Darkwater Read online

  The Civil War

  In Of the Ruling of Men, Du Bois writes about the organization needed to rule a group of people for either good or evil and delves into the psyche of the people being ruled and how history accounts for it. He comments on written records, especially concerning slavery. They’re rife with tales of philanthropy, but that’s not the truth. ‘Lions have no historians,’ Du Bois writes. And indeed it wasn’t the goodness of the people in power that ended slavery, it was violence and revolt. As Du Bois writes:

  Negroes had no bards, and therefore it has been widely told how American philanthropy freed the slave. In truth the Negro revolted by armed rebellion, by sullen refusal to work, by poison and murder, by running away to the North and Canada, by giving point and powerful example to the agitation of the abolitionists and by furnishing 200,000 soldiers and many times as many civilian helpers in the Civil War.

  Looking for a better democratic system not founded on slavery, lawmakers built social programs like distribution of land to offer economic independence. However, since the ruling class didn’t atone for their sins, they repeated their mistakes.

  The period after the Civil Rights era brought an attempt to bring balance between the Black and white races. With the passing of The Civil War Amendments – the 13th (1865), 14th (1868) and 15th (1870) – to the American Constitution the tide was turning to help bring free Black men and women into the fold. These amendments brought with them abolishment of slavery or involuntary servitude, except when punishment for a crime; citizenship rights and equal protection under the law for emancipated slaves; and ensuring voting rights were in place, irrespective of race, color or past servitude. The 14th Amendment overturned the infamous Dred Scott vs. Sandford (1857) Supreme Court ruling that denied Black people the right to citizenship.

  For some, this time known as the Reconstruction Era evened out the playing field for Black and white Americans. However, with Jim Crow Laws introducing segregation, redlining, Gerrymandering and countless other white supremacist systems enacted around the states for decades to come the only thing that ended was slavery – not the mistreatment of Black people.

  On this period of time, Du Bois writes:

  Reconstruction became in history a great movement for the self-assertion of the white race against the impudent ambition of degraded blacks, instead of, in truth, the rise of a mass of black and white laborers. The result was the disfranchisement of the blacks of the South and a world-wide attempt to restrict democratic development to white races and to distract them with race hatred against the darker races.

  He believes more equanimity is possible by supporting working class laborers of all backgrounds. Socialism – and communism, for some – arose in the US as a response to this treatment. But, again, white races were centered to the exclusion of Black and Asian people.

  Additionally, there were loopholes in the 13th amendement, which prevented slavery but allowed slave-like conditions to be replicated in chain gangs and prison labour. And the years following up until the modern day would include numerous examples of the mistreatment of Black people, including the War on Drugs and the FBI’s treatment of the leaders of the Black Panther Party, which were systemic efforts to incarcerate and kill more generations of Black men and women.

  An Anthem for Women and Children

  Du Bois was a pioneer scribe of the pain of women. In The Damnation of Women he wrote how both virginity and motherhood was worshiped when in fact mothers were hated and virgins were marginalized. Religion is a common refrain for people, no matter the race. Churches have firm opinions of how women should behave and what they should do with their bodies. This often takes the form of abstinence pledges and early age betrothals. Then when a woman enters a marriage and begins motherhood they’re placed on a pedestal. Yet, this is only how it is on the page. Because in truth women are often sexualized and marginalized, both in the present day and in Du Bois’ time.

  Simply, Du Bois argues for economic independence for women. The concept may in theory be a basic human right in many parts of the world, but in reality it is not guaranteed. Proper education and opportunities were and are in short supply if you’re Black or brown. He wraps it with a love letter to the women in his life and all the honest details of their existence.

  Hope for the Future

  In The Immortal Child Du Bois writes about the life of a great musician. His life wasn’t better than fate allowed but it did improve upon his ancestors’ circumstances. The fact that he was allowed to grow his talent was more the exception than the rule. Du Bois opens the chapter:

  If a man die shall he live again? We do not know. But this we do know, that our children’s children live forever and grow and develop toward perfection as they are trained. All human problems, then, center in the Immortal Child and his education is the problem of problems.

  Education can be used to equalize the masses but Du Bois understands that standardized training doesn’t consider the child or culture. He also goes on to ask a deeper question:

  Is it worth while? Ought children be born to us? Have we any right to make human souls face what we face today?

  His answer is that the only way to change things is through future generations; however Du Bois explores the difficulties surrounding this when he writes of how best to bring up Black children who must live their lives shrouded in prejudice. This chapter speaks to the pain still prevalent today that comes from Black lives that are cut short too soon for reasons of racism. It puts words to the confusion and pain that Black mothers felt, and still feel today. Du Bois suffered his own loss – his first son died at just 18 months old – and his personal grief can be felt in his words.

