All over the face of the land is the one-room cabin,—now standing in the shadow of the Big House, now staring at the dusty road, now rising dark and sombre amid the green of the cotton-fields.
Du Bois describes the ubiquitous presence of the one-room cabin across the Southern landscape, symbolizing the pervasive poverty and limited opportunities for Black families.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Some, like “Near the lake where drooped the willow,” passed into current airs and their source was forgotten; others were caricatured on the “minstrel” stage and their memory died away.
Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
The things evidently borrowed from the surrounding world undergo characteristic change when they enter the mouth of the slave.