Friday, March 2, 2018

The Structural, Institutional, and Hegemonic Power of White Supremacy As Ideology And Political Economy in The Age of Trump

https://www.motherjones.com/…/a-supreme-court-ruling-again…/

A Supreme Court Ruling Against Unions Would Hit Black Women Hardest

The decision could profoundly affect “the livelihoods of millions of individuals…all at once.”

by Eli Day
February 28, 2018
Mother Jones

PHOTO: AFSCME members protest at the Minnesota State Capitol against a "right to work" amendment in 2012.Richard Sennott/Minneapolis Star Tribune

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Janus v. AFSCME, a case that could kneecap public-sector union funding if the court rules in the plaintiff’s favor. Union opponents have celebrated the case for targeting the financial heart of the labor movement. Beyond the lively legal arguments, some labor supporters have noted that an unfavorable decision for unions would disproportionately affect women and people of color. 

The legal team for Mark Janus, an Illinois state employee who is represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is arguing that the required fee he pays to the union for bargaining on his behalf violates his First Amendment rights. If the Supreme Court rules in Janus’s favor, it will undo the precedent in the 1977 case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, in which the court ruled unanimously that public employees who disagree with the union representing them are not denied their right to free speech. 

During Monday’s arguments, the court’s liberal justices raised flags about how reversing a 40-year-old precedent would affect the livelihoods of millions of workers. Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed that the arguments against union fees were essentially no different from ones to “do away with unions.” And Justice Elana Kagan cautioned, “This is a case in which there are tens of thousands of contracts with these provisions. Those contracts affect millions of employees, maybe as high as 10 million employees.” About five million workers in 24 states are currently covered by the “fair-share” fees at the heart of the case.

If the court’s conservative justices rule against the union, it will hurt some workers more than others. In an amicus brief, the National Women’s Law Center and dozens of other groups “committed to civil rights and economic opportunity” argue that unions have been a vital tool for shrinking economic inequality for women and people and color: “Unions are associated with smaller wage gaps related to gender and race in part because they promote transparency in criteria and decisions on compensation, recruitment, and promotions. Gender-based wage gaps persist throughout the economy, but the wage gap for union members is 53 percent smaller than the wage gap among non-union workers.” The brief goes on to argue that union benefits like pensions, health insurance, and paid leave are especially important for women and people of color, who face greater vulnerability in the labor market.

The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, says that unionized black women would suffer the most from an anti-union decision in Janus. Black women make up a disproportionate share of public employees (18 percent, or roughly 1.5 million workers). Despite their ugly histories of racist exclusion, unions have emerged as a key vehicle for collapsing the vast inequality between black women and the rest of the workforce. According to the NWLC, black women who belong to unions make 30 percent more than those who don’t. And while black women earn 65 cents for every dollar earned by white men, that wage gap is 20 percent smaller for unionized black women. 

Justice Kagan acknowledged the significant real-world impact of this case, which could be decided this summer. Ruling against the union, she cautioned, would not only challenge laws across several states, but would affect “the livelihoods of millions of individuals…all at once. When have we ever done something like that?” 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Eli Day is an editorial fellow with Mother Jones and relentless Detroiter. You can reach him at eday@motherjones.com.


Trump and Congress Are Making It Easier for Banks and Companies to Rip Off Black People

“It’s fairly alarming”

by Hannah Levintova
February 25, 2018
Mother Jones




IMAGE: credit: P_Wei/Getty; hansslegers/Getty

In the mid-2000s, Hudson City Savings Bank, a large savings bank in New Jersey, was doing well, earning accolades for its smart management, its “small town” feel, and its relative strength in the face of the brewing financial crisis. It was even expanding—opening more than 50 new branches in neighboring New York and Connecticut.

But Hudson’s expansion strategy seemed designed to exclude certain customers. Despite placing dozens of new branches in counties near New York City, such as Westchester, the bank didn’t open any at all in Queens, Kings, Bronx, and New York counties—which happen to be the counties with the highest proportion of majority black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the state.

In 2014, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) started investigating the bank for possible redlining—the practice of excluding minority communities from credit products. To build a case, the bureau’s investigators relied on information collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), which requires lenders to report various data points on the mortgages they sell—including the distribution of loans across census tracts, data that helps regulators spot patterns of racial discrimination.

Mapping Hudson’s HMDA data revealed that the bank’s expansion “excludes and forms a semi-circle around” those heavily minority counties, the CFPB and the Justice Department noted in a subsequent lawsuit. Hudson, the suit alleged, “discouraged consumers in majority-Black-and-Hispanic census tracts from applying for credit.”
A major anti-redlining lawsuit hinged on data rules the Trump administration is doing its best to undermine.
The data showed that plenty of people in those black and Hispanic neighborhoods were getting loans, only not from Hudson. In 2014, the bank had approved 1,886 mortgages in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, but only 25 went to black borrowers. When a customer from one of the four excluded New York counties showed up at a Hudson branch, they would be deemed ineligible for certain discounted products the bank offered its low- or moderate-income clients from other areas. What’s more, Hudson’s advertisements dictated that customers had to go in to a single branch location—in majority white Fairfield, Connecticut, an hour’s drive from New York City—in order to close on any of the discounted loans.

“Hudson City,” the agencies concluded, “had no legitimate, non-discriminatory reason to draw relatively few applications from these majority Black-and-Hispanic areas.” In 2015, Hudson settled the federal lawsuit for nearly $33 million, the largest redlining settlement in the history of the CFPB and the DOJ. (The settlement did not include an admission of guilt by Hudson.) The deal called for the majority of the settlement to be invested in a mortgage subsidy program offered in the neighborhoods Hudson had neglected.

The access of federal regulators to good HDMA data has been key, not just to the Hudson lawsuit, but to many other redemptive actions intended to help consumers. But the Trump administration recently made a move that threatens the integrity of the data. In December, the CFPB—whose new interim director is Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director—announced that the agency will no longer fine lenders for reporting errors. This will make the information, “much less useful,” says Makada Henry-Nickie, a governance studies fellow at the Brookings Institution and former senior analyst at the CFPB. “Every single mortgage discrimination or redlining case is supported by the HMDA data, even if it didn’t originate there,” she adds. “So with Mulvaney’s decision, we’re losing a lot.”

The agency has also announced plans to reconsider the data-reporting requirements altogether.

These recent changes are just one piece of a broader trend that has swept across government since Trump took office—a gutting of anti-discrimination measures across the financial services, including mortgages, car loans, payday loans, and more. “This is a pattern we have observed, and it’s fairly alarming,” says Yana Miles, senior legislative counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. “You have good policy that protects consumers and tries to address discrimination. We’re seeing these rules delayed, picked at, or invalidated.”
Congress recently repealed a ban on corporate contract language that leaves consumers powerless in the case of a dispute.
This trend ramped up last October, when Congress repealed the CFPB’s rule banning clauses in financial contracts that required arbitration and prevented class-action lawsuits. Class actions allow customers to pool their resources to sue as a group, which tends to be much more feasible than financing a lawsuit individually—especially in cases where the financial losses are not large. With mandatory arbitration, too, the deck is stacked heavily against the consumer. The repeal marked a major win for Wall Street, easing the way for banks to engage in harmful practices—including unequal treatment of minority borrowers—unchecked by consumer lawsuits.

Last month, Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it would delay enforcement of an Obama-era rule that forces local governments to identify racial segregation in housing and develop plans to address it. Under the original rule, communities had to submit their plans to HUD starting in January 2019 to remain eligible for federal housing aid. But the administration has extended the deadline to October 31, 2020—days before the next presidential election. Some observers think the delay may presage an undoing of the rule, which Housing Secretary Ben Carson has long criticized as akin to “social engineering.” (Since taking his Cabinet post, Carson has said he’d like to “reinterpret” the rule.) HUD justified the delay by saying some of the assessments already submitted were deemed ineffective at reversing housing segregation, a sign that communities needed more time to hone their plans.

