Reconstructing the Radical Du Bois

What is happening to Marx's theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names, to a certain extent, for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.

—V. I Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917 ¹

You really have to forget about the last years of Du Bois' life.

—Wall Street Journal, November 4, 1963 ²

Prepared as a presentation for the opening plenary of the 99th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, California August 13, 2004.

Notes

1. V.I. Lenin, “The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution,” In K. Marx, F. Engels, and V. Lenin, On Historical Materialism (New York: International Publishers, 1972), p. 525.

2. Wall Street Journal, November 4, 1963. Historian Gerald Horne cites the negative comments of Du Bois's former friends and associates that appeared in the Wall Street Journal several months following the black scholar-activist's death. See Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), p. 357.

3. Horne, Black and Red, p. 4.

4. Manning Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Boston: Twayne/G.K. Hall Publishers, 1986), p. 40. Du Bois first presented this formulation in London at the Pan-African conference of July 1900, organized by Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams and T.J. Thompson of Sierra Leone.

5. Manning Marable, “Introduction: Celebrating Souls: Deconstructing the Du Boisian Legacy,” in W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 100^th Anniversary Edition (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2004), p. xxix.

6. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (New York: International Publishers, 1968), pp. 197–199.

7. Lucius T. Outlaw, Jr., “W.E.B. Du Bois on the Study of Social Problems,” Annals, Number 568 (March 2000), pp. 281–297.

8. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois, p. 206. See W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Study of the Negro Problems,” American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals, Vol. 11 (January 1898), pp. 1–23.

9. Ibid., p. 206. Du Bois added: “I was going to study the facts, any and all facts, concerning the American Negro and his plight, and by measurement and comparison and research, work up to valid generalizations which I could–. Thus, in my own sociology, because of firm belief in a changing racial group, I easily grasped the idea of a changing developing society rather than a fixed social structure” (p. 206).

10. Ibid., p. 214.

11. Ibid., pp. 22, 228.

12. For example, see W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Suffrage Fight in Georgia,” Independent, Vol. 51 (November 30, 1899), pp. 3226–3228; Du Bois, “The Negro as He Really Is,” World's Work, Vol. 2 (June 1901), pp. 848–866; Du Bois, “The Burden of Negro Schooling,” Independent, Vol. 53, no. 2746 (July 18, 1901), pp. 1667–1668; and Du Bois, “The Problem of Tillman, Vardaman and Thomas Dixon, Jr.,” Central Christian Advocate, Vol. 49 (October 18, 1905), pp. 1324–1325.

13. W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Training of Negroes for Social Power,” Outlook, Vol. 75, no. 7 (October 17, 1903), pp. 409-414. Also see Du Bois, “ Possibilities of the Negro: The Advance Guard of the Race,” Booklovers Magazine, Vol. 2, no. 1 (July 1903), pp. 3–15; and Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth,” in Booker T. Washington, et al., eds., The Negro Problem (New York: Arno, 1969), pp. 31–75.

14. W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Negro Problem from the Negro Point of View: The Parting of the Ways,” World To-Day, Vol. 6, no. 4 (April 1904), pp. 521–523.

15. W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Negro Ideals of Life,” Christian Register, Vol. 84 (October 26, 1905), pp. 1197–1199.

16. W.E.B. Du Bois, “Credo,” Independent, Vol. 57, no. 2914 (October 6, 1904), p. 787.

17. Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat, pp. 87, 89; W.E.B. DuBois, “Socialist of the Path,” Horizon, Vol. 1, no. 2 (February 1907), p. 7; Du Bois, “A Field for Socialists,” New Review, Vol. 1, no. 2 (January 11, 1913), pp. 54–57; and Du Bois, “Socialism and the Negro Problem,” New Review, Vol. 1, no. 5 (February 1, 1913), pp 138–141.

18. Francis L. Broderick's W.E.B. Du Bois: Negro Leader in a Time of Crisis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959) is representative of this highly critical evaluation of Du Bois's life and thought. Broderick declared that “no single work” of Du Bois, “except The Philadelphia Negro, is first-class.” Black Reconstruction was condemned for “its eccentric racist-Marxist interpretations.“ Broderick also believed that “it seems unlikely that Du Bois will be remembered as a literary artist…. His reputation as a writer will rest more on the Crisis than on his forays into belles lettres”(pp. 228–229).

19. Horne, Black and Red, p. 315.

20. See Harold R. Isaacs, The New World of Negro Americans (New York: John Day, 1963).

21. Irving Howe, “Remarkable Man, Ambiguous Legacy,” Harpers, Vol. 236 (March 1968), pp. 143–149.

22. Horne, Black and Red, pp. 239, 5.

23. Vincent Harding, “Introduction,” in Institute of the Black World, ed., IBW and Education for Liberation, Black Paper No. 1 (Chicago: Third World Press, 1973), p. iv. In 1969, Harding had also observed that Du Bois “was likely the most significant voice to prepare the way for this current, newest stage of blackness. He is the proper context for an adequate understanding of Malcolm, of Fanon, of Stokley Carmichael and Martin Luther King.“ See Vincent Harding, “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Messianic Vision,” Freedomways, Vol. 9 (First Quarter 1969), pp. 44–58.

24. Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: William Morrow, 1967), pp. 6, 564.

25. Earl Ofari, The Myth of Black Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), pp. 90–91.

26. See Horne, Black and Red; Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Cedric Robinson, Black Movements in America (New York: Routledge, 1997); and Arnold Rampersad, The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).

27. See, for example, Herbert Aptheker, ed., The Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois, 3 volumes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973, 1976, 1978); Aptheker, ed., Writings by W.E.B. Du Bois in Non-Periodical Literature Edited by Other (Millwood, New York: Kraus-Thomson, 1982); Aptheker, ed., Writings in Periodicals Edited by W.E.B. Du Bois: Selections from the “Crisis”, 2 volumes (Millwood, New York: Kraus-Thomson, 1983); Aptheker, ed., Writings in Periodicals Edited by W.E.B. Du Bois: Selections from the “Horizon” (Millwood, New York: Kraus-Thomson, 1983); Aptheker, ed., Annotated Bibliography of the Published Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois (Millwood, New York: Kraus-Thomson, 1973); and Aptheker, ed., Writings in Periodicals Edited by W.E.B. Du Bois: Selections from “Phylon” (Millwood, New York: Kraus-Thomson, 1980).

28. Sheila D. Collins, The Rainbow Challenge: The Jackson Campaign and the Future of U.S. Politics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), p. 145.

29. Ibid., p. 155. Collins also noted that Jackson's 1983 address announcing his intention to compete in the Democratic presidential primaries represented “placing himself within a historic tradition” of struggle which included Du Bois and others (p. 148).

30. Paul Buhle, Marxism in the United States: Remapping the History of the American Left (London: Verso, 1987), p. 169.

31. Robinson, Black Movements in America, p. 114.

32. Horne, Black and Red, p. 325.

33. W.E.B. Du Bois, “Socialism and the American Negro,” in Herbert Aptheker, ed., Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887–1961 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), p. 307. Even more remarkably, Du Bois preempted any would-be dialogue with his audience about Communist China by adding: “All this was my deep and firm impression. I cannot prove it, particularly not to you, who have been poisoned by lies and distortion for ten years” (p. 307).

34. For example, see Henry Lee Moon, ed., The Emerging Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), and Rayford W. Logan, ed., W.E.B. Du Bois: A Profile (New York: Hill and Wang, 1971). In the second-most widely used survey text of African-American history, Meier and Rudwick's From Plantation to Ghetto (New York: Hill and Wang, 1970), the authors note that at Du Bois's demise in Ghana in 1963, he had died “a Communist, completely alienated from his native land, whose citizenship he had renounced” (p. 270). This is simply untrue. Du Bois had intended to return to the U.S.; passport difficulties and continued harassment by the U.S. State Department had made it impossible for Du Bois to return.

35. Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois, p. ix.

36. Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race and Class (New York: Random House, 1981), pp. 146–147.

37. Wells-Barnett blamed Du Bois for having her name briefly dropped from the list of founding organizers of the NAACP. She also criticized Du Bois along with other “college-bred Negroes” for pushing white activist Mary White Ovington as chairman of the group's executive committee. Ovington “has made little effort to know the soul of the Black Woman,” Wells-Barnett declared. See Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Bantam Books, 1984), pp. 180–181.

38. Mary Ellen Washington, “‘The Darkened Eye Restored’: Notes Toward a Literary History of Black Women,” in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., Reading Black Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology (New York: Meridian/New American Library, 1990), p. 33.

39. Nellie Y. McKay, “The Souls of Black Women Folk in the Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois,” in ibid., pp. 227–243.

40. Shirley Wilson Logan, “We Are Coming”: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth Century Black Women (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press), pp. 157–158.

41. Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (New York: Vintage, 1998), pp. 46–47.

42. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois, p. 282.

43. Katherine Bell Banks with Robert C. Hayden, W.E.B. Du Bois, Family and Friendship: Another Side of the Man, Letters and Memories (Littleton, Massachusetts: Tapestry Press, 2004), pp. 18–19.

44. Ibid., pp. 55–57.

45. Washington Post, December 13, 1993, quoted in David J. Garrow, Review of David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993), in Journal of American History, Vol. 81, no. 2 (September 1994), pp. 620–622.

46. Robert L. Allen, Review of Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, Black Scholar, Vol. 23, nos. 3–4 (Summer 1993), p. 84.

