Negro
Monograph, I (March 1911), iv, especially 7-10.
35. Crisis,! (February 1911), iv, 20.
36. Ibid.,V (February 1913), 184-86.
37. Ibid.,XIV (August 1917), 166.
38. 7&t d.,XVII (January 1919), 112-13.
39. DuBois et al., "Race Relations in the United States," press release, Oc
tober 26, 1910, DuBois papers.
40. Crisis,V (April 1913), 291.
41. Ibid., I (February 1911), iv, 20; II (September 1911), 196-97; II (May
)* 19-
42. Ibid.,II (September 1911), 195.
43. Ibid., XII (October 1916), 270-71.
44. Ibid., XIII (December 1916), 63.
45. Ibidem (November 1914), 28-30.
46. DuBois, "The African Roots of War," Atlantic Monthly, CXV (May
707-14;
47. Crisis, XIV (June 1917), 61-62.
48. Ibid.,XV (December 1917), 77.
49. Ibid., XVI (August 1918), 164.
244 NOTES TO CHAPTER IV
50. Crisis, XVII (April 1919), 267.
51. Ibid., XIV (September 1917), 216.
52. Ibid.,XV (March 1918), 216-17.
53. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1947),
pp. 472-74.
54. Craw, XVIII (May 1919), 13-14.
55. Ibid. (September 1919), 231.
56. Ibid. (October 1919), 285, and XIX (November 1919), 335.
57. DuBois, "The Judge/ Brownies Book, II (February 1921), 41.
58. Crisis, XX (February 1920), 213.
59. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro in the United States (New York, 1949),
pp. 191-93.
60. Kelly Miller ("Fair Play," pseud.), "Washington s Policy," Boston Eve
ning Transcript, September 19, 1903.
61. Washington to Charles D. Hilles, March 29, 1912, Washington papers.
62. Washington, "My View of Segregation Laws/* New Republic, V (De
cember^ 1915), 113-14.
63. Washington to Villard, April 19, 1911, Washington papers.
64. DuBois, "The Great Northwest," 239.
65. Cleveland Gazette, October 8, 1910.
66. Craw, VI (July 1913), 130-31.
67. Ibid., IV (June 1912), 75.
68. Ibid.,IU (November 1911), 21.
69. Ibid.,Vm (May 1914), 17.
70. Ibid., I (November 1910), i, 10.
71. Ibid. (December 1910), ii, 16.
72. Ibid.,XVU (January 1919), 112.
73. Edwin R. Embree, 13 Against the Odds (New York, 1944), p. 153.
74. Crisis, IV (May 1915), 25.
75. Ibid.,XL (December 1915), 82.
76. Though Moton had assured Washington that he was "absolutely" on
Washington s side (Moton to Washington, April 8, 1914, Washington papers),
he had refused to join in the abusive attacks on DuBois. H. B. Frisell, the prin
cipal of Hampton Institute, told Ray Stannard Baker that Moton thought it
was a good thing to have men like DuBois stand up for Negro rights. (Frisell
to Baker, May i, 1908, Ray Stannard Baker Papers, Library of Congress.) Au
gust Meier records Moton s attempt to make peace between the two wings of the
race, and he regards Moton s selection as Washington s successor at Tuskegee
as a victory for moderation. "Booker T. Washington and the Rise of the
NAACP," Crisis, LXI (February 1954), 118-22.
77. DuBois, "The Amenia Conference: An Historic Negro Gathering"
(Troutbeck Leaflets, VIII) (Amenia, N.Y., 1925), pp. 14-15.
78. New York Sun (October 12, 1919), 7:5.
79. Anon., "Are We Menaced by a New Race War?" Current Opinion,
LXIX (July 1920), 82.
NOTES TO CHAPTER V 245
80. C. Alphonso Smith, "Dialect Writers," in W. P. Trent et al, Cambridge
History of American Literature (3 vols., New York, 1918), II, 351.
81. Washington Eagle, July 27, 1918.
82. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Mod
ern Democracy (New York, 1944), ch. 37.
Chapter V
1. Crisis, XVIII (September 1919), 234-35.
2. Ibid., XXXIV (November 1927), 3 11.
3. DuBois, "Hopkinsville, Chicago, and Idlewild," Crisis, XXII (August
1921), 160.
4. Ibid., XXVI (October 1923), 249.
5. Ibid., XXXIV (September 1927), 227.
6. DuBois, "Woofterism," ibid., XXXIX (March 1931), 81-83. T he refer
ence is to Thomas J. Woofter, A Study of the Economic Status of the Negro,
manifold script issued by the Rosenwald Foundation, 1930.
7. Crisis, XXV (March 1923), 202-3.
8. Ibid.
9. DuBois, "The African Roots of the War," Atlantic Monthly, CXV (May
1915), 714.
10. Crisis, XIX (January 1920), 108.
11. Ibid.f XX (September 1920), 214-15.
12. 7&z d v XIX (April 1920), 298.
13. Ibid.,XK (October 1920), 261.
14. Ibid., XXIV (June 1922), 55.
15. DuBois, "Liberia and Rubber," New Republic, XLIV (November 18,
16. New York Times, January 6, 1930, 29:3.
17. DuBois, "What Is Civilization? H. Africa s Answer," Forum, LXXHI
(February 1925), 178-88.
18. DuBois, Africa, Its Geography, People and Products (Little Blue
Books, No. 1505) (Girard, Kansas, 1930), p. 3.
