The plantation organization replaced the clan and tribe, and the white master replaced the chief with far greater and more despotic powers.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The plantation organization replaced the clan and tribe, and the white master replaced the chief with far greater and…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois describes the profound social upheaval caused by slavery, where traditional African social structures were violently replaced by the plantation system.
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Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.
Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.
They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at…
Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it.