W.E.B Du Bois: Seeking a Truer, Better Thing

*Picture by Christina of Liberty Station in San Diego, CA

I have held onto the following prayer for the past couple of years—it helps articulate the yearning that drives my life, and give it a little reprieve. But I think this prayer applies to all of us right now, specifically in regards to racial equality. We are all being asked to step out of our comfort zones and normative ways of being, in pursuit of something we have never yet fully experienced.
 

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"God bless the wanderers—they that seek and seldom find and yet all ceaselessly do seek some Truer, Better Thing—some fairer country. These are they, O Lord, who open up the hidden ways of earth and men: for the way of the wanderer is wide and winding, his soul hungers after God—always are his paths weary and without end. Yet we feel his kinship to us all, we glory in his findings, we enter into his heritage. God save his soul tonight wherever he may be and give our yearning following spirits Peace. Amen."
 

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This prayer comes from a short book called Prayers for Dark People, by W.E.B Du Bois—a collection of 71 prayers, written on loose leafs of paper for his students. The prayers address the question of “how to make a good life for all.”

A Black man living from 1868-1963, Du Bois devoted his life to ending racism. He fought against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment, so that all Black people could have thriving, purposeful, happy lives.

I think this is an important delineation to make as we continue the work of putting an end to racism: We are fighting against racism because we are championing for life.

I encourage you to pick up a copy of Prayers for Dark People, to glean from Du Bois’ wisdom of what a good life could look like. You may hear a prophetic voice in his writing—despite (or because) of his nuanced spirituality.

Du Bois grew up in a Christian church, but later identified as an agnostic freethinker. From the sidelines of organized religion, he holds the church and clergy accountable to further the work of equality. He allows biblical symbols to expose the cruelty in current events, like comparing lynching to Jesus’ crucifixon. And he invites his readers into a vision for a Truer, Better Thing.

Today, decades later, I know racial equality is a Truer, Better Thing, and maybe I’ve even caught glimpses of it. But our world is still in pursuit of equality’s full actualization.

In committing to completing the work that others have started, all those awakening to the call are committing to ceaselessly seek after our goal.

We are driven by an insatiable hunger for what is right, whole, and of God.

We are following those like W.E.B Du Bois who have shown us the way forward.

We are entering into Du Bois’ prophetic heritage of speaking truth to power.

And we are glorying in the progress other activists and freethinkers like Du Bois have already made for us.

As wearying as championing for life may be, may we be blessed with yearning spirits. May we find Peace only when every Black, Indigenous, and Person of Color has complete, irrevocable Peace.