BELATED THANK YOU LETTER TO W.E.B. DUBOIS
WHILE READING THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA EDITION, DUBOIS: WRITINGS,
THE SUPPRESSION OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE,
THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK, DUSK OF DAWN & ESSAYS,
AFTER 25 MAY 2020[i], AND THROUGH SUMMER AND FALL OF 2020
High in the tower where I sit above the loud complaining of the human sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk. Of them I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through them…Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native…I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know.
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of White Folk, Darkwater, 1920
Leaving, then, the world of the white man, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,--the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls…Before each chapter…stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs,--some echo of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil?
W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, Atlanta, Ga., Feb
1, 1903
Dear Dr. DuBois,
Anne Spencer’s on the new Harlem Renaissance stamp! I don’t need to be stepping on flowers in her garden at the reception, but can’t stop imagining the look on your face receiving the mail with her smile on the envelope. I’d love to find a photo of you from her writing cottage, Edankraal, listening to her poems. The price of stamps has gone up. You’re on two already. The Postal Service issued a 29-cent DuBois stamp in 1992 as part of its Black Heritage Series; and again in 1997, unveiling, (their word, they know not what they say) a 32-cent stamp honoring you as a civil rights pioneer. You’re sitting with your typewriter. You never went empty. Thank you for every word. Commemorative Stamps inspire, Dr. DuBois, but my hope in this letter is to say something of what Souls of Black Folk has meant to me over the past 50 years (I’m 75), and not write about stamps, wonderful as they are, and now here I am standing before the Post Office—O!—
Dr. DuBois, we’re in such a—
Nothing’s unveiled. Nothing. The veil.
Republicans are pulling out sorting machines at the post office,
Suppressing ballots not slavery, the election in six days.
Mailing ballots clogged, grinds each woman and man.
I used to teach, have a classroom.
The fly. Souls of white folk.
Atlanta and the 100 hills.
Your chronology and the dizziness it brings.
I didn’t want to talk about Washington,
Your well-known prophesies.
What, in God’s
name, am I on earth for?[ii]
Not Dudley Randall’s poem carrying me decades
None of the indelible beauty.
This is a war cry, warrior DuBois,
And you are the word behind
Black Lives Matter.
If I had a classroom today,
all my students would you write letters.
We’d start with the post office, telling you everything.
They told us to get out with our masks.
The poem in the garden, the chronology From here.
A new saint your way. George Floyd, Look for him.
You taught us caste too. Isabel Wilkerson
Took off with it: Caste of Our Discontent.
Another of your words making a comeback.
In the Vice-Presidential Debate
Between Democratic Senator Kamala Harris
And Vice-President Mike Pence,
(Kamala graduated from Howard),
A fly lands on the Vice-President’s head
And he doesn’t brush it off.
Call this Parable of the Fly Reborn.
I am underlining again reading (Yes I am!)
Souls of Black Folk, and that fly
Kept us going for a week.
A little blue fly
is trying to cross the yawning keyhole.
Oh Bishop Onderdonk![iii] You too live again!—thriving
In the well-tempered skin of Mike Pence.
Shoo fly, shoe fly, feelers in his clipped protestant
hair.
Have they all felt their Valley of Humiliation?
Your Alexander Crummell lives where he stands
Refusing entry under such terms.
Souls of Black Folk. But beautiful.
How laughter is food from Jesus.
Your long walk, your steady resistance,
Warns against word count and remembrance,
Requiring a march and not a parade,
Your breath planting free schools,
Your pen insistent, praising Freedmen’s Bureau,
Naming Edmund Ware, Samuel Armstrong,
So much faith in men! Unwritten history.
This one, Dr. DuBois:
I taught school in
the hills of Tennessee.
Out of Fisk, beginning the hunt for a school—
Got a teacher? Yes. So I walked on and on—
Horses were expensive. You found one.
You stayed in homes longing to know,
Knowing doubts of old folks.
Your two years in country schools
Makes Robert Moses[iv] possible,
Puts algebra alongside the vote.
Sorrow songs rise above all defining prayer.
Most beautiful expression of human experience.
It takes courage to leave the porch
And if you want to ride with our teacher
the Jim Crow door’s open.
Born in 1868, you start high school in 1880,
Become a saint at 95, a citizen of Ghana.
In 1963. I am 17, hearing your name for the first time.
Your Library of America writings count 1334 pages.
This letter. You’re not laughing in your essays,
But what on earth is whiteness that one should desire it?
Suppression returns. Your early call for suppression of slave trade.
Today it’s suppression of the vote and we follow you,
And it
shall mean the triumph
Of the good, the beautiful and the true.
Two friends here, Gilbert and Phil[v] won’t let me close
With a handshake. Dr. Dubois, we’ve been socially distanced
By another plague, and give air-hugs and elbow bumps.
I’m reading about your grandson, Arthur McFarlane II.
He’s got his own Ph.D in public health.
I’m looking at the picture of the two of you.
You’re 90. He’s two months.
Your birthday party in New York,
You’re guest of honor. Your grandson’s given your words,
You will soon learn, my dear young man…
That famous one addressed to you, ending,
Learn what you want to do, how you are fit to do it…
And Sharee Silerio lives with history, too,
Writes in THE Root how your grandson works
To re-distribute what’s here, with homelessness, food insecurity.
Here’s more. He knows your talented tenth.
…those ten were
supposed to be of service to the people,
…that piece of the
puzzle is what I’ve taken
As being my part
keeping grandpa’s legacy alive.
I think that a big
part of how I became myself.
People relate to
his double consciousness,
to what grandpa
says.
Writing to grandkids. What else to do?
Your grandson finds his voice in you.
Children hand-carrying letters, walking.
Jim Bodeen
Storypath/Cuentocamino
Yakima, WA
October, 2020
[i] George Floyd is murdered in Minneapolis by a policeman on this day.
[ii] DuBois, citing Alexander Crummell, who refused the veil, writing in Souls of Black Folk.
[iii] See Chapter XII, Souls of Black Folk, Of Alexander Crummell.
[iv] Robert Moses went on to teach Algebra in the South, insisting on quality education for Black students.
[v] Gilbert Chandler & Phil Pleasant, Yakima. Chandler took me into Black Ancestors to document their stories. Phil was famous for neckbones and his mantra, Don’t give me no handshake!
Posts
