Raymond Wolters. Du Bois and His Rivals

African American Review, Summer, 2006 by Verner D. Mitchell

Raymond Wolters. Du Bois and His Rivals. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2002.311 pp. $19.95.

The year 2003 proved especially important in W. E. B. Du Bois scholarship. Throughout the year, scholars convened at such varied sites as the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Stirling in Scotland, and Morgan State University in Baltimore to commemorate the 100th anniversary of The Souls of Black Folk, and in so doing to celebrate, as Raymond Wolters puts it, "the preeminent black scholar of his era." Along with the conferences came a flurry of publications. Significant book-length studies include Chester Fontenot and Mary Alice Morgan's Du Bois and Race: Essays Celebrating the Centennial Publication of The Souls of Black Folk (2002), Stanley Crouch and Playthell Benjamin's Reconsidering The Souls of Black Folk (2003), Dolan Hubbard's The Souls of Black Folk: One Hundred Years Later (2003), and the preeminent work in Du Bois studies, David Levering Lewis's two-volume, Pulitizer Prize-winning Du Bois biography, Biography of a Race (1993) and The Fight for Equality and the American Century (2000). Du Bois and His Rivals, then, is among the latest of a number of discerning, well-crafted books published in part to commemorate the centennial of Du Bois's 1903 masterpiece.

In this most recent volume, Raymond Wolters (Keith Professor of History, University of Delaware) dubs W. E. B. Du Bois "the great pioneer of the American civil rights movement." Where most of the centennial publications analyze in some depth The Souls of Black Folk, Wolters, much like David Lewis, focuses on Du Bois the man, particularly on his work as a civil rights leader. In doing so, he also illuminates the lives of Du Bois's principal friends and rivals-several black leaders who came to the fore in the years before World War II. Accordingly, Wolters envisions his book as a group portrait.

The book's central argument is that Du Bois was philosophically a pluralist. Although the author fails to provide a precise definition of pluralism, he does offer, in support of his thesis, a number of compelling examples. He notes, for instance, that in pursuing his life's work--the realization of economic, political and social justice for Blacks in America--Du Bois repeatedly rejected either/or approaches and embraced instead both/and solutions. This particular pluralism occurred perhaps most famously in the opening pages of Souls, where Du Bois initially sets forth his theory of "double consciousness." There he observes that the black American ever feels his two-ness, "an American, a Negro," and he goes on to identify the longing to merge these two halves into a harmonious whole as the great struggle of the American Negro. Rejecting the feasibility of choosing either hall he calls for a society where one can be both a Negro and an American, "without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face."

Wolters shows that, in arriving at this position, Du Bois engaged three opposing bodies of thought that emerged in the US during the nineteenth century. One group of activists, represented by Martin R. Delany and Edward Blyden (and later Marcus Garvey), argued that because white racism was so deeply entrenched, Blacks would never be treated fairly in America. Since efforts at improved race relations would in their view inevitably fail they called for an exodus of African Americans back to the Motherland. At the opposite end of the political spectrum were those like Frederick Douglass who held that racial integration and assimilation were viable goals. Little value, they maintained, should be placed on cultural and other group differences, so as to produce a united, colorblind American citizenry. Others, like the Cambridge-educated Episcopal priest Alexander Crummell (the subject of Souls, chapter 12), agreed in part with both groups. Crummell insisted, like the integrationists, on equal rights for Blacks, but he rejected their calls for assimilation, agreeing instead with the separatists' calls for the preservation of a unique African heritage and culture. Wolters concludes that Du Bois sided with Crummell and embraced what today is called cultural pluralism: "Rejecting the melting-pot idea, which looks toward a blending of different cultures into one, Du Bois envisaged the coexistence of distinct groups." Hence "African Americans should fight for equal opportunities and also proudly develop certain aspects of their unique heritage and subculture." Throughout the book Wolters includes several other interesting, well-described instances of Du Bois's pluralism.

The book consists of a brief introduction and seven main chapters. Chapter one is devoted to Du Bois's early years; the middle chapters explore his relationships with Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and Walter White, as well as key experiences during World War I and during his two stints with the NAACP, first as Director of Publicity and Research (1910-1934) and later as Director of Special Research (1944-1948). The final chapter, titled "The Final Years," gives a brief summary of the scholar and activist's last years. About his life's work, Wolters concludes: "As a youth he recognized that black people were repressed by the racist notion that Negroes were inherently deficient and therefore doomed to servitude. As a young man he dedicated himself to demolishing the idea of racial inferiority."