In our frantic effort to preserve the last vestiges of slavery and mediaevalism we not only set out faces against such improvements, but we seek to use education and the power of the state to train the servants who do not naturally appear.
Du Bois critiques the societal tendency to cling to outdated practices while resisting improvements in domestic service.
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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…
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.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.
Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.