Du Bois declares in the Forethought that the defining challenge of the new century is the color-line dividing white and black.

Du Bois introduces double-consciousness, describing the burden of African Americans always seeing themselves through the eyes of others.

Du Bois describes how masses of enslaved people fled to Union armies as soon as the Civil War began in the South.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is issued, and the Union calls on African Americans to enlist as soldiers.

Congress establishes the Freedmen's Bureau to oversee the welfare and transition of former slaves into free life.

The bank backed by the Freedmen's Bureau fails, wiping out the savings freedmen had deposited and destroying their faith in institutions.

The Freedmen's Bureau is dissolved and African Americans receive the vote through the 15th Amendment.

Booker T. Washington delivers the Atlanta Compromise speech, offering to trade civil rights demands for economic opportunity in the South.

Du Bois openly criticizes Washington's program, arguing it accepts inferiority and strips African Americans of dignity and political rights.

Du Bois argues that materialism has corrupted Atlanta and the South, threatening the moral foundations of the entire nation.

Du Bois argues that higher education for the Talented Tenth is essential to the uplift of the entire African-American race.

Du Bois guides the reader through the Black Belt, revealing ruins of the cotton economy and the misery of sharecropping debt.

Du Bois's firstborn son Burghardt is born, and Du Bois holds him with deep unease and fear about his future under racism.

Du Bois's son dies of a childhood illness, and Du Bois feels both grief and strange relief that the child escaped racism's reach.

Du Bois closes the book with a prayer that his work will vindicate the oppressed and awaken the conscience of the guilty.

The Souls of Black Folk opens with Du Bois declaring the color-line the defining problem of the new century and introducing the concept of double-consciousness to describe the psychological toll racism places on African Americans. He traces the history of Emancipation and the rise and failure of the Freedmen's Bureau, which promised land and justice but delivered neither, leaving former slaves politically vulnerable and economically trapped. Du Bois then launches a pointed critique of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise, arguing that trading civil rights for economic accommodation accepts inferiority and leaves African Americans with less freedom than before. He argues instead that materialism threatens both the South and the nation, and that higher education for the Talented Tenth is the only path to genuine racial uplift. His tour of the Black Belt exposes the crushing poverty of sharecropping and the ruins of the cotton economy. The collection closes on a deeply personal note with the death of his infant son and a final prayer that his book will serve justice.

The core arc of Du Bois's argument for Black freedom and dignity.

Du Bois positions himself in the Forethought as a writer who can lift the veil and reveal hidden African-American lives to white readers.

Du Bois describes Frederick Douglass leading African Americans in asserting their rights even after the Civil War and Emancipation.

Du Bois travels to rural Tennessee to teach after a hardworking farm girl named Josie tells him about a local teaching position.

Du Bois discovers the school is a poorly furnished log hut once used to store crops, serving about thirty students.

Josie's mother tells Du Bois she fears her daughter's dream of attending Fisk University will never come true because the family cannot get ahead.

Du Bois makes a return visit to the Tennessee community and discovers that Josie has died from overwork and a series of family disasters.

Du Bois rides home from Tennessee in a segregated rail car, questioning what the African-American struggle for freedom has actually achieved.

Du Bois describes Atlanta University as a green oasis where sons of former slaves study the liberal arts amid a desert of racial hatred.

Du Bois examines the class structure among African Americans in Dougherty County, ranging from landless laborers to rare landowners.

Du Bois concludes that segregated libraries, public events, and civic spaces prevent any meaningful exchange of ideas between the races.

Du Bois witnesses a woman receiving the Holy Ghost at a black religious revival and offers a sociological examination of the experience.

Du Bois travels from Georgia to Massachusetts in fear for his wife's life as she prepares to give birth to their first child.

The family carries Du Bois's dead son north to be buried while strangers call them racial slurs along the way to the graveyard.

Du Bois meets the elderly Alexander Crummell at a Wilberforce University commencement and immediately recognizes greatness in the man's character.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers tour America and Europe, singing the slave songs so deeply into the world's heart they are never forgotten.

Du Bois establishes himself in the Forethought as a guide who can reveal the hidden world of African Americans to white readers, then traces the history of Black leadership from Frederick Douglass's era onward. The personal narrative of Josie—a Tennessee farm girl whose dreams of education are crushed by poverty and overwork—gives a human face to the limits of post-Emancipation progress, and Du Bois's return visit and segregated train ride home deepen the tragedy. Atlanta University is presented as a fragile refuge of liberal learning surrounded by materialism and hatred, while Du Bois's sociological portrait of sharecroppers in Dougherty County reveals communities defined by debt, isolation, and narrow opportunity. His account of black church life exposes a community of resilient faith, and his anxious journey to the birth of his son and the grief of the child's burial bring the collection to its emotional heart. The pool ends with the Fisk Jubilee Singers carrying the sorrow songs permanently into the world's consciousness.

Lives, places, and communities behind the color-line.

Du Bois describes how African Americans first believed that gaining the vote after Emancipation would fulfill all their dreams of freedom.

General Sherman's March to the Sea draws masses of fugitive slaves, forcing a military field order to house and support them.

Congress passes two bills establishing the Freedmen's Bureau after the war, overriding presidential vetoes both times to make it law.

The end of Reconstruction allows Washington to emerge as a compromiser between the South, the North, and African Americans.

Du Bois's Sunday church visits in Tennessee reveal a sharp divide between elders who remember slavery and restless educated youth.

Du Bois uses the Greek myth of Atalanta to warn that Atlanta's obsession with gold will corrupt the city's soul.

Du Bois imagines sitting in conversation with Shakespeare and great Western thinkers as proof that the color-line cannot bar intellectual equality.

Du Bois crosses into the Jim Crow rail car as his imagined train tour enters the heart of the Black Belt.

Du Bois argues that voting came to be seen as disreputable after Reconstruction, leaving African-American civil rights steadily stripped away.

Du Bois traces African-American spirituality from African ancestors through plantation medicine men to the figure of the modern black preacher.

Du Bois first holds his newborn son and notices gold-tinged hair and blue-brown eyes, seeing the color-line and the veil made flesh.

An Episcopal seminary denies Alexander Crummell entry because of his race, nearly ending his calling before it begins.

A Philadelphia bishop offers Crummell a church only on the condition that he never seek representation at the bishop's convention.

Judge Henderson shuts down John Jones's school after learning he taught his students about the French Revolution and equality.

Du Bois recalls the African-language song his great-great-grandmother sang after being kidnapped into slavery, passed down with words no one could understand.

This pool traces the pivotal moments in Du Bois's argument and in the lives of the figures he chronicles. From the post-Emancipation belief that the vote would bring full freedom—swiftly disappointed—through the contested founding of the Freedmen's Bureau against two presidential vetoes, Du Bois reveals how institutional failures shaped African-American life from the start. He identifies the moment Washington's compromise emerged to fill a leadership vacuum left by the end of Reconstruction, then uses the myth of Atalanta and an imagined conversation with Shakespeare to argue for intellectual equality and the dangers of materialism. His crossing into the Jim Crow car and his tracing of Black spirituality from Africa through plantation medicine men to the modern preacher reveal the deep roots of both oppression and resilience. The stories of Crummell's repeated rejection by white church authorities and John Jones's school being shut down for teaching equality dramatize how every avenue of advancement is blocked. The pool closes with Du Bois's memory of his great-great-grandmother's African song, a reminder that something essential survived the Middle Passage.