Summarize Chapter Three of "The Souls of Black Folk."

Dubois begins by praising the achievements of Booker T Washington, yet then notes he was not a perfect man, one criticism of him being that he counseled “submission,” and this “overlooked certain elements of true manhood.” After noting other forms of criticism, including envy, Dubois states that “it is no ordinary tribute to this man's tact and power that, steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions, he so largely retains the respect of all.” But he also says that that “the Black men of Americahave a duty to perform; a duty stern and delicate—a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader,” who is Washington. Dubois then discusses (and criticizes) Washington’s position of “accommodationism,” which Dubois thought interfered with the essential rights of Negroes: 1) the right to vote, 2) civic equality, and 3) the education of Negro youth according to ability. He thought Washington’s position, though popular, especially among liberal whites, would undermine black franchise and education. Even now, scholars consider Dubois a much more forward and radical thinker than Washington yet value all Washington did to bring forward the emerging "Negro Rights" moment at the turn of the century.

Summarize chapter 5 of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Du Bois.

You can find a summary and analysis of chapters 1-6 in the eNotes study guide for this book, to which I've pasted a link below.

The Souls of Black Folks is a collection of essays about African American life in the years after the Civil War. Chapter 5 is titled "Of the Wings of Atalanta." It is about the city of Atlanta and how it emerged with new life after the war. Before the war, DuBois says, Atlanta "slept dull and drowsy." He says that it is hard to "live haunted by the ghost of an untrue dream" and that "many a man and city and people have found in it excuse for sulking, and brooding, and listless waiting." However, Atlanta rose from the ashes of war to become a greater city. The people of Atlanta "turned toward the future" and built factories and businesses, and now the city is prospering.

But Atlanta must not be like its namesake Atalanta and fall for the glitter of gold.

Atlanta must not lead the South to dream of material prosperity as the touchstone of all success; already the fatal might of this idea is beginning to spread; it is replacing the finer type of Southerner with vulgar money-getters; it is burying the sweeter beauties of Southern life beneath pretence and ostentation.

DuBois says that Atlanta can be an example for the rest of the country by building universities and educating its people at the same time it grows in prosperity. "Teach workers to work....Teach thinkers to think."

Summarize Chapter 6 of The Souls of Black Folk.

In Chapter 6 of his enormously influential The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois presents his argument for the importance of higher education if African Americans are going to overcome the legacies of slavery, segregation, and poverty. As importantly, Du Bois argued that the future of the American South itself hinged greatly on the ability of African Americans to attain a college education. Note, with respect to this latter point, the following quotes from Chapter 6:

“No secure civilization can be built in the South with the Negro as an ignorant, turbulent proletariat.”

“The dangerously clear logic of the Negro's position will more and more loudly assert itself in that day when increasing wealth and more intricate social organization preclude the South from being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk.”

Du Bois understood what many whites across America, especially in the South, did not: No country or region of a country could reach its full potential if it arbitrarily denied to a certain category of its populace equality of opportunity. Racism and segregation denied to the larger nation the contributions that could be made by all categories of people when structural and cultural obstacles to achievement were eliminated.

In advancing his argument for the importance of higher education for black people, Du Bois emphasized the achievements of those few among the African American community afforded such an opportunity. Noting the role played in facilitating the rise of an educated professional African American of black colleges like Howard, Fisk, and Atlanta, Du Bois further quantified the contributions to be made in the longer term of graduating black students into the professions. When he writes that “Fifty-three per cent of these graduates were teachers, —presidents of institutions, heads of normal schools, principals of city school-systems, and the like,” he is emphasizing the self-perpetuating system for the education of black people that the early efforts have entailed. By remaining in academia, these educated black citizens could contribute to the education of future generations of African American students.

Chapter 6 of The Souls of Black Folk is Du Bois’s argument for the importance of education. He knew that only through a college education could African Americans truly progress and that only with the benefits of an educated class of African Americans could the socially, culturally, and economically backwards South hope to progress.

Summarize Chapter 6 of The Souls of Black Folk.

The chapter advocates the importance of higher education of African Americans not only for themselves but for American civilization as a whole. DuBois claims that African American college graduates have been "conservative, careful leaders". Their education has allowed them to understand the importance of cooperation between the races. Thus, they have not become mob agitators, but are performing much needed work to construct a fairer and more peaceful society. To DuBois, denying education to the nine million African Americans that live in America would lead them to brood "over the wrongs of the past and the difficulties of the present" preventing them to apply their talent to a constructive cooperation with the whites to the advantage of American civilization.

Summarize the significant points from the second chapter of of The Souls of Black Folk.

The second chapter is where DuBois is able to bring out the fundamental question in relation to American society and people of color.  He argues that while legal equality has been conferred to a great extent upon people of color, he also argues that this has created a fundamental problem.  How can the full integration of people of color become evident in a society that for so long marginalized them?  The focus of the chapter is the elements of Reconstruction that sought to bring African- Americans into mainstream America.  DuBois' major points is that this is faulty because it does not take into account that an organization like the Freedman's Bureau cannot possibly solve the rift or divide that is evident in society, cannot address the fundamental problems of both what it means to be of color in America and how greater enfranchisement can be evident as a result of it.  It is in this chapter where DuBois makes the argument that initiatives like the Freedman's Bureau were simply token efforts by the government, initiatives that failed to really strike at the problem and lay out some semblance of a solution where people of color authentically shared in the construction of power and in where a sense of equality could be evident.