  Deferred Perfection

  The science-fiction short story, The Comet, is the closing chapter of Darkwater. The story opens in New York on the steps of a bank where a man named Jim feels invisible in the sprawling city. As a Black man in the 1920s, he’s only noticed in a way that disparages his humanity. Jim works at the bank as a messenger. On this day, while his affable colleagues comment on a comet that’s due to make landfall at noon, the president of the bank orders Jim down to the vault to recover a couple volumes of old records.

  While searching the vault, he finds an old compartment behind a door where the missing volumes are located. Jim becomes locked in by the old and failing vault system. After hours trapped inside, he’s able to escape the room and is welcomed by a foul odor and the corpse of the vault clerk. Upon entering the main floor, Jim sees what looks like robbery and murder. Knowing he would instantly be charged if found amidst the chaos, he tiptoes outdoors onto Wall Street.

  Instead of the bustling nature of city life, there is only silence. He finds the bodies of many men, women and children throughout the street. Finding a vehicle, he continues his search, only stopping miles away when he hears screams and sees a woman trying to attract his attention. When approaching each other they stare, realizing they hadn’t registered each other’s race before now. She’s richly dressed, and he’s in the garb of a working man, which further sets their division. Yet the two take off to search for more survivors.

  The themes of social standing and equality are strong in this story. Even with the world vacated of all life, both Jim and the woman must convince themselves that their attraction to each other is warranted. And they only find solace in their equality with the introduction of religion.

  Religion is still popular among the US masses, and groups continue to interpret their sacred texts in ways that defend their actions. Sometimes this is to positive ends, as with the acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage. Yet it has a dark side. The Christian faith touts equality and fairness, yet class and race – in the twentieth century – held much more standing in society for the devout. Jim understood his place in society and his rightful egalitarian place in truth before, during and after the events of the story. It was more so the woman who was to embark on a journey, where she w
ould discover whether she was willing to accept the new dynamic brought upon them by the upending of social constraints.

  The woman’s wholesale acceptance of the repressive society presented a class conundrum when she believed it was just her and Jim left in the world. She did not suddenly believe in his humanity because of some higher calling. She made logical calculations for her own survival. When she allowed her prejudice to fall by the wayside to give in to her desire for human connection, she gained moral authority. Yet it’s not known if she knew this or even cared. Jim, too, struggled even though he always believed in his own humanity. He had to allow himself to accept and even reciprocate the woman’s affection, even though she came from the same camp as his oppressors.

  The Beauty of Life

  Despite a life and history that were incredibly difficult Du Bois is still able to see beauty. In Of Beauty and Death he asks, ‘this Death – is this Life?’

  Black people can’t paint the picture of beauty or happiness on their face when they’re under the thumb of a white supremacist system. He writes:

  Ugliness may be indefinite but Beauty must be complete – whether it be a field of poppies or a great life, – it must end, and the End is part and triumph of the Beauty.

  There are many fleeting moments of beauty in Darkwater, including the ‘the sail-flecked, restless sea, humming its tune’ he sees when travelling in Maine; the ‘wild and sweet and wooing’ sounds of jazz from Tim Brymm; and when Du Bois is surrounded by his community in Harlem: ‘black eyes, black and brown, and frizzled hair curled and sleek, and skins that riot with luscious color and deep, burning blood.’

  Overall, Darkwater is summed up by its belief in what could be. A viewpoint shared by countless revolutionaries, across struggles. Is true equality a dream because we won’t realize it? Yet, we slumber because our grandchildren’s grandchildren might.

  Patty Nicole Johnson

  Further Reading

  Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press Inc., 2010)

  Bales, Kwvin, Disposable People (University of California Press, 1999)

  Coates, Ta-Nehisi, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015)

  Du Bois, W.E.B., The Souls of Black Folk (Penguin Classics, 1996)

  Hopkins, Pauline E., Of One Blood; Or, the Hidden Self [1902–1903] (Flame Tree 451, 2021)

  Oluo, Ijeoma, So You Want to Talk About Race (Seal Press, 2018)

  Smith, Clint, How the World is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown and Company, 2021)

  Wilder, Craig Steven, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (Bloomsbury Press, 2013)

  Walker, Alice, The Colour Purple (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982)

  X, Malcolm, The Autobiography os Malcolm X (Ballantine Books, 2015)

  W.E.B. DU BOIS

  Darkwater

  Voices from Within the Veil

  Postscript

  These are the things of which men think, who live: of their own selves and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and service; of rule and reason and women and children; of Beauty and Death and War. To this thinking I have only to add a point of view: I have been in the world, but not of it. I have seen the human drama from a veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced themselves in microcosm within. From this inner torment of souls the human scene without has interpreted itself to me in unusual and even illuminating ways. For this reason, and this alone, I venture to write again on themes on which great souls have already said greater words, in the hope that I may strike here and there a half-tone, newer even if slighter, up from the heart of my problem and the problems of my people.