Two weeks after the HUD announcement, Mulvaney’s CFPB said it would reconsider another Obama-era rule—one that created landmark federal restrictions on payday lenders. Using a person’s coming paycheck as collateral, these lenders loan cash at astronomical rates—sometimes, allegedly, as high as 950 percent. Studies have found that the lenders disproportionately target communities of color when setting up their locations.

With Mulvaney in charge, the CFPB has stopped going after auto dealers who give their black customers higher interest rates.

The CFPB has also announced it would strip enforcement powers from the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity, the agency’s division responsible for protecting minority borrowers against discriminatory lending. The fair lending office has levied hundreds of millions of dollars in fines on lenders who overcharged nonwhite borrowers, and has been responsible for some of the agency’s biggest victories, including a $169 million fine against GE Capital for credit card discrimination—the largest such settlement in the federal government’s history—and the 2015 Hudson settlement.

Consumer watchdogs are further concerned that under Mulvaney’s control, the CFPB, through a series of confusing legislative twists and turns, appears to have rolled back its guidance cracking down on discriminatory pricing on auto loans. In 2013, the agency called out car dealers for jacking up interest rates on nonwhite customers and then imposed limits on the dealers’ discretion to mark up those rates at random.

The auto-lending rule quickly became a Republican target—in 2015, Mulvaney, then a congressman, voted for a bill that aimed to nullify it. That bill failed, but several months after Trump’s inauguration, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) asked the Government Accountability Office to look into how the rule was made—the office determined that the CFPB had flouted certain congressional regulations in the process, and concluded that the agency needed to resubmit the rule for congressional approval before enforcing it any further. Perhaps not surprisingly, Mulvaney’s agency has not done so, which means the anti-discrimination rule is effectively null and void.

The CFPB did not respond to a request for comment about the impacts of its policy changes on communities of color, but the administration’s broad attack on anti-discrimination measures has raised the ire of Democratic lawmakers. Last week, 53 Democrats wrote to the CFPB demanding more information on how the agency went about deciding to roll back the protections, including the changes to mortgage data reporting and the reorganization of the fair lending office. “Laws that prohibit discrimination in consumer financial markets, like other consumer protection laws, were not prioritized by regulators before the financial crisis,” they wrote. “We are concerned that in taking these actions, you will frustrate the CFPB’s efforts to ensure all ‘consumers are protected from unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices and from discrimination.'”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Hannah Levintova is a reporter in Mother Jones' DC bureau. You can email her at hlevintova @motherjones.com





POLITICS
Schools See Major Uptick In Racial Harassment, New Data Suggests

It’s “distressingly unsurprising,” one former Education Department official says.

by Rebecca Klein

February 23, 2018

Huffington Post


PHOTO: Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Vice President Mike Pence, and Donald Trump. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

[Racial harassment complaints to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights increased nearly 25 percent between fiscal years 2016 and 2017.]

The U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights division saw a significant increase in the number of complaints it received regarding racial harassment in schools, including post-secondary institutions, in 2017, according to data the department provided to HuffPost. The increase represents the biggest rise in this category since at least 2009, the earliest consecutive year for which we could find publicly reported numbers in this category. 

The number of racial harassment discrimination complaints the department’s civil rights division receives has ebbed and flowed over the last nine years. It did not receive more than 600 complaints until fiscal year 2017, when the number climbed to 675, a nearly 25 percent increase from the previous year. Previously, the number had bounced between a low of 362 and a high of 577. 

The Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, is charged with addressing complaints under Title VI, the federal law that protects students from discrimination based on race, color and national origin.

The Department of Education provided the numbers in response to an inquiry from HuffPost. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment when asked about potential reasons for this uptick, or to a request about numbers from earlier than 2009, by press time. 

Catherine Lhamon, who ran OCR during the Obama administration, said she could not speculate on the reasons for this increase, but pointed to outside data showing a surge in hate crimes nationally.

“Our schools are places that encapsulate and reflect the national climate as well,” said Lhamon, who is now chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “It is distressingly unsurprising that there might be an uptick in racial harassment complaints coming to OCR.” 

Zoe Savitsky, deputy legal director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, pointed to the numbers as evidence that the Trump administration is creating a toxic national environment that is in turn affecting schools. In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, the Southern Poverty Law Center started surveying teachers about how the election had influenced their school’s climate. Many teachers reported seeing an increase in hateful language and attitudes toward marginalized student groups. 
“I am saddened but not surprised,” said Savitsky of the rise in racial harassment complaints in schools.

Our schools are places that encapsulate and reflect the national climate. Catherine Lhamon, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

In general, grievances regarding discrimination related to race and national origin appear to have mostly held steady between 2016 and 2017, per documents related to the department’s budget request released last week. But within that category, harassment complaints underwent a specific leap. Other types of complaints that involve race or national origin might cover disproportionate disciplining of minority students or segregation. 

The record number of harassment complaints comes as OCR has begun scaling back its operations under the Trump administration. The Education Department recently announced that it would no longer deal with discrimination complaints involving transgender students’ use of bathrooms. Last June, OCR announced that its attorneys would spend less time searching for evidence of systemic discrimination at public schools and universities in order to work through a backlog of complaints. The administration’s proposed budget for next year, released earlier this month, indicates that it plans to significantly shrink the number of employees working at OCR. 

Between 2016 and 2017, OCR saw a 23 percent drop in the number of complaints it received overall. This decrease, though, could be attributable to a single individual who filed over 6,000 complaints in 2016. Notwithstanding this complainant, the office actually saw a significant increase in overall complaints in 2017.

An Education Department spokesperson also provided HuffPost with numbers showing that complaints regarding incidents of sexual violence in schools, including at K-12 schools and universities, held mostly steady in 2017 after a huge uptick in 2016. 

Notably, in 2017, OCR also provided fewer technical assistance sessions, in which education department staffers advise public school officials and other stakeholders about their obligations under civil rights law. OCR held 250 sessions in 2015 and 295 in 2016. In 2017, the office held only 188. 

A spokesperson for the Education Department did not respond to inquiries about why this number might have decreased. 

Lhamon said she found the decrease concerning.
“I was sick about how few technical assistance sessions we were able to offer in my time,” she said. “Reducing the number means OCR reaches fewer willing audiences about how to do what Congress has commanded and make sure students are safe.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rebecca Klein is the Education Reporter for the Huffington Post


http://www.truth-out.org/…/43637-tax-forms-reveal-koch-brot…

Tax Forms Reveal Koch Brothers Spent Millions to Shape State Politics in 2017
by Alex Kotch 

February 25, 2018 

Truthout | Report

IMAGE:  Though positions advocated by the Koch brothers and their network are unpopular with Americans, big money can give life to even the unlikeliest of proposals. Though positions advocated by the Koch brothers and their network are unpopular with Americans, big money can give life to even the unlikeliest of proposals. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)


The conservative billionaire mega-donors Charles and David Koch poured millions of dollars into state politics in 2017, according to tax forms recently released by the Internal Revenue Service, despite it being a year with relatively few state elections.

The brothers' massive investments in federal Republican politicians and groups have been more heavily scrutinized, but the influence they and their vast political spending network have on state politics is too often overlooked.
The Koch political network has funneled money and organizing into state politics for some time, contributing to huge state legislative gains by Republicans over the last decade. Having cultivated a large number of state officials who share their beliefs, or feel indebted to them, the Kochs are able to heavily influence right-wing policy change, even at the federal level. One current initiative is a radical Convention of the States, which would bypass an often gridlocked Congress and convene representatives from each state to alter the US Constitution with federal spending caps and any number of unforeseen changes. Another goal is gerrymandering the US Senate by allowing state legislators and governors, not the people, to pick US senators.

