The Negro Problem — Story, Setting & Ideas

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Authors: Washington, Booker T., 1856-1915 [Contributor], Chesnutt, Charles W. (Charles Waddell), 1858-1932 [Contributor], Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963 [Contributor], Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 1872-1906 [Contributor], Fortune, Timothy Thomas, 1856-1928 [Contributor] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2005 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: African Americans; African Americans -- Social conditions -- To 1964; African Americans -- Politics and government -- 20th century Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 39,816

Reading time 174 min

Text sections 5

The catalog record for The Negro Problem — Story, Setting & Ideas provides practical reading context through 39,816 words, 2 hr 54 min estimated reading time, and 5 detected text sections.

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Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “African Americans,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #15041

A 1903 collection of seven essays by leading African American thinkers, including Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Charles W. Chesnutt, each addressing a distinct facet of the post-Reconstruction racial situation through argument, legal analysis, and social observation.

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South was an industrial school. On these plantations young colored men and women were constantly being trained not only as farmers but as carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cooks, laundresses, sewing women and housekeepers.

I do not mean in any way to apologize for the curse of slavery, which was a curse to both races, but in what I say about industrial training in slavery I am simply stating facts. This training was crude, and was given for selfish purposes. It did not answer the highest ends, because there was an absence of mental training in connection with the training of the hand. To a large degree, though, this business contact with the Southern white man, and the industrial training on the plantations, left the Negro at the close of the war in possession of nearly all the common and skilled labor in the South. The industries that gave the South its power, prominence and wealth prior to the Civil War were mainly the raising of cotton, sugar cane, rice and tobacco. Before the way could be prepared for the proper growing and marketing of these crops forests had to be cleared, houses to be built, public roads and railroads constructed. In all these works the Negro did most of the heavy work. In the planting, cultivating and marketing of the crops not only was the Negro the chief dependence, but in the manufacture of tobacco he became a skilled and proficient workman, and in this, up to the present time, in the South, holds the lead in the large tobacco manufactories.

In most of the industries, though, what happened? For nearly twenty years after the war, except in a few instances, the value of the industrial training given by the plantations was overlooked. Negro men and women were educated in literature, in mathematics and in the sciences, with little thought of what had been taking place during the preceding two hundred and fifty years, except, perhaps, as something to be escaped, to be got as far away from as possible. As a generation began to pass, those who had been trained as mechanics in slavery began to disappear by death, and gradually it began to be realized that there were few to take their places. There were young men educated in foreign tongues, but few in carpentry or in mechanical or architectural drawing. Many were trained in Latin, but few as engineers and blacksmiths. Too many were taken from the farm and educated, but educated in everything but farming. For this reason they had no interest in farming and did not return to it. And yet eighty-five per cent. of the Negro population of the Southern states lives and for a considerable time will continue to live in the country districts. The charge is often brought against the members of my race--and too often justly, I confess--that they are found leaving the country districts and flocking into the great cities where temptations are more frequent and harder to resist, and where the Negro people too often become demoralized. Think, though, how frequently it is the case that from the first day that a pupil begins to go to school his books teach him much about the cities of the world and city life, and almost nothing about the country. How natural it is, then, that when he has the ordering of his life he wants to live it in the city.

Only a short time before his death the late Mr. C.P. Huntington, to whose memory a magnificent library has just been given by his widow to the Hampton Institute for Negroes, in Virginia, said in a public address some words which seem to me so wise that I want to quote them here:

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This volume assembles seven essays by prominent African American intellectuals, each addressing a different dimension of what the title calls "the Negro problem" at the turn of the twentieth century. The contributors—Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles W. Chesnutt, Wilford H. Smith, H.T. Kealing, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and T. Thomas Fortune—represent a range of professional backgrounds, from educators and lawyers to journalists and poets. Rather than a single argument, the book offers a structured debate: Washington opens with industrial education, Du Bois counters with the "Talented Tenth," and subsequent essays examine disfranchisement, legal rights, racial characteristics, representative figures, and the broader place of African Americans in national life.

A Sequence of Arguments, Not a Monologue

The book’s structure is itself a statement. Each essay stands alone, yet the order creates a cumulative effect. Washington’s opening emphasis on economic foundation is immediately challenged by Du Bois’s insistence on higher education and leadership. Chesnutt’s legal and historical analysis of disfranchisement follows, grounding the debate in constitutional amendments and court rulings. Smith then narrows the focus to the law’s failures, citing specific cases like United States v. Cruikshank. Kealing shifts to social description, Dunbar to biographical portraiture, and Fortune to a synthetic conclusion. The reader moves from prescription to critique, from principle to lived reality.

Recurring Images: Work, Citizenship, and the Soil

Several images recur across the essays. Washington repeatedly invokes the soil and labor: the race must begin “by beginning in a proper cultivation and ownership of the soil.” Du Bois, while critical, also uses organic metaphors—the “Talented Tenth” as a seed for the rest. Chesnutt and Smith return to the language of constitutional amendments, treating the 13th, 14th, and 15th as foundational texts. The figure of the slave plantation appears as both a site of exploitation and, in Washington’s telling, a precursor to industrial training. These repeated references create a shared vocabulary even when the authors disagree.

Movement Between the General and the Specific

The essays vary in scale. Washington speaks broadly of “the race” and “civilization,” while Du Bois names specific individuals and institutions. Chesnutt quotes legal decisions at length, grounding his argument in precise judicial language. Dunbar’s contribution is the most concrete: he profiles representative African Americans, moving from abstraction to named examples. This alternation between principle and particular gives the collection a rhythm. The reader is asked to hold general claims against specific cases—a technique that mirrors the legal reasoning in Smith’s essay, where broad constitutional guarantees are tested against actual court outcomes.

The Role of the Law as a Structural Anchor

Legal reasoning provides a backbone for several essays. Chesnutt and Smith both examine the gap between constitutional promises and enforcement. Chesnutt traces the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, then cites the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and subsequent judicial narrowing. Smith continues this thread, quoting Chief Justice Waite to show how the Supreme Court limited federal power. The law appears not as a fixed solution but as a contested arena. This legal focus distinguishes the collection from purely sociological or moral arguments, grounding the “problem” in specific statutes and rulings that readers could verify.

Because the essays were written for a contemporaneous audience, they assume familiarity with events and debates that may be unfamiliar to modern readers. The legal citations, in particular, reward careful attention: they show how constitutional language was interpreted in practice. Reading the essays in sequence—rather than jumping between them—reveals the dialogue among the authors. The volume is best approached as a series of positions in a live argument, not a unified statement.

That rainy afternoon, The Negro Problem left me sitting with Du Bois’s quiet fury long after I closed it, the legal arguments blurring into a heaviness I couldn’t shake. Then, almost by accident, my hand found The Storm. An Essay. — Text and Context, and I realized both books share that same strange weather—how a single, gathered force can change everything it touches, slowly.