Larry
04/04/06
W. E. B. Dubois, Of the Dawn of Freedom: A synopsis and critical discussion
William Edward Burghardt Dubois work, The Souls of Black Folk, gave a critical discuss
of the early, twentieth century through the eyes of the Negro. Although many have limited
this work to Dubois argument of, The Talented Tenth, it should be noted that Dubois work
encompasses much more than that. The purpose of the essay is to summarize and give a
critical eye to W. E. B. Dubois Of the Dawn of Freedom.
In the first line of this work Dubois, states the now famous and words that would be
reiterated by most Black intellectuals and social scientist of the twentieth and now early
twenty-first century, “THE PROBLEM of the twentieth century is the problem of the
color-line”. From here Dubois funnels into his thesis, declaring that, the aim of the “essay
to study the period of history from 1861 to 1872 so far as it relates to the American
Negro.”[1]
From here Dubois, gives a synopsis of the civil war, partially through the eyes of the
Negro, and the politics behind it. He briefly discusses, weather or not slavery was the true
reason for the Civil War. After this discussion Dubois led
into the official, Dawn of Freedom, which was when slaves were officially freed.
Dubois, then leads into the affects of the Freedmens Bureau and helped Blacks, in the
beginning of this new era of their lives. He discuss how the Freedmens Bureau and
“Freedmens Aid societies, born of the touching appeals from Pierce and from these other
