Strange temptation for a child, you may think; and yet in this wide land to-day a thousand thousand dark children brood before this same temptation, and feel its cold and shuddering arms.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Strange temptation for a child, you may think; and yet in this wide land to-day a thousand thousand dark children brood…”
Editor's note · Context
This passage from The Souls of Black Folk broadens the narrative to emphasize that the "temptation" of hate and despair is a widespread experience for Black children.
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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.
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.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.