W.E.B. Du Bois: The zest for life
by Herbert Aptheker
One could discuss DuBois' careers: as a teacher and editor, organizer, po
et, novelist, essayist, historian, sociologist and anthropologist. One could
discuss DuBois* monumental confrontations: with Booker T. Washington,
with Marcus Garvey, with Walter White twice, with the board of trustees of
Atlanta University, with the so-called Department o f Justice of the U.S.
Government. One could discuss DuBois and his decisive influence on mo
mentous developments: the Pan-African Movement and the movement for
the liberation of Africa, of which he is the father; the Niagra Movement,
the N A A C P and the development of the modern Afro-American liberation
movement, of which he is the father; the W orld Peace Council and the
Peace Information Center, which he headed; and the movement to prevent
a third world war, in which he played a central role; the development of a
scientific study o f the history o f Africa and African-derived peoples, in
which he was the pioneer; the awakening of the world to the importance and
beauty of the art and music, the poetry and drama that welled up from the
souls of Black Folk. But I will do none of these .. rather. I want to talk of
Dubois' idea of life, of how he was able to make of his life an epic poem, of
what he himself once called in a commencement speach for black children in
jim-crow Washington in 1904. “ The Zest for L ife."
That he retained this zest, this eagerness, through 9$ years of turmoil,
would be remarkable in itself. But that this black man, this poetic black
man, retained this balanced Joyfulness while living and battling in the
United States from the 1880s until the 1960s is perhaps the single most in
credible reality in the accomplishments of this almost incred’ble person.
Some wit, I think it was Oscar Wilde, once remarked that in life one faced
two perils: failure and success. One would think this offered a rather hope
less alternative. DuBois* portion of cruelty was not less than Wilde's or any
one else's but he chose a third path. He so conducted his life that failure or
success was not possible for each connotes completion which means satia
tion. But suppose one so lived that the point is the struggle? Suppose one so
lived that he seeks to push back the past, to urge forward the present, to
help shape an ever moving future? Suppose one so lived as to be part of the
process, looking toward enhancement of the human condition?
Then, any possibility of final achievement is part of the joy of livin g .. .o f
one's zest. Then one sees himself, or herself, as one of a continuum and
consciously draws on those who proceeded him and consciously plans to be
queath not only some accomplishment to those who follow but also some
work for them to do in the endless flow of human endeavor.
DuBois believed in work. DuBois lived as though he had made his credo
Jefferson's advice to his daughter: “ Be doing. You will be surprised at how
much can be done if you’re always doing." DuBois believed in work, but
not work for its own sake, for mere business and certainly not work merely
for sustenance. No, work that one loved, that one could not resist doing.
The difference between hell and heaven, he once said, was the difference be
tween doing what one disliked and what one loved. But again, not work for
self-gratification but work for service. This was the point of his 1890 com
mencement address at Harvard and it was the point of his life until death
came in 1963. Service to what? Service to the enhancement of human well
being was beginning where you were and among the people who bore you,
sustained you, whom you loved.
Back in 1898, speaking on Careers Open to College Bred Negroes, Du
Bois said, “ We serve first for the sake of serving, to develop our own pow
ers, gain the mastery o f this human machine, and come to the broadest,
deepest self-realization. And then we serve for the real end of service, life,
no narrlow selfish thing, but to let it sweep the morning broad and full and
free for all men and women and all time, that you and I may earn a living
and earn too much more than that, a life worth living.” He urged here in
1898 divine discontent with the imperfect and told his young audience, at
the age of about thirty, " . . .to do your duty because the world thirsts for
your service; to perform clean, honest, thorough work not for cheap ap
plause but because the work needs to be done.”
O f course it was one thing to make speeches to college audiences, or any
other audience, and it is another thing to live by the suggestions made in
such speeches. DuBois did both.
