No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth,—What shall be done with Negroes?
W.E.B. Du Bois: “No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth,—What…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois observes that the question of what to do with Black people immediately arose as Union armies advanced into the South during the Civil War.
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They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at…
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 direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.
He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.