posted by Kelly Porter

on April 13, 2007

This documentary gave me some insight into the doctor’s life. It was quite inspirational because it showed his evolution as a scholar and as an enlightened black man. I am trying to understand what got him interested in the lives of blacks in the south. However, I believe it was at Fisk where the seeds were planted and from there on he blossomed.

The film is a bit long coming in at 116 minutes. However, I enjoyed every minute of it. There were many interviews with people that were good friends of Dubois and his granddaughter was also interviewed. I think the film does a decent job of capturing both his professional and personal lives. There were plenty of good anecdotes throughout. I am a big fan of story telling so that was quite enjoyable for me.

I believe I can relate more with the doctor before as he got older. It seems that when he began the NAACP he was a bit of an elitist but when he moved into the Pan Africa movement he saw racism as an international social problem. He painted the picture that there is one Africa. I’m thinking that he might have been more moderate in his younger years, while writing the crisis. The seeming “elitism” was probably him being more accommodating and compromising sot that he would not loose favor amongst his allies.

I get this from his use of the metaphor, “the veil” in “Souls of Black Folk”. The veil are the lies and the ideas that we as a people have been told and therefore we see ourselves and the world through the shroud of lies. It similar to the “Looking Glass-Self” paradigm which says that we view ourselves the way others perceive us. Still to come more about the veil and part 2 to my first entry…….