Anyone else feel like they discovered a missing piece of History? Like you grew up ‘being told’ all about slavery and civil war .... then they jump straight to civil rights. The complexity of the Reconstruction Era sets the stage for everything that follows.

This series of posts today is what has been missing from the larger national conversation. Reading these words, grappling with what they meant (and still mean) should be required reading. Reading these posts has inspired me to go back & re-read DuBois, Wright, Ellison & even Toni Morrison. It's been refreshing to feel like a grad student again today:) 💚

I will be honest and share that I’m still a few pages shy of finishing this book. But I thought I would share one observation that is weighing on me. George Whitefield. THE George Whitefield. Preached in favor of slavery. USED THE BIBLE TO JUSTIFY ENSLAVING OTHER HUMANS. In Georgia. A state where slavery was ILLEGAL until 1751. I feel like I have just walked through the looking glass.

I wonder what would have been a wiser way to appropriately "introduce" (for lack of a better word) the millions of freed slaves into U.S. society, if we could go back in time to the 1860s. What could have been done differently to avoid their plight in the following years, and even their plight today?

DuBios gave me hope when I began to question the euro-centric classical curriculum I was teaching my nine year old while holding my black baby boy. The cultivation of goodness, truth and beauty is not white. But when only white individuals are writing the texts or included in the readings or the Black experiences is dismissed.... or when classical learning is not accessible to the black community.... then the classical tradition is white washed. DuBios spoke to me in my overly intellectually season, when I needed to remember the humanity of both me and others. The struggle hundreds of years old and yet critically important right NOW.

Just in general, I'm glad to have had the push to read this book. I've read a ton of African American literature over the years--have been studying it since a good friend of mine gave me a stack of books in sixth grade, literally, but somehow failed to ever read this one.

"He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world." DuBois pg 3 Can we still here those messages?? I feel like in the generation in which I was raised we were told (and sang) "It don't matter if you're black or white" as in, "we are all the same". But what my suburban neighborhood meant by that was "I can overlook your color if you will act and think like me." True equality is not in pretending that we are the same but in valuing our differences. What thoughts do you have on what some of those "negro blood" messages might still be for our culture?

I agree with Carrie. I think looking back further than you think always illuminates the present. Also this Dubois can WRITE. I felt so much of it was sheer poetry.

So many people never understood that Northeners held contempt for blacks people. They didn’t want “white jobs” taken by freed slaves, they still felt that ‘negroes’ were inferior, and public opinion against slavery wasn’t as big in the North as was made out to be by abolitionists. They liked the ideology of it but not the reality. That’s part of the missing chunk that Carrie is speaking of.

I also wanted to say, this excerpt you’ve posted has me thinking about other cultures in our country and how they view education. Some have outright rejected it. I’m not talking about the college debate on whether or not every job needs a college degree, I’m talking about cultures that encourage kids not to go away, or even finish school because they know it raises the risk they will leave and never return. It makes me look at the states with failing schools and low graduation rates with a new eye.

I was just reading Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes 1:18 this morning: “For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.”

Yes, getting an education separated me from much of my families worldview...and the community. I can go back to visit, but it's no longer a place I can exist and be mentally healthy.

Yes, absolutely. I think every generation experiences this to some effect. I personally experienced this during and since college with the denomination I grew up in and church in general. I finally have determined just recently to never go back to it (the denomination, we have no idea what we are going to do about church and finding a new denomination) because I cannot reconcile my education, and what I know to be true, with their beliefs.

You see this same feeling, although not as strongly, in "Hillbilly Elegy", which was my absolute favorite book of 2016. Also, you see it in the discontent that can lead to radicalization in certain circles in Saudi Arabia--there is considerable evidence that it played into the 9/11 attacks. One of the interesting things about this is how it transmitted to later generations. My parents knew and taught us that we had to go to college, so we never struggled with worrying about growing beyond them. But also they knew and taught us that if we did finish college, we would be able to be self-supporting and make a living. That was true when I was growing up, but it is not true any longer. But additionally, the idea that education is to a great extent enlightening and its own reward had not made it down to their generation, or at least it was not a factor in decision making for them or for us. At 60 I see this differently. I believe that the exposure to great literature and to ways of thought, to various civilizations, and to great ideas that we are giving our kids are inherently valuable no matter what they end up doing with their lives. If I had a boring job, I could make it a lot more interesting by thinking about Great Ideas or Beauty or Virtue. Studying and contemplating those things and living them out to the greatest extent possible is valuable in and of itself.

As an expat, I live this. 😊 There are certain experiences which make it difficult to go home again. And, like Dubois, I understand that although I am living a certain experience, that experience is not the answer to every problem. In fact, it may make things worse if I'm not wise in how I handle things.

This touches heavily on the theme I outlined earlier. That self-awareness that's a curse and a blessing. I think it's especially frustrating when you know and you know why you know, but to get someone else to truly understand it would take years and years. I mean look at the world now, or the issues in the Middle East and Africa and knowing our part in that, I mean understanding all the bad we've done there and how we should be helping, educating, spending time, money and generations, saying sorry for the harm we've done. But you talk to your brother who says 'But I didn't do anything wrong, they're just evil, not like us'. And you want to shake him for his ignorance and explain this goes back to post-WW2 or that be traced back to the issues of colonialism. Or the troubles in Israel today are because of the revolutions in Israel during Roman Occupation. It's good to know. It's a curse not being able to express it and prove it in simple conversation with people who're only tangentially interested in the subject matter.

Yes. I grew up in a little town south of Houston, TX. My parents are both college graduates, but that was the end of their education. Since leaving home in 1991, my education has changed me as a person so that I have little in common with my roots or my original family. I'm grateful that I have a husband who grows with me as education is scary and causes changes in us whether for better or for worse. Robert Trivers, the anthropologist, writes about how humans deceive themselves in order to survive and find peace of mind for if we accepted all that we see and experience of the world, we would be like John and very very sad.

As troublesome as an education may be, what kind of world would we live in, if we all chose to be uneducated?