Are we going to induce the best class of Negroes to take less and less interest in government, and to give up their right to take such an interest, without a protest?
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Are we going to induce the best class of Negroes to take less and less interest in government, and to give up their…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois questions the implications of discouraging African Americans from participating in government and politics, advocating for their engagement.
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Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.