19. DuBois, "The Primitive Black Man," Nation, CXIX (December 17,
1924), 675-76.
20. DuBois, "Little Portraits of Africa," Crisis, XXVII (April 1924), 274.
21. DuBois, "Pan-Africa and New Racial Philosophy/* ibid., XL (Novem
ber 1933), 247.
22. Ibid.,XVLL (January 1919), 119-21.
23. Ibid., p. 112.
24. DuBois, "Back to Africa," Century, CV (February 1923), 542.
25. Crisis, XVII (February 1919), 166.
26. For Pan-Africanism, see DuBois, "Pan-Africanism: A Mission in My
Life," in Africa in the Modern World (a United Asia pamphlet, n.d.), pp. 23-28;
and George Podmore, Pan-Africanism: The Coming Struggle for Africa (Lon
don, 1956).
246 NOTES TO CHAPTER V
27. Crisis, XVIII (May 1919), 7-9.
28. DuBois, "France s Black Citizens in West Africa," Current History f
XXII (July 1925), 563.
29. DuBois, "A Second Journey to Pan-Africa," New Republic, XXIX (De
cember 7, 1921), 42.
30. DuBois, "The Negro Takes Stock," New Republic, XXXVII (January 2,
1924), 144-
31. Crisis, XXXII (October 1926), 284; XXXIV (October 1927), 264.
32. Ibid., XXIII (April 1922), 247.
33. Ibid., XXXIV (June 1927), m.
34. Ibid., XXXVI (October 1929), 350.
35. Ibid., XLI (January 1932), 448. The pagination and volume number
ing of the Crisis are somewhat confused about this time. The date is the most
useful referrent.
36. Ibid. (March, April 1932), 93, 116.
37. DuBois, "A Forum of Fact and Opinion/ Pittsburgh Courier, Octo
ber 2, 1937.
38. Crisis, XL (December 1933), 293.
39. DuBois, "Ethiopia," ms. of article, ca. 1930, Johnson Collection.
40. Crisis, XXVIII (May 1924), n.
41. Quoted in DuBois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography
of a Race Concept (New York, 1940), pp. 124-25.
42. Schuyler s comment is in Crisis, XU (March 1932), 92.
43. Margaret Halsey, Some of My Best Friends Are Soldiers (New York,
1944), P- 49-
44. New York Times, January 11, 1930, 10:6.
45. Crisis, XXXVI (December 1929), 424..
46. DuBois, "Worlds of Color," Foreign Affairs, III (April 1925), 423-44.
47. Crisis, XXII (September 1921), 200.
48. Ibid., XXXII (June 1926), 64.
49. Ibid., XXII (September 1921), 199-200.
50. Ibid. (May 1921), 8.
51. Ibid. (July 1921), 102-4.
52. Ibid., XXIII (April 1922), 247.
53. Ibid, XXXIV (December 1927), 348.
54. Ibid., XXXIII (November 1926), 8.
55. DuBois, "Judging Russia," j &z d., XXXIII (February 1927), 189-90.
56. 7fo"d.,XXII (September 1921), 200.
57. DuBois, "The Hosts of Black Labor," Nation, CXVT (May 9, 1923), 541.
58. DuBois, "These United States. XLIX. Georgia: Invisible Empire
State," Nation, CXX (January 21, 1925), 67.
59. Crisis, XXXVII (May 1930), 160.
60. 76 id., XXIV (May 1922), n.
61. I&id.,XXXV (December 1928), 418.
62. /&id,,XXH (August, October 1921), 151-52, 245-47.
NOTES TO CHAFEER VI 247
63. Robert Minor, "The First Negro Workers Congress," Workers Monthly,
V (December 1925), ii, 68; quoted in Wilson Record, The Negro and the Com
munist Party (Chapel Hill, 1951), p. 32.
64. Quoted in Record, The Negro and the Communist Party, pp. 44, 80-81.
65. New Masses, VII (February 1932), ix, 10.
66. Reprinted, undated, in Crisis, XXXIX (July 1932), 232.
67. Ibid., XL (September 1931), 314.
68. Ibid.. XXXVII (April 1930), 137.
69. Ibid., XL (September 1931), 313-15, 318, 320.
70. Ibid., XXXIX (July 1932), 234.
71. Ibid.,XL (April 1933), 93.
Chapter VI
1. See above, pp. 103-4.
2. Crisis, XXIII (January 1922), 105.
3. 7Wd.,XXXV (March 1928), 96.
4. Ibid., XX (October 1920), 263, 266.
5. Ibid.,XXIl (June 1921), 55-56, and XXVin June 1924), 57.
6. Ibid.,XXII (June 1921), 55-56.
7. DuBois, "The Negro in Literature and Art," in "The Negro s Progress
in Fifty Years," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
XLIX (September 1913), 233, 236-37.
8. Crisis, XXVIII (May 1924), 12; XXXIII (February 1927), 183; XXXIV
(April 1927), 70.
9. Alain Locke, "The Negro Intellectual," New York Herald Tribune
Books, May 20, 1928, 12: 12.
