The Bible in Du Bois

I recently had the pleasure of rereading W. E. B. Du Bois’s seminal book The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of essays that wonder between sociology and memoir, biography and fiction, objective reporting to personal lament, sewn together by a powerful literary voice. What particularly struck me this time was the effortless way that Du Bois draws upon biblical language and imagery, especially from the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. Although something of an atheist and communist later in life, in this book, published when he was 35, Du Bois richly imbues his writing with biblical oratory undoubtedly remembered from his church upbringing. This language, which surely would have been familiar to many of his readers, is used primarily to elevate his prose, to wax eloquent and acquire an emotional power that evokes a visceral reaction among his readers.

A few examples demonstrate the free and masterful way that Du Bois molds biblical material to serve the messages he conveys. He refers to the “Black Belt” of Georgia where thousands of poor farm workers concentrated as “Egypt,” alluding entirely to the biblical land of slave-drivers rather than the contemporary country of that name. A tribute to the Episcopalian African-American priest Alexander Crummell paints his mission as “to lead the uncalled out of the house of bondage“–a latter-day Moses. In a short story, a character who escapes a small town in Georgia to attend college and earn his degree decides that his mission is to return to his place of birth. He recalls a quotation from Esther, “I will go into the King, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish”–fateful words that anticipate the danger he will confront while attempting to save his people.

In a couple of places, Du Bois calls forth biblical allusions to toll the climax of a chapter. At the end of the chapter on Booker T. Washington, spelling out his argument with the most prominent African-American leader of his time, Du Bois compares Washington to Joshua in the Bible:

The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,–a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead this headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds, … we must unceasingly and firmly oppose him.

Du Bois’s evocation of Joshua here accords with the ambivalence with which he esteems Washington. The comparison harkens to Exodus 17:8-16, in which Joshua does battle with the Amalekite attackers while Moses gazes down from atop a hill. Aaron and Hur are perched next to Moses, holding up his hands toward God; according to the story, “whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; but whenever he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.” Du Bois’s call for people to “hold up [Washington’s] hands” thus refers to Moses, not Joshua who, being much younger and endowed with the body of a warrior, does not need such help. The figure of Moses in the background serves to blur the image of Washington as Joshua. Is Washington a bold warrior at the vanguard of his people fighting oppression and injustice? Or is he instead a weakened, aged Moses, a leader with antiquated ideas who needs his people to strengthen his resolve to fight?

Another chapter, “On the Training of Black Men,” discusses the power of education to raise African-Americans to peer above the “Veil,” the term Du Bois uses for the forced ignorance and blindness between the races. In the last paragraph, after a prolonged discussion of the attempts and challenges to develop institutions of higher education for African-Americans, he suddenly adopts the first person perspective:

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. … From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? … Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?

Education raises Du Bois above American discrimination and oppression, to converse with great thinkers and writers who accept him as one of their own. Now Du Bois himself becomes a Moses, not as a leader of others but as a lonely man removed to a high perch, granted a vision of the Promised Land but not permitted to enter: “Moses went up from the steppes of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the summit of Pisgah, opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land” (Deuteronomy 34:1). He feels privileged to occupy the world of erudition, “wed with Truth,” in his intellectual life, while socially and politically banished by the lie of racial superiority and the legacy of slavery.

One more example: the chapter “Of the Black Belt,” containing a description of life in rural Georgia, is prefaced by this quotation from the Song of Songs (1:5-6):

I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black,
Because the sun hath looked upon me:
My mother's children were angry with me;
They made me the keeper of the vineyards;
But mine own vineyard have I not kept.

It is striking to read these lines here, in the context of poor African-American farm workers less than 40 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Like the poem’s speaker, they have been looked upon only “because they are black” as somehow different and less worthy; their beauty and dignity have been hidden beneath their skin in the eyes of the dominant society. Indeed, they have been made to serve as the “keepers of the vineyards,” slaves and then serfs to the land, having almost no opportunity to “keep their own vineyard,” to develop themselves through education and business. These verses, written as part of a love poem between a man and a woman, in this setting seem oddly prescient of American society.

In short, Du Bois like countless others finds in the Bible an endless well of images, symbols, quotations, and wisdom that resonates with the world in which he lives and inspires him and his readers to reach for a more just and noble life.