So great an economic and social revolution as swept the South in ’63 meant a weeding out among the Negroes of the incompetents and vicious, the beginning of a differentiation of social grades.
Du Bois explains that the profound economic and social changes of Emancipation led to a natural process of social differentiation and challenges within the Black community.
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Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
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.
If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.