>>I, I want to start with a quick quote. The
vice president yesterday, of Ghana,
Dr. Bawumia, I'm bad, I speak Yoruba and this is Ghana, I'm probably gonna mispronounce
that I'm so sorry,
but yesterday he eulogized W.E.B. Du Bois and he stated quote, "For us in Ghana, we are
grateful that W.E.B. Du Bois chose to spend
his last days on earth with us
profoundly influencing the newly
independent country and leader to be, and
leader to be assertive in the comity of
nations. Fifty-five years after his
demise we continue to draw inspiration
from his works for rea-, for which, I'm
sorry, for which reason Ghana and Africa
are eternally grateful to you." So our
good friend Arthur McFarlane II who is
also a great grandson of W.E.B. Du Bois is
over there celebrating the hundred and
fiftieth birthday with the folks in
Ghana and we are fortunate to have, I
call them the Jeff's, but Jeff and
Jeff, Jeff Peck and Jeff Peck here with
us in in Western Massachusetts to
celebrate with us here and they will be
also with us in Great Barrington.
The powerful words that the Vice President
of Ghana said it should be something
that is it rings true in our country as
well and it doesn't seem to be that way.
As, as young Jeff Peck said, to grow up in a
school system to not hear about his
great great grandfather but to not
understand and to know many
undergraduates that come to our
university that either say Du Bois [French pronunciation]
or don't know who Du Bois is in
relationship to Massachusetts, to social
change, and
to civil rights, I think that we are in a
very necessary moment but a very
exciting moment. We are at the moment in
which civil rights is once again or the
rights of young people are once again
being heard from Florida up the coast
and with, and throughout so I
want to bring that up because I want to
talk about the words and the legacy of
Du Bois are needed generation after
generation after generation and like I
said before, apparently has been quoted a
couple of times, he's a man of all times,
he is a man whose initial work changed
because he lived ninety five years and
he was able to change his mind.
Hear that scholars. And I also say
this as like I said into being in this,
in this space and feeling so wonderful
of all the love and, and
excitement around this I want you all to
feel my excitement. I hope you can. Can
you? Okay.
Cause I love what I do, but I mean I'm also
still riding high you know after my
recent trip to Wakanda, so I feel, I
feel really really, I went there. Reiland,
has done, I'm sorry Dr. Rabaka has done a
piece on it too so I'm not just saying
this out in a vacuum, Black Panther, Wakanda forever and it came just in time
for his birthday, it's just like wow, wow.
It's a prelude. Okay so that's why I want
to say this is, this is a happy moment
because I think that we are going to
experience someone who when I had to
dream about who could speak for his 150th
birthday for the 24th
annual lecture Dr. Rabaka was the first
person that I thought of. He is a
professor and chair of African and
African American and Caribbean studies
and Department of Ethnic Studies at the
University of Colorado Boulder, where it
is seven degrees, where he also has
affiliations with the Women and Gender
Studies program,
Humanities program, graduate program and Cultural
Theory, School of Education, College of Media,
Communication and Information and
the College of Music because he started
out as a jazz musician
I just wanted to include that.
He is the author of more than 50 scholarly
articles and book chapters as well as 12
books which I'm not going to read all
here but among them are Du Bois's
Dialectics, Africana Critical Theory,
Against episton, epimes, I'm sorry,
Epistemic, thank you, thank you family,
Epistemic Apartheid, W.E.B. Du Bois and the
Disciplinary Decadence of Sociology, Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon's
Critical Theory and the Dialectics of
Decolonization, The Negritude Movement,
Hip Hop's Inheritance,
Hip Hop's Amnesia, and The Hip Hop Movement.
Rabaka's research has been recognized
with several awards including the
National Endowment for the Humanities,
the National Endowment for the Arts, the
National Science Foundation, the National
Museum of African-American History and
Culture, the National Museum of American
History, the Smithsonian Institution. He
has received several book awards, he has
conducted archival research, and lectured
extensively both nationally and
internationally, and has been the
recipient of numerous community service
citations, distinguished teaching awards,
and research fellowships.
Rabaka's cultural criticism, social commentary, and
political analysis has been featured in
print, radio, television, and online media
venues such as NPR, PBS, BBC, CNN, ABC,
I could go on BET and VH1, had to include
them, The Huffington Post, The Denver Post
the Dallas Morning News,
etc. And I want to say that when I first
met Dr. Rabaka, it was five years ago when
we were pulling together an amazing
"Du Bois in Our Time" exhibit at the
University Museum of Contemporary Art
and it brought together scholars and
artists in conversation and I don't
think, I mean we also had Saidiya Hartman,
we had, we had
some serious folks in that room but what
I learned from Dr. Rabaka was
the idea of activism and scholarship all
of those, they're not separate things.
They don't have to be separate. To be an
intellectual it shouldn't be as
narrowing as we tend to look at it today.
And I hope that you understand the
importance and the significance of this
space, this time, this moment as civil
rights is burgeoning and starting again
or maybe it's never going away.
So I'm going to introduce to you with a very,
very warm
UMass Du Bois Center loving community,
please welcome Dr. Reiland Rabaka to the stage.
[Applause]
>>Good afternoon, good evening. It is a
great pleasure to be here. I'm very, very
humbled by just the opening here, I feel
like I can just go back to Boulder you
know get back on my snowboard. No
seriously I want to say thank you so
much to Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste I, I
can't say thank you enough, thank you for
the invitation, thank you for the vote of
confidence. It means the world to me and
in fact I'll say it in Kiswahili. Asante
sana nashik guru sana. You know, thank you
a thousand times for every grain of
sand on the seashore, I say
thank you. I'd like to also thank Carol
and Emily and all the other folk in the
Du Bois Center who made this happen and I
want to thank you UMass. Thank you for,
for showing up, for being here today. I
have family and friends in the audience
what's up Chris, what's up Dr. Shabazz,
you know so I want to shout out all my
beautiful people. But since you brought
me here let's get right into it.
In the spirit of Du Bois I want to just
say as a disclaimer that I'm sort of
more interested in a dialogue with
Du Bois today. This isn't a scholarly
conference so people that would
criticize me for not being highfalutin
that's not what this is about, right. This
isn't a professional conference so this
is about exposing that next generation
to Du Bois I'm really, really committed to
sharing Du Bois with the next generation
why because my first grade teacher,
Mrs. Robinson, during Black History Month in
1979 she did it with me and I was so mad
when she gave me a Frenchman. See I
thought he was a Frenchman. Everybody else,
somebody got Duke Ellington, somebody got
Bessie Smith, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr.,
Marcus Garvey and then she gave
me a Frenchman.
And so I strode up to her desk and said
Mrs. Robinson I think there has been a
mistake [Laugh]. And she said, Reiland, you know
what if you would read as much as you
run your mouth. And so of course I had to
stay after class, my mother wasn't happy,
and she walked me to the library and she
showed me Du Bois and that was the first
book, The Souls of Black Folk was the
first book I've ever seen with a black
person on the cover. And it changed me
fundamentally so yes, Wakanda forever.
