The system of slavery had, on this soil and amid these surroundings, no economic justification, and the small number of Negroes here furnished no political arguments against them.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The system of slavery had, on this soil and amid these surroundings, no economic justification, and the small number of…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois argues that slavery lacked economic justification in certain regions, emphasizing its moral implications.
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The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.
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.
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.
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.