Naturally the Negroes resented, at first bitterly, signs of compromise which surrendered their civil and political rights, even though this was to be exchanged for larger chances of economic development.
Du Bois describes the initial resistance among Black Americans to policies that traded civil and political rights for economic opportunities.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.