In memory of an extraordinary man that changed the way political views were expressed in literature. I planned to do a 5 series conclusion of all the essays in W.E.B. Du Bois collection of essays; The Souls of Black Folk. Below I have selected the three that was a literary experience in reviewing W.E.B. essays.
Of The Meaning Of Progress - Review by W. Owen Brown, a guest writer.
Although most people will look back at this story and think of a time far removed, because we have progressed to a point that these are tales we see in movies and history books. However, I am reminded of how slow this progress truly was, for it was not in history books and movies that these tales were revealed to me, but life itself. I grew up on the back woods of southern Virginia in the 1960's. While my education was steady and uninterrupted, I saw many of my classmates curtail or end their education at an early age to go work the farms and help the family scratch out a poor impoverished existence. I spent time in the peanut and cotton fields but never at the expense of my education. I suffered through the deep poverty, and the pangs of hunger and not knowing where your next meal will come from. But my illiterate and uneducated parents never allowed us to forget the importance of education to change our hopes for the future.
As I write this piece, I can now begin to answer the questions Du Bois raised:
How shall man measure progress where the dark-faced Josie lies?
How many heartfuls of sorrow shall balance a bushel of wheat?
How hard a thing is life to the lowly and yet how human and real is it?
And all this life and love and strife and failure, -- is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?
The answer lies in each of us. For somewhere in your past ... somewhere some 100 years ago...there rose from the smoldering ashes of slavery...a proud and humble family who suffered and struggled with life. A family who found the strength to endure all the indignities of life in America, and that family had the hope for a taste of her bounties in the future.
