The Souls of Black Folk

The veil is the psychological distance that exists between whites and African Americans as a result of the color-line. The veil is the result of both willful blindness and ignorance. Du Bois presents himself as a person who can pull back the veil of racial distance for whites. 

In “Of the Black Belt,” Du Bois uses the train as a means for his revelation of the true situation of African Americans in the South. With its segregated cars, the train represents the division of public facilities and spaces for whites and blacks. In “Of the Coming of John,” the train is the means by which John Jones escapes racism in Georgia, in this instance representing the idea of African-American mobility and progress. However, the same train, with its small-town depot crowded with locals, also represents the foreclosure of opportunity when John returns home.

In “Of the Coming of John,” John Jones is an African American from Georgia who goes North for his education and comes back home to start a school. He dies at the hands of a lynch mob after killing John Henderson, the white son of the local judge, whom he interrupts assaulting his sister. John Jones represents the “Talented Tenth” who are frustrated in their efforts to engage in racial uplift by the provincialism of other African Americans, their inability to re-connect to their old communities as a result of their education, and the racism of whites. John Henderson, who also leaves the South in order to attend Princeton, represents the entitled white Southerners whose upbringing in the South damages their morality.

In some editions of The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois includes bars of music from African-American spirituals as one of two epigraphs before each essay. These songs represent important themes and beliefs of African Americans. Du Bois does not include lyrics with the songs, and he also does not identify the songs until the very last essay of the collection. His refusal to identify the songs reflects whites’ general ignorance of important aspects of African-American culture.

The little boy in “The Passing of the Firstborn” is Burghardt, Du Bois’s son who passed away as a result of a childhood disease. Children are traditionally symbols of the future for parents, but Du Bois expresses fear when his son is born. On first seeing the boy, he says the child’s blondish hair and unusual eye color convinced him that the veil of racism and the color-line of segregation had fallen across the child. Through describing the child’s death, Du Bois’s reveals his pessimism concerning the possibility of escaping racism in life.