Down through the green waters, on the bottom of the world, where men move to and fro, I have seen a man--an educated gentleman--grow livid with anger because a little, silent, black woman was sitting by herself in a Pullman car.
Du Bois illustrates the irrational anger directed at Black individuals in public spaces, emphasizing racial prejudice.
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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.
To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes…
The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the…
One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.