The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

This summary covers “The Debate,” “Founder's Day,” “The Dirty Thirty,” “Reunion,” and “I'm Hungry.”

During another Chicasetta summer, Ailey’s old boyfriend David continues to visit Uncle Root despite no longer having a relationship with Ailey. He and Uncle Root often debate whether Booker T. Washington or W.E.B. Du Bois was the most influential African American intellectual; David pleads the case for Washington, while Uncle Root backs Du Bois. To make his case, Uncle Root tells David and Ailey about a speech Washington gave at a cotton expo in 1895. He says that his mother saw the speech and “had a memory like nobody’s business” (341). Washington assured his white audience that America’s Black population would be “patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful” toward their white neighbors and even went so far as to approve segregation, saying, “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers” (342). David concedes the debate to Uncle Root.

When school resumes the following year, Ailey gets mixed signals from Abdul: The two have sex regularly, but he will not commit to being her boyfriend. Nevertheless, he wants to meet her family. On Founder’s Day, an annual celebration at Routledge, Abdul is upset when Ailey will not introduce him to her visiting family.