47. Eric Foner, “Drum Major for Justice: W.E.B. Du Bois,” The Nation, Vol. 257, no. 16, p. 574.

48. Richard Blackett, Review of Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, American Historical Review, Vol. 99, no. 2 (April 1994), pp. 510–511.

49. Nahum D. Chandler, Review of Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, American Literature, Vol. 66, no. 3 (September 1994), pp. 606–607.

50. Mark Higbee, Review of Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, Science and Society, Vol. 59, no. 1 (Spring 1995), p. 82. In a similar vein was the Christian Science Monitor review of African-American historian Gloria Waite, who observed that “the most disturbing feature of Lewis's biography is his psychosexual analysis of Du Bois. He dismisses conclusions reached by others that Du Bois's high regard for women, especially for black women, was rooted in his respect for his mother. Such analysis is unworthy of an otherwise perceptive and revealing study.” Waite, “Exemplar of African-Americans,” Christian Science Monitor (December 6, 1993), p. 15.

51. Garrow, Review of Lewis, pp. 620–622.

52. To his credit, however, Julian Bond also admitted that Du Bois did not always adhere to the liberal integrationist creed. Bond noted: “[A]bsolute consistency was never Du Bois's strong point. He never blindly followed the path he had prescribed without some deviation.” See Julian Bond, “Foreword,” in Arthur J. Magida, Prophet of Rage: A Life of Louis Farrakhan and His Nation (New York: Basic Books, 1996), pp. x–xi.

53. Gerald Early, Review of David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000), in National Review, Vol. 52, no. 23 (December 4, 2000), pp. 58–62.

54. Ibid., pp. 58–62. Early's apparent objective was to reposition Du Bois to the ideological right, illustrating that without the burden of race, the black scholar's “radicalism” would probably have disappeared. “I wonder if Du Bois would be so disliked by the Right,” Early wistfully pondered, “if his meritocratic ideals, his high regard for standards, and his preaching against black ‘pathological’ behavior were better known.” Ibid⋅, p. 58.

55. Alan Brinkley, “Autumn of the Agitator,”New Republic, Vol. 224, no 1–2 (January 1, 2001), pp. 27, 30. Both Brinkley and Lewis interpreted Du Bois's exile in Ghana a tragic culmination of his alliance with “the far left”: “[As] if to confirm his final alienation from his own nation, [Du Bois] left the United States for Ghana, where he became the revered ward of the leftist regime of Kwame Nkrumah. He died there in August 1963, on the eve of the great March on Washington that marked a culmination of many of Du Bois's early dreams but that now seemed to him a largely irrelevant gesture against a world incapable of granting equality to people of color without revolutionary change.”

56. V. P. Franklin, Review of Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality, in The Journal of American History, Vol. 89, no. 1 (June 2002), pp. 189–191.

57. Judith Stein, “The Difficult Doctor Du Bois,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 29, no. 2 (2001), pp. 247–254. Philosopher Joseph DeMarco, the author of an excellent book on Du Bois, also makes the same point about Lewis's inability to address the theoretical and philosophical groundings Du Bois held which, in turn, informed his political and tactical decisions. “Following Du Bois's reasoning requires a different book,” DeMarco argued. “Without it, as is the case with The Fight for Equality, [Du Bois's] change in emphasis, for those who want an explanation, can be perceived as random.” See Joseph DeMarco, Review of Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality in The New England Quarterly, Vol. 74, no. 3 (September 2001), pp. 514–515.

58. Edward W. Said, Representation of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), pp. 11–12.

59. Ibid⋅, p. 12.

60. Horne, Black and Red, p. 287.

61. E. Franklin Frazier, “The Du Bois Program in the Present Crisis,” Race: Devoted to Social, Political, and Economic Equality, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Winter 1935–1936), pp. 11–13.

62. W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Future of Europe in Africa,” in Aptheker, ed., Against Racism, pp. 173–184.

63. W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Future of Europe in Africa,” in ibid., pp. 184–198. Du Bois provocatively added: “For this reason, the colonial and quasi-colonial peoples will be more ready to achieve and accept this Democracy of industry, than the misled people of Europe whose conception of democracy has been industrial anarchy with the spirit of man in chains.”

64. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Quest of the Silver Fleece: A Novel (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1911).

65. W. E. B. Du Bois, Dark Princess: A Romance (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1928).

66. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Ordeal of Mansart (New York: Mainstream, 1957); Du Bois, Mansart Builds a School (New York, Mainstream, 1959); and Du Bois, Worlds of Color (New York: Mainstream, 1961).

67. W.E.B. Du Bois, “A Social Program for Black and White Americans” (May 31, 1943), in Aptheker, ed., Against Racism, p. 214.

68. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois, p. 228.

69. Ibid., p. 270.

70. Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: Verso, 1979), p. 105. Emphasis in the original text.