Seeing images of us it's very
powerful and I think some people take
that for granted so anyways another one
of my disclaimer since I have the Dean
of libraries right here before me, I
believe I have been coming here to UMass
and attempting to work in the papers
very humbly, attempting to work in the
papers since 1997, might have been 96 and
so Du Bois brought me to Massachusetts I
had never been in Massachusetts before
this was the only reason I came here and
now this is like a second home to me. I
quite love it out here.
Especially since the weather's nicer than in Boulder but
anyway I'm gonna leave that alone.
So let's get right into it the the title
today "W.E.B. Du Bois: Reflections on His life and Legacy, 1868 through 2018"
about 150 years here.
This talk is going to be one where I
emphasize Du Bois's interdisciplinarity
and his intersectionality. When we say
interdisciplinarity we're talking about
literally Du Bois working in between and
contributing to many different
disciplines. This is going to be
fundamental to that field that we call
African-American studies which we're
going to be talking about a little bit
later, it's also fundamental to women and
gender and sexuality studies, it's also
fundamental to post-colonial and
decolonial studies, and in fact it's also
fundamental to LGBTQ studies.
Interdisciplinarity right and the power
of it and in essence I say that Du Bois
is a classical interdisciplinarian in
fact he's a proto-interdisciplinarian, that means before, you know,
anyway I wasn't going to get highfalutin,
but sometimes I can't help it.
Okay Du Bois also embraces
intersectionality this whole notion of
the critical exploration of the
interconnected nature of identity and
social categories such as race, gender,
class, and sexuality so Du Bois again
would be a proto-intersectionalist so
this talk is really going to be couched,
operating from these two angles here.
This is also how I have attempted to
dialogue with Du Bois in the 21st century.
Some people like to think of Du Bois as a
very 20th century figure and in fact my
first book is called Du Bois and the
Problems of the Twenty-First Century. What am I
saying? I'm saying that Du Bois is still
incredibly relevant for us today in the
21st century. In order to understand
Du Bois we need to understand the
National Association of Colored Women
and in fact it is this organization that
took an orphaned Du Bois in when his
mother passed away on March 23rd, 1884.
He was only 16 years old when his mother
passed away. So we need to understand how
is it that this 16 year old who's the
only African-American in the town of
Great Barrington, least one of the only
children there, how is it that he's able
to complete high school, go to Fisk,
Harvard, and the University of Berlin.
We need to understand some things about
this organization, an organization that's
really going to be instrumental to
understanding who Du Bois is. I also just
want to shout out sister Whitney, that I
am beginning on a black feminist note.
Which is where I almost always begin. Why?
Because my grandmother was one of these
or is, she's 90 years old, she is one of
these clubs' women down in Texas and my
mother is one of these clubs' women down
in Texas. So the National Association of
Colored Women established in 1896 by
Harriet Tubman, I'm gonna say that again,
by Harriet Tubman, the godmother of our
people, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper,
Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells, and
Margaret Marie Washington you can see there.
All day long. Oh, this is beautiful. Thank
you Trevor, I needed that
calling response you know, I'm saying you
gonna get a better show if you talk back
to me. Here we go, it's so beautiful, here
we go,
National Association of Colored Women
again I want to foreground Harriet Tubman
who inspired someone by the name
of Frederick Douglass and in fact if you
go and get a book by Frederick Douglass,
it's called Frederick Douglass on Women's Rights,
and he says that he got
up the courage to challenge the
enslavement because of Harriet Tubman's
example. This is really powerful because
a lot of times, a lot of times when we
talk about a lot of these great male
figures the sisters are always in the
background instead of right alongside us.
I think that that's important and I know
that's African-American Studies as well.
Okay so when we talk about the National
Association of Colored Women we're
talking about the foremothers of
contemporary black feminism/womanism,
they engaged in a wide range of
issues, including: civil rights, women's
rights, voting rights, lynching, poverty,
crime, and alcohol, critiquing alcoholism,
health and education. So again you can
really see the germ for what's later on
going to become the civil rights
movement, the seed of it is here and in
fact if you go and engage the work of
Darlene Clark Hine,
Darlene Clark Hine says that the black
woman's club movement, the National
Association of Colored Women is
literally the first civil rights
organization in the history of this
nation. So some people have very
20th century conceptions of the
civil rights movement without
understanding that that period 1954 to
1965, that was a modern mid-20th century
expression of the civil rights movement
but the civil rights movement has been
going on since 1619, August 1619 we've
been fighting for freedom. You can see
here, here's the motto of the Black
Women's Club movement "Lifting as We Climb,"
imagine if more of us embrace that
today, "Lifting as We Climb" right.
Very, very powerful to understand the motto of
the movement here's one of their banners
from the Smithsonian, "Lifting as We Climb."
In terms of major figures someone from
right,
from right here in Massachusetts
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Frances
Ellen Watkins Harper.
It was Mrs. Ruffins house that Du Bois
went to he says in his autobiography
every Thursday night he had dinner there,
when he was up in Harvard. And he said
that he borrowed many books from her
library, he did admit many of which he
did not return he felt bad about that.
This is in the autobiography, I'm not
gossiping I'm just telling if you read
carefully, okay. And so it was
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin who becomes the president of the National Association of Colored Women,
this is gonna be very, very
important so that you can see the link
right between Du Bois and this
particular organization. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
could be characterized as
a black feminist abolitionist and in
fact right alongside Frederick Douglass
would be Frances Allen Watkins Harper.
Again most people know about Douglass
and they know so little about
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and in fact Frances
Ellen Watkins Harper was one of the
greatest poets America has ever produced
and she also wrote five novels they call
her the Toni Morrison of the 19th
century. This is that connection between
black politics and black arts, Du Bois is
going to really embrace that. Again from
right here in Massachusetts, Mary Church
Terrell, in fact she goes on to found the
Boston chapter of the NAACP. And
Ida B. Wells, the greatest anti-lynching
crusader that this country has
produced, both were presidents if you
will of the National Association of
Colored Women. And one of the most iconic
members to emerge from this association
Dr. Anna Julia Cooper who lived to be
105 years old, she was educated at
Oberlin, Columbia University, and the
University of Paris. She published A
Voice from the South in 1892 which
provided the conceptual framework for
black feminism
and African-American women's studies. She
was a leader and member of the
National Association of Colored Women and she
went on to be a university president.
She was the fourth African American woman to
earn her PhD.
Here's a photo of members of the
National Association of Colored Women,
you can see that they were suffragettes
as well, but some of you all know that
unfortunately in the suffrage movement
there was a color line.