The first thing in terms of making a life was work— work that one cher
ished. And second was service, which meant a cause. And what cause was
that? He explained to the children of Washington back in 1904 and only the
numbers he then used need changing "Look! Yonder lie 10 million human
be:ngs writhing in sorrow and disappointment, bending beneath insult and
hatred, choked with the blood and the dust of battle___ For them must you
work, in their service must your work be put, and such work and such ser
vice will be the ultimate secret of a worthwhile life and that is sacrifice. Be
prepared for personal sacrifice, the sacrifice of position, of income, of so
cial prestige, even of life itself for the sake of a mighty people." Even then
he made clear that he meant far more than the 10 millions of his own folk
for he added, "The majority of mankind are colored The farthest portions
of the earth are under their feet, and the marvelous spectacle before the
world today is the fear of the darker races Not fear of their retrogression,
but fear of their advance."
It is in conjunction with this sense of service and of sacrifice that one is to
understand DuBois* famous essay on the talented tenth, first published in
1903. There still adheres to that something of the attitude of a settlement
worker. It was under the auspices o f a settlement house as well as the
University o f Pennsylvania that DuBois had produced in 1899 his great
book, The Philadelphia Negro. That is, there adheres to this great 1903
essay. The Talented Tenth, the idea of lifting up the mass. But whatever the
limitations of this essay, which may be discerned now with the hind sight of
three-quarters of a century, it was not elitest in the sense of remoteness from
the masses, the withdrawing from them On the contrary, his whole purpose
was that of service to them, albeit still from outside.
By 1907 DuBois encompassed in his view of work, service and sacrifice
not only his own people, and not only the colored people, but also all
working people For he then writes, "The cause of labor is the cause of the
colored masses, and the cause of those masses is the cause of labor.” By
1911 he joined the Socialist Party. True, he remained a member only one
year, but this was at least as much the doing of the party as of DuBois. In any
case, Dr. DuBois considered himself a socialist from about 1907 until his
death. His definition of socialism changed through the years but his basic
commitment to the emancipation of working people and his sense of the
irrationality of capitalism and the bestiality of imperialism not only never
left him but grew as the decades passed and as both the irrationality and the
bestiality intensified. The culmination came with his joining the Communist
Party of the United States in 1961.
In his essay written in Rayford Logan's splendid book. What the Negro
Wants, 1944, DuBois concluded this way: "The hope of civilization lies not
in exclusion, but of inclusion of all human elements. We find the richness of
humanity not in the social register but in the city directory, not in great
aristocracy's chosen people in superior races but in throngs of disinherited
and underfed people; not the lifting of the lowly but the unchaining of the
unawakened mighty will reveal the possibilities of genius, gift and miracle in
mountainous treasure trove which hitherto civilization has scarcely touched
and yet boasted blatentlv and even glorified in its poverty. . . In worldwide
equality of human development is the answer to every meticulous taste and
each rare personality."
DuBois* work and service and sacrifice was moved by a love for his
people and a passionate hatred of their oppressors. This passion in DuBois
is the secret of his vast accomplishments and of his life. Many missed this
passion, but missing this means misunderstanding. One might well miss it.
DuBois’ manner was more courtly than warm; DuBois was not the kind of
person who slapped others on the back and certainly not the kind of person
one slapped on the back himself. So far as I know, in his adult years only his
wife of 50 years and Mary Church Teller, who was his senior, ever called
him Will.
