Jan 1, 1903
For the hum of the cotton-mills is the newest and most significant thing in the New South to-day.
W.E.B. Du Bois
The Public Record
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, writer, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. He completed graduate work at Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate. He was a professor at Atlanta University and over the course of his life wrote many books and articles. He spent the last years of his life in Ghana and died in Accra on August 27, 1963.
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Jan 1, 1903
Then, too, there are fewer signs of a romantic past, and more of systematic modern land-grabbing and money-getting.
Jan 1, 1903
Beggars and vulgar speculators rose to rule over them, and their children went astray.
Jan 1, 1903
A revolution such as that of ’63 is a terrible thing; they that rose rich in the morning often slept in paupers’ beds.
Jan 1, 1903
Sad and bitter tales lie hidden back of those white doors,—tales of poverty, of struggle, of disappointment.
Jan 1, 1903
I know not which are the more touching,—such old empty houses, or the homes of the masters’ sons.
Jan 1, 1903
Careless ignorance and laziness here, fierce hate and vindictiveness there;—these are the extremes of the Negro problem which we met that day, and we scarce knew which we preferred.
Jan 1, 1903
Forty-five years he had labored on this farm, beginning with nothing, and still having nothing.
Jan 1, 1903
At best, the natural good-nature is edged with complaint or has changed into sullenness and gloom.
Jan 1, 1903
There is little of the joyous abandon and playfulness which we are wont to associate with the plantation Negro.