Last year, Koch Industries, the giant, private fossil fuel and materials conglomerate co-owned by the Koch brothers, lavished state-level super PACs, such as the Republican Governors Association, the Republican State Leadership Committee and the Republican Attorneys General Association with hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Groups like these use donations from wealthy conservatives and corporations to help elect state legislative, gubernatorial and cabinet secretary candidates who, in many cases, lower taxes, slash regulations and hinder collective bargaining -- policies that aid the profits of big businesses like Koch Industries and line up with the Koch brothers' libertarian ideology.

David Koch, the richest resident of New York City with a net worth of $60.7 billion as of February 22, personally donated $500,000 to the New York Republican Party in 2017. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Charles Koch has not personally yet donated to state candidates since 2014; however, campaign finance report deadlines will soon arrive in some states, and these reports could reveal any such contributions.

"The positions advocated by the Koch brothers and their network are incredibly unpopular with Americans, and yet in our political system, big money can give life to even the unlikeliest of proposals," Laura Friedenbach, communications director of the progressive money-in-politics nonprofit Every Voice, told Truthout. "Big donors and their allies have successfully rigged the rules of our democracy in ways that give them, their political spending, and out-of-touch politicians too much influence."

Democratic donors also contribute to super PACs and dark money groups that spend on state elections, but in the last decade, Republican spending groups -- which are often better funded -- have proved more effective in influencing local policies.

Since 2010, Republicans have gained control of 18 additional state legislatures. However, recent elections in Virginia and other states demonstrate what appears to be a Democratic wave, in part due to the unpopularity of President Donald Trump and the dearth of major legislation passed by the GOP-controlled Congress.

To complement super PAC spending and campaign contributions, the Koch political network also spent millions of dollars on outside advertisements in state races. For example, the most well-known "dark money" nonprofit partially funded and overseen by the Kochs, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), spent at least $2.8 million on TV ads, digital ads and mailers attacking Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam, intended to benefit the unsuccessful bid of Republican Ed Gillespie.

Virginia Republicans suffered some tough losses in last year's elections, but that hasn't deterred Freedom Partners, the "central bank" of the political network, from advocating work requirements for Medicaid recipients, or AFP from opposing a Medicaid expansion in the state.

Gillespie was a keynote speaker at an annual AFP event in August. The Defending the American Dream Summit is an annual weekend gathering for "defenders of freedom to come together to learn, be inspired, and celebrate liberty."
"Ed Gillespie has long been a champion for policies that promote economic prosperity and improve people's lives," said AFP President Tim Phillips. "I'm excited for our activists to learn more about his approach to advancing free market principles in Virginia and how he plans to keep the American Dream alive and well for this generation and many more to come."

In typical Koch fashion, one anti-Northam mailer attacked the candidate for supporting higher taxes on sales, gas, home and car sales. A digital video criticized Northam for opposing an "education savings account" proposal that would give parents who removed their children from public school 90 percent of the state funds that would have been spent on those children, which they could spend on private school tuition and other educational costs.

The Koch network, which advocates charter and private school expansion, is supporting similar education savings account bills around the country. In Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey, a Koch favorite, signed a 2017 bill creating private school vouchers, which pay for children to attend private, often religious, schools. Now an anti-voucher measure is on the state's 2018 ballot, and the Kochs' LIBRE Initiative, a project targeting Latino voters, is campaigning against it.
"The Koch network of funders considers vouchers the 'low-hanging fruit' of what can be accomplished in the public policy world," Mary Bottari, deputy director of the Center for Media and Democracy, which studies and reports on the Koch network, told Truthout. "The terrible tragedy is that empirical research is increasingly showing that vouchers are actually harming kids."

Both the Arizona law and Virginia's measure on vouchers -- which passed the state legislature but was vetoed by then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe -- mirror model legislation crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill made up of big business representatives and conservative state lawmakers. ALEC receives funding from Koch Industries, which has been on the group's governing board, and the Charles Koch Foundation.

And the Koch network is embedded in the ALEC leadership. Frayda Levin, an AFP board member, and Michael Morgan, a Koch Industries lobbyist, are on ALEC's Private Enterprise Advisory Council. ALEC recently hired former AFP analyst Grant Kidwell to chair its Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force.

Donors to the Republican Governors Association can't technically earmark their donations for specific candidates, but they can convey their "interest" in certain races or say they are making a donation "at the request of a candidate," according to The Wall Street Journal.

In 2017, Koch Industries donated $525,000 to the Republican Governors Association, per recently released tax forms, which gave $5.25 million to Gillespie's campaign and gave almost $8 million to another super PAC, A Stronger Virginia. That PAC contributed the largest total out of all donors, $7.5 million, to the Gillespie campaign.

The New Jersey governor's race, also held in 2017, broke the state record for independent spending ($24.5 million), which included $2.3 million from the Republican Governors Association backing GOP candidate Kimberly Guadagno, who lost.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, to which Koch Industries and Koch Companies Public Sector LLC donated $154,000, put roughly $2 million into Virginia races in 2017, including $810,000 to lieutenant governor candidate Jill Vogel, $700,000 to the Virginia Republican Party and over $500,000 to the Dominion Leadership Trust, a committee set up by House Speaker Bill Howell to aid Republican state candidates.

Koch Industries donated nearly $60,000 directly to Virginia state campaigns last year, including $20,000 to Gillespie, $10,000 to Adams and $7,500 to the Dominion Leadership Trust.

Koch Industries and Koch Companies Public Sector LLC collectively donated over $215,000 in 2017 to the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), a super PAC that spends large amounts to help elect GOP state attorneys general. RAGA donated at least $6.9 million last year to Virginia attorney general candidate John Adams, the Virginia Republican Party and the Dominion Leadership Trust, as well as to party organizations in other states, such as Florida, Michigan and Washington, according to the group's most recent tax forms. As a top-tier donor to RAGA, Koch Industries had "posting access" to an exclusive online policy bulletin board, according to documents recently revealed by The Intercept.

Koch Industries and its corporate political action committee, KochPAC, made over $137,000 in direct donations to state candidates' campaigns and state party groups, per data compiled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

By maintaining and expanding Republican majorities in state legislatures across the country, the Koch network will help the party control the 2020 redistricting of state and federal districts.

In 2010, led by the Republican State Leadership Committee's REDMAP program, the party successfully took control of a majority of state legislatures, allowing the GOP to draw legislative and congressional voting districts in those states the following year, after the 2010 Census was released. The result in several states, including North Carolina and Pennsylvania, were partisan and racial gerrymanders. In 2021, state lawmakers will again redraw these maps after the 2020 Census, and political donors like the Kochs want to prevent Democrats from regaining majorities and controlling this process.

In addition to privatizing education and cutting taxes, the Koch network has plenty of other designs for the states. AFP supports an anti-union "Right to Work" amendment to the North Carolina constitution and expanded offshore gas drilling in nearby Atlantic waters. In Kentucky, AFP applauded Gov. Matt Bevin's push to impose Medicaid work requirements and his plan to repeal film tax credits.

Requests for comment from Freedom Partners, Koch Industries and KochPAC were not returned.

"The ALEC-Koch machine has long advocated this list of policies -- corporatizing public education, dismantling public health care, backing policies to lower wages and destroy public and private sector unions," said Bottari. "These policies benefit no one except corporations and the wealthy trying to rig our economy for their own benefit."

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Alex Kotch is an independent investigative journalist focused on money in politics, and he's been published by over 20 outlets including VICE.com, Salon, Exposed by CMD, AlterNet, DeSmog and Rewire. Follow him on Twitter @alexkotch and see more of his work at alexkotch.com.