The exterior of formality was part of DuBois' armor, just as his sartorial
care, his precise grooming, his promptness, and the manifest dislike he had
for wasting time. He lived under fire for decades. This did not destroy him
but tempered him. And part of this tempering was a very conscious and
necessary kind o f restraint. He relaxed o f course; there was no more
delightful companion than DuBois if the company were small and congen
ial. He carefully watched his own health. He never failed to take at least a
two-week vacation he spent walking, fishing and hoping not to catch any
fish, and reading detective stories. He ate quite slowly and wisely, slept
eight hours a day, smoked (Benson and Hedges Gold-Tipped) only three
cigarettes a day, one after each meal and then quite deliberately as part of
the enjoyment of the meal. Ever since his mother had warned him to stay
out of saloons DuBois avoided hard liquour, but he dearly loved good wine
and his student days in Germany gave him a taste for fine beer. Certain
things he relished. Among them were music, poetry, the circus. At a seventi-
eth birthday celebration DuBois said of himself, “ I am especially glad of
the divine gift of laughter. It has made the world human and loving despite
all its pain and wrong. I am glad that the partial Puritanism of my upbring
ing (he means New Fngland| has never made me afraid of life. Now I have
lived completely, testing every normal appetite. Feasting on sunset, sea, and
hill, I have seen the face of beauty, from the Grand Canyon to Capri to
Lake Baikal, from the African Bush to Venus de M ilo. I am proud of a
straightforward clearness of reason. 1 suppose a gift of the gods but also to
no little degree due to scientific training and discipline. By means of this I
have met life face to face. I have loved a good fight and above all I have
done the work which I wanted to do and not merely that which somebody
paid me to do."
As to DuBois’ passion, witness the tenderness of his love for Josie in his
immortal Souls o f Black Polk; the depths of his anguish at the passing of
their firstborn, o f their son; the intensity of his hatred for those who at
tempted what he called "the damnation of women.” No one has ever ex
pressed with greater force hatred of the oppressor, not even M r. Eldridge
Cleaver before he became a born-again Christian.
Shall w^ sample a little of this part of DuBois? “ Does not this justice of
hell stink in your nostrils, oh God? How long shall the mounting flood of
innocent blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our hearts for vengeance?
Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes who do such deeds high on Thine
Altar and burn it in Hell forever and forever."
As for his great essay, The Burden o f Black Women, DuBois writes of,
“ The white world's vermin and filth, all the dirt of London, all the scum of
New York, valiant spoilers of women, conquerors of unarmed men, shame
less breeders of bastards drunk with the greed of gold. . . " Cannot you
PACIFIC NORTHWEST BELL SALUTES TWO BLACK
INVENTORS
GRANVILLE T WOODS
1856 1910
INVENTOR
Alexander Graham B ril and Thomas
Edison dominated the age of electricity
in the late 1800's, but others played
important roles.
Ia-wis Howard Latimer and Gran
ville T. Woods, who produced key
inventions, had two things in common.
They both contributed to telephone
and electricity and they were Black
L A T IM E R was born in 1848 He left
home at sixteen to join the Navy and
after serving in the Civil War. returned
to Boaton to become a draftsman
Alexander Graham Bell hired lai
timer in 1876 to make the patent
drawings for the first telephone
LEWIS HOW ARD LATIMER
1X48 1928
DRAFTSMAN. ENGINEER
A fter joining the United States
Electric Lighting Company in 1880,
la tim e r invented a carbon filament for
an incandescrnt lamp As a member of
Edison's engineering staff he supervis
ed the installation of the electric light
in New York. Philadelphia, Montreal
and London
(alter in life laitim er produced one of
his first b<»ks. explaining the principle
of the electric light and published a
volume of his poetry when he retired
He died at the age of righty.
WOODS who was born in Columbus.
Ohio in 1856. was a prolific inventor
He learned through practical exper
icnce rather than from books He quit
mechanical skills by working in a
machine shop and on a railroad
He was 28 when he patented his first
invention: a furnance and a boiler to
produce steam heat In the same year
he invented a telephone transmitter
which he sold to Bell.
inciuuro an inrunator, an electrt
relay switch, a regulator for elecl
motors, and a safety rut out switch
avoid overloading electrical cirruiti
One of his last inventions was
telegraph system for use betwi
moving trains
Pacific Northwest Bell
< 1982 Pat if n Northwest Bell
An Equal Opportunity Employer
Portland Observer, February 23, 1983 Section II Page 3