Vincent Harding lecture, "DuBois and the Role of the Black Scholar in the Struggles of the Black Community," at the University of Iowa, June-July 1972
Speaker 1: The following is an address recorded at the fourth annual Institute for Afro-American Culture held at the University of Iowa, June 25th through July 7th, 1972, speaking on W.E.B. Du Bois and the role of the Black Scholar in the Struggles of the Black Community is Vincent Harding, Director of the Institute of the Black World. Introducing Mr. Harding is Charles T. Davis, Professor of English at the University of Iowa and Chairman of the Institute.
Charles T. Davi...: It is my pleasure to introduce Mr. Vincent Harding this evening. And this is the first evening lecture in the second week of the Institute on W.E.B. Du Bois. The work of the new Black historians is not well known in the academic communities across the land, and the Black historian who has had most to do with insisting upon rewriting the history of Blacks and who has presented a model of how this is to be done is our lecturer this evening, Vincent Harding. Vincent Harding is now the Director of the Institute of the Black World an independent research center in Atlanta. He participated in the creation of the center when he was a part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center, a connection which was terminated in September 1970. He brought to the center experience, both as an activist and as a member of the academic community. He served from 1961 until 1965 as a negotiator and troubleshooter in the freedom movement in the South.
Charles T. Davi...: He has an undergraduate degree from the City College of New York and graduate degrees from Columbia and the University of Chicago. He was, for four years, Chairman of the History and Sociology Department at Spelman College in Atlanta. He's written articles, stories, poems. Many of us here are familiar with his perceptive pieces in Black World and especially, in terms of the interest of this Institute, the one on Du Bois in China. And we all await, with much interest, the book which is in preparation now on Black Radicalism. The title of the lecture this evening is, "W.E.B. Du Bois and the Role of the Black Scholar in the Struggles of the Black Community." Mr. Harding.
Vincent Harding: As we sat there waiting for the public address system to do something, it struck me that that was a marvelous act of faith to be spending so much time worrying about whether the public address system is working without knowing whether or not the public addressee is going to have anything to say that's worth listening to, but I appreciate your act of faith and I trust that we will find some ways of being faithful to each other in the course of what we have to do here this evening. This afternoon, near the close of the session, a sister raised a question that seemed almost to have been one that she was prodded to raise or paid to raise or both, but I assure you that was too far away to prod her and I'm too poor to pay her. But I thank her anyway for raising the question because her question was precisely, "What is the role of the Black scholar?" And John, in his rambunctious way, said that he would give a two minute answer, and she should come later on for Vincent Harding to give the rest.
Vincent Harding: The rest, I should forewarn you, is going to be about an hour long. One half of it is going to be on what I understand the role of the Black scholar to be, but not simply the role of the Black scholar in abstract, but the role of the Black scholar in the struggles of the Black community towards new liberation, new freedom, new humanity, and the second half will be, in what I understand to be, the nature of Du Bois' own engagement in that role. I shall speak primarily to his faithfulness in that role. There were many times when he was unfaithful in that role, but that is not my responsibility tonight. Because I believe in ritual, especially where Black people gathered together to try to understand themselves and our role in history for that one reason among others, I want to begin with what we might call an incantation from one of our marvelous Black poets, brother Ted Jones.
Vincent Harding: The incantation is called, Oh, Great Black Mask, and it seems to me most fitting for the beginning and the participation of a conversation about Du Bois. "Oh, great Black mask that is me, that travels with me in spirit, your big eyes that see tomorrow, saw yesterday's and gazes at now. Oh, great Black mask of my soul, those ears have heard the clink of slaves' chains and the moans of sorrow of our past, but those same ears can hear on now. Oh, great Black mask that is me, you who copulated with Europe signs and now dynamically demystifies Europe. Oh, great Black mask, who is our ancestors with your cave mouth filled with sharp teeth to chew the ropes that bind our hands and minds. Oh, great Black mask, you that grins, you that always wins the throw of seven [inaudible] and two black-eyed dice.
Vincent Harding: Oh, great Black mask, who says that it is half past pink, since white is not a color. Oh, great Black mask, that carried me from [Barkly] to Alabama and back from [Mali] to Manhattan. Oh, great Black mask, that dances in me day and night. Oh, Black mask of urban gorillas and forest gorillas. Oh, Black mask, that screams in joy at childbirth and opens up to the rays of the sun. Oh, great Black mask, your sharp blade tongue burns will make us buildings. You who stand guard to African breast and soul. Oh, great Black mask, give us our blacker heavens, release our minds from borrowed white helms. Oh, great Black mask of Africa. Oh, great Black mask of all Black people. Oh, beautiful Black mask, our own Black truth."
Vincent Harding: So the poet leads us to the answer, to the question, what is the role of the Black scholar in the struggles of the Black community, and he throws out advertently and inadvertently hints to us to chew the rope that binds our hands and minds. Release our minds from borrowed white helms.
Vincent Harding: To speak to the question, what is the role of the scholar in the struggles of the Black community, is to be forced to come up against another kind of poet, another kind of life, another kind of living. His name was Frantz Fanon. To ask the question, what is the role of the scholar in the struggles of the Black community, his answer comes in many ways through his life, in many words through his words like these: "The colonized man who writes for his people or to use the past with the intention of opening the future has an invitation to action and a basis for hope, but to ensure that hope and to give it form, he must take part in action and throw himself body and soul into the struggle." Fanon speaking about the colonized man and the colonized scholar who seeks to free himself and his people, but there are strange answers to that question about what is the role of the Black scholar and the Black community coming from places that we would never expect.
Vincent Harding: An answer to that question came from Martin Luther King, three months before he died, less than three months. He was speaking at a special celebration, the Centennial of Du Bois' birth in Carnegie Hall in New York, and he said this about Du Bois in answer, inadvertently, to our question, "Above all, Du Bois did not contend himself with hurling invectives for emotional release and then to retire into smug, passive satisfaction. History had taught him, it is not enough for people to be angry, the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force. It was never possible to know where the scholar Du Bois ended and the organizer Du Bois began. The two qualities in him where a single, unified force. This lifestyle of Dr. Du Bois is the most important quality this generation of Negroes needs to emulate. The educated Negro, who is not really a part of us and the angry militant who fails to organize us, have nothing in common with Dr. Du Bois. He exemplified Black Power and Achievement, and he organized Black Power in Action. It was no abstract slogan for him."
Vincent Harding: Martin Luther King speaking, surprisingly for some, about Du Bois and Black power, but there is a sense in which the best answer to the question, the simplest answer to the question, is caught up by a Black sister whom some of us know and love. And it is significant that it is a Black sister who should catch up the essence of the answer to this question, significant that it should be a Black poet who should lead us in this way, because of course, Du Bois considered himself at times a poet, his best poetry coming, of course, in his prose rather than in his poetry, but even more important Du Bois considered himself a lover of Black women, and that he was; and therefore, it is good that a Black woman should lead the way to the answer of our question about him.