10. Dewey R. Jones in the Chicago Defender, June 9, 1928.
11. DuBois, The Gift of Black Folk (Boston, 1924), p. 341.
12. Crisis, XXX (May 1925), 8.
13. DuBois, "Criteria of Negro Art," ifo d, XXXII (October 1926), 296.
14. Ibid., XXXIII (December 1926), 81.
15. Ibid., XXXIV (June 1927), 129.
16. DuBois, "The Browsing Reader/* ibid., XXXVI (April 1929), 125.
17. Ibid., XXXV (June 1928), 202.
18. Ibid., XXXVI (July 1929), 234.
19. DuBois, "The Browsing Reader," ibid., XXXV (November 1928), 374;
XXXVII (April 1930), 129.
20. Ibid., XL (September 1931), 304.
21. J. Saunders Redding, They Came in Chains (The Peoples of America
Series) (Philadelphia, 1950)^.265.
22. DuBois, "Fall Books," Crisis, XXXIX (November 1924), 25.
23. DuBois and Locke, "The Younger Literary Movement," ibid., XXVII
(February 1924), 161-62.
24. Ibid., 161.
NOTES TO CHAPTER VII
25. DuBois, "Browsing Reader," Crisis, XXX (May 1925), 26.
26. DuBois, "Criteria of Negro Art," p. 296.
27. Ibid.,XL (July 1931), 230.
28. DuBois, "Our Book Shelf," i6id.,XXXI (January 1926), 141.
29. Ibid., XXXV (May 1928), 168.
30. DuBois, "Frederick Q. Morton/ ibid., XXX (July 1925), 116.
31. /&id,XXIV (June 1922), 57.
32. /&*., XXXI (March 1926), 216.
33. Z&icZ.,XXIX (April 1925), 250.
34. Reprinted as DuBois, "Education and Work," Journal of Negro Educa
tion, I (April 1932), 60-74.
35. DuBois, "The Negro College," Crisis, XL (August 1933), 175-77.
36. DuBois, "Education and Work," Journal of Negro Education, I (April
1932), 64.
37. DuBois, "The Negro College," p. 177.
38. Ibid., XXXVII (November 1930), 389.
39. DuBois, "On Being Ashamed of Oneself," ibid., XL (September 1933),
200.
40. This account draws on the minutes of the Board of Directors, the cor
respondence files of the NAACP, and the pages of the Crisis from January
through August 1934.
41. Ovington to Villard, July 22, 1934, Villard papers.
42. NAACP Board minutes, October 14, 1924.
43. George E. Cannon to Ovington, October 25, 1924; reprinted in part in
Crisis, XXIX (January 1925), 126-27.
44. Walter White s introduction to DuBois, "Black America," in Fred
J. Ringel, ed., America as Americans See It (New York, 1932), p. 139.
45. Crisis, XXXI (February 1926), 166.
46. 76id.,XLI (February 1932), 59.
47. J&MkXXXV (July 1928), 239.
48. Ibid., XXXVI (November 1929), 388.
49. Quoted in Vernon F. Calverton, ed., Anthology of American Negro
Literature (New York, 1929), pp. 252-53.
50. The resolutions of the conference were reprinted in DuBois, "Youth
and Age at Amenia," Crisis, XL (October 1933), 226-27. See also, Bunche, "Ex
tended Memorandum," 208-10, and the mimeographed "Findings" of the con
ference, n.d., Johnson Collection.
51. DuBois to Spingarn, May 31, 1934, Johnson Collection.
52. Chicago Defender, March 24, 1934.
Chapter VII
i. DuBois, ed., "Report of the First Conference of Negro Land-Grant Col
leges . . ." (Atlanta University Publications, XXII) (Atlanta, 1943), p. 9.
NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 249
2. DuBois, "Phylon: Science or Propaganda," Phylon, V (first quarter,
1944), 6-8.
3. DuBois, "As the Crow Flies," New York Amsterdam News, February 27,
1943-
4. DuBois, "Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?" Journal of Negro
Education, IV (July 1935), 332.
5. DuBois, "A Forum of Fact and Opinion," Pittsburgh Courier, June 5,
1937-
6. Ibid., August 15 and 22, 1936.
7. Ibid., August 14, 1937.
8. DuBois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race
Concept (New York, 1940), p. viii.
9. Benjamin Stolberg, "Black Chauvinism," Nation, CXL (May 15, 1935),
570-
10. DuBois, "Inter-Racial Implications of the Ethiopian Crisis," Foreign
Affairs, XIV (October 1935), 92.
11. DuBois, "A Forum of Fact and Opinion," Pittsburgh Courier, May 23,
1936.
12. Ibid., June 13 ,1936.
13. Ibid., March 7, 1936.
14. DuBois, "As the Crow Flies," New York Amsterdam News, April 12,
1941.
15. Ibid., January 18, 1941.
16. Ibid., August 9, 1941.
17. Ibid., October 23, 1943.
18. Ibid., February 14, 1942.
19. DuBois, "Prospects of a World Without Race Conflict," American Jour
nal of Sociology, XLIX (March 1944), 450-56.
20. DuBois, "As the Crow Flies," New York Amsterdam News, August 19,
1944-
Chapter VIII
1. DuBois, In Battle for Peace (New York, 1952), p. 180.
2. DuBois, "The Negro and Imperialism," ms. of broadcast, November 15,
1944, NAACP files,
3. DuBois, "Winds of Times," Chicago Defender, March 23, 1946.
4. DuBois, "Jan Christian Smuts: Story of a Tyrant," New Masses, LXH
(March 4, 1947), x, 7.
