Talk:The Souls of Black Folk/Archive 1

Untitled
I reverted an edit that seemed to make use of text from the following two sites: http://www.islamonline.org/english/Politics/2001/04/article12.shtml and http://www.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/Kashif/kashif.htm. These may be copyright protected.--Bkwillwm 04:55, 11 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Hello, made an edit to the "Chapters" section of the article, let me know what you think! C mena15 (talk)

Inaccurate portrayal of Chapter X
In a previous version, the article contained this description of Chapter X:


 * "In "Chapter X: Of the Faith of the Fathers", Du Bois argues that the Black church is deeply connected to black political movements. Instead of seeing this as a positive, he sees this as a weakness that needs to be overcome. He sees the Church as the last remnants of tribal life that needs to be overthrown for Black Civilization to thrive. He says by the middle of the Eighteenth Century the black slave was sunk to the bottom of the economic ladder. Through this, he lost all joy in the world. The Church then offered him salvation in the next world, which he gripped to. Du Bois says the slave then, and the Black Man now must look to salvation in this life in order to build a culture of economic prosperity. However, he said it was much better than the wider Christian Church in that it never excluded. He offered a future program for the Church of buying real estate for its members and increasing their economic status in society."

This is original content which interprets the chapter, but is not supported and appears an inaccurate portrayal of the book. I have simplified the article to include only what can be clearly substantiated by the text.

Du Bois showed *much* more respect for the church, and the tribal origins of African spirituality, than the above text suggests. He does not in any way call for the overthrow of the church or the remnants of tribal life. He does not offer a future program for the Church of buying real estate for its members. I wonder where all this came from! He did not say that the Black Church is "much better than the wider Christian Church," though he does call for an awakening when Life, Justice, and Right are no longer labeled "For White People Only." It's quite a stretch, however, to interpret this as a broad condemnation of the Christian Church in general.zadignose (talk) 02:34, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Illustration shows second edition: more detail would be nice
The illustration for this article is a bit confusing: it says "Second Edition". According to this site, the book was originally published in 1903, and when through over 30 printings between then and the 1940s. Then W. E. B. Du Bois republished it in 1953 for a 50th anniversary edition, which had only about a dozen very minor changes from the original edition. What is the "second edition"? Is it the 1953 edition? Or is it a second printing from the early 20th century? What year did the 2nd edition get published? --Noleander (talk) 17:54, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

"Each chapter in The Souls of Black Folk begins with a spiritual."
The text at Wikibooks would seem to belie this claim. The chapter headings of that edition contain poems by Lowell, Whittier, and Symons, among others -- all White authors, and usually the quoted parts aren't even hymns. The text itself often quotes spirituals, but they don't start the chapter. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 20:25, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

In the last paragraph of the Forethought, DuBois writes: "Before each chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow songs," meaning spirituals. In the two printed editions I have seen, there are bars of sheet music following the poems Smerdis refers to. These may not show up in the Wikibooks edition, but they are a part of the printed work which DuBois clearly thought important enough to mention (confusingly, the words quoted seem to have no relation to the bars of music that follow them). --EC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.145.27 (talk) 16:41, 19 March 2012 (UTC)