Vincent Harding: What is the role of the Black scholar and the struggles of the Black community? Sister Marie Evans answers, "Speak the truth to the people. Speak the truth to the people. Talk sense to the people. Free them with reason. Free them with honesty. Free the people with love and courage and care for their being. Spare them the fantasy. Fantasy enslaves. A slave is enslaved can be enslaved by unwisdom, can be enslaved by Black unwisdom, can be re-enslaved while in flight from the enemy, can be enslaved by his brother whom he loves, his brother whom he trusts, his brother with a loud voice and unwisdom. Speak the truth to the people. It is not necessary to green the heart, only to identify the enemy. It does not necessary to blow the mind, only to free the mind. To identify the enemy, is to free the mind.
Vincent Harding: A free mind has no need to scream. A free mind is ready for other things; to build the Black schools, to build Black children, to build Black minds, to build Black love, to build Black impregnability, to build a strong Black nation, to build. Speak the truth to the people. Spare them the opium of devil hate. They need no trips on honky chance. Move them instead to a Black oneness, a Black strength, which will defend its own, needing no cacophony of screams for activation, a Black strength, which attacks the laws, exposes the lies, disassembles the structure and ravages the very foundations of evil. Speak the truth to the people. To identify the enemy, is to free the mind. Free the mind of the people. Speak to the mind of the people. Speak truth."
Vincent Harding: What is the role of the Black scholar and the struggles of the Black community? Speak the truth to the people. That is my own beginning point for what I have to say to that question. Speak to the truth and thereby to free the minds. To speak the truth and to free the minds of our people, concerning ourselves as a people. To speak the truth concerning our enemy oppressors and their system. To speak the truth and to live the truth by participating in the building of new Black people and a new society. Live the truth by working. And if I'm asked, what does it mean to free our minds concerning ourselves, let's begin to talk about that. To free our mind, to speak the truth so that we may free our minds concerning ourselves. We who are Black, are if nothing else, are people rooted in Africa. We exist, therefore, in the three dimensions of all Eastern and African people.
Vincent Harding: We live not as those who are cut off from our past or our future, but we live as those who are in the midst of past, present, and future at every moment of our lives; therefore, to speak the truth concerning ourselves is to speak the truth concerning our past, our present, and our future for all of that is integral to ourselves, our being, our existence. And so, the role of the Black scholar in the struggles of the Black community is to speak the truth concerning our fathers and our mothers and the struggles through which they have gone; to claim them, to know them, to study them, to criticize them, to celebrate them, to elaborate on them, to vindicate them and not to feel that one of them must be exalted and another sent low like Booker T. and W.E.B. Du Bois, but to recognize that both are our fathers and we must grasp from both of them, the things that they have to offer to us.
Vincent Harding: To speak the truth is to speak the truth concerning our fathers and our mothers. To speak the truth is to speak the truth as well concerning ourselves and our own time and our own generation. To speak the truth concerning ourselves is to look at our struggles, our now struggles, our victories, our defeats, our strengths, and our weaknesses. To ask, for instance, what does it mean to go to Gary and speak about independent Black politics and go to Washington and speak about African Liberation Day and then to support George McGovern. We must speak the truth about ourselves.
Vincent Harding: We must be the experts on ourselves. We must be the experts on Malcolm and Martin and on Du Bois. We must be the custodians of the Black experience, not the Ford Foundation, not the Office of Education, not certain other people that I don't have to mention. We must be the writers, the tellers, the doers of the history of our people. For, we must assess what is our role now, and we must understand what is the nature of our role to the role that our fathers and our mothers have played. To speak the truth is to speak the truth, not only concerning our fathers and our mothers, which is in some ways, sometimes, somewhat easier, but also to speak the truth concerning ourselves and our own generation.
Vincent Harding: But no Black scholar can serve the struggles of the Black community unless he speaks the truth also as he understands the truth about the nature of our future. We must speak the truth as well about our children. We must ask at every point, what must be done to build for them, what must be abandoned in order for them to have a way ahead, what must be held, what must be developed, what must be created on their behalf. We must, at every point, ask what new connections must be made with the colonized of the world, what new risks must be taken on their behalf. Always the work of the Black scholar if it is faithful to the lives of Black people must press us forward towards the future and press us forward with hope, and press us forward with hope. Speak the truth concerning ourselves in our past and our present and our future is one aspect of the role of the Black scholar, but there is another, and for a colonized people, a far more difficult one, and that is to speak the truth concerning the enemy oppressors.
Vincent Harding: To identify the enemy, is to free the mind. And those of us who would claim to be teachers and learners and seekers after the Black truth that is in constant tension with the monstrous truth of the white Western world must not be afraid to identify this American system and so many of its parts as enemy oppressor to the masses of Black people, regardless of the little holes that it lets us as a minority sneak into for the masses of Black people, it is enemy oppressor.
Vincent Harding: To speak the truth, is to speak that truth; to speak it in our teaching, to speak it in our writing, to speak it in our living. To speak the truth to free the minds of our people concerning the enemy, is to clarify the nature of the systems in those who maintain and support them. To speak the truth for Black people, you see, is not simply to talk about Black things, not simply to have a Black studies program on Soul Food 439. To speak the truth, to speak the truth to Black people is to bring a Black analysis of white America. For wherever men are colonized, true freedom demands that we not only define ourselves, but that we define the colonizers as well.
Vincent Harding: To speak the truth about the enemy, is to place our own definition about the nature of America from its beginning to its endings. The role of the Black scholar and the struggles of the Black community is to explain and to analyze the systems of politics, the systems of economics, the systems of art and religion and others, but there's a special responsibility that those like us have. And that is that we must understand and clarify the nature of the white dominance in education and scholarship, and then understand what this means and requires of us. For, we must speak the truth about the enemy system in such a way that we identify its presence within our own very midst, within our own very minds, within our own very spirits. We must speak the truth about ourselves and about the way the enemy system has taken over our values and our judgments and our aspirations and our affairs and our goals.
Vincent Harding: We must speak the truth, then not only about the nature of that system and what it has done, but we must speak the truth about what is necessary to break the control of the oppressor enemy, internally and externally. Speak the truth to the people to identify the enemy, to attack the laws, to expose the lies, to disassemble the structure, to ravage the very foundation of evil. This is the role of the Black scholar in the struggles of the Black community, but unfortunately, to speak the truth is not enough. To live the truth is also necessary. To live the truth, this is the best speaking and living and teaching of all. What does it mean to live the truth in the midst of the struggles of the Black community? What does it mean to live the truth as a colonized people? To live out the truth concerning the nature of our real struggle, to live as if we really believe that other Black people are not the major enemy, to live as if we really honor our fathers and mother and the oceans of blood through which they waded.