Right, Ida B. Wells writes of this very eloquently in
her autobiography how she wanted to join
with the National, if you will,
Women's Clubs but they drew the color
line, and so that's why somebody,
anybody's asking why there's a special
Black Women's Club movement it's because
of racial segregation and the pernicious
effects of American, of American
apartheid.
Here again, this National Association here's some further images
before we transition here I just want
you to know that even in naming the
organization that Du Bois co-founds the
National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, Du Bois is troping on
this parent organization. He considered
them his surrogate mothers. These
were the women who took up collections
to make sure he got through all of those
schools. Right so from the age of 16 to
the age of 27 Du Bois was in school,
that's 11 years, they supported him all
the way through and his tribute, however
mute, his tribute to them is actually
in the name of the NAACP, but
since most people actually they write
off and erase black women and their
contributions they don't realize that.
That wow, Du Bois was very, very
influenced by this organization. So to
understand Du Bois we need to understand
the National Association of Colored
Women. We also need to understand the
American Negro Academy, and I want you to
see this as the genesis of
African-American Studies and so if you look at
other major scholarly and professional
organizations as they were coming into
being in the United States of America,
I just want to roll call real quick. So
they found the American Historical
Association 1884, American Economic
Association 1885, American Psychological
Association 1892, and look the National
Association of Colored Women 1896.
The American Negro Academy 1897, the
American Philosophical Association 1900,
the American Anthropological Association
1902, the American Political Science
Association 1903, and lastly the American
Sociological Association 1905. So look at
how African American Studies is actually
quite contemporary to the formation of a
lot of these other fields so far from
being new it's actually quite old.
Now we're talking about Du Bois as an
intellectual ancestor, we're talking
about intellectual architecture
something on which we are building
thought and practice, right, because
Du Bois always emphasized connections
between theory and practices some of the
key members of the American Negro
Academy, Anna Julia Cooper,
Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Alain Locke, and
certainly Du Bois. It's important to look
at these figures, these iconic figures
and what they did. Anna Julia Cooper
helped to initiate black feminism and
African American women's studies, she
wrote, obviously, A Voice from the South
and was a member of the National
Association of Colored Women.
Carter G. Woodson established the Association for
the Study of Negro Life and History in
1915 as well as Negro History Week which
became 50 years later Black History Month.
Alain Locke achieved his PhD from
Harvard University in philosophy and he
served as the impresario of the Harlem
Renaissance, one of the main ringleaders
if you will of the Harlem Renaissance.
And again my argument here is to
understand Du Bois we need to understand
these fundamental organizations. Why?
Because Du Bois was about social
movements. Du Bois was about political
movements, Du Bois was about cultural and
artistic movements, so I want you to see
this emphasis on movements. Right, on
movements. Now let's get right into it. W.E.B. Du Bois,
he was born February 23rd, 1868
that's five years after the Emancipation Proclamation,
he was educated at Fisk,
Harvard, and the University of Berlin.
Du Bois again being
interdisciplinary, he studied philosophy, history,
politics, and economics among others. He's the first African-American to graduate
from Harvard University. These are some
of the things that we know, these are
some of the sound bites we all know that
in here, certainly at UMass. Hallelujah.
Du Bois had an 80-year publishing career
from 1883 to 1963, that is phenomenal by
any record. An 80-year publishing career,
let me say it slowly because I feel so
good. Du Bois started publishing at 15 and he
was still publishing at 95. When, I just
feel so shameful, you know. People say
well how did you do, how do you do all that, I just, it's shamefu,l I just feel
like we, I just feel lazy you know?
The guy didn't have a computer, didn't have an iPhone. And in fact, if I'm gonna keep it real they wouldn't even
let him in most libraries because of
segregation.
And he did all of that?
He co-founded the NAACP, he was one
of the first scholars to seriously study
African-Americans retention of African
culture and contributions to American
history, culture, and politics. He died the
day before the march on Washington
August 27th, 1963.
These are, these are some of the
adjectives that we could, that have been
used, pardon me, to describe W.E.B. Du Bois;
a pan-Africanist,
an anti-colonialist, a cultural critic, a
critical race theorist, a male-feminist, a
radical Democrat, a political economist, a
sociologist, and a historian. Major works
by Du Bois again a lot of us know them
but I want to keep, I want to move beyond
The Souls of Black Folk. Why? If we start
and stop with The Souls of Black Folk,
most people don't realize Du Bois was
only 35 years old. In my work I talk
about intellectual assassination,
essentially they kill him off
at 35 and he lived another 60 years and
I have spent the great bulk of my
lackluster career exploring what is he,
what did he do that last 60 years of his
life? Why do people start and stop with
The Souls of Black Folk? They might go to
The Talented Tenth which is also 1903,
he's only 35 years old. They might go to
The Philadelphia Negro but that was in
the 19th century they don't even, I mean
the guy lives until the middle of the
20th century. You know people talk about
early period Karl Marx, middle period
Marx, late period Marx well I'm fixing to
talk about early period Du Bois, middle
period Du Bois, and late period Du Bois.
He lived 95 years he actually deserves
this kind of periodization, that's what
it's called for the smart people out
there, a periodization. I'm trying.
Scholarly works, major scholarly works:
The Philadelphia Negro; The Souls of
Black Folk; his 1915 classic which really
is a major contribution to cultural
anthropology Dr. Battle Baptiste
The Negro by which he meant the black or
the African; my favorite book
I typically don't say this especially not in
front of children but my favorite book
by Du Bois is called Darkwater 1920 and
you have the seeds of afrofuturism so if
you really want to read something that
is a precursor to Black Panther go and
pick up a book called Darkwater where
Du Bois develops some of the most
beautiful short stories and poetry. In
fact it's it's a work where he mixes so
many different literary styles you
really see his genius, now his genius is
everywhere but I think it's pronounced
in Darkwater; The Gift of Black Folk
1924; Black Reconstruction, now I'm fixing
to contradict myself,
my other favorite work, my other favorite
work by Du Bois the 1935 classic which
really helps to inaugurate something
called black Marxism according to
Cedric Robinson, Black Reconstruction; Black Folk, Then and Now; Color and Democracy; and I
guess my later life favorite by
Du Bois, The World and Africa, this book
will change your life you've got to read
beyond The Souls of Black Folk.
Du Bois was also an editor
extraordinaire of some great renown.
He began his career editing The Atlanta
University Studies and for almost 20
years roughly, seemingly, between let's
say 1895 and 1915, each year Du Bois would
put out The Atlanta University Studies
and so he really, really would gather
some of the most brilliant scholars in
this country and get them together on a
single theme, something I hope we do in
UMass, though you know I hope we could do
that here. Would be really beautiful. What
Du Bois would do, you all, is with
The Atlantic University Studies, he would
say what is the most pressing problems
confronting black folk in America? And
one year it would be religion, the
next year would be education, one year
would be a crime, one year would be
health, and so each year he would gather
the top minds, right, who are really doing
African Americanist work and he would
put out an edited volume. Those volumes
continue to stand the test of time, they
are incredible and in fact this year's
National Council for Black Studies
conference will be in Atlanta, am I right
Dr. Shabazz? Right and so if y'all come
on down there you can get an opportunity
to see some of those works The Atlanta
University Studies a monument to
American scholarship. After that he
edited The Moon however briefly,
The Horizon however briefly, and his most
famous editorial activities were with
The Crisis right the magazine, the
periodical for the NAACP.
