The Souls of Black FolkDu Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
History
The Souls of Black Folk
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
African Americans
Patience, Humility, Manners, and Taste, common schools and
kindergartens, industrial and technical schools, literature and
tolerance,—all these spring from knowledge and culture, the children of
the university. So must men and nations build, not otherwise, not
upside down.
Teach workers to work,—a wise saying; wise when applied to German boys
and American girls; wiser when said of Negro boys, for they have less
knowledge of working and none to teach them. Teach thinkers to think,—a
needed knowledge in a day of loose and careless logic; and they whose
lot is gravest must have the carefulest training to think aright. If
these things are so, how foolish to ask what is the best education for
one or seven or sixty million souls! shall we teach them trades, or
train them in liberal arts? Neither and both: teach the workers to work
and the thinkers to think; make carpenters of carpenters, and
philosophers of philosophers, and fops of fools. Nor can we pause here.
We are training not isolated men but a living group of men,—nay, a
group within a group. And the final product of our training must be
neither a psychologist nor a brickmason, but a man. And to make men, we
must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living,—not sordid
money-getting, not apples of gold. The worker must work for the glory
of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth,
not for fame. And all this is gained only by human strife and longing;
by ceaseless training and education; by founding Right on righteousness
and Truth on the unhampered search for Truth; by founding the common
school on the university, and the industrial school on the common
school; and weaving thus a system, not a distortion, and bringing a
birth, not an abortion.
When night falls on the City of a Hundred Hills, a wind gathers itself
from the seas and comes murmuring westward. And at its bidding, the
smoke of the drowsy factories sweeps down upon the mighty city and
covers it like a pall, while yonder at the University the stars twinkle
above Stone Hall. And they say that yon gray mist is the tunic of
Atalanta pausing over her golden apples. Fly, my maiden, fly, for
yonder comes Hippomenes!
VI.
Of the Training of Black Men
Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were’t not a Shame—were’t not a Shame for him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?
OMAR KHAYYÁM (FITZGERALD).
[Illustration]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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