Vincent Harding: To live as if we respect ourselves and our own capacities to create new ideas. To live as if we honor our children enough to risk our present for their future. To live the truth is to live as if we know that there is indeed a real oppressor and a real system of oppression and not just figments of Don Lee and Imamu Baraka's mind. To live the truth is to live as if we know that there is a system against whom a relentless struggle must be waged. To live the truth is to refuse to live before our students, and our colleagues, and the white academic world as if God's in his heaven and all is well in the black and white world.
Vincent Harding: To live the truth is to live as if we know that God's not in his heaven and that if he's anywhere he's dying under American bombs in Vietnam, and burning under American supplied napalm in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, and stretched out by American approved drugs in Harlem and Detroit, and poisoned by the waters of Lake Erie, and starving in Mississippi with the consent of the American Department of Agriculture. To live the truth is to know that this America, this killer of the divine, operates under the leadership of men and women who were trained in the great universities of this land, quote unquote. And these are the models that we are so often tempted to follow.
Vincent Harding: To live the truth is to let the reality of the struggle show through. To live the truth as a black scholar is to refuse to be objective. When our people struggle against harsh oppression, oppression for survival and for humanity, they do not need us to be objective about their struggle. They need us to be exceedingly subjective. To live the truth is to work, to work, to work. Not to rap, to rap, to rap, but to work for new educational alternatives, for new political alternatives, for new economic alternatives, for new life that is tied to the lives of the oppressed and the wretched of the earth. To live the truth is to live and work, not like America lives and works, without hope, without nerve, without courage, but to live with hope and to live with nerve and to live with courage.
Vincent Harding: And what I say is that if that is indeed the role of the black scholar in the struggles of the black community, to speak the truth about ourselves, about our enemy, and to live the truth, that then WEB Du Bois is an example of some of the best aspects of that role, that speaking and that living the truth with a ferocious tenacity until his death. I want to give you some examples of what I mean. I mean that strange romanticism that is still necessary for life that led him at the age of 18 in the midst of Fisk University, coming out of the confusing atmosphere of Massachusetts, that led him to speak the truth to and about himself.
Vincent Harding: In one of his early public addresses at Fisk, Du Bois announced, "I am a Negro and I glory in the name. I am proud of the black blood that flows in my veins. I have come here not to pose as a critic, but to join hands with my people." Of course, Du Bois could now be a critic wherever he was, but the spirit was the important thing, that he came trying to speak the truth about who he was, and about what he wanted to be and to do.
Vincent Harding: This is the same Du Bois, seven years later in 1893, some of you are reading Dusk of Dawn now, some of you have already read it. It's a repeated in the autobiography, where Du Bois in Germany of all places on his 25th birthday discovers himself and his role in the new way. Du Bois seeking the truth beginning on his 25th birthday, lighting candles, celebrating his mother and her commitment to him and to his life, and then offering himself, his commitment to truth, his commitment to black people, his commitment to the good of the world with these words: "I will seek the truth on the pure assumption that it is worth seeking and heaven nor hell, God nor devil shall turn me from my purpose till I die."
Vincent Harding: And then he went from the truth to the world and said, "I am firmly convinced that my own best development is not one and the same with the best development of the world. And here I am willing to sacrifice. I know the sacrifice to the world's good becomes too soon, sickly sentimentality. I therefore take the world that the unknown lay in my hands and work for the rise of the Negro people taking for granted that their best development means the best development of the world."
Vincent Harding: So Du Bois seeks the nature of the truth about universalism, and teaches us and shows us that the truly universal man becomes universal not by leaping into the universe, but by fighting his way through all of the bloody prisons of his own particular and specific experience, and in that way finding the universal nature of truth itself. And Du Bois was old fashioned like I am talking about truth as if such a thing existed.
Vincent Harding: This was the Du Bois of 1897. A brash young man of 29 at the American Negro Academy speaking again out of a deep sense of confidence in black people and the need for us to see that our own ultimate truth is in ourselves, not in, quote, the Western world, but in ourselves. Seeing the ultimate truth to be in us, not because of some mysticism about our color, but because of the concrete realities of the struggles of our history. So he says, "Let us not deceive ourselves at our situation in this country. Weighted with a heritage of moral inequity from our past history, hard pressed in the economic world by foreign immigrants and native prejudice, hated here, despised there, and pitied everywhere.
Vincent Harding: Our one haven of refuge is ourselves, and we have but one means of advance: our own belief in our own great destiny, our own implicit trust in our ability and worth. There is no power under God's high heaven that can stop the advance of 8,000 thousand honest, earnest, inspired and united people. But, and here is the rub, they must be honest, fearlessly criticizing their own faults, zealously correcting them. They must be earnest. No people that laughs at itself and ridicules itself and wishes to God it was anything but itself ever wrote its name in history. It must be inspired with the divine faith of our black mothers, that out of the blood and dust of battle will march a victorious host, a mighty nation, a peculiar people to speak to the nations of earth a divine truth that shall make free."
Vincent Harding: Du Bois, believing in the truth of black people. And of course, he goes from there to the Atlanta University and as a black scholar, committed to black people attempts to work, to work. And works in very hard and specific and concrete ways for very long hours, and in very surprising places throughout the South and the North. And he works to build a tradition of what he called scientific scholarship on behalf of black people and on behalf of our truth. But he could not possibly work in this country and could not possibly certainly work in the South without constantly being pushed up against the real nature of the struggles and the agonies of black people.
Vincent Harding: And one of the greatnesses of Du Bois was that he was constantly leaving himself open to the swords of that oppression, and it had its natural effect on his work. You recall, he tells on one occasion about how he was in the midst of his work and very deeply concerned about the whole experience of lynching and what it was doing to black people. And he had a letter in his pocket because he had heard about a black man being captured by a mob someplace else in Georgia. And he was just about to take that letter, Du Bois a great letter writer, and take it in his pocket. And of course, because he didn't ride the public transportation, to walk from Atlanta University down to the Constitution office. And on his way, somebody told him the black man who had been captured had been killed and the good white people of Atlanta were exhibiting his knuckles in a grocery store window.
Vincent Harding: And Du Bois turned around and put his letter in his file. And he said of that period, "At the very time, when my studies were most successful, there cut across this plan or red ray, which could not be ignored." The issue of the sufferings of his people forced on him again and again. And he said, "I began to turn aside from my work." One could not be a calm, cool and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved.
Vincent Harding: And so Du Bois moves on, and moves into in some ways almost accidentally the role of organizing. Organizing for one thing, Niagara. Elitist, yes, but organizing as we must all organize. Organize only the people that we know and that's who he knew and that's who he organized. But organizing. Organizing those he had some influence over, on behalf of black people for social and political change, with strange kinds of blindnesses to the real economic situation of black people. But trying to organize, recognizing that he could not sit in the halls of Bumstead and somehow find a way for black people. There had to be organizing.
