W.E.B. Du Bois Speaks: Speeches and Addresses 1920-1963

308 Pages·1971·6.3 MB·English

by  W.E.B. Du Bois

ULEJL
BY PHILIP S. FONER
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IILEJL
SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES
1890-1919
EDITED BY DR. PHILIP S. FONER
WITH ATRIBUTE BY
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KINQ 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.
410 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.