5. DuBois, The World and Africa (New York, 1947),?. 14.
6. DuBois, "Winds of Time," Chicago Defender, September 27, 1947.
7. Ibid., June 23, 1945-
8. DuBois, "Roosevelt," ms. of speech in Baltimore, January 30, 1948,
Schomburg Collection.
9. DuBois, In Battle for Peace, p. 46.
250 NOTES TO CHAPTER IX
10. New York Times, September 9, 1948, 27:1.
11. DuBois, "None who saw Paris will ever forget," National Guardian,
I (May 16, 1949), xxxi, 12; In Battle for Peace, p. 28.
12. DuBois, In Battle for Peace, p. 41 .
13. New York Times, July 17, 1950, 5:1.
14. Daily Worker (New York), September 25, 1950.
15. E. Clay, "The Negro Writer and the Congress," New Masses, XIV
(March 19, 1935), xi, 22.
16. Aptheker, "W. E. B. DuBois: Story of a half-century of distinguished
service to humanity," National Guardian, II (February 8, 1950), xvii, 6-7.
17. Daily Worker, September 11 and 13, 1950.
18. DuBois, "Winds of Time," Chicago Defender, November 16, 1946.
19. New York Times, June 20, 1949, 7:6.
20. His talk was reprinted as DuBois, "Bound by the Color Line," New
Masses, LVIII (February 12, 1946), vii, 8.
21. DuBois, "From McKinley to Wallace: My Fifty Years as a Political
Independent," Masses and Mainstream, I, vi, 7.
22. This account of the trial is based on DuBois, In Battle for Peace; United
States District Court for the District of Columbia, "United States v. Peace In
formation Center, et al." Criminal file No. 178-51, and the New York Times,
August 25, 1950; February 10, 17, April 28, May 10, June 21, July i, November 8,
19* 1951-
23. DuBois, "The Freeing of India," Crisis, LIV (October 1947), 316.
24. DuBois, review of Ralph Linton, ed., Most of the World: The Peoples
of Africa, Latin America and the East Today (New York, 1949), in Science and
Society, XIII (fall, 1949), 367; New York Times, June 2, 1949, 10:6.
25. DuBois, In Battle for Peace, p. 154.
26. DuBois, "America s Responsibility to Israel," ms. of speech to the
American Jewish Congress, New York, November 30, 1948, NAACP files.
27. Gordon B. Hancock, a sociologist, quoted in DuBois, In Battle for
Peace, p. 191.
28. DuBois, In Battle for Peace, pp. 75-76, 77, 155.
29. DuBois to author, May 31, 1951.
30. Kwame Nkrumah to Bernard Reswick, April 25, 1957, Schomburg Col
lection.
Chapter IX
i. DuBois, A Pageant in Seven Decades, 1868-1938, p. 44.
a. DuBois, "Winds of Time," Chicago Defender, January 6, 1945.
3. Aptheker, "W. E. B. DuBois: The First Eighty Years," Phylon, IX, 59
(first quarter, 1948). This whole essay is a well informed statement of the
myth.
4. The remark appears in one of Miss Graham s (i.e., Mrs. DuBois s)
"Comments," in DuBois, In Battle for Peace (New York, 1952), p. 12.
NOTES TO CHAPTER IX 25!
5. See p. 214, above.
6. Van Wyck Brooks, The Confident Years, 1885-1915 (Makers and Finders:
A History of the Writer in America, 1800-1915) (New York, 1952), p. 547.
7. John Gunther, Inside U3A. (New York, 1947), p. 681.
8. Henry Steele Commager, "The Men Who Make Up Your Mind/ 48,
H,v,33 (May 1948).
9. J. Saunders Redding, To Make a Poet Black (Chapel Hill, 1939), p. 80.
10. Youra Quails, "Authors and Books," Southwestern Journal, I, 375
(Spring 1945).
11. William Stanley Braithwaite, "A Tribute to W. E. Burghardt DuBois,
First Editor of Phylon," Phylon, X, 302 (fourth quarter, 1949).