Vincent Harding: And because his organizing led him constantly against certain streams in black and white society, he had to pay a cost. The cost is constantly present in any commitment to truth. And he had to move. He had to move from Atlanta University. But more important for our purposes, he moved to something else. As far as I can understand it, the major reason why Du Bois went in among that strange batch of liberal white people in the NAACP was because he saw himself able to get his hands on a journal that he could use. He saw himself moving from so-called scientific detached scholarship to partisan journalism on behalf of black people.
Vincent Harding: What was he doing? Simply attempting to speak the truth to a larger black audience. Speaking the truth to 29 students in Atlanta University is nice, but not sufficient. If we can make it 290, or 29,000, or several hundred thousand as the crisis eventually did, then the role of the black scholar is being more fully acted out. And as many of you know, in the midst of the NAACP experience Du Bois was constantly fighting, attempting to gain power for black people, especially that particular black man over the destiny of that organization, coming up against some of the most racist paternalism that one has ever seen among that stratum of white people.
Vincent Harding: Coming for instance, from people with such names as Oswald Garrison Villard. But Du Bois was fighting for power there, for power for a black organization to come into being controlled and directed by black people for the purposes of black struggle. And of course during this crisis period, we know that he fought many other kinds of battles as part of being a black scholar in the midst of our battle. He struggled on the pages of Crisis, and one of the most marvelous experiences is to go back to that periodical and just go through those pages, turn them over hour after hour and experience that again.
Vincent Harding: He struggled in those pages to keep our history alive, to resurrect it, to make it live for us in new ways. And he taught us that it was a prerequisite for our future. Africa especially came in the pages of Crisis more than it had ever really come in any kind of newspaper of that time before. And Africa, of course, was something special for Du Bois. He said, "I'm not sure just when I began to feel an interest in Africa," but he knew that somehow he became tired of, quote, finding in newspapers, textbooks and history, fulsome lauding of white folk, and even no mention of dark peoples or mentioned in disparaging and apologetic phrase. "I made up my mind that it must be true that Africa had a history and a destiny. And that one of my jobs was the disinter this unknown past and help make certain a splendid future."
Vincent Harding: So Du Bois is discovering Africa in some ways late. A lot of black folks had discovered it before him, but discovering it and, with the passion that was always his, trying to press it forward into the midst of the black community. In Crisis acting as a black scholar should. Encouraging new black voices to come forth and to speak their truth as they understood it. And in Crisis trying again and again to fight against the system of white colonization, right in the NAACP, in black schools, and increasingly as he saw it throughout the black world. Because it was in this period that Du Bois began to gain a fuller understanding of the meaning of the whole colonial experience. And that is why he was able to say finally, by the time that he wrote Darkwater words which are very modern and very current. But words which he himself backed away from, but he had touched the truth.
Vincent Harding: He wrote, published in 1920, "If the attitude of the European and American worlds is in the future going to be based essentially upon the same policies as in the past, then there is but one thing for the trained man of darker blood to do, and that is definitely, and as openly as possible to organize his world for war against Europe. There is no way out unless the white world opens the door." Du Bois saw the truth, more of the truth than he really wanted to see at that point, because he backed away from it again and again, as all of us back away from the truth when we see it's possible implications for our own life.
Vincent Harding: But he saw it and spoken it. And in the midst of that period as a black scholar should, Du Bois was constantly trying to open himself to new experiences, expose his life, expose his people to new and often controversial sources of truth. So he went to the USSR. So he went to China. So he went to Africa. All before 1936. So he explored world socialism in a new kind of way, and it made a deep impact on him. He said, for instance, about his trip to Russia in 1928, "Since that trip my mental outlook and the aspect of the world will never be the same again."
Vincent Harding: It was not the Communist Party of the 1940s and '50s that introduced Du Bois to the meaning of socialist struggle. It was his own experience, in Russia, in China, and elsewhere. But that was Du Bois. Constantly working, constantly thinking, constantly trying to create new models for the future, the future, the future. That is one of the prime identities of the work of the black scholar, always concerned, how shall we, as a colonized people break through to the future?
Vincent Harding: Du Bois, while he was with Crisis, had some very real plans for the way in which crisis should move to the future. Plans which the NAACP couldn't quite dig. In 1930 in his section of the NAACP Annual Report, he wrote this about his plans for Crisis magazine:
Vincent Harding: "I propose to make this magazine a forum, not simply for what the NAACP thinks or what I think, but for what any person, honestly and temperately wishes to express as his idea of the solution of the race problem and other problems. I wish more and more to link up the problems, the race problem in the United States with the race and color problems throughout the world. And especially I wish to make common cause between the so-called Negro problem and other social problems of peace and war, of labor and the distribution of wealth, of the further emancipation of women, of industrial democracy and the curbing of imperialism, of colonial government and other problems. For the support of such forward movements, we must look not to the rich, but to the working classes. Not to a few white friends, but to the mass of educated and thoughtful black folk. In this way and in this way alone, can the foundation for an intelligent world democracy be laid."
Vincent Harding: This was Du Bois. Always trying to break forth into the future, break past the kinds of lines that the NAACP had set up around him. And of course, as you know, coming into the thirties, into the heart and the agonies of the Depression, Du Bois came forward with something that he insisted on calling a new segregation, which was really a new black solidarity, a new black self-help, what would come to be called one of these days, some version of black power.
Vincent Harding: And Du Bois spoke about what that meant and what he was trying to do with that. He said, "If the economic and cultural salvation of the American Negro call for an increase in segregation and prejudice, then that must come." He called upon black people to gather themselves together and build their own institutions. Not simply as a kind of a negative reaction to white segregation, but as a positive move to hold on to their humanity while the struggle against white racism went on. "American Negroes must plan for their economic future and the social survival of their fellows in the firm belief that this means in a real sense, the survival of colored folk in the world and the building of a full humanity instead of a petty white tyranny. Separate Negro sections will increase race antagonism, but they will also increase economic cooperation, organized self-defense, and necessary self-confidence."
Vincent Harding: Du Bois was talking about new levels of black solidarity. And of course, many people said, "Is this the Du Bois of Niagara?" How can you say that in the light of what you'd been saying? And marvelously, again as I think a black scholar should do, Du Bois was not unprepared to be inconsistent. He said, "I am not worried about being inconsistent. What worries me is the truth. I am talking about conditions in 1934, and not in 1910. I do not care what I said in 1910 or 1810, or BC 700."
Vincent Harding: But interestingly enough, the good doctor at the height of the debate felt that he really wasn't being inconsistent with himself, especially not from that first 1897 Conservation of the Racist essay that I quoted from. And therefore he wrote in 1934 after looking that over again as was his warrant, he wrote, "On the whole, I am rather pleased to find myself still so much in sympathy with myself." The black scholar needs a sense of humor about himself if he is not to go crazy or drive others crazy.
