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WEB Du Bois Speaks ULEJL BY PHILIP S. FONER The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (4 vols.) History of the Labor Movement in the United States (4 vols.) A History of Cuba and Its Relations with the United States (2 vols.) The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (2 vols.) Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and the Irrepressible Conflict The Fur and Leather Workers Union Jack London: American Rebel Mark Twain: Social Critic The Jews in American History: 1654-1865 The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs The Case of Joe Hill The Letters of Joe Hill The Bolshevik Revolution: Its Impact on American Rad­ icals, Liberals, and L abor The Black Panthers Speak Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years The Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson The Selected Writings of George Washington The Selected Writings of Abraham Lincoln The Selected Writings of Franklin D. Roosevelt IILEJL SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES 1890-1919 EDITED BY DR. PHILIP S. FONER W ITH ATRIBUTE BY DR. MARTIN LUTHER K IN Q JR. PATHFINDER PRESS NEW YORK Copyright © 1970 by Philip S. Foner and Shirley Graham Du Bois All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 78-108719 First printing 1970 Second printing 1972 Pathfinder Press, Inc. 4 1 0 West Street New York, N. Y. 10014 Acknowledgments For permission to reprint the specified material the following acknowledgments are gratefully made to: Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Freedomways, a Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement, for "Honoring Dr. Du Bois" by Martin Luther King, Jr. Henry Miller and Grove Press, Inc. for the quotation from Plexus. Copyright © 1963 by Henry Miller, copyright © 1965 by Grove Press, Inc. CONTENTS Editor's Introduction 1 Honoring Dr. Du Bois, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 12 1. A Pageant in Seven Decades, 1878-1938, (1938) 21 2. The Conservation of Races, (1897) 73 3. Careers Open to College-Bred Negroes, (1898) 86 4. The Study of the Negro Problems, (1898) 102 5. Address to the Nations of the World, (July 1900) 124 6. On Booker T. Washington, (1903) 128 7. The Training of Negroes for Social Power, (October 17, 1903) 130 8. Credo, (October 1904) 142 9. The Niagara Movement, (September 1905) 144 10. The Economic Future of the Negro, (1906) 150 11. We Claim Our Rights, (August 1906) 170 12. The Value of Agitation, (March 1907) 174 13. Is Race Separation Practicable? (May 1908) 179 14. Politics and Industry, (May 31, 1909) 187 15. The Evolution of the Race Problem, (June 1, 1909) 196 16. Race Prejudice, (March 5, 1910) 211 17. The Negro Problem, (July 1911) 218 18. How to Celebrate the Semicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, (February 2, 1912) 226 19. Disfranchisement, (1912) 230 20. Socialism and the Negro Problem, (January 1913) 239 21. The African Roots of War, (May 1915) 244 22. The Problem of Problems, (December 27, 1917) 258 23. The Great Migration North, (1918) 268 24. The Future of Africa —A Platform, (January 6, 1919) 272 Notes 276 Index 285 Your country? How come it's yours? Before the Pil­ grims landed, we were here. Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with yours; a gift of story and song—soft, stirring melody to an ill-harmonized and unmelodious land; the gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil, lay the founda­ tions of the vast, economic empire two hundred years before your weak hands could have done it; the third a gift of the spirit. Our song, our toil, our cheer. Would America have been America without her Negro people? W. E. B. Du Bois — The Souls of Black Folk Once upon a time in my younger years and in the dawn of this century I wrote: "The problem of the twen­ tieth century is the problem of the color line." . In 1925, as in 1899, I seem to see the problem of the twen­ tieth century as the problem of the color line." W. E. B. Du Bois, "Worlds of Color," Foreign Affairs, III, April 1925, p. 423. EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION In his Autobiography, published after his death, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote: "In June 1890, I received my bachelor's degree from Harvard cum laude in philos­ ophy. I was one of five graduating students selected to speak at commencement. My subject was 'Jefferson Davis.' I chose it with deliberate intent of facing Harvard and the nation with a discussion of slavery as illustrated in the person of