Family Questions for the Final Exam

Below are the family questions (and answers) which I have accepted for the final exam. You'll note I did a bit of editing in some cases. Remember, these questions will be on the exam. On some of the questions which require longer answers, you do NOT have to give me the answer verbatim on the exam, as long as you are close enough in your own words.

FAMILY I (Sarah, Cam, Arsenio, Preston) earn 20 pts., plus one bonus point.

1. In his 1906 Niagara Movement speech, how did DuBois alter the last couple lines of the Star Spangled Banner, and what did he mean by it? (2)

ANSWER: Instead of: "home of the free and land of the brave," DuBois's words were: "home of the thief and land of the Slave," basically alluding to the theft of Native American lands and the enslavement of Africans.

2. Which short, early work of DuBois was framed and hung on the walls of many African American homes? (1)

ANSWER: "Credo"

3. In his essay entitled, "Negro Education," how did DuBois describe the proper relationship between liberal arts education and vocational training? (3)

ANSWER: A school system should carry the child as far as possible in its knowledge of the accumulated wisdom of the world and then when economic or physical reasons demand that this education stop, vocational training to prepare for one's life work should follow. He did not believe that the race should be trained simply to be servants and laborers. He said that anyone who sneered at "literary courses" and books, and believed that education should focus solely on teaching the techniques of modern industry was pitifully wrong.

4. In "The First Universal Races Congress," DuBois cites the three propositions that Gustav Spillers said that a fair interpretation of the scientific evidence would support in regard to the mental characteristics and capacities of races. In your own words, identify ONE of these propositions. (1)

ANSWER: Any ONE of the following:
(1) It is not legitimate to argue from differences in physical characteristics to differences in mental characteristics.
(2) Physical and mental characteristics of races are not permanent, nor are they modifiable only through long ages. On the contrary, they are capable of being profoundly modified in a few generations by changes in education, public sentiment, and environment generally.
(3) The status of a race at any particular time offers no index to its innate or inherited capacities.


FAMILY II: (Tramaine, Michael, Brianna) earn 20 pts., plus one bonus point.

1. What did DuBois say happened to him in terms of his identity as a result of the time he spent at Fisk? (1)

ANSWER: He said he "became a Negro."

2. In what DuBois called, "Slavery by another name," what were the MANIFEST nad LATENT functions of white support for the "Tuskegee Machine?" (2)

ANSWER: Manifest -- helping the race through charity efforts. Latent -- by funding such vocational education, it provided a steady stream of cheap labor.

3. In professing his agnosticism in a short piece entitled, "Immortality," what ancient philosopher does DuBois clearly seem to have in mind? (1)

ANSWER: Socrates

4. Near the end of his life, what country did DuBois emigrate to and what project did he plan to work on there? (2)

ANSWER: Ghana, and he planned to work on his "Encyclopedia Africana."
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Family Activity: Making up Questions for the Final Exam

I want each of the two families listed below to come up with SIX short-answer questions for the final exam, drawing from anything we have covered since the beginning of the term. Remember to focus only on things covered in class, along with some notes I posted on this blog. This is especially important in terms of the selections in the Reader. You obviously have plenty of material to work with. One other thing you should keep in mind as you compose your questions and that is you should provide some context for each question. For example, if you ask something about one of the selctions in the Reader, you should at least identify which selection the question pertains to. By short-answer, I mean questions that can be answered simply and directly in a word, phrase, or at most, a couple sentences. I DO NOT WANT OPEN-ENDED, OPINION QUESTIONS. ALSO, NO TRUE-FALSE, NO MULTIPLE CHOICE EITHER. But I will accept fill-in-the-blank. I will give you some time in clas next Tuesday 5/3 to get organized and perhaps even begin discussing some possible questions. Remember, this is a JOINT effort; I want each family to agree on the six best questions you can come up with and submit them. I WILL ONLY ACCEPT SIX QUESTIONS FROM EACH FAMILY, AND NOT SEPARATE QUESTIONS FROM INDIVIDUAL FAMILY MEMBERS. I will also give you some more class time on the following Tuesday, 5/10, to discuss this further and hopefully arrive at the questions (AND ANSWERS) you want to submit. I then want each family to submit in writing or via email (NOT ON THE BLOG) your six proposed questions and answers NO LATER THAN THURSDAY, MAY 12TH, BY 4PM. I will then consider the submitted questions and select at least THREE questions from each family for inclusion on the final exam, and for each additional question I accept, that family will earn a bonus point and also have the advantage of knowing more of the questions on the exam. I will then post the accepted questions and answers on this blog no later than MONDAY, MAY 16TH AT 4PM, so you will have them in plenty of time to study for our final exam, which is scheduled for THURSDAY, MAY 19TH FROM 2-5PM. Each PARTICIPATING family member will earn 20 activity points for this exercise, plus whatever bonus points you might earn.