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By Mary Bottari, PR Watch | News Analysis

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Homage To and Celebration of the Life, Work, and Legacy of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) on the Sesquicentennial Of His Birth

All,

Today February 23, 2018 marks the 150th year birthdate or sesquicentennial of the legendary W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) one of the world's greatest and most important as well as influential scholars, public intellectuals, philosophers, historians, sociologists, radical activists, political leaders, and cultural critics of the past century. In homage to and celebration of this pivotal world historical figure and his extraordinary life, work, and legacy we offer the following articles, commentary, and documentary material.  Enjoy and pass the word…

Kofi


CALIFORNIA NEWSREEL

Film and Video for Social Change since 1968

W.E.B. DUBOIS: A BIOGRAPHY IN FOUR VOICES
DVD and DVD + 3-Year Site/Local Streaming

116 minutes, 1995



Image may contain: 1 person, beard


Producer/Director: Louis Massiah, Writer/Narrators: Wesley Brown, Thulani Davis, Toni Cade Bambara and Amiri Baraka

The long and remarkable life of Dr. William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B) Du Bois (1868-1963) offers unique insights into an eventful century in African American history. Born three years after the end of the Civil War, Du Bois witnessed the imposition of Jim Crow, its defeat by the Civil Rights Movement and the triumph of African independence struggles

Du Bois was the consummate scholar-activist whose path-breaking works remain among the most significant and articulate ever produced on the subject of race. His contributions and legacy have been so far-reaching, that this, his first film biography, required the collaboration of four prominent African American writers. Wesley Brown, Thulani Davis, Toni Cade Bambara and Amiri Baraka narrate successive periods of Du Bois' life and discuss its impact on their work.

Part One: Black Folk and the New Century (1895-1915)

Du Bois' first sociological work, The Philadelphia Negro, and, even more, The Souls of Black Folk, examined the cultural and political psychology of the American African Diaspora. During the same period, racism was institutionalized under the Jim Crow system. Du Bois emerged as the most outspoken critic of Booker T. Washington's advocacy of accommodation to segregation. He co-founded the Niagara Movement and then the NAACP to agitate for full equality between blacks and whites.


Part Two: The Crisis and the New Negro (1919-1929)

Du Bois created the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis, which became a vital organ in the burgeoning African American cultural movement, the Harlem Renaissance. Du Bois also was a founder of the Pan African movement, organizing the first international congresses of leaders from Africa and the Diaspora.


Part Three: A Second Reconstruction? (1934-1948)

Dismissed from the editorship of The Crisis for his radical views, Du Bois was forced to resume his academic career at age 68. It was now the Depression and he became more open to leftist ideology as reflected in his magnum opus, Black Reconstruction.


Part Four: Color, Democracy, Colonies and Peace (1949-1963)

Du Bois' continuing anti-racist activism and growing leftist sympathies made him a target during the McCarthy years. He was indicted and for a time his passport was revoked. In 1961, Kwame Nkrumah, the president of the newly independent African state of Ghana, invited him to participate in that country's development; Du Bois accepted, living there for the remainder of his life.


CRITICAL COMMENTS: 

"An absolutely incredible job! Your film on Du Bois nears perfection . . . A resonantly full work of art. I can't imagine that Du Bois himself would not weep in gratitude upon seeing the work." 

--Houston A. Baker Jr., University of Pennsylvania
"Scholar, activist, father of Pan-Africanism, founder of the twentieth-century struggle for civil rights, W.E.B. Du Bois succeeds in capturing this remarkable man and his significance. It will enlighten anyone - student scholar or general viewer - fortunate enough to see it." 

--Eric Foner, Columbia University
"Sets a new standard for documentary film. The brilliance of interpretation and historical breadth make it a fitting tribute to the man whom I believe is the most important intellectual of our century." 

--Robin D. G. Kelley, New York University 
"One of the essential tools for teaching about the great Dr. Du Bois...Hearing this most self-reflective of men speaking in his own voice about the meaning of the central events of his life is at once profoundly moving and a source of insight." 

--K. Anthony Appiah, Harvard University
"A beautiful and moving epic - not only about a brilliant and important figure but about the struggle of a people in the 20th century...Will make a wonderful teaching tool. I was personally inspired." 

--Lani Guinier, University of Pennsylvania


All,

Today February 23, 2018 marks the 150th year birthdate or sesquicentennial of the legendary W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) one of the world's greatest and most important as well as influential scholars, public intellectuals, philosophers, historians, sociologists, radical activists, political leaders, and cultural critics of the past century. In homage to and celebration of this pivotal world historical figure and his extraordinary life, work, and legacy we offer the following articles, commentary, and documentary material Enjoy and pass the word…

Kofi

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: "Running after Du Bois"
The American Academy in Berlin
November 2017


W.E.B. Du Bois was the most influential black intellectual of his time. In this talk, Columbia University professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak considers Du Bois in the great diversity of his positions—from the American “Negro” all the way to global communism and Pan-Africanism, with reference to his literary and autobiographical works as well. Her focus is his analysis of the emergence of US “abolition-democracy” as reflected in Du Bois’s massive Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, a pioneering study of the societal role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War.


VIDEO: https://vimeo.com/241178298


ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor, and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. B.A. English (First Class Honors), Presidency College, Calcutta, 1959. Ph.D. Comparative Literature, Cornell University, 1967. D. Litt, University of Toronto, 1999; D. Litt, University of London, 2003; D. Hum, Oberlin College, 2008; D. Honoris Causa, Universitat Roveri I Virgili, 2011; D. Honoris Causa, Rabindra Bharati, 2012; Kyoto Prize in Thought and Ethics, 2012; Padma Bhushan 2013; D.Honoris Causa, Univeridad Nacional de San Martin, 2013; D. Litt, University of St. Andrews, 2014; D. Honoris Causa, Paris VIII, 2014; Presidency University, 2014; D. Hum, Yale University, 2015; D. Litt, University of Ghana-Legon, 2015; D. Honoris Causa, Universidad de Chile, 2016; Lifetime Scholarly Achievement from the Modern Language Association of America, 2018.

Fields: 19th- and 20th-century literature; politics of culture; feminism; Marx, Derrida; globalization. Books: Myself Must I Remake: The Life and Poetry of W. B. Yeats (1974), Of Grammatology (translation with critical introduction of Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, 1976), In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (1987; Routledge Classic 2002), Selected Subaltern Studies (ed., 1988), The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (1990), Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Post-Coloniality (1993; 2d ed forthcoming), Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993; Routledge classic 2003), Imaginary Maps (translation with critical introduction of three stories by Mahasweta Devi, 1994), The Spivak Reader (1995), Breast Stories (translation with critical introduction of three stories by Mahasweta Devi, 1997), Old Women (translation with critical introduction of two stories by Mahasweta Devi, 1999), Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet / Imperative zur Neuerfindung des Planeten (ed. Willi Goetschel, 1999; 2d ed. forthcoming), A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present (1999), Song for Kali: A Cycle (translation with introduction of Ramproshad Sen, 2000), Chotti Munda and His Arrow (translation with critical introduction of a novel by Mahasweta Devi, 2002), Death of a Discipline (2003), Other Asias (2005), An Aesthetic Education in the Age of Globalization (2012), Readings (2014), Du Bois and the General Strike (forthcoming). Significant articles: "Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography" (1985), "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism" (1985), "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1988), "The Politics of Translation" (1992), "Moving Devi" (1999), "Righting Wrongs" (2003), "Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching" (2004), "Translating into English" (2005), "Rethinking Comparativism" (2010), "A Borderless World" (2011), "General Strike" (2012), "Crimes of Identity" (2014), "Our World" (2014). Activist in rural education and feminist and ecological social movements since 1986.



W.E.B. Du Bois was the most influential black intellectual of his time. In this talk, Columbia University professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak considers Du Bois…vimeo.com


All,

Today February 23, 2018 marks the 150th year birthdate or sesquicentennial of the legendary W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) one of the world's greatest and most important as well as influential scholars, public intellectuals, philosophers, historians, sociologists, radical activists, political leaders, and cultural critics of the past century. In homage to and celebration of this pivotal world historical figure and his extraordinary life, work, and legacy we offer the following articles, commentary, and documentary material Enjoy and pass the word…

Kofi


'He's still teaching us about injustice in the world': UMass, Great Barrington celebrate 150th anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois' birth

February 17, 2018

'He's still teaching us about injustice': 150th anniversary of W.E.B. DuBois' birth
by Diane Lederman
University of Massachusetts at Amherst


AMHERST -- Although he was born 150 years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois is as relevant as today's headlines, an executive at the University of Massachusetts library named after him says.

