Entry · catalog no. 1323
the veil
/ /ðə veɪl/ /thuh VAYL
noun phrase · Atlanta, Georgia; drawn from Southern Black folk belief, read nationwide · 1900s
✓ Verified
1.
In W. E. B. Du Bois's usage, the color line pictured as a veil: the barrier that separates Black Americans from the rest of the country, and through which the Black American can see out while the white world sees only the veil.
“He wrote the whole book from behind the veil and told you so on the first page.”
2.
The second sight that comes with it — being born with a veil, in the old folk sense of a caul, and so gifted with a clear view of a country that cannot see itself.
“That clarity is not a gift anybody asked for. It is what the veil leaves you.”
Origin & Attribution
From W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), where the Negro is "a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world." Du Bois folded together two things: the biblical veil of the temple and the Black Southern folk belief that a child born with a caul over its face can see what others cannot. The book opens and closes on it, and the final chapter leaves the reader standing outside it.
1903
The Souls of Black Folk opens with the seventh son born with a veil
1903
The closing Afterthought addresses the reader from within it
1961
The book's paperback reissue puts the figure before a new generation of student organizers
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Atlanta, Georgia; drawn from Southern Black folk belief, read nationwide · 1900s
Spoken by
Black scholars, preachers and writers; Black studies classrooms
$THEVEIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady123 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
58/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1903
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago
book · 1903
■
+ Cite a sourceNewbell Niles Puckett, Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro, University of North Carolina Press — records the caul and second-sight belief
folklore study · 1926
See also