FAMILIES: (1) Tramaine, Michael, Brianna
(2) Sarah, Cam, Arsenio, Preston

Lecture Notes

Before I post some more lecture notes, let me call your attention to the previous blog post describing the extra credit opportunity in connection with the talk to be given by Mayor Steve Benjamin tomorrow at 4PM in Leonard Auditorium.

As I noted yesterday, we are going to wrap up volume II of Lewis's biography of DuBois tomorrow and then move on to the selections of DuBois's work next week. In order to have any chance of doing that, I am going to post some lecture notes below. Please incorporate these along with your other class notes.

We left off yesterday in the middle of Chapter 10: Atlanta: Black Reconstruction and Casanova Unbound.

I ended by commenting on DuBois's critical review of a major work on slavery, "American Negro Slavery," by Ulrich B. Phillips. See pp. 358-359.

1. Indeed, "Black Reconstruction" was a response to another biased potboiler, Claude G. Bowers' "The Tragic Era: The Revolution After Lincoln," which was popular in high schools and colleges.

2. DuBois's book was ignored by the American Historical Review and disparaged by mainstream historians during the McCarthy era (1950s) and well into the 1970s. Nonetheless, it did attract some favorable reviews at the time.

a.) In commenting on the book, Lewis notes how DuBois highlighted the intersection of race and class. In a very perceptive passage (see bottom paragraph, pp. 370 - 371)he also exposes the "blaming the victim" mentality of white historians writing about this period. ***CHECK OUT THESE TWO PAGES, WHICH I BELIEVE ARE VERY INSIGHTFUL.

b.) And Lewis notes that in his essay, "The Propaganda of History" (a coda to "Black Reconstruction"), "DuBois proclaimed that history as truth could empower democracy, if only historians chose to lie less." (p. 374)


Chapter 11: Dictatorships Compared: Germany, Russia, China, Japan

A. DuBois is awarded a travel fellowship in June 1935 which initially takes him to Hitler's Germany, but then is extended to Russia, China and Japan.

B. He witnessed anti-Semitism first hand in Germany, but was only able to speak out against it after he left. (see top p. 400) But in speaking out against it, he compares it to American Jim Crow. I believe he was thoroughly disgusted with what he witnessed, although at the same time he had some positive things to say about the National Socialist (Hitler's party) reconstruction of Germany and he himself was not discriminated against.

C. I believe most interesting was his praise for the Japanese, which he saw as a nation of colored people who had demonstrated superiority in defeating the Russians in 1905. In his "Message to Japan," he said in part, "Nowhere else in the modern world was there a people so intelligent, so disciplined, so clean, so punctual, so instinctively conscious of human good will,..." (p. 415) Although he did recognize a down-side to Japanese culture, he clearly was blind to some of the atrocities the Japanese committed in subduing the rest of Asia, such as the "rape of Nanking" (China).

1. Because, in the end, he put such faith in the Japanese as a colored nation which might come to the defense of other colored nations, he accepted Japanese aggression in China and the Pacific and urged Blacks not to lose faith.


Chapter 12: Atlanta: The Politics of Knowledge

A. Nice opening paragraph captures DuBois's sense of urgency, even at 69, of accomplishing as much as he could to correct this imperfect world. See first paragraph, p. 422.

B. Lewis talks about a couple scholarly projects he was carrying out. One, "The Bronze Booklets" (a series of small volumes on race relations problems) contained an essay entitled, "The Negro and Social Reconstruction," in which DuBois calls on Negroes to embrace a separatist and socialist agenda. This selection was rejected by Alaine Locke who was the editor.

1. In another piece, "The Basic American Negro Creed" (which was published later in "Dusk of Dawn"), he again endorses a socialist agenda. Lewis comments: "Once again, DuBois extolled the centrality of the Talented Tenth (or in Marxist lingo, "The Vanguard of the Black Proletariat"), charging it to study and scientifically formulate the proper course of racial action 'by which the masses may be guided.'" This, of course, would not sit too well with corporate donors.

2. The other project, "Encyclopedia of the Negro," would likewise run into difficulty because corporate sponsors (the Phelps-Stokes Fund) saw DuBois as too radical. In this case, it was considered too radical to have an all-black editorial board. In fact, he was forced to accept joint editorship with white scholars such as Ezra Park. There was much concern over whether DuBois could be "objective."

