"Souls of Black Folk". There is the theme of souls and their attainment of consciousness, the theme of double consciousness and the duality and divergence of black life and culture. But one of the most striking themes is that of "the veil." (Du Bois 1). The veil metaphor in Souls of Black Folk is symbolic of the invisibility of blacks in America. Du Bois says that Blacks in America are a forgotten people, "after the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil.”(Du Bois 5) The invisibility of Black existence in America is one of the reasons why Du Bois writes Souls of Black Folk in order to explain the invisible history and strivings of Black Americans, "I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand Americans live and strive."(Du Bois 1). Du Bois also claims that as long as one is wrapped in the veil their attempts to gain self-consciousness will fail because they will always see the image of themselves reflect back to them by others. Du Bois applies this by claiming that as long as one is behind the veil the, "world which yields him no self-consciousness but who only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world." (Du Bois 5). In each of the following chapters Du Bois tries to manifest the strivings of Black existence from that of the reconstruction period to the black spirituals and the stories of rural black children that he tried to educate. Du Bois in Souls of Black Folk is trying to establish some sense of history and memory for Black Americans, but Du Bois struggles in the pages of the book to prevent Black Americans from becoming a Seventh Son invisible to the rest of the world, hidden behind a veil of prejudice. Du Bois affectingly captures the necessity for a legal equalizing measure in his description of the tragedy of slavery and the ragged, conflicted nature of the black co