Vincent Harding: This was Du Bois' continued work. Seeking, searching, that dogged search for the truth as he understood it. Writing focused constantly on black people and our history, and our present, and our future. It was out of that that Black Reconstruction came. And some of us have not yet said anything better than that crucial paragraph that Du Bois wrote there, again about our future. Notice Du Bois wrote Black Reconstruction about the 1850s, '60s, and '70s, but he ends up with talking about what does this mean for our future?
Vincent Harding: And he says in 1935 what can be said now with very few changes: "This the American black man knows, his fight here is a fight to the finish. Either he dies or wins. If he wins, it will be by no subterfuge or evasion of amalgamation." You know what he meant.He will enter modern civilization here in America as a black man. On terms of perfect and unlimited equality with any white man, or he will enter not at all. Either extermination, root and branch, or absolute equality, there can be no compromise. This is the last great battle of the West. He's still right. He's still right. But, because he was so often right about the wrong things, the boys broke with NAACP over the truth for that period, as he saw it and he returned to the AU Center.
Vincent Harding: But Du Bois again, returned with what people sometimes called arrogance and what certainly was arrogance at times, but what was more, I think, a deep sense of history. For he believed that even though the NAACP forced him out, indeed, that history would vindicate him, and he said, "In dusk of dawn, I shall not live to see entirely the triumph of this my newer emphasis, that is on black solidarity, but it will triumph. It will triumph just as much and just as completely as did my advocacy of agitation and self-assertion. It is indeed a part of that same original program. It is its natural and inevitable fulfillment."
Vincent Harding: The black scholar in search of the truth for his people, he comes back to Atlanta University. He finds Atlanta University not really a black university, but controlled by a little white lady and some big white foundations and some immense black fears. But still he attempted to build, to build new roles for black schools, especially, and he took a very prophetic role here, new roles for black land-grant schools, and he would have put black land-grant schools far ahead of the foolishness that goes on in so many white land-grant schools, that people are now finally seeing.
Vincent Harding: But that truth was somewhat ahead of the time for certain people at Atlanta University, including a little lady and the president, and Du Bois lost his job. Now, to say Du Bois lost his job is only to indicate, it's only to insinuate what the search for truth cost him. Because Du Bois losing his job in 1944 meant he was 76 years old losing his job, meant that because he was so foolish in search of the truth, he had no real savings at all at 76, and as he said, "Nobody assumed but at 76, anybody was supposed to start working again." I can't and won't go into the entire story of what happens after that. It's a story that has not yet been mastered. None of the biographers have dealt with Du Bois and the way that Du Bois deserves to be dealt with. Some of them have been quite flippant and foolish as a matter of fact.
Vincent Harding: But the important thing is that he continues in this commitment to truth and to black people and to the good of the world, the same commitment that he spoke about in 1893, and for him, truth, the struggle of black people, and the good of the world, especially oppressed nonwhite majority of the world, this led him to see the coming in a new way of a new colonization in the Western world led by his own country, and Du Bois took a stand against this, because the truth was more important to him than respectability in his own country. He knew that in a criminal country truth and respectability meet only accidentally, and the meetings are not very long at all.
Vincent Harding: In 1949, he spoke about his own country. The truth as he saw it and what role this country was taking in the new colonization of nonwhite peoples. He said, "Socialism is spreading all over the world and even in the United States. Against this spread of socialism, colonialism is working desperately and leading this new colonial imperialism comes my own native land built by my father's toil and blood, the United States. The United States is a great nation, rich by the grace of God, and prosperous by the hard work of its humblest citizens." Not sure what God Du Bois was talking about, but we ain't going to get into that. "Rich by the grace of God and prosperous by the hard work of its humblest citizens. Drunk with power, we are leading the world to hell in a new colonialism with the same old human slavery which once ruined us and to a third world war, which will ruin the world."
Vincent Harding: Two years later, he was under indictment, because of his association with what was then the peace movement in which people assumed had to have been inaugurated out of Soviet Russia, and under indictment, he went across the country, making speeches, speaking the truth wherever he could find people. Under indictment now, federal indictment, and he spoke these words, "Remember it is American money that owns more and more of South African mines worked by slave labor. It is American enterprise that fattens off of Central African copper. It is American investors that seek to dominate China, India, Korea, and Burma, and who are throttling the starved workers of the Near East, the Caribbean and South America. If you are not satisfied to find peace only in death, you must change the system that is making war on you." Du Bois, 1951.
Vincent Harding: Because he spoke that truth about the system of oppression that was breaking not only black people here, but nonwhite people elsewhere, he came under tremendous persecution. He came under in many ways, tremendous betrayal by the community of black scholars, and there were inflicted upon him scars that I think he never lost, until the day of his death. And what happened was that Du Bois then, as I understood it, at least for that time, lost hope, not in the truth of black people, but lost hope in the leadership of American black people in the search for that truth. So he went into the Communist Party. I wonder if Herbert reminded you that Du Bois' going into the Communist Party was a very interesting thing. He wrote his letter of application to the Communist Party on October 1st and by the end of that week, he was out of the country. Now that membership in the Communist Party was very tricky, to be in Ghana and a member of the US Communist Party. But that's another matter as well.
Vincent Harding: Du Bois was a great one for strange moves. But he moves to Africa because of this sense of loss of hope in American black people and because of the persecution and because of the scars. And what he hopes to do there, always hope, is to pick up again the idea of black scholarship that had pressed him forward for so long; scholarship on behalf of black people's struggle. In 1909, he had first put forward the idea of an Encyclopedia Africana. Now in 1961, after a long, long time, Du Bois, with that tenacity and that courage, went off to Ghana in his 90th year to pick it up again. And he went with hope in Ghana, with hope in Ankuma, with hope in Africa.
Vincent Harding: So in February 1963, just eight days before his 95th birthday, he received his Certificate of Naturalization as a citizen of Ghana. And in his statement, he made this marvelous kind of presentation. "My great-grandfather was carried away in chains from the Gulf of Guinea. I have returned, that my dust shall mingle with the dust of my forefathers. There is not much time left for me, but now my life will flow on in the vigorous young stream of Ghanaian life, which lifts the African personality to its proper place among men. And I shall not have lived and worked in vain."
Vincent Harding: For such a life, obviously, death is no end; for in the midst of his dying, black people were gathered in Washington, D.C., doing some strange things, but gathering. And beyond that, black people learned to affirm many of the things that he had already affirmed. And the black power period was clearly a period of great affirmation of much that Du Bois had put forward in the 1930s and 40s. And beyond that, the marching of African Liberation Day in Washington, D.C., in May, speaks again to the renewed sense of African and Pan-African solidarity that Du Bois represented; that is, Du Bois, as the black scholar speaking the truth, living the truth.