From there once they kicked him out of the
NAACP,
I said it, once they kicked him out of
the NAACP he edited Phylon.
Phylon is a Greek word that means race.
Du Bois like his idol Frederick
Douglass also engaged in autobiography.
This is a very very important genre
within African American literature and
like Douglass Du Bois has five
autobiographical works, now I'm not
saying that they're all autobiography
because Du Bois just didn't rock like
that. There were also elements of history and
culture and politics and economic
analysis in Du Bois's autobiographical
works, but who can deny that once you get
to The Souls of Black Folks
say for instance a chapter call "Of the
Passing of the Firstborn"
that's autobiographical, anybody with me?
Right so autobiography is strung
throughout Du Bois's corpus. Darkwater
again autobiography, Dusk of Dawn he
actually called that an autobiography, my
favorite autobiography by Du Bois is
called In Battle for Peace 1952, which
was actually at one point banned in this
country. [Audience member sneezes] God bless you.
And then lastly, they put it out on his
100th birthday and Martin Luther King
Jr. was the keynote speaker at his 100th
birthday February 23rd, 1968, where they
unveiled,
Dr. Herbert Aptheker unveiled the
autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois his most
profound autobiography. It's amazing that
he planned for his own centennial, the
guy is just a genius, this is amazing to me! Wow. I talked early about the connection
between politics and arts. Most people
don't realize Du Bois's
creative writings include: five novels,
several volumes of poetry, three dozen
short stories, and two dozen plays. This
is important so that when I start
talking about interdisciplinarity people
can see Du Bois drew just as much from
the arts and the humanities as he did
from the social sciences and in fact
this field called African American
studies, we actually don't make those
kinds of distinctions. We find them to be
very arbitrary and artificial, okay.
Because African American Studies is a
human science, we're talking about
humanity and it's important to emphasize
that. Why? Because people of African
descent for so long in this country were
dehumanized. Again this emphasis on
movements. Du Bois was very active in a
number of social and political movements;
Pan-Africanism, the African Independence
movement, Cooperative Economics movement,
the Niagara movement, obviously the
NAACP, the New Negro movement,
the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights
movement, the Women's Liberation movement,
at least the Suffragette movement, that
end of it, the Anti-War and the Peace movement.
So look at Du Bois again
embracing this whole idea of a scholar
activist of a scholar activist. It's not
enough to be an academic,
we have too many academics running around
these campuses. What we need are
intellectuals. Why? Because the
intellectuals work isn't just
quarantined to the college campus. An
intellectual can go and rock the best of
the synagogues,
the mosques, the churches, the spiritual
centers. They can go to town halls, they
can go anywhere it's at, you can get it.
Wherever they go you can get it. That's
the way Du Bois was, right? So he wasn't an
academic, he was an intellectual. And if
you look at what was happening when
Du Bois was really emerging and coming of
age as an intellectual there was a lot
of discourse on what it meant to be an
American intellectual. What kind of
issues would really distinguish an
intellectual in America.
Du Bois was at the forefront of those
discussions. And we couldn't talk about
Du Bois without talking about his great
debate with Booker T. Washington.
Some people position it as Washington
emphasizing industrial education where
Du Bois emphasized liberal arts education.
It wasn't that simple. Things are a lot
more complicated if we actually read,
right? Here, in fact, it's important to
point out that Booker T. Washington
actually was an advocate of
Self-Reliance and Social Uplift. He
secretly, most people don't know this, he
secretly supported and sought civil
rights and social justice. A lot of this
come from Louis Harlan's work on Booker
T. Washington, some of the best work and I
think Washington's major biographer,
Louis Harlan has two volumes on
Booker T. Washington where a lot of this comes
from. Booker T. Washington proposed
African Americans obtained power by
accumulating wealth, that's going to be
very tricky in American society at that
particular time.
Washington is most famous for his
September the 12th, 1895, Atlanta Compromise address.
He seemed to accept
many racial myths and stereotypes about
African Americans, he privileged black
manual labor over black mental labor, and
he was at least publicly an advocate of
accommodationism. He mastered the
nuances of the political arena in the
late 19th century which enabled him to
manipulate the media, raise money,
strategize,
network, pressure and reward friends, and
distribute funds while punishing those
who opposed his plans for uplifting
black folk. And one of the responses
Du Bois came with was The Talented Tenth theory
but also he has the key piece in his
most famous book, The Souls of Black Folk,
called "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and
Others." Now one of the ways that we can
grapple and engage with The Souls of
Black Folk is to look at the first three
chapters. Basically they hinge on the
historical strivings of black folk.
So notice Du Bois's emphasis on history.
Chapters four through nine symbolized
the social and political strivings of
black folk. In chapters ten through fourteen
represent the spiritual and religious
strivings of the souls of black folk.
So look at how there's a triad here, right,
of the way these chapters
can be coupled together to understand
The Souls of Black Folk. At least this is
the way I try to introduce it to high
schoolers among other youth. There are
five fundamental themes, I believe, in The
Souls of Black Folk. Again some of you
all may find others. These five
fundamental themes: the Vision of the
Veil, so the veil; Life Lived Along the
Color-Line, so the color line; the Concept
of Double Consciousness; the Saga of
Second Sight, something that we saw in
the recent Black Panther movie, second
sight; and the Gift Theory, another one.
I could do a Souls of Black Folk
reading the Black Panther movie. Wow. I'm
not gonna ruin the movie for you. Anyway
so these five fundamental concepts I
think are very important in terms of
engaging The Souls of Black Folk.
Now, let's shift to some of the academic
disciplines that Du Bois directly
contributed to and made significant
innovations in. So let's look at the
discipline of history. Du Bois really
makes significant contributions to the
history of race. We all know that his
dissertation was called
"The Suppression of the African Slave Trade" so he had to really grapple with a great
deal of African history. Du Bois
certainly mastered American history,
African-American history, made
contributions to women's history,
intellectual history, cultural history, social
history, political history, economic
history, and religious history. I want to
emphasize this this whole notion of
economic history here because when he
studied at the University of Berlin
he studied in the department of
Political Economy. There was no such
thing as sociology when Du Bois was in
school. So he helped to pioneer this
discipline called sociology and major
subfields within sociology that Du Bois
contributes to would be first and
foremost historical sociology, political
sociology, urban and rural sociology.
