The Souls of Black Folk: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

The chapter begins with a verse by the German writer Friedrich Schiller. Du Bois opens with the phrase “Once upon a time,” and goes on to recall a time 17 years before the time of writing, when he was a student at Fisk and spent a summer teaching in rural Tennessee. He describes the Teacher Institute he attended, in which white teachers had their classes in the morning, and black teachers at night. After training, the teachers went out “hunting” for schools, journeying across the land and asking each school individually whether they needed a teacher.

Du Bois found a school through Josie, “a thin, homely girl of twenty,” whom he met while walking. Du Bois describes Josie’s family: her father was “a simple soul, calmly ignorant,” her mother was ambitious and energetic, and she had many siblings, some of whom had already moved away. Du Bois liked the family, finding them to be hard-working and honest. Some time after finding a school to teach at, Du Bois rode with a white teacher to the Commissioner’s house.At first he was pleased to be invited to dinner, however, the “awful shadow of the Veil” fell when Du Bois realized the white men would eat first, “then I—alone.”

Du Bois describes the school where he chose to teach as run-down and poorly furnished. Josie attended the school along with her siblings, and Du Bois mentions that she dreamed of studying at “the great school in Nashville.” Du Bois describes the rest of the students, recounting them by name and noting that some were beautiful, some plain, some smart, some lazy, and so on. Du Bois admits: “I loved my school,” and describes the time he spent teaching in idyllic terms. However, he explains that some of the elder members of the community were suspicious of “book-learning,” and that some children were taken out of school to perform agricultural work.

Du Bois recalls that on Friday nights he would stay with a farmer called Doc Burke and his family, in a home that was modest but “scrupulously neat” and welcoming. Du Bois goes on to describe other families who hosted him, as well as his time spent having conversations with Josie. Although Josie dreamed of going away to school in Nashville, it seemed unlikely that this would be possible. Josie was hard-working and resourceful, but the jobs available to her paid far too little money.

Du Bois spent two summers teaching at the school and living “in this little world.” He describes attending ceremonies at the local black church,during which he met people from “other worlds” and listened to “the mighty cadences of Negro song.” The community Du Bois inhabited was drawn together by a common experience of the cycle of life, poverty, hardship, and “the Veil that hung between us and Opportunity.”Older members of the community tended to view life with a kind of grim, fatalistic acceptance, whereas younger people who did not have firsthand experience of slavery and war struggled in vain against racism and injustice.

Ten years later, Du Bois returned to Tennessee to find that Josie was dead. This was only one of many hardships her family had suffered—her brother was also in prison for theft. The old schoolhouse was gone and had been replaced with a new building. Doc Burke had managed to buy a hundred acres and a larger house, but remained in debt and was still working even in his elderly, frail state. Du Bois reflects on the cycle of life and death, observing that life is incredibly difficult for the poor, “and yet how human and real!”. He concludes that in such a context it is hard to know whether the world is experiencing a moment of “twilight” or “the flush of some faint-dawning day.”