"He is still teaching us about injustice in the world," said Carol Connare, UMass Amherst Libraries W.E.B. Du Bois Center director of Library Development and Communication.

Du Bois, who was born in Great Barrington, founded the NAACP and created "The Crisis," a magazine for that organization that looked at race and social injustice.

The UMass Board of Trustees voted Oct. 5, 1994, to name the library in honor of the African-American historian and activist. The library holds his writings.

UMass and Great Barrington are holding events to honor Du Bois all month to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth on Feb. 23. 

Director of UMass Du Bois Center gives away books to call attention to library namesake

Whitney Battle-Baptiste was giving away 500 copies.

He was the first black man to graduate from Harvard, Connare said. He wrote non-fiction and plays.

"We have this extraordinarily prolific writer, and activist, who is commenting and changing his mind over time and we have it all documented in really amazing quality of writing," she said.

He might best be known for "The Souls of Black Folk," which was published in 1903.

"His ideas are more relevant today than ever and those are ideas about social injustice of all kinds and how do we as a people address (that)," Connare said. "Those are questions we're wrestling with today. You can look back, but here we have this relevance that has never been more relevant because we're still listening to him.

"He said that the problem of the 20th century is the color line. And we're well into the 21st century. It's time to listen," she said.

Upcoming events in Great Barrington include:

Sunday at 11 a.m., Karla Nicholson, executive director of the Haymarket People's Fund in Boston, will speak on the "Courage to Change" at the Macedonia Baptist Church, 9 Rosseter St.

Monday at 7 p.m., the documentary "Du Bois in Four Voices" will be screened at Berkshire South, 15 Crissey Road, followed by a panel discussion.

Feb. 23, UMass history students will provide guided tours of the Du Bois home site.

Also Feb. 23, Reiland Rabaka, University of Colorado at Boulder professor of African, African American, and Caribbean studies in the department of ethnic studies, will speak the Mahaiwe Performing Arts center at 7 p.m.

Rabaka also will speak at UMass Feb. 21 at 4 p.m. at the Old Chapel. His talk at both locations is titled "W.E.B. Du Bois and the Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement."

UMass will celebrate Du Bois' Feb. 23 birthday with cake at 10 a.m. in the library lobby. There is also a new exhibit in the Learning Commons in the library showing publications photographs and writing to further augment his life.

On the UMass Amherst Libraries W.E.B. Du Bois Center homepage, director Whitney Battle-Baptiste wrote:

"We live in complicated times. For each national victory, there is a sobering moment to temper our celebration. This has been a summer of mourning, crying, shouting, and marching, and one also questioning why? In moments like these, I find myself reaching for the words of Dr. Du Bois from so long ago, to help with context and perspective."


W.E.B. Du Bois Biography
Civil Rights Activist, Educator, Journalist
1868–1963

W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most important African-American activists during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the NAACP and supported Pan-Africanism.

Who Was W.E.B. Du Bois?
Scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In 1895, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Du Bois wrote extensively and was the best known spokesperson for African-American rights during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) in 1909. Du Bois died in Ghana in 1963.

Early Life & Education

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, better known as W.E.B. Du Bois, was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. While growing up in a mostly European American town, W.E.B. Du Bois identified himself as "mulatto," but freely attended school with whites and was enthusiastically supported in his academic studies by his white teachers. In 1885, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Fisk University. It was there that he first encountered Jim Crow laws. For the first time, he began analyzing the deep troubles of American racism.

After earning his bachelor's degree at Fisk, Du Bois entered Harvard University. He paid his way with money from summer jobs, scholarships and loans from friends. After completing his master's degree, he was selected for a study-abroad program at the University of Berlin. While a pupil in Germany, he studied with some of the most prominent social scientists of his day and was exposed to political perspectives that he touted for the remainder of his life.
Du Bois' Unprecedented Accomplishment

Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895, and went on to enroll as a doctoral student at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now Humboldt-Universität). (He would be awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Humboldt decades later, in 1958.)

Writing and Activism

Not long after, Du Bois published his landmark study — the first case study of an African-American community — The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899), marking the beginning of his expansive writing career. In the study, he coined the phrase "the talented tenth," a term that described the likelihood of one in 10 black men becoming leaders of their race.

W.E.B. Du Bois' Beliefs

While working as a professor at Atlanta University, W.E.B. Du Bois rose to national prominence when he very publicly opposed Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Compromise," an agreement that asserted that vocational education for blacks was more valuable to them than social advantages like higher education or political office. Du Bois criticized Washington for not demanding equality for African Americans, as granted by the 14th Amendment. Du Bois fought what he believed was an inferior strategy, subsequently becoming a spokesperson for full and equal rights in every realm of a person's life.
Co-Founder of the N.A.A.C.P.

In 1903, Du Bois published his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of 14 essays. In the years following, he adamantly opposed the idea of biological white superiority and vocally supported women's rights. In 1909, he co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and served as editor of its monthly magazine, The Crisis for over 25 years.

Pan-Africanism and Death

A proponent of Pan-Africanism, Du Bois helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to free African colonies from European powers. 

W.E.B. Du Bois died on August 27, 1963 — one day before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington — at the age of 95, in Accra, Ghana, while working on an encyclopedia of the African Diaspora.

VIDEOS:

W.E.B. DuBois - Civil Rights Pioneer
W.E.B. DuBois - Civil Rights Pioneer(TV-PG; 2:22)
W.E.B. DuBois - Rivalry with Booker T. Washington
W.E.B. DuBois - Rivalry with Booker T. Washington(TV-PG; 2:16)
W.E.B. Du Bois - The Niagara Movement
W.E.B. Du Bois - The Niagara Movement(TV-14; 3:46)
W.E.B. Du Bois - Mini Biography
W.E.B. Du Bois - Mini Biography(TV-14; 3:47)



W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most important African-American activists during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the NAACP and supported Pan-Africanism.
biography.com


https://www.bostonglobe.com/…/Grzxw0bwxRr3Q08JeS…/story.html

Opinion | Cornell William Brooks

W.E.B. Du Bois offers lessons to this generation of citizen activists
by Cornell William Brooks
February 23, 2018
The Boston Globe 



PHOTO: John Lindsay/Associated Press. Some 200 members of the W.E.B. Du Bois Club carry banners and placards as they demonstrate in front of New York’s City Hall, on March 11, 1966. The club members were protesting police brutality and Attorney General Nicholas Katzenback’s recent effort to have the organization register as a Communist front.

During this tumultuous time in America, the youngest Americans are being inspired to become advocates by the most American of tragedies — violence. From the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., to the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., to last week’s school schooting in Parkland, Fla., younger Americans by the millions have been energized to advocate against persistent police brutality, rising hate crime, and pervasive gun violence. In the wake of the violent deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and Heather Heyer, and of numerous school shootings, America has witnessed a generationally unprecedented level of activism. On Friday, the 150th anniversary of the birth of a global citizen and son of Great Barrington, W.E.B. Du Bois, offers a few lessons to this generation of citizen activists.

In 1899, the life of the still young scholar Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was radicalized by a single act of horrific violence. As the first African-American to earn a PhD from Harvard, Du Bois was then a 31-year-old Atlanta University professor. This already distinguished professor was walking to a meeting with the editor of The Atlanta Constitution to discuss the case of Sam Hose, a black laborer who was accused of murdering his white employer and raping his wife. Du Bois was all too aware that African-Americans were often falsely accused of crimes and then, without judge or jury, lynched by mobs. While walking to meet the editor, Du Bois was informed that Sam Hose had already been lynched. Indeed, Du Bois learned that Hose’s knuckles were already being sold as a gruesome souvenir in an Atlanta store.

