THE
GIFT of BLACK FOLK
The Negroes in the
Making of America
by
W. E. Burghardt DuBois
Ph. D. (Harv.)
Author of “The Souls of Black Folk,” “Darkwater,” etc.
Editor of The Crisis
Introduction by
EDWARD F. McSWEENEY, LL. D.
1924
THE STRATFORD CO., Publishers
Boston, Massachusetts
Copyright, 1924
By THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
| Chapter | Page | |
| Foreword | i | |
| Prescript | 33 | |
| I | The Black Explorers | 35 |
| II | Black Labor | 52 |
| III | Black Soldiers | 80 |
| IV | The Emancipation of Democracy | 135 |
| V | The Reconstruction of Freedom | 184 |
| VI | The Freedom of Womanhood | 259 |
| VII | The American Folk Song | 274 |
| VIII | Negro Art and Literature | 287 |
| IX | The Gift of the Spirit | 320 |
It is not uncommon for casual thinkers to assumethat the United States of America is practically acontinuation of English nationality. Our speechis English and the English played so large a partin our beginnings that it is easy to fall more orless consciously into the thought that the historyof this nation has been but a continuation and developmentof these beginnings. A little reflection,however, quickly convinces us that at least therewas present French influence in the MississippiValley and Spanish influence in the southeast andsouthwest. Everything else however that has beenadded to the American nationality is often lookedupon as a sort of dilution of more or less doubtfulvalue: peoples that had to be assimilated as faras possible and made over to the original andbasic type. Thus we continually speak of Germansand Scandinavians, of Irish and Jews, Poles,Austrians and Hunga