Black History Month is American History Month
Carl Van Vechten, Van Vechten Trust. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University This article is reprinted from Feb. 13, 2015. W.E.B. Du Bois’s magisterial book The Souls of Black Folk (1907) has left one particularly clear imprint on American conversations: its description, in the opening chapter “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” of African Americans’ “double consciousness,” their sense of being both within and without American identity, insiders yet outsiders to this national community. Yet in his closing chapter “The Sorrow Songs,” Du Bois frames that relationsh...