During this tumultuous time in America, the youngest Americans are being inspired to become advocates by the most American of tragedies — violence. From the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., to the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., to last week’s school schooting in Parkland, Fla., younger Americans by the millions have been energized to advocate against persistent police brutality, rising hate crime, and pervasive gun violence. In the wake of the violent deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and Heather Heyer, and of numerous school shootings, America has witnessed a generationally unprecedented level of activism. On Friday, the 150th anniversary of the birth of a global citizen and son of Great Barrington, W.E.B. Du Bois, offers a few lessons to this generation of citizen activists.

In 1899, the life of the still young scholar Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was radicalized by a single act of horrific violence. As the first African-American to earn a PhD from Harvard, Du Bois was then a 31-year-old Atlanta University professor. This already distinguished professor was walking to a meeting with the editor of The Atlanta Constitution to discuss the case of Sam Hose, a black laborer who was accused of murdering his white employer and raping his wife. Du Bois was all too aware that African-Americans were often falsely accused of crimes and then, without judge or jury, lynched by mobs. While walking to meet the editor, Du Bois was informed that Sam Hose had already been lynched. Indeed, Du Bois learned that Hose’s knuckles were already being sold as a gruesome souvenir in an Atlanta store.

Du Bois later wrote that the lynching of Hose inspired him to forgo the cool detached logic of an academic for the heated arguments of advocate. Over the course of his 95 years, Du Bois founded the NAACP; launched and led the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, served as a progenitor of Pan-Africanism, wrote voluminously against racism and colonialism, raged against lynching and the wanton taking of black lives, and defied racism. These are a few lessons for the citizen activists of this Twitter-age civil rights movement:

First, our heroes and heroines need not demonstrate an uncritical patriotism for their contributions to demand American recognition and gratitude. After having been arrested by the American government at age 82 for being a communist, Du Bois left America and lived out his remaining years in Ghana. He died estranged from the land of his birth, believing the ideal of American equality, in the words of scholar David Levering Lewis, to be a “mirage.” And yet on his deathbed, he sent a telegram of support to attendees of the 1963 March on Washington. The writings of Du Bois both painfully castigated and powerfully inspired America to end Jim Crow segregation in public accommodations with the Civil Rights Act, grant African-Americans fuller access to the franchise through the Voting Rights Act, end lynching, and reexamine the white-washed American history that erased the contributions of African-Americans.

Du Bois and today’s citizen activists cannot be judged by whether they kneel before or wave the American flag with uncritical enthusiasm but to the degree they compel America to fulfill her promises to all her citizens. By this measure, no one has researched, written, spoken, or advocated more over so many decades for American racial justice. Du Bois is a heroic figure not for the absence of his criticism but for the excellence and enduring relevance of his critique and analysis of American racism.

Second, DuBois’s life and legacy make clear that activism must not be a plaything of the young. Some older Americans have suggested that activism is a passing phase that millennials and Gen Xers will grow out of. Du Bois stood against injustice until the edge of his death bed. True, his world view and writings evolved over the decades. That said, the protean intensity of his advocacy is reflected at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which houses the Du Bois collection of nearly 300 boxes, or 100,000 items, of correspondence, speeches, plays, short stories, book reviews, nonfiction books, fables, and poetry.

Lastly, the tools needed to address the challenges before the country must be interdisciplinary and globally informed. Du Bois is a role model for today’s generation of activists. He examined the American and global injustices of his age through the lens of sociology, economics, literature, poetry, policy, and politics. It is hard to think of a tool available to him that he did not use during his long life. The diversity of Du Bois’s advocacy suggests not only the breadth of his brilliance as one activist but also the variety of reform opportunities for today’s activists.

As we observe the birthday of W.E.B. Du Bois, there is much for Massachusetts and America to celebrate. There is far more to emulate.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cornell William Brooks, former president of the NAACP, is a visiting professor at Boston University School of Theology and Boston University Law School.

NOTE: The following comment is from one of the readers of this article:

no-name-02/23/18 11:30 AM

"A few facts about the Hose lynching":

While he was still alive,his face was skinned, all his body parts were cut off. then, he was burned alive. A white mob in the thousands cheered as all this was done. All the major atlanta newspapers wrote approving articles. Not satisfied, two other African Americans were also lynched. Another African-American was lynched soon after because he was complaining about the lynching of Afro-Americans. No one was ever charged in these murders.

The white woman who Hose was accused of sexually assaulting gave interview in which she acknowledged that she was never assaulted and that Hose killed her husband in self-defense after her husband pulled a gun on hose because hose was asking for wages that were due to him.
Can't help wondering where all the comments are from those who are always writing in support of the "southern way of life" and segregation as being part of the local culture"


W.E.B. DuBois Speaks! 

"Socialism and the American Negro"

April 9, 1960

Astonishingly DuBois was 92 years old at the time of this speech!





Published on May 25, 2015

W.E.B. DuBois Speaks! Socialism and the American Negro. The venerable W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), historian and activist, gives an address to the Wisconsin Socialist Club in Madison on socialism and the struggle of Black people in America. This speech was given on April 9, 1960 when DuBois was over 90 years of age and just months before his removal to Africa where he died in Ghana on August 27, 1963 at the age of 95.

In the speech Du Bois asserts that African Americans must learn the truth about socialism that they may "preserve their culture, get rid of poverty, ignorance and disease, and help America live up at least to a shadow of its vain boast as the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Audio sections from "Socialism and the American Negro":

0:00 Anecdote about learning meaning of Democracy
0:40 McCarthyism vs. Socialism, Robert Lafollette vs. monopolized wealth, W.E.B. DuBois work
1:35 Collapse of capitalism, socialism, "The New Deal"
3:00 Negro analysis of their condition in America, solutions, and results
4:19 Negro suffrage
5:46 Demands made at Niagra movement meeting in Niagra Falls June 1905
6:13 NAACP organized in 1909 and 1954 supreme court decision on segregation
7:46 Democracy failing in America 9:31 Rising costs of elections ("monopoly", "propaganda", "deception")
9:46 Travel to Europe and Asia as a catalyst for the adoption of socialist views
11:49 "Degeneracy of Capitalism" and personal experience with socialized healthcare in Britiain
12:51 European colonialism, exploitation of colored people, end of colonialism
13:50 Western Europe and American negligence regarding wealth disparity and being impressed with Socialism
15:24 China vs.The West, "spread of socialism and communism", and predictions for 21st century
16:32 NAACP, Necessity for economic foundation in addition legal rights
18:02 Migration to urban, metropolitan areas as a remedy for poverty and its problems
18:42 "The center of the problem", wealth, monopoly, allocation of money for war
19:46 DuBois attends Soviet Peace Conference
24:48 Sun Yat Chen
28:54 W.E.B.DuBois speaks on hypocrisy of Americans regarding prison, mass incarceration, national war debt
30:00 What America must do
33:24 What American Negroes must learn
33:36

https://news.harvard.edu/…/radcliffe-fellow-retraces-du-bo…/

Arts & Humanities

Retracing Du Bois’ missteps

Radcliffe fellow Chad Williams is working on a book about what he considers one of W.E.B. Du Bois’ greatest missteps: “The Black Man and the Wounded World,” an unfinished history of the African-American experience during World War I. 

by Colleen Walsh
Harvard Staff Writer
February 22, 2018
Harvard Gazette

Radcliffe fellow Chad Williams is working on a book about what he considers one of W.E.B. Du Bois’ greatest missteps: “The Black Man and the Wounded World,” an unfinished history of the African-American experience during World War I.  Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer  

The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the History of WWI | Chad L. Williams || Radcliffe Institute

Harvard University

https://youtu.be/8hpiK7gUf_c


Published on November 30, 2017:
The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois, African Americans, and the History of World War I
As part of the 2017–2018 Fellows’ Presentation Series at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Chad L. Williams RI ’18 tells a story that spans almost two decades, from one world war to the next, and features as its central character arguably the most significant black intellectual in American history, W. E. B. Du Bois.