C. Instead, the board chose to fund a Swedish scholar, Gunnar Myrdal, who had little knowledge of race relationsin the U.S. to do a major study which became "An American Dilemma." DuBois swallowed his pride and offered Myrdal advice and counsel on the project, but also criticism of his research agenda. In the end, DuBois had many good things to say about Myrdal's book, "An American Dilemma," but he had some notable reservations as well.
See pp. 451-2 praise
See pp. 452-3 reservations.
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That brings us up to Chapter 13, where I will start tomorrow.

EXTRA CREDIT OPPORTUNITY

This coming Thursday, April 7th at 4PM in Leonard Auditorium, the African/African American Studies program is sponsoring a lecture by Mayor Steven Benjamin of Columbia, SC. By attending the lecture and posting a brief (one- or two-paragraph)"DuBoisian" reflection on his talk you may earn 5 points extra credit. I am not sure exactly what he is speaking on, but I am sure whatever it is it will resonate with some aspect of DuBois's life and work. Basically, I just want you to comment on how you believe his speech/message would have been received by DuBois if he were around to hear it. Please post your response NO LATER THAN THE FOLLOWING TUESDAY, APRIL 12TH.

***This is entirely voluntary.

Lecture Notes

So I don't get too far behind I am going to post my lecture notes or commentary on the rest of Chapter 2 on DuBois and Garvey as well as Chapter 3. Be sure to check out the textual references and incorporate these notes with your class notes.
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J. Garvey turned up the heat on DuBois and the Talented Tenth leadership and Lewis suggests that: "...Garvey's real message was an ulterior one aimed at assuaging and propitiating the American white power structure. (Garvey's) African Zion was to be built by 'Negro capitalism,' the economic system that was not only 'necessary to the progress of the world,' but had no place in it for labor unions." (p. 72)

1. Seems Garvey was trying to reassure the U.S. Government of his patriotism.

2. Garvey must have sensed he was running out of time. And indeed the mail fraud charges caught up with him in 1922.

3. In the end, DuBois worked to undermine him because he believed he had a more sober, prudent plan of uplift for Africa and African Americans. DuBois even enlisted the support of the President of Liberia in disavowing UNIA.

4. It also came out that Garvey had made contact with the KKK and some racist politicians to enlist their support in allowing blacks to survive and thrive separately or even go back to Africa.

a.) Lewis cites another hard-hitting critique of Garvey in which DuBois exposed his dealings with the Klan. See first paragraph, p. 82 (note how the threat posed by Washington and now by Garvey is characterized by Lewis.)


Chapter 3: On Being Crazy and Somewhat Devious

A. Lewis opens by discussing a short piece of satirical fiction DuBois published in "The Crisis" (July, 1923) -- he indicates that most cultured whites who read "The Crisis" were either shamed or angered or both. "The Crisis" kept track of things that were crazy and becoming even crazier such as lynching: eg. although hard to believe, a university course in lynching, including the chance to observe one, was offered in Missouri.

B. "The Crisis" also exposed some institutional developments of major consequence to educated Negroes: (1) racial discrimination at Harvard, (2) southern white control of the new Veterans' Adm. Hospital at Tuskegee, (3) denial of scholarship assistance to colored American artists by the Fountainbleau School of Fine Arts. All of the above was happening against a backdrop of Anglo-Saxon (WASP) concerns about immigrants, alien political ideas, high birthrates of swarthy immigrants, influx of Negro migrants. That is, "Nativist fears"

1. Regarding the VA Hospital at Tuskegee, DuBois railed -- "The last place on God's green earth to put a segregated Negro hospital was in the lynching belt,..." and then to have it run by an all-white medical and nursing staff! (see, pp. 91-92)

C. Lewis, then, gets into an influential book DuBois published in 1922, "The Gift of Black Folk" (which I had the pleasure to read this past summer), in which he highlights aesthetic, literary contributions of Blacks. He described the Negro as primarily an artist possessed of a special sense of beauty and a "certain spiritual joyousness, a sensuous, tropical love of life" -- "in vivid contrast to the cool, cautious New England reason (of whites)." (p. 95) (almost sounds like a common racial stereotype of Blacks and Whites that people still have.)

1. Lewis notes that this book was actually part of a series which highlighted the contributions of different ethnic groups to the making of America, countering nativist, conservative Gentile whites. Really an early work trumpeting MULTICULTURALISM.

2. It was an effort to deflate the "conquering ideology of whiteness."

3. "The Gift of Black Folk" was, as well, a written history lesson ranging over art, music, education, women's rights, and political theory." (p. 99) It had negligible appeal for white ethnics who were primarily concerned with wanting to be more white.

a.) Notes all the concern at the time of whites desperately trying to maintain white racial purity.

