Internet Exercises

Exercise 1

Collins and Makowsky observe: “Du Bois’s classic work The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is an extraordinary collection of essays composed in a poetic prose that emphasizes the predictive power of sociology regarding the racial conflicts that continue to plague our species and urges the autonomy of the black community. Du Bois defined the main problem of the twentieth century as the problem of the color line” (pp. 182–83).

Go to http://www.duboislc.org/html/DuBoisBio.html. After reading the biographical sketch of W.E.B. Du Bois, answer the following questions:

1. Where and when was Du Bois born?



2. What is the title of Du Bois’s doctoral thesis?



3. Why did Du Bois oppose Booker T. Washington?



4. Where did Du Bois die?

Exercise 2

Go to http://www.bartleby.com/114 and click on Chapter 1 (“Of Our Spiritual Strivings”) of The Souls of Black Folk. Read this chapter and then answer the following questions:

1. How did Du Bois characterize the history of the “American Negro”?



2. Compare Du Bois’s and Marx’s characterizations of history.



3. Find the passage where Du Bois discusses the concept of “double consciousness” and give an example of what this concept means.