Can we establish a mass of black laborers and artisans and landholders in the South who, by law and public opinion, have absolutely no voice in shaping the laws under which they live and work?
Du Bois challenges the feasibility and justice of creating a productive Black working class in the South while denying them any political voice in their governance.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.
In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.
With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…