There were, of course, exceptions to this,—cases of personal kindness and forbearance; but in the vast majority of cases the rule was to extract the uttermost farthing from the mass of the black farm laborers.
This passage from "The Souls of Black Folk" summarizes the pervasive economic exploitation of Black farm laborers in the post-slavery South.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.
Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.