INDEX
Abbott, Lyman, 58, 72
Abrahams, Peter, quoted, 4611
Acheson, Dean, 209-10
Adams, Herbert Baxter, quoted, 18
Addams, Jane, 35, 90, 91, i48n
African Development Company, 9in-
92n
African Methodist Episcopal Church,
34
African National Native Congress,
99
"African Roots of the War, The," 107-
8, 13&-37
Afro-American Council, 78
Age (New York), 21, 79n, 114, 115
Aldrich, Winthrop W., 21 1
All- Russian Peace Congress, 209
Amenia conference, 119-20; second
conference, 179, 229
American Academy of Political and
Social Science, 40, 124
American Federation of Labor: dis
criminates against Negroes, 97, 110-
11, 138; rebuffs NAACP, 141
American Forum for Socialist Educa
tion, 225
American Historical Association, 18,
36
American Historical Review, 40-41
American Labor Party, 210-11
American Missionary Society, 8
American Negro Academy, 52-54, 78
American Negro Labor Congress, 144
Americans for Democratic Action, 206
Anderson, Charles W., 78
Anderson, Marian, 157
"Appeal to America," i43n
"Appeal to the World, An," 205
Aptheker, Herbert, 2i4n; quoted, 213,
214, 227-28
Atlanta Exposition, 63
Atlanta University, 8; DuBois teaches
at, 34-35; bis courses at, 51-52; vis
iting professor, 148; returns, 174-75;
awards honorary degree, 180; dis
misses him, 197
Atlanta University Publications: dis
cussed, 41-43; hard pressed for
funds, 56-57; critical reception of,
57-58; renewed, 181, 187
Attlee, Clement, 202
Austin, Warren, 211
Baker, Newton D., 109
Baldwin, Maria, 4
Beale, Howard K., quoted, iByi
Benson, Allan L., 96
Bentley, C. C., 75
Binga, Jesse, 166
Black Flame, The, 225-26
Black Folk Then and Now, 185, 228
Black Reconstruction, 124, 182-85,
228
Boas, Franz, 35, 128
Bontemps, Ama, 158-59; quoted, i^n
Booth, Charles, 37
Braithwaite, William Stanley: cited,
154; quoted, 228
Briggs, Charles A., 14
Brooks, Van Wyck, cited, 228
Browder,Earl,2i2
Brown, Sterling A., 190, 19on
Browne, Hugh M., 72
Brownies Book, 152
Bryan, William Jennings, 84-85
Byrnes, James F., 111-12, 206
Buckley, William L., 90
Bumstead, Horace, 34, 56, 57
Bunche, Ralph J.: criticizes NAACP
program, 17311; approves attack on
254
INDEX
DuBois, 190, 19011; accused of apos
tasy, 220; quoted, 229-30
Cambridge History of American Liter
ature, 120
Carlyle, Thomas, 50, 51, 74
Carnegie, Andrew, 63, 72
Carnegie Foundation, 182
Chalmers, Allan Knight, 145, i46n
Chase, Frederick A., 9, 10, 16
Chesnutt, Charles W., 44n, 64, 68, 114
Chiang Kai-shek, 197
Citizens Committee to Free Earl
Browder, 212
Clement, E. H., 102-3
Cleveland, Grover, 12
Color and Democracy: Colonies and
Peace, 200-201
Colored American (Washington), 61,
70
Commager, Henry Steele, quoted, 228
Commission on Interracial Coopera
tion, 124
Committee on the Economic Position
of the Negro, report of, cited, 59
Committee of Twelve for the Ad
vancement of the Interests of the
Negro Race, 72
Committee to Present the Cause of
the Negro at the Next Peace Con
ference, 198
Communist party: attacks DuBois and
NAACP, 144-47; accused by Ache-
son, 210; supports DuBois for Sen
ate, 211; and other leftists woo Du
Bois, 211-16; said to want man in
NAACP, 2isn; DuBois attacks in
dictment of leaders, 216
Congress (Committee) of Industrial
Organizations, 179, 189
Connelly, Marc, 157, 159
"Conservation of Races, The," 53-54
Constitutional League, 91
Council on African Affairs, 199, 207,
214,216,217,225
Courier (Pittsburgh), 176, 187
Cravath, Erastus, 9-10, 14
Crisis: founded, 92; supports NAACP
policies, 93-95; apart from NAACP,
98-100; focal point in Negro strug
gle, 106; circulation of, 116; pub
lishes parables, 152; contribution of,
157, 231; "segregation" controversy
in, 169-71; control of, 172-74; basis
for DuBois s reputation, 229
Crowley, Leo T., 197
Crummell, Alexander, 44n, 46-47
Cullen, Countee, 159, 173
Cultural and Scientific Conference for
World Peace, 208
Current Opinion, quoted, 120
Daily Compass (New York), 219
Daily Worker (New York), 211, 213-
14,219
Daniels, Josephus, 127
Dark Princess, 154-56, 227
Dark-water: Voices From Within the
Veil, 89, 124-25, 152-53, 227
Davis, Benjamin J., Jr., 212, 214
Davis, Jefferson, 18, 68
"Declaration of Principles, The" (Ni
agara Movement), 76-77
Defender (Chicago), iisn, 155, 179
Democratic party, 12-13, 82-85, 96,
142, 225
DePriest, Oscar, 162
Detts, Nathaniel, 157, 158
Dewey, John, 90
Diagne, Blaise, 130, 131
Dickerson, Earl B., 205
Dixon, Thomas, 60
Doak, William, 141-42
Dorsey, Emmett E., 190, igon
Douglass, Frederick, xi, i, 13, 20, 20n,
44n, 57
Douglass National Bank, 166
DuBois, Alexander, 2, 5
