Holding in that little head—ah, bitterly!—he unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand—ah, wearily!—to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie.
In a poignant reflection on his son's future, Du Bois expresses the bitter reality of racial oppression and the false promise of freedom for Black people in America.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.
By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.
The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.