Praise for the black men of earlier

The experience of translating The souls of the Black folk is unique what it holds; a contrasting reality, between bitterness and joy, between hope and unreason, a strange experience. Above all, the pitiful smallness of the men of these times, who cannot live up to their events; like those men of earlier, in front of whom the landscape was rugged and rough yet beautiful and extended, ready for the smart craft.

Along with that disappointment, the wonder of those titans, who not only worked on their own illustration and recorded those times; but were also able to do so generously, distancing themselves enough in order to approach their work zealously and with responsibility. A black man of the early twentieth century cannot have had an easy life in the United States, even having money; and yet, W.E.B. Du Bois had the generosity to arrange his time to reckon and explain what he could, because that made sense.

There again comes heartbreak, because if these men were able to do that, the inability of today's men is voluntary; the stubbornness with which we push agendas, futilely dwarfing tremendous causes, is sad. Black men who from that reality of them made clear the reasons for the war, which were not those of emancipation; and that is why they can still explain such a complex process, with each one of its ungraspable and countless details.

Astonishing the generosity, with which he recognizes the limitations of those who undertook that task of emancipation; that thus is not a simple proclamation, but a gigantic operation, full of offices, officials— each one with its peculiar character, budgets, and a powerful will. Not only the political candidness of the liberated black, but also the goodwill of those who became operators of that moving machinery; and also the reluctant, the recalcitrant who did everything they could to hinder the operation, and the weakness of those who did not know how to take advantage of it.

All without an epithet, without a condemnation of the other, without an enemy —only people who do not understand— in sight; which is what causes this unreason at the poverty of our time, blaming ones to other. Because these men who wrote the story, we knows that all the problems now have a solution, it’s just that we don’t wants to solve them; because for that we must be generous, and discover the enthusiasm of personal fulfillment in those small tasks that only bear fruit afterwards.