Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary?each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work.

With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered Du Bois's impassioned yet formal prose, the largely autobiographical chapters of The Souls of Black Folks take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty, the neo-slavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation, and lynching, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that birthed gospel music and the blues. The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk is Du Bois's haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the black psyche's "double consciousness," which he described as "a peculiar sensation...One ever feels this twoness?an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

Enriched Classics enhance your engagement by introducing and explaining the historical and cultural significance of the work, the author's personal history, and what impact this book had on subsequent scholarship. Each book includes discussion questions that help clarify and reinforce major themes and reading recommendations for further research.

Read with confidence.

W.E.B. Dubois

Introduction

Chronology of W. E. B. Du Bois's Life and Work

Historical Context of The Souls of Black Folk

The Forethought

I. Of Our Spiritual Strivings

II. Of the Dawn of Freedom

III. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others

IV. Of the Meaning of Progress

V. Of the Wings of Atalanta

VI. Of the Training of Black Men

VII. Of the Black Belt

VIII. Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece

IX. Of the Sons of Master and Man

X. Of the Faith of the Fathers

XI. Of the Passing of the First-Born

XII. Of Alexander Crummell

XIII. Of the Coming of John

XIV. Of the Sorrow Songs

The Afterthought

Notes

Interpretive Notes

Critical Excerpts

Questions for Discussion

Suggestions for the Interested Reader