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.