Vincent Harding: And after having said that, what more can we do but return to the black poets? For Aimé Césaire, certainly had a lifelike Du Bois in mind when he wrote, "It is not true that the work of man is finished, that we have nothing to do in the world that we are parasites in the world that we have only to accept the way of the world, but the work of man has only begun. The work of man has only begun." And that I think is what Fanon meant when he said, "Come now comrades at this time to be done with this foolishness of mimicking the white Western world, let us create, let us invent, let us for our own sake, and for the sake of the white Western world, create new man, create a new society." That is the role of the black scholar in the struggles of the black community to speak the truth to the people, to live the truth with the people, to join with the people, to create new men and new societies for our fathers, for our children, and for ourselves.
Charles T. Davi...: I want to thank Mr. Harding for that inspiring address. He is, with the permission of Ms. Richardson and Ms. Kyle, he is perfectly willing to answer questions. And if he wishes me to do them to field them, I'll be happy to do that too. Are there questions now?
Charles T. Davi...: Yes, Ms. Grant.
Ms. Grant: In your estimation Dr. Harding, Du Bois, like many scholars, present day and former, had difficulty in realizing certain [inaudible].
Vincent Harding: Realizing certain what?
Ms. Grant: In realizing making concrete realizations of those abstractions that we talked about, that you talked about like seeking the truth ideally and living that ideal. He chose to turn to writing as a form, through which though as a vehicle, for which he could work most effectively I suppose. And we kept talking about Du Bois as a scientific mind, the man who, primarily a sociologist, hisstorian [inaudible 00:01:04:16], but that discipline as a formal study cut itself short at a certain point. How will you see that in terms of his scholarly endeavors? Did he move to a different understanding in terms of his role as a scholar, as an activist that spoke at this point? Or, would that have been just as appropriate in terms of realizing his role, if he had pursued that path, scientific investigation, which of course he continued to do, but as a formal study of formal discipline.
Vincent Harding: Yeah, those, the question basically is supposed Du Bois had continued in the pathway of the Atlanta University studies and the so-called scientific scholarship, would he have been able to fulfill his role as a black scholar? That is what they call one of the golden IF's. Du Bois, was not able to teach in the so called white universities at the time when he was most interested in it, and then became increasingly uninterested by in that possibility. And therefore, one of the reasons why he didn't continue along that way was because of certain shut doors. Now, my own sense is that within the arena that I've been trying to put forward of the role of the black scholar, there are many particular ways in which that can be lived out and worked through. The important thing for that is, that it does have a working through with a self consciousness about a sense of purpose and identity and a sense of goals.
Vincent Harding: And I think that Du Bois in another kind of a setting are one more restricted to what one might call more formal areas of scholarship. While I would certainly have, have carried out another aspect, another important aspect of what black people need are in terms of the speaking of the truth about ourselves and about the enemy and about the future. So, I think that it would be quite possible that the critical thing was Du Bois' overwhelming concern for basic integrity, I think, in his work, whatever it was, this integrity did not go without compromise. And he hasn't started walking on water yet and he certainly won't or if that's the way you get to walk on water, but still, I think it was there in such an overwhelming way that whatever he would be involved in, or that would be the hallmark of his work.
Vincent Harding: I want to say something about his choosing of writing. I Du Bois did choose writing, but one of the things that you would be fascinated to note is that, especially in the twenties, when he was at his height as a crisis editor Du Bois was in great demand as a speaker throughout the black community. And you would get in that little car of his, and I would just be driving all through the South or in another parts of the country. And a Shirley Du Bois liked to tell of how surprised she was when the first time she saw Du Bois. Du Bois' his car broke down and Du Bois with dressed the way Du Bois usually dresses, but in his car, he had a whole, what would be called a jumpsuit now, already for the breakdown of the car. And he got out and took off his hat and gloves put on his jumpsuit and got down under the car. Shelly just couldn't believe that that was possible, but Du Bois was a man of many parts as you can see.
Vincent Harding: But the important thing here is that he had a great speaking or responsibility as well. And he used that in very critical ways. So that when you had a Du Bois say, going to Fisk and standing in the face of McKinsey and saying, "You're no good for these students, these young people here, you got to go." To be able to say that right there at Fisk, and then to write it down and crisis too, and send that to 100,000 people. That was some very important strength and power that Du Bois then used a number of ways. So. I think that... I just want to make that point that writing was not his only chosen vehicle. He liked to speak, he liked to speak, and he was much more careful about preparing his speeches then I am.
Ms. Grant: Would you speculate then, this is my husbands, that he felt fulfilled, in your careful reading of Du Bois for instance, in his post writings that he really felt fulfilled in what he was doing [crosstalk].
Vincent Harding: That's a very interesting question. Did Du Bois feel fulfilled in what he was doing? I won't ask you why he asked the question, even though I'm exceedingly curious about that, but that's really not the point. I think that it was impossible for Du Bois to be fulfilled in the light of what he saw happening in black America, especially after World War II. If you get a chance to read the Black Flame trilogy, the novels. Because I think, and I was testing this out on Shirley last year, Du Bois was writing himself into Mon side. And the tremendous disappointment that he felt with so-called black leadership in America. And there great assimilationist and compromise urges are, were deeply troubling to him. And I don't see from Du Bois his life, how he could possibly feel fulfilled as an individual when his community was not fulfilled because you see, that was what I was saying about the nature of black scholarship that operates in the midst of the community, not as a separate entity the way so often the model is set up for white Western scholarship. It is a scholarship with, and for, and about, and by, and to the people. So I don't see Du Bois being fulfilled when we have not been fulfilled.
Charles T. Davi...: You have a question?
Speaker 3: With the legacy that Du Bois left us, what direction do you think he [inaudible] was it being black equals now or the fact people should be directing themselves to [inaudible].
Vincent Harding: The question was, what might the legacy of Du Bois mean for now? What direction might that legacy be pointing to for black people at this stage? Du Bois had a number of concerns that again, in the eviscerated world of Western society are considered old fashion. One of them was a concern that people keep their souls, that people remain true to themselves, that people live in basic integrity and not in schizophrenia. And one of his deep concerns, and one of the things around which he wanted to build this implementation of black solidarity was, as he put it, the maintaining of our souls and our spirits. Now what he was saying, there was, again, going back to what some of you know, I've been, I've called his messianic kind of urge. He was saying that in the midst of a decaying Western society, black people ought to be holding themselves together for the next thrust forward, which must be theirs really.
Vincent Harding: Now I think that, that would lead in a direction with a number of aspects. I'll just mention two of them. One is that Du Bois seemed to be, before the whole white left experience that his wife really led him into as much as anyone else, his second wife, before that whole experience Du Bois was deeply into the matter of independent black organizing.
Vincent Harding: I think that the kind of direction that [inaudible] indicated at its best would have been the kind of direction that Du Bois was talking about. That Du Bois was concerned about not organizing black people economically for black capitalism, but for an alternative to black capitalism, recognizing of course said, no alternative would live until the system, and its superstructure was transformed, broken, smashed, whatever terms we want to use. But I think that this concern for independent black organizing on a whole number of levels would be one major concern of his. You remember, Mansart says, I guess he wrote that sometime between 58 and 60, "You know, I should be happy about the school decision, but I'm really not sure that I am happy about that school decision." He said "For so long, I have dreamed of a great Negro race." He said "And now I may just have to think about a human race."