D. DuBois eulogizes his close friend, Colonel Charles Young, a West Point graduate who died in West Africa -- "he had kept the emphasis upon Young's triumphal humanity, his uncompromising patriotism, and his Homeric sense of duty --..." which was indirectly aimed at the War Dept. which had treated him so badly, denying him the opportunity to command black troops in Europe during WWI.

E. Lewis notes the profound impact DuBois made on a couple attractive, talented black women (one of whom was interviewed in the video biography -- Louise Thompson Patterson). Ms. Patterson was so impressed with a speech he made at Berkeley, CA that she walked out of the room "for the first time in my life, proud to be black." (see, pp. 103-104) (Later, Malcolm X would have a similar impact on many who came to hear him speak.)

F. Nina and Yolande come back into the picture, especially Yolande's improvident ways as reflected in her diet, mediocre school performance, chronic illnesses, love life (she dated Jimmie Lunceford, who would become one of the jazz greats in the 1930s).

G. DuBois sets sail for London in Oct. 1923 to attend another Pan African Congress. And on this trip abroad he finally was able to visit Africa -- Liberia, specifically.

1. Lewis notes some of the pronouncements that came out of this gathering. In addition to addressing specific issues such as the brutal exploitation of the Belgian Congo, Lewis makes a broader comment about DuBois's whole approach. See first paragraph, p. 114 ( which I would characterize as a cautious, reasoned elitist approach to independence for African countries.)
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That brings us up to Chapter 4, which is where we'll begin on Thursday, 3/17.

More Lecture Notes or Commentary

Chapter 9: Social Science, Ambition, and Tuskegee

A. They move to Atlanta where DuBois will plunge himself into teaching and especially research -- his ambitious Atlanta University Studies. But his wife, Nina, hated the South with its raw racism, lack of educational,recreational, medical facilities for blacks.

B. Atlanta University was isolated -- "an ivory tower of race." "Matthew Arnold's precepts guided their pedagogy -- the 'disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known throughout the world.'" (only in Georgia)

1. It was an integrated campus, faculty and students, which was unusual and raised the ire of white Atlantans -- "...the school had been subjected for several years to an almost total boycott by white Atlanta, its faculty treated as pariahs and its students periodically intimidated." (p. 214) the Georgia legislature took steps to cripple it financially.

a.) Notes what was an article of faith in the 1890s as it concerned educating Negroes. See, top p. 215.

C. DuBois was quite a campus character with his cane, and he was a stickler for punctuality and abiding by the rules -- no smoking on campus. As a rule, the brighter students were attracted to him and several research papers were done by students under his direction.

D. In setting up the Atlanta University series, DuBois had to challenge the bias of the university president and other white professors who saw the Negro's moral failings as the problem, not discrimination.

1. Lewis comments on several of these studies: "The Negro in Business," "The Negro Artisan," "The Negro Church," "The Negro American Family," etc.-- these broke new ground in terms of methodology, data collection, and historical analysis, drawing connections to slavery and even pre-slavery days.

2. Couple interesting points: (a) compiled much-needed data on public and college education for Negroes: The disclosure that there were 2,600 Negroes with college degrees was met with disbelief when DuBois testified in Washington, D.C. about this. (b) documented the wholesale exclusion of African Americans in the union movement. And they did all this -- conferences, publications, even DuBois's salary -- on a shoestring $5,000 budget.

E. This work and speaking engagements placed DuBois in the vanguard of social science scholarship in America. Yet the South, with its rabid racism, was unchanged. It appeared that all this knowledge, this scientific truth, repeatedly broadcast, was apparently impotent to ameliorate racist collective behavior. (I would note that this is similar to Dr. King's realization of the limits of moral persuasion and education.)

1. DuBois realized it was not enough to expose ignorance, tell the truth, but you needed to induce people to act on the truth, implement it politically. In this context, Lewis recalls a ghastly lynching in the summer of 1899, the Wilmington, NC riot. And most devastating personally -- the death of his son, due in large part to the lack of black doctors and the unwillingness of white doctors to treat black patients. Nina was devastated. Imagine, being called "niggers" when they walked behind the horse-drawn cart carrying their son's coffin to the Atlanta train station!

F. DuBois meets Washington on a fund-raising tour in New England. Washington was well-disposed toward him and even made a vague offer of employment at Tuskegee.

1. DuBois had earlier even defended Washington at an Afro-American Council meeting in Chicago in 1898. Washington had spoken out about some racial injustices. They also collaborated in defeating a bill in Georgia that would have restricted voting rights for blacks.

