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.
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So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.
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Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.