Margaret Walker’s Gifts for Her People
Preface for the 2015
Margaret Walker Centennial
Although The Gift of Black Folk (1924) is less well-known and less discussed
than The Souls of Black Folk (1903),
this historical survey by W. E. B. DuBois can be instructive as an early
example of Black Studies. “Who made America?” DuBois asked in the first
sentence of his brief “Prescript.” In the first quarter of the
twentieth-century, the question was necessary DuBois argued because “there are
those as always who would forget the humble builders, toiling wan mornings and
blazing noons, and picture Americas as the last reasoned blossom of mighty
ancestors; of those great and glorious world builders and ruler who know and
see and do all things forever and ever, amen!” The flowery prose is a negative
imitation of prayer, a prelude to DuBois’ understanding that America involved
building “real democracy and not that vain and eternal striving to regard the
world as the abiding place of exceptional genius with great black wastes of
hereditary idiots.” His sarcasm is nicely pitched in the third, final
paragraph: “We who know may not forget but must forever spread the splendid
sordid truth that out of the most lowly and persecuted of men, Man made
America. And that what Man has here
begun with all its want and imperfection, with all its magnificent promise and
grotesque failure will some day blossom in the souls of the Lowly” (1). Black
assessment of America is forever and ever salted with ironies.
DuBois’ “splendid sordid truth”
reveals a deliberate shortcoming in his historical memory, because he failed to
deal forthrightly with the “forced complicity” of black folk in the genocide of
indigenous peoples in America. The
obvious limits of his historical narration or historiography still plague
contemporary discussions of how black folk fit into the unfinished process of
building America (forming the nation’s identity), because cultural discourses
are subjective; purpose rather than not having all the facts governs our selectivity. Acquiring “new,” reliable facts, of course, does
encourage revision or correction of history; so too, our efforts to improve and
expand our assessments of writers inform our work as literary theorists,
critics, and historians, although we are not immune to subjectivity.
The
Gifts of Black Folk offers a guide for talking about Margaret Walker’s
gifts for her people, a guide from an African American intellectual giant for
whom she had lifelong respect. If quantity of output were the only measure, it
is obvious that DuBois gave more gifts to his people than Walker. My motives for talking about Walker have
little to do with quantity and much to do with a sense that the quality of her ideas and her creative
works has not been emphasized enough in a field where DuBois’ quantity and
quality have been richly documented.
DuBois’ nine chapters provide handy categories for discussion of Walker’s
gifts ---- exploration, labor, military
service, emancipation of democracy, reconstruction of freedom, womanhood, folk
song (music), art and literature, and spirit. Walker never served in the United
States military, so I substitute “political investments” for “military
service.” I replace DuBois’ emphasis on geographical exploration with
exploration of ideas. What might we gain now from Margaret Walker’s gifts for
people?
WORK CITED
DuBois, W. E. B. The Gift of Black Folk. Boston: The
Stratford Company, 1924; New York: Washington Square Press, 1970. Print.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
July 22, 2014