2. Nonetheless, DuBois interpreted Washington's offer of a job at Tuskegee as a subtrefuge designed to co-op him. But DuBois had his sights set on becoming a superintendent of colored schools in Washington, DC, but Booker T. Washington put his weight behind someone else who got the job. DuBois felt betrayed by the "Tuskegee Machine."
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That brings us up to Chapter 10, where I will pick up tomorrow (Tues., 3/1) and try to do better getting through several chapters. We'll see how close we can get to finishing volume 1 of his biography by the end of this week.

Lecture Notes

Given my utter failure to make much progress in commenting on the first volume of DuBois's biography, I am going to start blogging some of my commentary. I will do some today and probably also on Monday. Keep in mind that whatever notes I post on the blog will be potential material to make up final exam questions at the end of the semester. I trust some of this will also be useful in shedding light on the reading, and you are also welcome to use this material as a basis for journal entries or it may be relevant in other contexts. So, you might want to print this out and insert it along with your other notes.

We left off in the middle of Chapter 8:

D. In a speech at a gathering of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Nov. 19, 1897), he urged the great universities to embark on studies of the American Negro -- something he, of course, would do in "The Philadelphia Negro" and many later studies under the auspices of Atlanta University.

1. He did one such study for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia: A Social Study."

2. DuBois was very much committed to the research enterprise -- gathering facts, data, in contrast to mere theorizing, or moralizing, which Lewis notes he also did. "Yet along with moralizing came the first documented sociological insights..." (p. 196) See also, bottom, p. 195.

E. He was asked to write a piece for "The Atlantic Monthly" (summer, 1897) on the state of Negro America -- "Strivings of the Negro People," which clearly foreshadows some of his most famous passages in "The Souls Of Black Folk" (1903). Eg., "How does it feel to be a problem?" (the Negro problem, that is); "Twoness" or double-consciousness, being American and Negro, see bottom p. 199 & pp.200-201.

F. Lewis makes a nice observation about the significance of "The Philadelphia Negro" for the field of sociology specifically. Very high praise. "The Philadelphia Negro was a remarkable example of the new empiricism that was fundamentally transforming the social sciences at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although DuBois's novel sociological insights would soon become conventional wisdom, as one of the last books of the nineteenth century, the Philadelphia study would be a breakthrough achievement, an important and virtually solitary departure from the hereditarian theorizing of the times...." (pp. 201-202)

1. DuBois even wrote an unpublished essay, "Sociology Hesitant" (1900), which challenged the sociological establishment. He defined the field as -- "sociology,...is the science that seeks (to measure) the limits of chance in human conduct." (p. 203)

2. Lewis notes the influence of "The Philadelphia Negoro" on some works from black sociologists -- E. Franklin Frazier's family studies, "Black Metropolis" by Horace Cayton & St. Clair Drake, not to mention Myrdal's, "An American Dilemma," and Moynihan's family study (Myrdal & Moynihan were white of course). (I would also include, Wilson's "The Truly Disadvantaged" (1987))

3. Lewis notes that most of the reviewers of "The Philadelphia Negro" virtually ignored DuBois's race-class-economic analysis of the plight of blacks in Philadelphia, especially how powerful race prejudice was.

4. Lewis closes the chapter with a couple interesting observations about both DuBois's class and race analysis. First, see pp. 209-210, and second: "When DuBois finally wound up this catalogue of discrimination, the causal linkage of race and class to economics was unmistakable. DuBois had ended by driving home his point, writing feelingly: 'For thirty years and more Philadelphia has said to its black children: 'Honesty, efficiency and talent have little to do with your success; if you work hard, spend little and are good you may earn your bread and butter at those sorts of work which we frankly confess we despise; if you are dishonest and lazy, the State will furnish your bread free.'" (p. 210) (Such biting sarcasm is worthy of Malcolm X.)
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That brings us to Chapter 9. I'll pick up there over the weekend, or on Monday, so look for that.

First Exercise

On Thursday (2/17), we'll be seeing a video-documentary of DuBois's life, entitled: "W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four Voices." After seeing this documentary, I'd like you write a paragraph and post it as a comment on this blog on which ONE of the four segments of DuBois's life you found most interesting and why. In this paragraph you want to refer to some of what you saw and heard in the video, as well as make a case for why you believe it was the most interesting. This exercise is worth 5 activity points, and I'd like you to post your comments NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, FEB.25TH.

Welcome

Welcome students of Sociology 307: W.E.B. DuBois and the Development of Black Sociology. We will be using this blog for a variety of activities over the course of the semester, which I will call you attention to during our first class next Tuesday, Feb. 8th. I will be posting a "get-your-feet-wet" exercise early next week, so be looking for that.