DuBois, Alfred, 2
DuBois, Burghardt, 46, 54
DuBois, Mary Burghardt, 2, 7, 25
DuBois, Nina Gomer, 34, 54, 217
DuBois, Shirley Graham; see Graham,
Shirley
DuBois, William Edward Burghardt:
youth in Great Barrington, 1-7; at
Fisk University, 7-13; teaches in
Wilson County, Tennessee, 8, 10;
INDEX
255
attends Harvard, 13-18, 24; budget
at Harvard, ign; at University of
Berlin, 26-28; teaches at Wilber-
force, 33-34; marries Nina Corner,
34; job at Pennsylvania, 34; at At
lanta University, 34, 174-75, 180-86;
issues Atlanta University Publica
tions, 41-43; writes for white Amer
ica, 43-49; trains Negroes, 50-54;
critical reception of work by, 56-60;
criticized in Negro press, 61-62;
fights Booker Washington, 62-74,
82n; 1904 conference, 71-72; and Ni
agara Movement, 75-79, 98; pub
lishes Horizon, 82-85; supports
Democrats, 83-85, 96-97; and NAA-
CP, 90-106, 98-101, 169-74, 198, 207,
229; founds Crisis, 92; and socialism
and communism, 86-87, l ffl-4P*
142-49; and labor unions, 97, 110-
n, 140-42; and progressive re
formers, 97-98; hostility to white
men, 101-6, 124-26; and First World
War, 106-12; becomes main Negro
spokesman, 112-22; obituary for
Washington, 119; and Pan-African
Congresses, 129-33, 204-5; appeal
of Africa, 128-29; and colored
nations, 133-36; rejects politics
as Negro solution, 143-44, 160-
62; and an autonomous Negro com
munity, 151-69; and Negro litera
ture, 151-60; revises views on Ne
gro education, 163-66; and Negro
group economy, 166-69, 186-89;
feud with White, 174; decline as
leader, 175-79; turns more to world
affairs, 191-98, 200-210; edits peti
tion to U.N., 205-6; in the "peace
crusade," 208-10; runs for Senate,
210-11; relations with extreme
"left," 211-16; indictment and trial,
216-19, 222-24; turns his back on
race, 219-25; later years, 225-26;
man behind "myth," 227-31
DuBois, Yolande, 54, 173
DuBois literary prizes, 157
Dulles, John Foster, 202
Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 44n, 68
Durham, North Carolina, 45
Dusk of Dawn, 186, 189, 227
Eagle (Washington), 121
Eliot, Charles W., 24
Ely, Richard T., i48n
Embree, Edwin R., cited, 228
Emerton, Ephraim, 24
Fadeyev, Alexander A., 208
Faulkner, William, 225
Fauset, Jessie, 131, 160
Firestone Plantations Company, 127-
28
Fisher, Rudolph, 158
Fisk University: DuBois student at, 7-
13; training Negro youth, 8-9; Du
Bois lectures at, 52; seen as timid,
163; student revolts at, 163-64;
awards DuBois honorary degree,
180
Fleming, Walter L., 58n; quoted, 57-
58
Foraker, Joseph B., 83
Forbes, George W., 64, 1 14
Fortune, T. Thomas, 4-5, i2n
Franklin, John Hope, cited, 1 1 1
Frazier, E. Franklin, 178, 190, igon
Freeman (Indianapolis), 85n
Freeman (New York); see Globe (New
York)
Garrison, Francis J., 65
Garvey, Marcus: and "Back-to-Africa"
movement, 129-30; hurts Pan-Afri
can Congresses, 132
Gazette (Cleveland), 21, 70, 79, 115,
116
"General Staff of Negro Economic
Guidance/* 165
George, Henry, i48n
Georgian (Atlanta), 48, 105
Ghent, W. J., i48n
Gift of Black Folk, The, 156
Globe (New York), 4-5, 6
Gneist, Rudolph von, 27
Goldman, Eric F., cited, 19711
Gompers, Samuel, 97, 1 10
Gordon, Taylor, 158
256
INDEX
Graham, Shirley: attacks NAACP,
213; praises DuBois, 224; marries
DuBois, 217
Graves, John Temple, 48
Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 1-7
Grew, Joseph C., 195
Grimke, A. H., 94-95
Grimke, Francis J., 90, 177
Guardian (Boston), 69, 70
Gunther, John, quoted, 228
Halsey, Margaret, quoted, 135
Hampton Institute, 71, 164
Hanley, Joe R., 199, 210
Harding, Warren G., 161, 162
Hardwick bill (Georgia), 66
Harris, Abram L., 178
Harrison, Richard, 157
Hart, William H., quoted, 96n
Hart, Albert Bushnell, 9, 15, 16, 17,
24,35,62
Harvard University, 13-18, 32
Hayes, Roland, 157
Hayes, Rutherford B., 26
Herald (Newburyport, Mass.), 105
Herberg, Will, 144
Hershaw, L. M., 82
Heyward, DuBose, 158, 159
Hitler, Adolf, 192-93
Holmes, John Haynes, 90
Holt, Hamilton, 90
Hoover, Herbert C., 161, 166
Hope, John: DuBois friendly with at
Atlanta, 54; "surrenders" to Wash
ington, 89; welcomes DuBois back
to Atlanta, 174, 182
Horizon, 50, 79, 82-89, i48n, 152
Hose, Sam, 65
Hosmer, Frank A., 3-4
House Un-American Activities Com
mittee, 210
Howard University, 8; DuBois wants
job at, 32; seen as timid, 163; stu
dent revolt at, 164; DuBois speaks
at, 164-65
Howell, Clark, 48
Howells, William Dean, 90
Hughes, Charles Evans, 94-95
Hughes, Langston, 159; quoted, 178
Hull, CordeU, 195
Hull House Maps and Papers, 37
Hunt, Ida Gibbs, 132
