The Souls of Black Folk: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

The chapter begins with a verse by the Victorian Scottish writer William Sharp, writing under the pen name of Fiona Macleod. Du Boisthen returns to his days as a rural schoolteacher, describing one Sunday night far from the home in which he’d been staying. He recalls approaching a church and sensing an “air of intense excitement,” a “suppressed terror” and even “demoniac possession.” He describes a scene of shrieking, jumping, and flailing, all centered around the powerfully charismatic preacher and hauntingly beautiful music. Indeed, Du Bois describes African-American religious music as “the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil.”

Du Bois claims that studying African-American religious practices is the only way to understand how those people who were taken from Africa viewed the world. It is also important to note the influence that black Christians have had on the Methodist and Baptist churches as a whole. In this sense, studying the black church is crucial to understanding not only African-American history but American history in general.

Du Bois describes the black church as the center of African-American social life. He explains how churches operate as the “central club-house” of communities, providing support, entertainment, education, political and economic power. Bishops are some of the most powerful leaders in the black community, and it is possible to think of the churches as “governments of men.” This vast influence is partly due to the fact that almost every black person in America is a member of a church.

Du Bois turns to the history of the black church, describing how African slaves initially practiced “nature-worship,” but plantation life destroyed the kinship relations around which these African religious communities were structured. Some elements of the old religions endured, however, such as the existence of the Priest or “Medicine-man.” From this figure arose the black preacher, who came to play a different role yet retained many of the Medicine-man’s characteristics. After Emancipation, black Christian communities largely cut ties with the white church, which gave rise to new institutions such as the African Methodist Church, which Du Bois calls “the greatest Negro organization in the world.”

Du Bois argues that Christianity was a uniquely appropriate faith for black slaves, who had been subjugated to extreme lengths such that they were “at the bottom” of the social and economic system. Faced with a mortal existence filled with suffering, slaves dreamed of freedom in the afterlife. The handful of freedmen who emerged as leaders prior to Emancipation tended to hold a “darker and more intense” religious faith, their desire for abolition tinged with dreams of revenge. Emancipation thus appeared—at least at first—to be an act of God with echoes of the Day of Judgment, until the “inevitable” backlash that followed.

In order to understand the contemporary black church, Du Bois says, it is important to remember that African-Americans live a “double life” inherently colored by the constant presence of the Veil. This double life then gives rise to “double thoughtsand double ideals.” On the one hand, the intense suffering caused by racism turns religion into a bitter expression of pain, and on the other, many black people find strength and determination through their identification with Jesus.

In order to survive and maintain even a modest quality of life, black people in the South must resort to deception. Those in the North, meanwhile, quickly turn to radicalism—either engaging in a sensualist lifestyle of gambling and sex, or forming a black “aristocracy” characterized by keen intellectual awareness that in turn leads to bitterness and pessimism. Most black people live between these extremes, and—cut off from their own history and from the opportunity to live freely—turn to religion and trust in the coming of an eventual “Awakening.”