the president of the Confederate States of America. Naturally, my effort made a sensation." Bishop Potter of New York wrote in the Boston Herald that after hearing Du Bois's address, "I said to myself: 'Here is what an historic race can do if they have a clear field, a high purpose, and a resolute will.'" The press published excerpts from Du Bois's speech which was titled, "Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization." To Du Bois, Davis was a typical representa­ tive of "Teutonic civilization," the embodiment of "the idea of the Strong Man." The idea converted "a naturally brave and generous man" into a "Jefferson Davis —now advanc­ ing civilization by murdering Indians, now hero of a national disgrace called by courtesy, the 'Mexican War’; and finally, as the crowning absurdity, the peculiar cham­ pion of a people fighting to be free in order that another people shall not be free. Whenever this idea has for a moment escaped from the individual realm, it has found an even more secure foothold in the policy and philosophy of the state. The Strong Man and his mighty Right Arm has become the Strong Nation with its armies. Under whatever guise, however a Jefferson Davis may appear as man, as race, or as nation, his life can only logically 2 W. E. B. Du Bois Speaks mean this: the advance of a part of the world at the ex­ pense of the whole; the overweening sense of the T and the consequent forgetting of the ,rrhou.,n Thus in what was one of his earliest public speeches, W. E. B. Du Bois already stressed themes which were to be identified with him for the remainder of his long life: hatred of and contempt for the domination of the op­ pressed by the oppressors; the plundering of the American continent by the white settlers, and opposition to aggressive wars and imperialism. We are indebted to the New York Age, a leading black newspaper of the early eighteen-nineties edited by T. Thom­ as Fortune, for a report of what was probably Du Bois's next public speech. Fortune quoted the young Du Bois in order to criticize his opposition to the Lodge Federal Elections Bill which would have protected Negro polit­ ical rights but was defeated in a Republican Congress. Clearly, from the excerpt of Du Bois's speech quoted in the Age> he was closer at this time to the position of Book­ er T. Washington than was Fortune, although within a few years, Du Bois was to become Washington's most famous critic and Fortune was to assume the role of Washington's defender. At any rate, here is the report of Du Bois's speech and Fortune's comment as published in the New York Age of June 13, 1891 under the head­ ing, "He is Young Yet": "Here's some funny talk recently indulged in by Mr. W. E. B. Du Bois of Harvard College, at a race meeting in Boston: "'The whole underlying idea of the Federal Elections bill was wrong. Granted even that it would succeed in putting a few more Negroes into office, it would not ben­ efit the colored people. The underlying idea of the mea­ sure was that law can accomplish everything; that if you have an evil in the community, all you have to do is to pass a law against it, and presto, it is gone. We must ever keep before us the fact that the South has some excuse for its present attitude. We must remember that a good many of our people south of Mason and Dixon's line are not fit for the responsibilities of repub­ lican government. When you have the right sort of black Editor's Introduction 3 voters you will need no election laws. The battle of my people in the South must be a moral one, not a legal or physical one.' "Mr. Du Bois is young yet. He does not know as much about some things as he thinks he does. The Federal Elections bill was based upon the underlying principle embodied in section one of article fifteen of the Federal Constitution, which declares that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. What Mr. Du Bois has to say after the first sentence of his remark, is so much humbug based upon no provision in the Con­ stitution and at war with all the principles predominant in our system of government. Southern newspapers may praise Mr. Du Bois' remarks, but they represent simply the opinions of a very young man who will think and talk differently a few years hence." It was indeed an accurate prediction! An account of a lecture delivered by Dr. Du Bois in Philadelphia early in 1902 appeared in The Colored Amer­ ican, a black weekly published in Washington D. C. in its issue of January 18, 1902: "Before a highly cultured audience, Prof.
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