"Immediate Program of the American
Negro, The," 101-2
In Battle for Peace, 216, 219-25, 227
International Congress of Races, 106
International Labor Defense, 145
James, William, 7, 9, 15, 16, 24, 30-31,
Sin, 35
John Brown, 49, 81-82, 227
Johnson, Guy B., quoted, 6sn
Johnson, James Weldon: visits At
lanta University, 34-35; surprised
by DuBois s joviality, 54; joins
NAACP staff, 116; role in NAACP,
229; quoted on The Souls of Black
Folk, 46, on Washlngton-DuBois
fight, 70, on Negro renaissance,
Justice, Department of, mn, 217
Kahn, Albert E., 214
Kardiner, Abram, and Ovesey, Lionel,
The Mark of Oppression, cited,
King, C.D.B., 134
Konvitz, Milton R., 205
Krigwa Players Little Negro Theater,
157
Laffitte, Jean, 217-18
LaFollette, Robert M., 83, 142
Lehman, Herbert H., 199, 210
Liberator (Los Angeles), 116
Lincoln Institute (Missouri), 32
Lincoln University, 163, 164, 178
Locke, Alain: Rhodes scholar, 122;
The New Negro, 160; quoted on
The Quest of the Silver Fleece, 155
Logan, Rayford W.: helps organize
third Pan-African Congress, 132;
What the Negro Wants, 186; writes
essay for U.N. petition, 205
London, Jack, i48n
Lovett, Robert Morss, 22, 24
Lusk Committee, ii2n
McClure,S.S.,59
INDEX
MacDonald, Ramsey, 147
McGhee, F. L., 75
McGrath, J. Howard, 217
McGuire, Matthew F., 218, 223
McKay, Claude, 138, 139, 13911, 158
Marcantonio, Vito, 214, 218, 223, 225
Marx, Karl, 148, 14811
Matsuoka, Yosuke, 195
Meier, August: quoted, 6511; cited, 7311
Messenger, 10911
Milholland, John E., 91
Miller, Kelly: critical of Washington,
64; defends him, 65; named as
"radical," 68; praises NAACP, 112;
opposes unionism, 141; DuBois
criticizes, 176; quoted, 65
Ming, William R., Jr., 205
Molotov, Vyacheslav, 203
Moore, Fred, 1 14
Morgan, Clement, 18, 79, 114
Morton, Frederick Q., 162
Moscowitz, Henry, 90
Moton, Robert Russa: fails to pro
test discrimhiation, no; successor to
Washington, 119; praised for stand
on Tuskegee hospital, 163; wins
Spingarn prize, 175; What the
Negro Thinks, 175
Murphy, Charles F., 162
Murray, F. H. M., 82
Mussolini, Benito, 191
Myrdal, Gunnar: quoted, 39; cited,
Nation, quoted, 18, 42, 58
National Association for the Advance
ment of Colored People (NAACP):
organization and program, 90-93;
DuBois and, 55, 98-101, 129, 169-
74, 198-99, 207, 229; makes overtures
to AFL, 141; sponsors petition to
U.N., 205-6; comments on DuBois s
indictment, 219, 2ign
National Colored League of Boston,
19
National Convention of Colored Men,
i
National Council of the Arts, Sciences,
and Professions, 213, 219
National Guardian, 213, 219
National Institute of Arts and Letters,
180
National Negro Congress, 212
National Urban League, 141, 172, 178
Negro, The, 228
Negro American Political League, 78
Negro Artisan f The, 67, 97
Negro in Business, The, 41-42
Negro in the South, The, 102
Negro Non-Partisan Conference, 176,
179
Negro Press Association, 141
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 196
New Age (Los Angeles), 116
New Masses, 145, 211, 212-13
"New Negro" movement, and DuBois s
role, 151-60
Niagara Movement, 75-79, 88; Du
Bois plans to continue, 98
Nkrumah, Kwame, 204, 225
Nolan, William A., cited i3gn
Norton, Charles Eliot, 24
Oberholtzer, E. P., 49
Odum, Howard W., 43
O Neill, Eugene, 151
Outlook, quoted, 42
Ovesey, Lionel, see Kardiner, Abram
Ovington, Mary White: comments on
Niagara Movement, 78; urges Du
Bois to socialism, 86; starts Negro
conference in 1909, 90; supports
Negro causes, 91; works with
NAACP, 93; sees Crisis as NAACP
rival, 99; relieved by DuBois s de
parture from NAACP, 172
Page, Thomas Nelson, 58
Paley, William, cited, i4n
Pan-African Congresses: in 1920*8, 127-
33, 136; revived in 1945, 204-5
Pandit, Vigava Lakshmi, 202
Parkhurst, Charles H., 90
Peabody, Francis G., 15, 16
Peace Information Center: DuBois at,
199, 209; disbanded, 210; indict
ment and trial, 216-19
Pennsylvania, University of, 34
Perry, Abner W., 2 13
Perry, Bliss, 59
258
INDEX
Perry, Leslie $., 205
Peterkin, Julia, 157
Phelps-Stokes, J. G., 90
Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study,
The, 36-39, 228
Phylon, 180, 185-86, 197
Populist party, 86
Prattis, P. L., quoted, 21911
"Program of a Hundred Years," 41,
56
Progressive party: 1912, 95-96; 1924,
142; 1946-48, 206-7
Quails, Youra, 228
Quest of the Silver Fleece, The, 88,
153-54:
Randolph, A. Philip, 121, 141
Record, Wilson, quoted, 2i3n
Redding, J. Saunders, quoted, 63-64,
i5 8 159* 228
Reid, Ira DeA., 186
"Renaissance of Ethics, The," 24, 30-
3 1
Republican party, 11-12, 60, 83-84,
142, 225