There is no way to read The Philadelphia Negro
without grappling with Du Bois's
juxtaposition of urban and rural
sociology and in fact I submit to you
before he wrote The Philadelphia Negro
Du Bois did six Department of Labor
Studies on rural, right, the rural
conditions of black folk particularly in
Farmsville, Virginia, right. Some of the
most incredible work we need to
republish those pieces but they're
really, really incredible incredible
pieces. So again both urban and rural
sociology, sociology of culture, obviously
sociology of race, sociology of gender,
sociology of class, sociology of
education, sociology of religion, and
sociology of crime. Du Bois made some
serious contributions to criminology.
Another major field Du Bois contributed
to education and these are some of his
major works within the area of education.
So again Du Bois as an interdisciplinarian.
And notice that last point there at
the bottom, the last bullet point he
published over a hundred articles on
education. So that shows you Du Bois's
emphasize, emphasizes this whole notion
of education is connected to
transformation, and I like to say
education for social transformation,
education for human liberation, and in
fact Du Bois is preoccupied with
education because in the United States
of America for 350 years it was
prohibited for African Americans to be
educated, that was not lost on Du Bois,
that was not lost on Du Bois, 350 years.
To hold people in bondage and tell them
they can't get married, they can't be
educated, Du Bois did not forget that, right.
We go from there, education to religion most
people don't talk about this this is a
little taboo when it comes to Du Bois.
Arguably the first sociologist of
American and African American religion,
and these are some of the works where
you can see some of his sociology of
religion really really comes through.
Particularly his 1903, if you all have
not read it, in the same year that Du Bois
published The Souls of Black Folk he
published a work called The Negro Church,
which is a profound, profound,
profound work. Alright, I want to go to
the next slide. Also on religion it keeps
going here, the University of Massachusetts press
in 1980 put out a
book called Prayers for Dark People and
these are prayers that Du Bois wrote,
composed himself. They are incredible,
they are absolutely incredible. And so
please note Du Bois contributed not
simply to sociology of religion but also
to history of religion, philosophy of
religion, anthropology of religion,
psychology of religion, religious economy,
and political theology among others and
I argue that his work in religion
prefigures black Christian nationalism,
black liberation theology, and even
elements of womanist theology. I want to
transition here from the traditional
fields and disciplines to some of the
other areas that Du Bois contributes to.
Du Bois was a pioneer Pan-Africanist.
We don't have to break up and talk about
whether Du Bois invented Pan-African
that's all beside the point.
It is, it is undisputable that Du Bois
helped to popularize Pan-Africanism.
That's what's gonna be really important
right this is very, very key. And look as
early as 1900 Du Bois attends the
Pan-African conference. There, right along
with him was Ida B. Wells and Anna
Julia Cooper, again that influence of the
National Association of Colored Women,
right, who were also Pan-Africanist, most
people don't, there's a book, we should
write that book, there's a book. Wow, the
Pan-Africanism of the
National Association of Colored Women.
This is profound, right. So you can see a
lot of his Pan-Africanist activities there.
So Du Bois is Pan-Africanism but also, I
should say it outright, his
anti-colonialism. Look at his doctoral
dissertation, it is called
"The Suppression of the African Slave Trade." If that's not anti-colonialism nothing is.
And so please note all the way
throughout into the last year of his
life when he came out with "Colonial and
Colored Unity," which is a pamphlet, in
1963 this is going to be one of the
major, major preoccupations of Du Bois's life.
From here we go directly to Du Bois
as an architect of African American
studies and in fact I argue that he is a
major architect of African American
studies, we've already talked about him
being an interdisciplinarian but this
is fundamental to the field the field
should be intersectionalist. That means
it should not just be black male studies,
you know, that's the way some people do it.
[Audience member]>>Haha okay.
[Laughing]
I ain't mad. I'm in women and gender and
sexuality studies out in Boulder because
you know that's where all the freaky people live.
[Laughing]
So we can mix it up where
I'm at, I'm not afraid to say it but some
of y'all know for a long time when
people say Black Studies they really
meant black male studies and women were
often intellectually erased and rendered
invisible. So it's important to take up
Kimberlé Crenshaw's
concept of intersectionality, right. Which
is very, very powerful, which I believe
has been fundamental to the best of
African American studies, the best of the
field is always going to emphasize, right,
the full range, the full gender spectrum
if you will, right. Du Bois was a multi-methodologist in fact he came up with
something called methodological
triangulation. That's a $5 word.
Methodological triangulation. Du Bois was
also a scholar activist but a scholar artist.
A lot of his novels feature
female protagonists, right, they're deeply
black feminists and so he would mix his,
his activism with his artistry, his
poetics with his politics, and ultimately
Du Bois is also a radical humanist.
Within African American Studies
there are ten fundamental fields that
Du Bois drew from consistently and these
are those fields: they're history
religion, philosophy, politics, economics,
sociology, psychology, anthropology,
education, and the arts, aesthetics. So
again I'm trying to get you to
understand then that when we say
African American studies we're talking
about an interdisciplinary discipline.
I'm putting it very poorly, but, right, so
it's, in fact I say in some of my other
work, its transdisciplinary. That means it
transgresses and transcends the
artificial and arbitrary boundaries of
disciplines and in fact Du Bois breaks
down barriers and breaks down borders.
So he's a border crosser if you will
conceptually speaking. In my work I argue
that Du Bois not only helped to found
black studies but he was also
instrumental to founding what's called
white studies and in, and in fact
critical white studies. These are some of
his major works and terms, major
contributions to critical white studies.
And some of y'all have already realized
if I'm teaching in Boulder, Colorado I
have to do a lot of critical white
studies even as I do, even as I do
and, watch out, even as I do black
studies. We're doing it. I want y'all to
please notice that, look at the second
bullet point. Most people don't realize
this, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote the first biography
of John Brown in 1909 the same year that
he co-founded the NAACP.
John Brown the great European American
abolitionist who was willing to really,
really I mean he brought fury, he brought
fury toward, very, very close John Brown
was with Harriet Tubman and Frederick
Douglass and so Du Bois wanted to write
the biography of Frederick Douglass but
Booker T. Washington took that one,
he took John Brown. So it's very profound
here to see this.
Also in 1910 one of my favorite works by
Du Bois is called The Souls of White Folk.
