[ Paul Peart-Smith, Paul Buhle, and Herb Boyd provide the world
with their masterful graphic adaptation and edited interpretation of
W. E. B. Du Bois’s great scholarly The Souls of Black Folk - “The
Souls of Black Folk: In Its Time…and Ours.”]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

W. E. B. DU BOIS, SOULS OF BLACK FOLK: A GRAPHIC INTERPRETATION – A
REVIEW  
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Patrick Delices
July 2, 2023
Portside
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_ Paul Peart-Smith, Paul Buhle, and Herb Boyd provide the world with
their masterful graphic adaptation and edited interpretation of W. E.
B. Du Bois’s great scholarly The Souls of Black Folk - “The Souls
of Black Folk: In Its Time…and Ours.” _

W. E. B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk: A Graphic Interpretation,
Rutgers University Press

 

Approximately 120 years after African American academic and activist
W. E. B. Du Bois published one of the greatest scholarly works in the
canon of world literature, _The Souls of Black Folk_, literary giants
Paul Peart-Smith, Paul Buhle, and Herb Boyd provide the public and the
world of academia with their masterful graphic adaptation and edited
interpretation of Du Bois’s_ Souls of Black Folk_.  As Buhle and
Boyd enabled and assisted Peart-Smith regarding this text, President
Jonathan Scott Holloway of Rutgers University provides us with a
sagacious and felicitous introduction by titling it – “The Souls
of Black Folk: In Its Time…and Ours.”

 

W. E. B. Du Bois Souls of Black Folk: A Graphic Interpretation
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by W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), Paul Peart-Smith
Edited by Paul Buhle, Herb Boyd
Introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway
By (artist) Paul Peart-Smith
Rutgers University Press; 180 pages
April 14, 2023
Paperback:  $19.95; Cloth:  $49.95;  EPUB:  19.95;  PDF:  $19.95
ISBN: 9781978824652  -  9781978824669  -  9781978824676  -
 9781978824690

 

This timely adaptation of Du Bois’s_ Souls of Black Folk_ is further
enhanced by the intense and spectacular artistic graphics of Paul
Peart-Smith where readers will strongly feel various emotions as they
contemplate deeply Du Bois’s profound prophecy regarding race
relations along with his pungent polemic regarding not necessarily the
souls of Black folk, but essentially the soul of America. For it is
the soul of America, not Black folk that created and still perpetuates
the pernicious ordeal and reality of not only a double consciousness,
but a dual and divided country: one Black, the other White where
inequality, injustice, and white supremacy thrive and prevail as the
lives of Black folk are not only exasperated, but almost extinguished.


Truth be told, it is the soul of America, not Black folk that created
“this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s
self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape
of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Peart-Smith,
Buhle, and Boyd, 2023, p. 8). Yet, before the birth of the United
States, it was Black folk, given their double consciousness, who
fought alongside white folk during the American Revolution, and
ultimately, in all of their wars for the sake of white liberty and
acceptance.  

As the United States struggled to develop its infant industries and
dominance, it was Black folk from Haiti by way of the Haitian
Revolution of 1804 that prevented Napoleon’s dream of an American
empire.  During the Haitian Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase
occurred as France sold the vast territory of Louisiana to the United
States which doubled the size of the United States.  Therefore, it
was the soul of Black folk that made Haiti, not the United States, the
first nation in the Americas to abolish slavery.  Furthermore, as the
United States incorporated Manifest Destiny, it was the soul of Black
folk (specifically the Buffalo Soldiers) that further expanded U.S.
territories westward and played a major role in making the United
States victorious in the Spanish-American War of 1898 by fighting side
by side with Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. Thus, it was the
soul of Black folk not the soul of America that built this nation even
though this nation still “looks on in amused contempt and pity”
regarding Black folk.

            Although this nation “looks on in amused
contempt and pity” regarding Black folk, it was the soul of Black
folk that made it possible for Edward Bouchet, a possible descendant
of Haiti, to become the first African American to earn a doctorate in
the United States.  While Dr. Bouchet earned his Ph.D. in physics
from Yale University in 1876, it was the soul of Black folk as this
nation “looks on in amused contempt and pity” that made a
descendant of Haiti, W.E.B. Du Bois prevailed in earning his Ph.D.
from Harvard University making him the first African American to earn
a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895.

It is the pernicious soul of America by way of slavery, Jim Crow,
hatred, fear, ignorance, and white supremacy that ruled affirmative
action in college admission for Black folk unconstitutional. Yet,
unqualified white folk affirmatively enjoy the privilege of being
admitted to elite colleges and universities by way of legacies. A
legacy where the soul of Black folk, by way of African enslavement,
built and financed the very same institutions of higher education that
prevent qualified Black folk from admissions and other opportunities.
 Moreover, it is the pernicious soul of America not Black folk that
officially and legally prohibits certain books from being borrowed,
purchased, and read.  It would be a great American tragedy if certain
states banned _The_ _Souls of Black Folk_ and its graphic
interpretation because some soulless folk with an elite education
purposely misinterpret or misrepresent these texts.

            Nonetheless, Peart-Smith, Buhle, and Boyd’s
graphic interpretation of Du Bois’s _Souls of Black Folk_ is timely
and significant because it is the soul of Black folk not the soul of
America that will prevail and save this nation and its people. 
Hopefully, at that point, Black folk will no longer be viewed and
treated with “amused contempt and pity.” Furthermore, in their
stylistic and artistic representation of Du Bois’s _Souls of Black
Folk_, Peart-Smith, Buhle, and Boyd provide the public and the world
of academia with a stellar presentation and remembrance of Du Bois’s
pungent polemic and profound prophecy.  As such, the problem of the
color line will no longer persist in the 21st century only if the
consciousness of America and the rest of humanity is one with the soul
of Black folk.  

 

_[PATRICK DELICES is a Pan-African scholar, public intellectual,
essayist, and bibliophile who taught at Hunter College, Department of
Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies. Patrick Delices also served
as a research fellow at Columbia University for Pulitzer Prize
historian Manning Marable. Patrick Delices earned a BA/MS from the
City College of New York; an Ed.M at Teachers College, Columbia
University; an MBA from New York University, Stern School of Business;
and an MPA from Columbia University, School of International and
Public Affairs.  He can be reached at [email protected].]_

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