Is not this my life hard enough,—is not that dull land that stretches its sneering web about me cold enough,—is not all the world beyond these four little walls pitiless enough, but that thou must needs enter here,—thou, O Death?
In a moment of intense grief, Du Bois questions why death must add to the already immense hardships of his life.
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Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.