Most people know The Souls of Black
Folk but they don't know Du Bois's
piece The Souls of White Folk. This will
change your life, I'm telling you, this
will change your life. This is also again
why I say if you start and stop with
The Souls of Black Folk, you don't
really know Du Bois. You know a piece of
Du Bois but you don't really know the
full range of someone that lived and
worked 95 years, right. Please notice the
last bullet point there, "Published over
100 articles in areas such as philosophy
of race, sociology of race, critical race
theory, whiteness, critical white studies,
and anti-black racism." So again this is
going to be a really, really key area
that often gets overlooked. In fact Du Bois
being dialectical in his thought
would say something like you can't
really understand black folk unless you
understand white folk, right, and I also
believe that Du Bois would be very open
to us moving beyond the so called
black/white binary and expect, and
engaging everybody in between as well
and in fact his work does engage lots of
folk in between. If you think I'm trippin
go and pick up a book called, Du Bois on
Asia edited by Bill Mullen. There's a
whole book. Du Bois wrote so much on Asia there's a whole book out called, Du Bois on Asia,
right, really, really fascinating
here. So Du Bois isn't just for so-called
black studies, Du Bois isn't just for
African American studies, he again is a
world historical figure. I don't need to
tell anybody at UMass that. We move on
from black and white studies to Du Bois's major contribution to women gender,
women and gender studies. These are some of his major works my favorite of this
bunch would be The Black Mother 1912,
Suffering Suffragettes 1912,
Votes for Women 1912. Do y'all see a theme? Du Bois was
one of the most vocal, male, suffragettes
if you will, in the United States of
America. He was one of the most vocal men,
right, for women achieving the right to
vote.
Most people negate that but he was
completely out, I mean out, I mean this
was very unusual if you will. And in fact
if you turn to the other great
sociological thinkers people like let's
say Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber,
you won't find many flattering words
with respect to women but with Du Bois
you do have strong work with respect to
women. I'm not saying he's perfect
because I don't know if a man can be
perfect when it comes to gender politics
when you're socializing a sexist
society, but we can try brothers.
[Laughing]
My favorite piece up here is going to be
called "The Damnation of Women" 1920,
changed my life when I read it, that is
in Darkwater so this is one of the
major chapters of Darkwater called "The
Damnation of Women" and this is a
profound peice but also in 1924 his
peice, The Freedom of Womanhood.
Du Bois published over 75 articles on women's rights, women's suffrage, and gender justice.
Du Bois believed that
African American women had a special
role to play, had special contributions
to make. He argued that black women have
and would continue to contribute to
three great revolutions: the revolution
against racism, the revolution against
sexism, and the revolution against capitalism.
Last time I checked that
would be like early 20th century
intersectionality because there were
still lots of taboos surrounding
discussing sexuality in the early half
of the 20th century although we had some
brave folk who actually did bring that
out in the open. I'm not gonna invoke
Langston Hughes or Claude McKay or Zora
Neale Hurston right now. I could roll
call a lot of Harlem Renaissance figures
who they were grappling with sexuality
right there. Right so their work was
already intersectional. If people
actually look at it from a framework
that's specific to the Harlem Renaissance
as opposed to always trying
to superimpose some kind of lost
generation paradigm onto the Harlem
Renaissance. Okay, so I think it's
important to grapple with both, right, and
both are sort of grappling with
sexuality in some really unique ways
for early 20th century America.
We're heading home y'all, because I want a
dialogue with you all about Du Bois, UMass.
So lastly Du Bois and his work in
political economy.
Cedric Robinson argues that Du Bois
inaugurates something called Black Marxism.
We all know that Du Bois joined
the Socialist Party in 1911 and he
summarily resigned from the Socialist
Party in 1912 because and I quote,
"They discriminate against Negroes and
Asiatics." Du Bois quit the
socialist party. Look at this level of
intellectual independence.
So unprincipled he believes in certain
aspects of socialism. Now most people in
Trump's America don't know what socialism is, but I would like to think since
Bernie Sanders came from somewhere up
here in New England
some of y'all know what socialism is and
by the very fact that Du Bois puts
Democratic in front of it you can see
what Du Bois is doing. And I'm well aware
that many people seek to colonize
socialism because isn't that precisely
what Adolf Hitler said he was doing in
Nazi Germany, he too called it socialism.
I don't need to bring up Joseph Stalin
who said that's what he was doing as well.
But I'll leave that alone.
Du Bois don't want nothing to do with that.
Again it's not a perfect socialism
because I don't know anybody that has a
perfect socialism. But as early as 1907
Du Bois is moving in this direction.
1907 y'all, that's only four years after
he publishes The Souls of Black Folk.
Again for all those people that go
around telling me how elitist Du Bois was
and he was so aristocratic you don't
know Du Bois. How could the same person
write Black Reconstruction, they haven't
read Du Bois, they haven't gone to the
Du Bois papers at UMass. [Laughing] I should
be like y'all, I should do commercials
for y'all shouldn't I? Oh yes! Oh yes! Anyway the Socialist of the Path in 1907,
The Negro and Socialism 1907, The Economic Aspects
of Race Prejudice 1910,
Socialism is Too Narrow for Negroes. So look at Du Bois as
a critic of socialism. He didn't just
accept it as people hand it down, he
developed his own independent
interpretation of socialism, and in fact
I would argue with everybody in here
develop your own relationship with
Du Bois. That's what this is about
obviously I have my own funky freaky
relationship with Du Bois. You got to do
some work and develop your own working
relationship with Du Bois and he has
something for everybody. I feel like I'm
about to preach and say come on now, come
on, come on up if you want to get saved
sinners. Woooo!
Hmm feels so good today, feels so good,
feels so good.
Okay, all right, okay. I'm gonna move on.
Black Marxism and Democratic Socialism.
So look at how once we get to the
so-called Great Depression, because
if you're black in America you've always
been depressed economically speaking,
you've never not been economically
depressed you know what I'm talking
about, talking about a Great Depression. We've been great depressed since the Middle Passage.
Oh, I feel the spirit of Du Bois. [Laughing]
I really do sometime, oh I'm trying to be
nice, I don't embarrass you Whitney but I
feel so good right now.
Oh I do, I do, I do. Oh okay. [Audience member]>>Let it out.  >>That's okay.
Thank you, thank you all right. So Du Bois
has The Negro  and Radical Thought,
The Negro and Communism, look at Karl Marx and the
Negro, Marxism and the Negro Problem,
Black Reconstruction, Lifting from the
Bottom. Oh Whitney, am I saying that Du Bois
was subaltern in 1937? If subaltern is
about looking at things from the bottom,
Du Bois was... Black Reconstruction was
subaltern, I better stop it. [Laughing] Okay, whoa.
One of my favorite works by Du Bois
is his 1953 classic
Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the U.S..
You've got to read this. Look at that
bottom, that bottom bullet point, numerous,
he published numerous articles on black
radical politics, economics, and
democratic socialism.
And from your
archive, from the Du Bois papers, from your
collection here is Du Bois with Nikita
Khrushchev, the premier of Russia. I'm
just saying for all the people who think
I'm trippin' and Du Bois is not a world
historical figure, the Russians know
something we don't,
UMass.
Here is Du Bois and Shirley
Graham Du Bois with Nikita Khrushchev in Russia.
Here is Du Bois and Mao Zedong.
This is from your collection, I'm just
showcasing your collection. Well I've
been coming out here for 25 years.
Woo.
Here is Du Bois the world historical
figure having a good laugh
with Mao Zedong. Can you all see?
Can y'all hear me?
Can you all see the vitiligo?