Reuter, Edward B., 125-26
Rhodes Trust, 65
Riis, Jacob, i48n
Robeson, Paul, 199, 215, 216
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 127, 188, 195,
202
Roosevelt, Theodore, 75, 83, 96
Rosenberg, Ethel and Julius, 216
Rosenwald Foundation, 114, 182
Rosenwald Foundation Conference,
179
Royce, Josiah, 24
Russell, Charles E., 90, 125, 173
San Francisco Conference (U.N.), 201
Santayana, George, 15, 24
Schiff, Jacob, 62
Schmoller, Gustav, 27-28, 32, 39-40, 86
Schuyler, George S.: and DuBois s
"Negrophilism," 135; Black No
More, 159; opposed for NAACP
post, 176; comments on DuBois as
leader, 176
Scott, Emmett J.: called injudicious,
73; gloats over Niagara failure, 89;
fails to protest Army s treatment of
Negro, no
Scottsboro case, 145-46
Searchlight (Seattle), 116
Selassie, Haile, 134, 192
Shaler, Nathaniel, 15, 24
Shostakovich, Dimitri, 208
Simon, Abbott, 210
Slater Fund, 26, 28-29, 57
Smith, Harry C., 64, 114
Smith, Hoke, 48
Smuts, Jan Christian, 136, 202, 213
Socialist party, 138
Sons of the American Revolution, 8m
Souls of Black Folk, The, 46-48, 68-
69; quoted, 50, 102, 126-27, 152, 156
Southern Negro Youth Conference,
213,215
Southern Sociological Congress, 105
Southern Workman, 61-62, 70
Spargo, John, i48n
Spence, Adam, 9
Spencer, Herbert, 39
Spencer, Samuel R., Jr., quoted, 73n
Spero, Sterling D., quoted, i48n, 184
Spingarn, Joel E.: works with the
NAACP, 93, 99-100, 229; asks
Hughes for statement, 95; presents
plank to Progressive party, 96; op
poses DuBois s acceptance of "seg
regation," 170
"Star of Ethiopia, The," 152
Steffens, Lincoln, 90; quoted, 139
Stimson, Henry L., 195
"Stockholm Appeal," 209-10, 216-17
Stolberg, Benjamin, 190
Stone, Irving, cited, i46n
Storer College, 78-79
Storey, Moorfield, 91, 94
Streator, George, i48n
Sun (New York), quoted, 120
Sunday, "Billy," 95
Suppression of the African Slave-
Trade to the United States of
America, i6^8-i8jo, The, 17, 36-36
Taft, William H., 83-84
Talbert, Florence, 157
"Talented Tenth," 51, 73-74, 204
INDEX
259
Tammany Hall, 161-62
Tanner, William O., 44n, 68
Taussig, Frank W., 24, 57
Thomas, Norman, 147, 162, 188
Tillman, "Pitchfork Ben," 109
Toomer, Jean, 159
Treitschke, Heinrich von, 27
Trotter, William Monroe: edits Guar
dian, 64; hammers at Washington,
69; in Boston riot, 70; helps write
Niagara declaration, 76; feuding in
Niagara Movement, 79; skeptical of
whites in NAACP, 91; DuBois s
obituary of, 176; role in Negro
struggle, 114, 229
Tuskegee Institute, 32
United Nations, 200 201
Vann, Robert, 176
Van Vechten, Carl, 157, 159
Villard, Oswald Garrison: wants proof
on "Tuskegee machine," 73; writes
"call" for 1909 conference, 90; rela
tions with DuBois, 92, 99-100; works
with NAACP, 93, 229; protests seg
regation in government offices, 94;
asks Hughes for statement, 95; pre
sents Negro statement to Wilson, 96;
reviews Dark-water , i25n; pities Du
Bois, i25n
Voice of the Negro, The, 50
Wagner, Adolph, 27-28
Wald, Lillian D., 90
Waldron, J. Milton, 90
Walker, James J., 162
Walker Manufacturing Company,
Mme. C. J,, 188
Wallace, Henry, 206-7
Walling, William E., 60, 90
Walters, Alexander, 90
Ward, William H., 73, 90, 91
Ware, Edward T., 57, 87
Washington, Booker T.: Negro spokes
man, 1895-1915, xi; offers Du
Bois job in 1894, 32; visits Atlanta
University, 34-35; named an "excep
tional" man, 44n; DuBois s relations
with, 51, 55, 62^74, 82n, 119, 164-65,
190; speech at Atlanta Exposition,
63; writes Up From Slavery and My
Larger Education, 63; contrasted
with DuBois, 69-70; hi 1904 Negro
conference, 71-72; talks abroad, 104;
last years and death, 113-19; speaks
out bluntly, 114-15; moderates at
tack on NAACP, 115
Washington Conference, 133
Watson, Thomas E., 48, 96
Weber, Max, 35
Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 64, 90, 91, 114,
229
Wendell, Barrett, 24
Whip (Chicago), 168
White, Walter: cited, 60; Fire in the
Flint, 159; feud with DuBois, 170,
174; praises DuBois, 175; has
NAACP rehire DuBois, 197-98; asks
for his dismissal, 207; role in
NAACP, 229
Wilberforce University, 32-34,51, 180
Wilkerson, Doxey A., 214, 228
Will, Thomas E., 22n
Willcox, Walter F., 58-59
Wilson County, Tennessee, 8, 10
Wilson, Woodrow, 96, 108
Wise, Stephen S,, 90
Wissler, Clark, 35
Woodward, C. Vann, quoted, n, 60
Woofter, Thomas J., 126
Woolley,MaryE.,90
World and Africa, The, 205, 228
World Congress of Defenders of Peace,
Committee of, 208-9, 216, 217
World Partisans of Peace, 209
World Peace Council, 2 16, 2 18
Young Men s Christian Association,
81, 103
00
1 06 330
3
