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IV. Of the Meaning of Progress

Summary

Du Bois starts with a narrative passage about finding work as a teacher after graduating from Fisk University. Traveling eastward from town to town, he eventually finds a small rural town with a single-room log schoolhouse. The school was rather crude, especially compared to Du Bois’ expectations of a New England schoolhouse, but he thoroughly enjoys teaching there. He also describes visiting homes after school each day to talk to parents of students that have not attended regularly, having missed classes due to work necessity at home, or parents who have doubts about “book-learning.” Du Bois describes the individuals in the small town and how intimately he knew each of their families, regularly staying at different houses in the community. He teaches at the small town for two years before moving on.

Du Bois then recalls returning to Fisk University ten years later, and how he desired to revisit the small town where he was a teacher. The town has seen little progress. There is a new school building with a proper foundation, but it still has the same crude interior. Some of his students have inherited their parents’ work while others have died. Du Bois states that “death and marriage had stolen youth and left age and childhood there.” After leaving the town, Du Bois wonders how progress can be possible, considering that one of his most eager students has died and the town has not changed. The chapter ends with him “sadly musing” and riding to Nashville in the Jim Crow car of the train.

Analysis 

When Du Bois shares his reflections on the small rural town where he taught, he reveals his understanding of racism on a systemic level as well as a personal level. His degree from Fisk University sets him apart from other Black people without advanced education, but the fact that he had to walk the countryside to find a teaching position illustrates how much harder he had to work than his white peers to obtain even a humble job. While a school specifically for Black children is a positive step toward a more just society, the school itself is substandard. Education is crucial for Black people, yet they must often overcome many obstacles in order to obtain it, and Du Bois wants his audience to understand that the ramifications of slavery and racism are still reverberating all over the country. By juxtaposing his initial impressions about the town and its inhabitants with the thoughts from his visit ten years later, Du Bois reveals that the people who live in rural communities like this one are far less likely to succeed because of their lack of access to education.

The small town where Du Bois taught also serves as an allegory for the pitfalls of living in an insular community. Some people belong to small, exclusively Black communities in order to block out the unpleasant realities of the larger world. While this social network can make daily life easier for some Black people, it also prevents them from envisioning a better future. This is another example of the “Veil,” and again Du Bois highlights the difficulties that this type of insular living can cause. Just as the exclusion of Black people from segregated communities creates new bonds among white people, living in isolation causes Black people to form relationships only with others who share the same experiences, which limits their world view. The Veil keeps this community and the family of Du Bois’s favored student from the hopeful and prosperous future Du Bois foresaw for them. Du Bois feels a brooding sense of pessimism about the future, not just for this community, but for every Black community.

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