Vincent Harding: And he had some very funny feelings about that. Cause we all say, "Oh, that's good human race, fine." Well, I'm not sure it's fine. The other kind of thing that he came on to, some of you may recall are Harold Isaacs, In the New World of Afro-Americans or something like that, negro Americans, whatever he called it, interviewed Du Bois and asked Du Bois about how he thought things had gone for black people up to now. And Du Bois said, "Yes, it's true." And I could just hear him. "It's true. Negroes are indeed becoming more and more part of America, but what are Americans becoming?" That was always the question. That was always the question.
Vincent Harding: And I think that, that concern for the creation of new wellsprings of life, identity, purpose, hope built with all of the structures of economic, political, spiritual, religious life attached to it, that that concern for independent black movement that would hold the black spirit in order that it might move in creative ways. That that seems to me to be a real part of this concern. I was just thinking today, as a matter of fact, how would Du Bois be dealing with McGovern? Whether you were in the communist party or not. Because the communist party seems to be pretty satisfied with McGovern. So I don't know where that would leave Dr. Du Bois, but he never worried about such things.
Vincent Harding: But my sense is that he would have been very disappointed about folks running into Washington, D.C. to offer McGovern 97 or 99 or 100, or whatever it was delegates. That he would feel, I think, that the time for that has passed and that there's time now for other things. But that's just my guess. I don't know. Unfortunately, I never talked to the good man. I only was able to listen to him and I don't know what he would be thinking, but it seems to me that that is the direction of the major part of his legacy as I see it.
Vincent Harding: I really don't want to chill much, but I'll be grateful. I'm your guest. [inaudible] I'm your guest so you go ahead.
Charles T. Davi...: [inaudible] sometime.
Vincent Harding: No. You go ahead, Don. I'm your guest. Sister [inaudible] please. Speak.
Speaker 4: [inaudible].
Vincent Harding: No. No. Spell it out. The question was [inaudible] it out. Do you mean don't vote. No. I was. I was going beyond the issue of voting or not voting. The issue was, how shall black people organize themselves for the greatest possible political power? Do they do that best by trying to get quote leverage within one of the existing parties or do they do that by independent black political development? That's the question. And it really has nothing to do with McGovern at all.
Charles T. Davi...: One of the questions that have been raised periodically during the week has been this one. There's never been any question about Du Bois meeting your first commandment. That is to say, speak the truth to the people. But there is some question about the second commandment, that is to say living with the people. And it would seem that it is involved, obviously, in certain decisions that he made in the 1940s. If I remember correctly, you said that Du Bois was disappointed in the leadership in black America, and therefore this was one of the reasons why he looked more kindly toward his commitment to the communist party.
Charles T. Davi...: Now that seems a little strange because if he lived with the people, it would have to take more than a abortive leadership to make him be genuinely frustrated about the possibilities for black Americans in this country. Let me add just one other thing before you start. And that is that when Du Bois went into the communist party, he didn't go in, of course, as a common worker. He went in as a saint, at the very top of the communist order. And so that, too would seem to me that there are other things involved other just than living with people or frustration with that in terms of this final commitment which he made, of course, at a very advanced age.
Vincent Harding: Well, let me try to clarify a couple of things there. One about him and the communist party and his going into it. Of course, as some of you may know, there aren't too many common workers in the communist party, USA. So Du Bois was not out of company there. Secondly, what I was trying to say was that there were a number of things... And when I spoke about a sense of disappointment, that was referring much more to his going to Africa. I was speaking about there was much more in his joining the communist party. Part of it, of course, is lodged in the question and let us make believe that we can say 1961 was 1960 or 58 or whatever it is. Because during that whole period or from really 50 on, he was very much involved. Well, at least 48 on, he was very much involved in our relationships with progressive and other kinds of white supposedly left forces.
Vincent Harding: I think it's important to ask the question. If you are a Du Bois, and if you have very strong convictions about the need for socialism in America and throughout the world, about the role of America as an anti-liberation force, about the need for certain kinds of organization among black people. And if you want to quote vote, or if you want to be a part of a political party, where you go? In 48 to 78. Now where do you go? Where, as John Bracey asked? You know, the left parties, obviously the CP wasn't in any real sense of the word left party in this country. Just as they are not in many other countries, but Du Bois and many other black people, and some white people like him, had if they wanted to connect up with a political party, what else was there? You see?
Vincent Harding: I think that's a very important kind of question because it is one of the great tragedies of American society itself. Second thing, is that I think that Du Bois went into the party partly simply as a symbolic act. I mean, what does it mean to go into the party? You write to Gus Hall on October 1st and you're out of the country by October 7th. What does that mean? It's symbolic. It's saying that I believe... And if you read his letter, by the way, I don't know. I was meaning to ask [inaudible] if I could get a copy of Hall's letter because Du Bois was certainly putting forward his own version of communism in that letter of his. Wasn't quite the same thing that the communist party was putting forward. But anyway, I think that there are a number of things involved in going into the communist party.
Vincent Harding: When I mentioned the disappointment with black people, I was talking primarily about Du Bois' long concern and commitment that black people in the United States should lead the vanguard of the whole pan-African force for a new kind of society, as he would put it, a new kind of spirituality, a new kind of sense of direction. And again, and again are from the 1950s on in China, in Africa, in Europe, he kept saying, well, I thought that black people would take the leadership for my country, but it looks as if they can't.
Vincent Harding: Africa is going to have to take the lead. What he would say now, of course, is a very sad and tragic thing. We don't know. But the point is that that disappointment was, I think, the thing that led him as much as a lot of other factors about encyclopedia, about the new legislation against communists to go to Africa. But I was not speaking about the disappoint with black people as the thing leading him into the communist party. Last word is this. What does it mean to live with the people? It seems to me that to identify what the struggles of black people does not mean that you strip yourself of your own personality. Does not mean that you make believe that you from off the street when everybody know you ain't from off no street.
Vincent Harding: That you ain't been no place near the street, but you understand much of the street and you are committed to the people of the street. And so I don't... I'm not bothered by fact that De Bois wore gloves and the cane and the hat and all that kind of thing. He was bad. He was bad. And if some other people go around wear hat and gloves and cane, too and do what he did. That's all right with me. The work. The work that came out of the commitment to the people, I think, is really the central kind of thing. Because they all kinds of people who look like they committed to the people who dress like they committed to the people, but who work like they jive. So really what does it mean? That's all you have to say to me? Yeah? Yes.