Williams is an associate professor and the chair of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis University. He is the 2017–2018 Evelyn Green Davis Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/peo....

For information about the Radcliffe Institute and its many public programs, visit https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/.


By any measure, W.E.B. Du Bois was an intellectual giant. A historian, writer, editor, teacher, sociologist, and Civil Rights activist, he was also the first African-American to receive a Harvard Ph.D., co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and author of several groundbreaking books, including “Black Reconstruction in America” (1935).

But according to historian Chad Williams, Du Bois was also a failure.

As a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Williams is writing a book about what he considers one of Du Bois’ greatest missteps: “The Black Man and the Wounded World,” an unfinished history of the African-American experience during World War I. Unlike many Civil Rights crusaders of the time, Du Bois urged African-Americans to join the war effort. But when acts of loyalty and heroism in Europe failed to translate to the societal change he’d envisioned back home, he began documenting the results of his misjudgment.

“Du Bois as a failure … that’s a framework for thinking about him that I would never have really considered,” said Williams, chair of African and Afro-American studies at Brandeis University.

Williams came across Du Bois’ incomplete manuscript at UMass Amherst in 2000 while researching the Ph.D. dissertation that would become his 2010 book, “Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era.” His years spent poring over Du Bois’ archives and records helped Williams understand the professional and personal dimensions to Du Bois’ failings. The inability to finish the book was a source of deep frustration, while his support of the war and his belief in what the conflict could have meant for equality in America haunted Du Bois till his death.

“The war was one of the most consequential and traumatic moments in his life as far as his wrestling with what it meant to be an African-American,” said Williams. “What he talks about in his 1903 book, ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ — the ‘double consciousness,’ the twoness of being a Negro and being an American, these two warring ideals. Du Bois thought that the war would be able to, at least temporarily, reconcile those two conflicting aspects of black identity more broadly, but also personally, and that didn’t happen.”

More than 350,000 African-American soldiers served in segregated units during World War I. Most of the black troops stationed in France were assigned to ditch digging or the bearing of dead bodies. In time, the Army created two African-American combat units, the 92nd division made up of draftees, and the 93rd that comprised black national guardsmen. While the 93rd “compiled a stellar combat record,” the 92nd floundered.

PHOTO: Cover page of W. E. B. Du Bois' Harvard dissertation " The suppression of the African slave trade in the United States of America, 1638-1871." 

PHOTO: W. E. B. Du Bois photograph from the Harvard College Class of 1890 Class Book, 1890. 

Image 1: Cover page of Du Bois' Harvard dissertation " The suppression of the African slave trade in the United States of America, 1638-1871." Image 2: Du Bois' photograph from the Harvard College Class of 1890 Class Book.

Courtesy of Harvard University Archives; (2) Pach Bros., New York, New York, United States [photographer] ca. 1890

“Racist white commanders and deliberate neglect from the War Department doomed the performance of the division from the start, while its black officers … endured humiliation after humiliation,” Williams said in a Radcliffe talk in the fall.

Du Bois initially saw “Wounded World” as way to stem the outcry over “Close Ranks,” an editorial he’d written in July 1918 for the NAACP monthly journal The Crisis in which he called for African-American soldiers to temporarily put aside their grievances and join up with the Allied forces in the name of democracy. Critics branded him a traitor to his race. Du Bois was shaken by the rebuke.

“He viewed writing this book as a form of personal and political redemption … that he would be able to rehabilitate his credibility through writing the history of the black experience in the war,” said Williams.

But the project took on an even deeper meaning when Du Bois interviewed African-American soldiers in France after the fighting. They recounted the “horrific racism and discrimination they had endured,” at the hands of fellow servicemen, said Williams. From that moment on the project became one of “reclamation.”

PHOTO: African-American soldiers fighting in WWI pose for a company photo. Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

“Du Bois is aware that the official historical record is going to marginalize the contributions and sacrifices of African-American soldiers and officers in particular, and that it’s necessary to tell this history correctly.”

Yet that effort led to another failed opportunity, and a breach of trust. In his drive for accuracy, Du Bois sent out a call for African-American veterans to send him material related to their experiences. Letters, diaries, and other documents poured in. Their willingness to share information showed they were “investing their hopes and historical visions in Du Bois,” said Williams. “In the end, those untold stories are part of the real tragedy of this project.”

Du Bois’ disillusionment with the war reached its peak in 1930s during travels in Russia, China, Japan, and Germany. The rise of fascism and militarism in Europe and elsewhere convinced him that the condition of the world “was almost irredeemable,” said Williams. Any lessons his book could offer would be “almost too late,” he decided.

While Williams referenced Du Bois’ World War I material in his 2010 book, he knew the manuscript, 800 pages written over the course of 20 years, was something to which he “would inevitably turn back.” In an increasingly polarized U.S., Williams thinks a closer examination of Du Bois’ unfinished work can offer important lessons not only to scholars but also to the wider public.

Table of Contents, 1936, The Black Man and the Wounded World (unpublished), W. E. B. Du Bois.

Image 1: Williams holds a photo of a WWI African-American soldier from Du Bois' collection. Image 2: Table of Contents for "The Black Man and the Wounded World" (unpublished, 1936).

(1) Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer; (2) W.E.B. Du Bois Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Fisk University

“One hundred years later we are still reckoning with the legacies of World War I, particularly in terms of race and democracy — the same challenges that Du Bois wrestled with,” he said. “What does it mean to be African-American? That’s still the fundamental question for many people, along with how we try to heal the wounds of our still very wounded world.”

And though Williams ultimately calls the story of the unfinished manuscript “a tragedy,” he sees hope in Du Bois’ failure.

“I think it’s instructive for us and for me as a historian to know that Du Bois, for all of his brilliance and clairvoyance, was genuinely confused by this moment, and to the end of his life was unsure if he made the right decision in supporting the war.

“If there is any hope to take from it, it’s the struggle that Du Bois was engaged in and the commitment that he had, which I think is a commitment that we all must have — especially today, when we see democracy itself being undermined and attacked and we see white supremacy resurgent and being legitimized at the highest levels of our democracy.”


https://www.npr.org/…/the-enduring-lyricism-of-w-e-b-du-boi…

Book News & Features

The Enduring Lyricism Of W.E.B. Du Bois' 'The Souls Of Black Folk'

4:54

AUDIO: 

by Lynn Neary
February 23, 2018
National Public Radio

PHOTO: W.E.B. Du Bois' The Souls Of Black Folk has been re-published in a new edition for the author's 150th birthday anniversary.. C. M. Battey/Getty Images

It was no accident that W.E.B. Du Bois called his book The Souls Of Black Folk, says Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped From The Beginning: The Definitive History Of Racist Ideas In America. Du Bois wasn't looking for a catchy title — he was reacting to the reality of his times.

"Racist Americans were making the case that black people did not have souls," Kendi says. "And the beings that did not have souls were beasts."

Friday is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Du Bois, the great African-American thinker and writer. To celebrate, The Souls Of Black Folk has been republished. It's a collection of essays on black life and race relations in the United States at the turn of the 20th century.

In his introduction to the new edition of The Souls Of Black Folk, Kendi writes that Du Bois wanted the world "to know the humanity of black folk." Some of the essays, like one about his time as a teacher in the rural South, vividly depict what it was like to be black. Others address the ongoing debates of the time about the best way to improve black lives. Taken as a whole, the book reads like one long poem.

"It's deeply lyrical, but not just lyrical in the sense that he had, sort of, beautiful language," Kendi says. "It's lyrical in the sense that he was able to really capture the complexities and multiplicities of life."

A central metaphor in the book is the idea that a veil separates white and black America. Blacks can see through the veil, says Kendi — whites either can't or won't.

"In many ways black people could see the opportunities through the veil that white people were privileged to have," Kendi says. "White people could not see through the veil the opportunities that black people were denied."