  Between the sterner flights of logic, I have sought to set some little alightings of what may be poetry. They are tributes to Beauty, unworthy to stand alone; yet perversely, in my mind, now at the end, I know not whether I mean the Thought for the Fancy – or the Fancy for the Thought, or why the book trails off to playing, rather than standing strong on unanswering fact. But this is always – is it not? – the Riddle of Life.

  Many of my words appear here transformed from other publications and I thank the Atlantic, the Independent, the Crisis, and the Journal of Race Development for letting me use them again.

  W.E.B. Du Bois

  New York, 1919.

  Credo

  I believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development.

  Especially do I believe in the Negro Race: in the beauty of its genius, the sweetness of its soul, and its strength in that meekness which shall yet inherit this turbulent earth.

  I believe in Pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves; in pride of lineage so great as to despise no man’s father; in pride of race so chivalrous as neither to offer bastardy to the weak nor beg wedlock of the strong, knowing that men may be brothers in Christ, even though they be not brothers-in-law.

  I believe in Service – humble, reverent service, from the blackening of boots to the whitening of souls; for Work is Heaven, Idleness Hell, and Wage is the “Well done!” of the Master, who summoned all them that labor and are heavy laden, making no distinction between the black, sweating cotton hands of Georgia and the first families of Virginia, since all distinction not based on deed is devilish and not divine.

  I believe in the Devil and his angels, who wantonly work to narrow the opportunity of struggling human beings, especially if they be black; who spit in the faces of the fallen, strike them that cannot strike again, believe the worst and work to prove it, hating the image which their Maker stamped on a brother’s soul.

  I believe in the Prince of Peace. I believe that War is Murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong, and I believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength.

  I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love.

  I believe in the Training of Children, black even as white; the leading out of little souls into the green pastures and beside the still waters, not for pelf or peace, but for life lit by some large vision of beauty and goodness and truth; lest we forget, and the sons of the fathers, like Esau, for mere meat barter their birthright in a mighty nation.

  Finally, I believe in Patience – patience with the weakness of the Weak and the strength of the Strong, the prejudice of the Ignorant and the ignorance of the Blind; patience with the tardy triumph of Joy and the mad chastening of Sorrow.

  Chapter I

  The Shadow of Years

  I was born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The house was quaint, with clapboards running up and down, neatly trimmed, and there were five rooms, a tiny porch, a rosy front yard, and unbelievably delicious strawberries in the rear. A South Carolinian, lately come to the Berkshire Hills, owned all this – tall, thin, and black, with golden earrings, and given to religious trances. We were his transient tenants for the time.

  My own people were part of a great clan. Fully two hundred years before, Tom Burghardt had come through the western pass from the Hudson with his Dutch captor, “Coenraet Burghardt,” sullen in his slavery and achieving his freedom by volunteering for the Revolution at a time of sudden alarm. His wife was a little, black,
Bantu woman, who never became reconciled to this strange land; she clasped her knees and rocked and crooned:

  “Do bana coba – gene me, gene me!

  Ben d’nuli, ben d’le—”

  Tom died about 1787, but of him came many sons, and one, Jack, who helped in the War of 1812. Of Jack and his wife, Violet, was born a mighty family, splendidly named: Harlow and Ira, Cloë, Lucinda, Maria, and Othello! I dimly remember my grandfather, Othello, – or “Uncle Tallow,” – a brown man, strong-voiced and redolent with tobacco, who sat stiffly in a great high chair because his hip was broken. He was probably a bit lazy and given to wassail. At any rate, grandmother had a shrewish tongue and often berated him. This grandmother was Sarah – “Aunt Sally” – a stern, tall, Dutch-African woman, beak-nosed, but beautiful-eyed and golden-skinned. Ten or more children were theirs, of whom the youngest was Mary, my mother.

  Mother was dark shining bronze, with a tiny ripple in her black hair, black-eyed, with a heavy, kind face. She gave one the impression of infinite patience, but a curious determination was concealed in her softness. The family were small farmers on Egremont Plain, between Great Barrington and Sheffield, Massachusetts. The bits of land were too small to support the great families born on them and we were always poor. I never remember being cold or hungry, but I do remember that shoes and coal, and sometimes flour, caused mother moments of anxious thought in winter, and a new suit was an event!