Speaker 5: I was interested in your point of view that Du Bois and [inaudible] recent contest [inaudible] that Du Bois saw America as being... as the United States as being pivotal point, as far as liberation of black people was concerned. As you read Du Bois, and as you talk as you have last year of his wife, Shirley, were there any elements that considered Du Bois going to Africa as escapism and avoiding the real issues of America?
Vincent Harding: Sure. The question was, were there people who considered Du Bois' going to Africa as escapism and avoiding the realities of America. I'll try to resist getting into that one because that's a whole long theme that I want to deal with, the whole issue of Africa as escapism. Let me just make a couple of comments about that general idea. First, the answer is yes. Many people said escape. Now what a 91 year old man's escaping to or from, I don't know, but escape. I mean, they want to say escape. They were just ashamed the way they treated Dr. Du Bois, for one thing. Now, secondly, I don't hear anybody any place talking about the pilgrims as escapists. You see? But when we want to go someplace where we can be free and do what we want to do and build what we want to do and create new societies, we escapists. There's some people who say that it's more escapist to stay here than it is to leave.
Vincent Harding: So it's really the fact that people did say that. And, of course, Du Bois was very tired and Du Bois did have a new hope in Africa. No question about that. And Du Bois did want to work on this 52 year old project, The Encyclopedia Africana. Now there is something for black scholarship, a 52 year old project. Some of us ain't going to live 52 years, much less work on 52 year old projects. But people did feel that. I certainly don't feel that. I think that it was perfectly fitting for him to want to rest his bones on the continent of his origin. You know? That's fine. And he had fought such a marvelous battle that he could afford to escape four times if that's what he wanted to do. Anybody who's fought that long, they have my written permission to escape, if that's what it's all about.
Vincent Harding: But I don't think that essentially that whole business of going to Africa for a whole lot of black people was escape. I think, and I am going to be pressing this very hard in what I'm working on right now that we need to use, as Bishop Turner very often did, the Pilgrim analogy. People who are setting out and want to create a new life for themselves and who say that America is just not the place to create the new life. We must find a more amenable kind of situation for us in which to build. As I understand it these are people who are answering Fanon's call to move forward in the line of mankind. And if they feel they can't move forward here, then they must move forward where they can. If you study some of the documents of those escapists going off to Africa and you see the spirit with which they went, not despair, not sadness, not lossness, but singing the great songs of the black community.
Vincent Harding: People testify that out in the middle of the ocean they had these boats of black people singing great songs of going to a new land, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that's not escape. That's not escape. That's struggle forward. Some people struggle forward in one way. Some people struggle forward in another way. What we know, of course, is that in the light of America, as it is, even if we wanted to escape, there is no place to escape from this nation. And we must struggle with this nation, even for the right to try to escape, if we wanted to escape, you see. So I say to the Du Boises or to everybody else who wants to try someplace else, great power to you. I know that most of us will be here, living here, struggling here, trying to survive, and trying to overcome here. But I feel that for those who really see themselves as seeking to make a new beginning and perhaps create some new models of new possibilities, right on. Right on.
Speaker 6: I have a question. [inaudible] you probably know Du Bois' [inaudible] heaven and, which was [inaudible] favorable [inaudible].
Vincent Harding: Neither was another.
Speaker 6: Go ahead. And he really did [crosstalk] the law. But then I [inaudible] just a curious thing of I recently came across a [inaudible] one of Du Bois' [inaudible] a photograph. One of these had said the photograph was taken by the author of [inaudible] Heaven. And I was wondering what their relationship was at the end of how we resolved or didn't this [inaudible]
Vincent Harding: I don't know. John, do you know about Du Bois' relationship to Van Vechten?
John: [inaudible].
Vincent Harding: Right. He did. Right.
John: [inaudible].
Vincent Harding: Du Bois... The answer was that... Well, the question was about Van Vechten and Nigger Heaven and what kind of relationship did Du Bois have with Van Vechten and the person who asked the question particularly mentioned seeing a picture that Van Vechten had taken of Du Bois. And John was saying that a Van Vechten had indeed made quite a collection of Negro renaissance people in the twenties, but lost many of his so-called friendships after that. That whole area, though, of Du Bois' relationship to white people, to white liberals particularly is a very fascinating one. And somebody really needs to spend time and energy on looking at it. One of the most puzzling and disturbing to me, for instance, is his relationship to Joel Elias Spingarn. Du Bois had some very strange and mixed feelings about that man and evidently that man did about him.
Vincent Harding: Spingarn... I don't know. Who could you compare Spingarn to now? We're no longer in the era of white liberalism, so I'm not quite sure what white liberal you could put him on, but anyway the head of the Urban League or somebody, Lenin or somebody like that. But, anyway, Spingarn, as some of you may know, was the person who evidently had most influence in urging Du Bois into that whole near patriotic thing during World War One. Spingarn, evidently, was one of those interesting combinations of semi-liberated Jew and patriotic American, and Spingarn gets a commission for himself in army intelligence, and then talks about Du Bois getting a commission army intelligence to sit with Spingarn someplace, at some desks. And Du Bois really thinks that this will serve the cause of black people. And it's just a whole strange kind of thing.
Vincent Harding: As I was reading through it, I said, Du Bois, did you really believe this? And then I remember Martin Delaney, and a lot of other people thought that commissions in the US army were really going to work miracles for black people. But then one of the fascinating things is that in the 1930s, when Du Bois puts forward his new black solidarity program and asked the NAACP to back it up, Spingarn is the major voice on the board saying, oh no. We can't have anything like that.
Vincent Harding: So Spingarn is ready to have Du Bois follow him into the US army, but not quite ready for the NAACP to follow Du Bois into the black community. This is a very interesting matter. Very interesting matter. And some somebody needs, really, one of the things that we're doing at the institute is developing what we're calling a Black Research Agenda. And one of the things that needs to be looked at closely, decade by decade, is the whole business of white allies of the black struggle. Who were they? What were they about? What was the nature of their alliance? What were they for? What happened to them? Et cetera, et cetera. And I want Spingarn, if anybody wants to take on a joint project, because he's just fascinates me.
Speaker 4: When you get to finish, I hope you [crosstalk].
Vincent Harding: No. No. When we get to finish.
Speaker 4: [inaudible] our brothers now to stay out of [inaudible] teach us.
Vincent Harding: Sweet. Man, let me say this to you. That's when I was talking about all along. Black scholarship must always be pressing us towards the future. See, I'm not interested in that, just so I can call some people some names and say, look at this, look at that, look at that. The question is, what does it mean for our future? That's always the question. So yes. When we get it done, we're going to put it forward there and talk about McGovern and everybody else. There was somebody back there who was raising their hand. Yes.
Speaker 7: Speaking of our future, the fact that black people, I wouldn't say black people as a whole, but black people, in general, [inaudible] what do deserves that because I know that black people today [inaudible] or who might reject a whole lot of people [inaudible] us, you know, and what black people did on this continent and on other continent. Now, what we've done [inaudible] the fact that our people rejected...