Many of the ideas that Du Bois outlined in the book still endure. Dana Williams, head of the English department at Howard University, has taught the book many times.

"It doesn't matter where the student is in his or her learning experience," Williams says. "There's always something in The Souls Of Black Folk that students can identify with."

The Souls of Black Folk
by W. E. B. Du Bois, Donald B. Gibson and Monica M. Elbert
Paperback, 247 pages

Nnyla Lampkin is a freshman at Howard. She and several other students gathered recently to discuss the book.

"It was amazing to me to hear somebody from the past speaking the way that some of us think today," Lampkin says.

One idea that seemed to resonate with the group was Du Bois' concept of "double consciousness," which describes how difficult it was to be both black and American — at a time when being American essentially meant being white. Freshman Hadiyah Cummings says this duality can still be a struggle.

"It's definitely hard having to know I love being black and I love what I represent, and also knowing that if I want to get a job that I have to look a certain way or speak a certain way," Cummings says. "And so having to fight this constant battle of choosing which side of me am I going to show today and also just wanting to be able to be unapologetically me and be accepted in both spaces is definitely hard to deal with."

In The Souls Of Black Folk, Du Bois outlines his ideas about the need for higher education for blacks. He lays the groundwork for a later essay, "The Talented Tenth," which is also included in this new edition. This is one of his best known ideas — that "the Negro race," as he called, it would "be saved by its exceptional men."

Though Du Bois later revised some of his thinking, this idea has been criticized as elitist. Howard senior Sadiya Malcolm doesn't see it that way.

"To me the proposition is not elitist," she says. "It's a responsibility — it's a task. It's about creating opportunities so that when my nieces or my little brothers and sisters are going to school, it looks possible — so they have somebody in their community to go to to say 'well, what's the college process like?' It's about realizing collectively how we can contribute to our betterment as a people."

At the start of each essay Du Bois includes a bar of music. These are "The Sorrow Songs" that Du Bois writes about in his final essay. They are the spirituals and folk songs that emerged from slavery to become a gift to America — what Du Bois calls the "singular spiritual heritage of the nation." It is the story of these that touched Asan Hawkins most deeply.

"I don't think any of us have escaped our childhoods without hearing at least one of these songs," Hawkins says. "And for him to weave them into each and every one of these chapters — he lit up our spirits. He gave us something that we could relate to throughout time. Each song spoke to somebody, each chapter spoke to somebody."

In his introduction, Ibram Kendi notes that when The Souls Of Black Folk was first released, a black newspaper in Ohio declared that it should be read "by every person." Kendi believes that advice still holds today for anyone who wants to understand America and to see what's on the other side of that veil.

Read an excerpt of The Souls of Black Folk (1903):

Excerpt: The Souls Of Black Folk
The Souls of Black Folk
Of Our Spiritual Strivings
O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,
O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.
Unresting water, there shall never be rest
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;
And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea, All life long crying without avail,
As the water all night long is crying to me.
— Arthur Symons

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked bysome through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightlyframing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead ofsaying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellentcolored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not theseSouthern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, orreduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the realquestion, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience — peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is inthe early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one,all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse,something put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards— ten cents a package — and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, atall newcomer, refused my card, — refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from theothers; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from theirworld by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in aregion of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I couldbeat my mates at examination time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade;for the worlds I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs,not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I wouldwrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, byhealing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, — someway. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youthshrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world aboutthem and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry,Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades ofthe prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to thewhitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who mustplod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, orsteadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian,the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with secondsight in this American world — a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the otherworld. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense ofalways looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soulby the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feelshis twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciledstrivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alonekeeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longingto attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better andtruer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. Hewould not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world andAfrica. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, forhe knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to makeit possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursedand spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closedroughly in his face.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom ofculture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powersand his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past beenstrangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro pastflits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx.Throughout history, the powers of single black men flash here and there likefalling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged theirbrightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man'sturning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made hisvery strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, likeweakness. And yet it is not weakness, — it is the contradiction of double aims.The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan — on the one hand to escapewhite contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and onthe other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde — couldonly result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart ineither cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister ordoctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of theother world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge hispeople needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledgewhich would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. Theinnate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the blackartist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which hislarger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of anotherpeople. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciledideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of tenthousand thousand people, — has sent them often wooing false gods and invokingfalse means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make themashamed of themselves.

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the endof all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half suchunquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so faras he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, thecause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to apromised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of weariedIsraelites. In song and exhortation swelled one refrain — Liberty; in his tearsand curses, the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At last it came,— suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood andpassion came the message in his own plaintive cadences: —

"Shout, O children!
Shout, you're free!
For God has bought your liberty!"

Years have passed away since then, — ten, twenty, forty; forty years ofnational life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthyspectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation's feast. In vain do we cry tothis our vastest social problem: —
"Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble!"

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet foundin freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years ofchange, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people, — adisappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unboundedsave by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.

The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, theboon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, theterrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpetbaggers, the disorganization ofindustry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewilderedserf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew,however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for itsattainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. Theballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he nowregarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which warhad partially endowed him. And why not? Had not votes made war and emancipatedmillions? Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything impossible to apower that had done all this? A million black men started with renewed zeal tovote themselves into the kingdom. So the decade flew away, the revolution of1876 came, and left the half-free serf weary, wondering, but still inspired.Slowly but steadily, in the following years, a new vision began gradually toreplace the dream of political power, — a powerful movement, the rise ofanother ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after aclouded day. It was the ideal of "book-learning"; the curiosity, born ofcompulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters ofthe white man, the longing to know. Here at last seemed to have been discoveredthe mountain path to Canaan; longer than the highway of Emancipation and law,steep and rugged, but straight, leading to heights high enough to overlook life.

Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly, heavily, doggedly; only thosewho have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dullunderstandings of the dark pupils of these schools know how faithfully, howpiteously, this people strove to learn. It was weary work. The cold statisticianwrote down the inches of progress here and there, noted also where here andthere a foot had slipped or some one had fallen. To the tired climbers, thehorizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim andfar away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no resting-place,little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure forreflection and self-examination; it changed the child of Emancipation to theyouth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect. In thosesombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,— darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation ofhis power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain hisplace in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the first time hesought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead-weight of socialdegradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem. He felt hispoverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he hadentered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor manis hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom ofhardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance, — not simply of letters, but oflife, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking andawkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was hisburden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuriesof systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meantnot only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight ofa mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.

The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. Du Bois, 

1903 

[Audiobook] 





Published on January 22, 2016:

Listen to an unabridged recording of W.E.B. Du Bois' classic work of African-American literature The Souls of Black Folk. Published in 1903, Du Bois begins his collection of essays on race with the statement that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." The essays that followed were instrumental to the intellectual argument for the black freedom struggle in the twentieth century. This audio book is read in a straightforward manner by Torias Uncle at Librivox along some brief musical interludes.

Download this audiobook at: http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audi...

The Souls of Black Folk
by W. E. B. DuBois

1903

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

0:00:00 Forethought 0:03:06 

Chapter 1 Of Our Spiritual Strivings 0:25:23
Chapter 2 Of the Dawn of Freedom 1:11:54
Chapter 3 Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others 1:44:34 Chapter 4 Of the Meaning of Progress 2:09:18
Chapter 5 Of the Wings of Atalanta 2:31:54
Chapter 6 Of the Training of Black Men 3:07:33
Chapter 7 Of the Black Belt 3:51:41
Chapter 8 Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece 4:42:55
Chapter 9 Of the Sons of Master and Man 5:25:38
Chapter 10 Of the Faith of the Fathers (low volume) 6:00:11 Chapter 11 Of the Passing of the First Born 6:17:25
Chapter 12 Of Alexander Crummell 6:42:08
Chapter 13 Of the Coming of John 7:19:08
Chapter 14 Of the Sorrow Songs