This essay is drawn from a book manuscript, in which the arguments presented here are given more detailed attention and substantiation.
Notes
1. “[In Souls], the soul of W. E. B. Du Bois, his sufferings, his virtues, his gifts, [is] offered as exemplary of the best achievement of the Afro-American people” (CitationRampersad, 1976, 88).
2. Robert Stepto (1991, 53–55) discusses some of the specific textual changes Du Bois made in these articles.
3. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” is a revised version of “Strivings of the Negro People,” published in Atlantic Monthly (August 1897). The titular change is strongly indicative of the unifying tendencies that run through the text. The object “the Negro People” is replaced by the first person plural; and the strivings of the people are characterized as spiritual.
4. The last of the sorrow songs is “let us cheer the weary traveller,” followed by: “and the traveller girds himself, and sets his face toward the Morning, and goes on his way” (163–64).
5. On the dating of this incident, see Lewis, 33–34, and 590.
6. Harris adopts an Adlerian approach to the interpretation of Souls in general and this incident in particular. The choice is sensible, because Adler focuses so clearly on issues of superiority and inferiority, issues that white supremacy necessarily brings to the fore. See also the continuation of her analysis, 228–29.