Du Bois like Michael Jackson had vitiligo. Most people didn't understand why
Michael Jackson put on the gloves.
We
don't talk about it openly but a lot of
African Americans believe that vitiligo
is contagious so they won't shake your hand.
So when people keep saying how a leader Du Bois is because he shook
people's hands with gloves, he actually
did it for them and not for him.
He knew it wasn't contagious right and so again
you can see in a lot of these
photographs it started early on, right.
When he wore gloves often
This is interesting right you didn't know I can make a Michael Jackson and Du Bois
connection this is dope baby, hip-hop we don't stop. Okay here's Du Bois and Mao again.
Look at his statue. Du Bois was a very
small man like myself, you know that's
why I looked up, he was left-handed I'm
left-handed. I thought okay.
He just had his mama, I just had my mama. Wow look at him, with Mao Zedong.
Here's Du Bois with the great, the great Kwame Nkrumah.
This is Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois in Ghana.
This is Du Bois I believe on his
95th birthday with Shirley Graham Du Bois
and Mr. and  Mrs. Nkrumah.
And as we close out this is one of my favorite
photos of Du Bois, I have so many of them
that I've gotten from the collection,
thank you very much for digitizing it,
and this is one of my favorites because
it shows Du Bois at his home and if you
look Fredrick Douglass is looking over
his shoulder and he has his only son, his
photo there on the mantle, Burkhardt. It's
a very powerful photo.
Du Bois idolized Douglass a lot of people like to talk
about Du Bois as a Marxist or this or
that or the other again if you don't
grapple with the
influence of let's say a Harriet Tubman
and a Fredrick Douglass, the National
Association of Colored Women, or the
American Negro Academy we won't really
understand the intellectual architecture
of a figure like Du Bois and how he
built on that and took it world
historical all around the world and so I
will close with Du Bois's last message
to the world which he composed in 1957
where he says, "I have loved my work, I
have loved people and my play, but always
I have been uplifted by the thought that
what I have done well will live long and
justify my life; that what I have done
ill or never finished can now be handed
on to others for endless days to be
finished, perhaps better than I could
have done.." I hope that we continue what
he started. Thank you.
[Applause]
>>Thank you. I know, I don't, let's open it
up for questions and answers, question time.
If you would just raise your hand
and speak loudly that would be
great, so do we have any questions for
Dr. Rabaka? One more round of
applause, that, we don't have to stand but
thank you.
[Applause]
I said he would bring the fire now all
of y'all are used to the fire. It's okay,
this is the age of Wakanda so get used
to it. We are, we are here to stay and we
are here in all of our Wakandaness and
our blackness and our, and that doesn't
mean its exclusion of anybody else. Join
in. I'm telling you it is a good place to be.
Okay. Go see Black Panther clearly that's
the message for today and read several
of the favorite works of Dr. Rabaka as
he said because each one of them will
change your life.
Yes, Keisha.
>>I just want to say thank you for being here and [inaudible]
and my students actually use
[Laughing] >>That's very kind.
Of all the books that I assign, this is the one that they [inaudible] and the one they keep returning to, the one they keep asking about.
So thank you for that.
Hip Hop's Inheritance.
Anyway, I wanted to ask you a few very specific questions.
As I read much of his work, I'm a product of this environment,
and I studied through the Du Bois program over at the New Africa House
and I wanted to know how [inaudible] his going to Fisk instead of Harvard
for undergraduate was his own transformation, intellectually, spiritually, culturally, coming from Great Barrington?
>>This is, this is an incredible question
to be perfectly honest with you, and I
thank you for it.
In some of his work he talks
specifically about being incredibly
disappointed that he could not initially
go to Harvard and, and so the townsfolk,
as you know the story, sent him to Fisk
because it was a good "negro school." It's
a very good school by the way.
I mean Fisk produced David Levering
Lewis who I think we'll be with on Friday.
I mean Fisk. Du Bois, tongue-in-cheek, said
that when he got to Fisk the first time
he went to the cafeteria he said that he
thought he had died and gone to heaven
because Lena Horne's grandmother was it?
Yeah, was on one side of him and I
forget was it Margaret Murray, Margaret Murray at that time was on the other side
of him and so he had, you know, not been
around a lot of, you know, beautiful
sisters, so that was one thing. I
think the grounding in southern culture,
I think coming from New England and what
that must have done to him, you know, he
talks a lot about the frenzy
experiencing African American religion,
the rootedness, and the connecting to the
agriculture as well, folktales among
other things, just different, you know, the
ways if you will, of black folk in the
south. You can tell I'm from the south.
And so yeah, that groundedness I just
think gave him a just a different
worldview, right, so he synthesizes that
with some of the elements of the New
England worldview and you have a very
unique figure, right. So a lot of
African Americans at this time as you
know are going from the south to the
northeast. Du Bois being Du Bois, doing
it like only Du Bois can do it, goes from
the northeast to the south. Check this
out, Du Bois is also that figure who, let's be
honest, some people would consider quite
conservative when he's young and he
becomes increasingly more radical as he
gets older so he flips that old adage on
it's head where you're sort of young and
radical and then you're old and
conservative, Du Bois he did everything
sort of his way.
Its really, really unique so I think that that grounding if you will, in southern
history and southern culture, also in
southern struggle because there were
different ways that black folk in the
south were resisting segregation than,
you know, than presented itself in New
England. Du Bois soaked all of that up.
I hope I answered your question.
>>I'm just starting to learn about Du Bois, so bear with me.
I have a question about the friendship with Mao.
I didn't know he ever knew Mao until you showed it to us,
and I have read his fairly flattered obituary
Stalin and my question is this: I understand the
appeal of Marxism to him completely, did he know and
Americans generally know about the labor camps,
the famines, the executions, or did he not know or did he want to just
honor the shared spirit in some respects
and not, you know, gravitate toward the bad part?
What was his level of information and his response to that?
>>Okay, thank you.This is a great question. This is one
that comes up a lot with respect to
Du Bois. I would say to you that obviously
this is pre iPhones, internet, and all
that kind of stuff and you and I both
know the media, back then, there's a lot
of filtering that's going on especially
during McCarthyism which actually
affects Du Bois directly. Okay. They
actually throw him in jail as you might
know, handcuffed and put him in jail. 82
years of age, really sad. And so I think
that Du Bois was preoccupied with the
idea of a democratic socialist society
and a lot of times, from my understanding,
from what the scholars have written, a
lot of times when he traveled to certain
countries he was chaperoned around a
great deal. So he's not gonna be privy
and he's not gonna know, you know, Du Bois had a love affair with Germany. I mean he
has a, you know, degree from the University of Berlin,
but to act like he somehow knew
stuff that you know he obviously did not
know. I mean... And some of the countries
he's traveling in he would be one of the
few African Americans, so everybody knows exactly who's going where, when, and all
of that that kind of stuff. So Du Bois is
preoccupied with a lot of the ideas
there and the actual putting them
into practice which is gonna be
something that's always going to be
tricky, right. I'm thinking about also the
work of Robin D.G. Kelly, he has a book
called Freedom Dreams. Freedom Dreams by
Robin D.G. Kelly and in that book Robin D.G.
Kelly says that we shouldn't be so
preoccupied with whether movements
achieve each and every one of their
goals. Really what's important about
movements is does it inspire the next
generation to continue the struggle? And I
think that Du Bois is one of those
figures who when he looks at certain
things that were going on around the
world he's grasping for certain things
and synthesizing them with certain
things and talking about different
examples of different things. Okay? Great
question though, thank you for the
question.
>>Okay, we're going to take a couple more questions cause we have this amazing
reception downstairs with real food and
I know you can smell it. Yes? Okay.
So please a couple more questions and don't go to the food yet.
>>Hi, thank you so much for being here today. That was a fantastic overview. One thing that I had hope to hear you talk about
was, specifically was Du Bois's relationship with organized labor
and the way that that evolved over time, not just in the U.S. but also internationally.
>>Great question. Again Du Bois did have a very,
very interesting relationship with
organized labor. Obviously he with his
work in political economy this is going
to be something that's very, very
important and you can see during the
Harlem Renaissance period there are a
lot of figures certainly, A. Philip
Randolph and Chandler Owens, right.
So they're going to be doing a lot of
really incredible work and Du Bois
evolves his relationship by talking more
and more about workers banding together.
He also put a special emphasis though on
white workers dropping the color
line because there were more of them and
they have, they were in more of a
privileged position, so he thought that
that they were in a privileged position
to break down some of these barriers and
that that was really important. He also
talked about black, black workers being
very skilled, prompt, professional, all
those kinds of things but also expanding
and creating more opportunities, right.
So he saw the labor struggle as a major
struggle. This is also why Du Bois is
going to turn in the direction of, what
someone like Paul Boule is gonna call
American Marxism, right. This is where you
also can put Du Bois into dialogue with
a figure like C.L.R. James who's also
going to be writing in this country with
his colleague and good friend Grace Lee
Boggs and my own personal favorite
Raya Dunayevskaya. So a lot of that
activity is happening around the midwest
particularly in Detroit, but you have
lots of different folks sort of banding
together, getting involved in labor
struggles and I'm not, I'm not sure if
you're aware of Du Bois's run for the
Senate. So when he ran, he ran as an
independent but he had lots of support
from different labor unions, right,
because they believed that Du Bois was
really on the side of workers if you
will. And so this is really interesting
to sort of think about the
Harlem Renaissance is being grounded in folk
culture, and I'm saying that with all due
respect, in fact I understand hip hop to
be a folk culture, right. I think now we
use terms like popular culture but it's,
you know in the Academy it's a folk
culture and in that sense workers
culture it's always gonna sort of be folk
culture and workers cultures always
gonna be bound up in popular culture
which is why you and I both probably
know that lots of elements of hip hop
are very much sort of workers culture.
These are sort of working-class folk.
this is their world view, their value
system, and so on and so forth which is
why it gets really tricky with a lot of
the bourgeoisie elements that sometimes come
out a lot of rap music. I know, I
digress, but yeah, but definitely Du Bois
has really strong connects if you will,
with working-class struggles and
different labor unions. He did have
problems though with a lot of the racism
sometimes of different organized labor
unions though.
>>One last question, and then we can... two quick questions and then that's it? Okay.
>>Thank you so much for coming today. My question is,
you talked a lot about how Du Bois wrote about Black Marxism and got into socialism,
and I was wondering if you knew anything about his relationship to politics and reparations specifically for African Americans
and within [inaudible] and politics. [Claps]
>>Thank you, this is really good. In my book, Du Bois's Dialectics, I actually developed a piece
called Critical Theory of Reparations
and so it's based on Du Bois's
proposal to the United Nations for
reparations for African Americans and
actually placed Du Bois into dialogue
with not only Malcolm X who did
something similar but the Republic of
New Africa and so it's really important
to understand, I think over a long period
of time a lot of what we call Du Bois's
Pan-Africanism, a lot of times and his
black radicalism if you will was very
grounded in a push for reparations right.
Now for Du Bois he's not necessarily
interested in, always in money it wasn't
like a monetary thing, in fact that might
be the last thing Du Bois would argue for
as I say in this chapter, Du Bois is
interested in housing, health care,
education, right, food, like basic stuff
that African Americans did not receive
from the United States government for
350 years. Du Bois began to talk about
well how is it that we're supposed to
experience the Emancipation Proclamation
and those of us from Texas June 19th
Juneteenth, right, so it's January,uh, June 19th, 1865 and there's no, there's little or no
nothing, right, nothing very little done
to actually help people get up. And so
Du Bois really pushed for measures if you
will, to really try to sort of write some
of these wrongs and at least give us a
level playing field and so a lot of that
work I do in my critical reparations
theory chapter though. But that's a great question.
>>Can you talk about [Inaudible]
>>Okay, so he asked if I could talk about
Du Bois and Dr. Herbert Aptheker.
Dr. Aptheker was as you know Du Bois's literary executor so when he left the
United States of America in 1961 to go to Ghana he left Professor Aptheker in charge with
his papers which are now here at UMass.
But Professor Aptheker is a very unique
figure if you will, amongst historians and certainly
African American historians he has training at Columbia as you know but his gravitation
towards African American historiography
now as a field and particularly elements
of radicalism so if you, his, his
wonderful work Negro Slave Revolts where
he documents 350 if
you will, revolts of enslaved Africans.
It's gonna be very important. He goes on
and just has several series of work
that were really sort of incredible,
bringing little-known episodes in
African American history and culture to
light. He's gonna be unique as well
because of the influence of Marxist and
leftist politics and radical, if you will,
historiography and he, Aptheker, believes
that this marginalization of
African Americans if not and other progressive
groups in America meant that to really
do American history one has to almost do
it from, what we call now, from a
subaltern perspective you really have to
look from below and not from above.
So like Du Bois he believed that there were
so many people that were writing from
above that we really did need people
that could write from below, the sides,
right, different angles and different
things like that so it's very, very
important but it's also Aptheker is a very unique figure in that he's very
open, vocal, adamant about the influence
of African American historiography on
his craft, on his body of work, on what he
was able to do. And yeah, just a really
special relationship that went on over a
long period of time.
I ended up with the collection of the
published writings of Du Bois by Herbert Aptheker,
I have them in my house and
everything that he's put out obviously
on Du Bois, even the literary legacy of
Du Bois, his 1989 book which is very, very good.
So he's a very, very powerful thinking thinker
and I think that again he is considered
arguably you know, this is, he's one of
the definitive Du Bois scholars, like the
greatest. One, one of the greatest if you
will.
>>Thank you so much! I hope to see you downstairs.
[Applause]
