Now a rising group of people are not lifted bodily from the ground like an inert solid mass, but rather stretch upward like a living plant with its roots still clinging in the mould.
Du Bois employs a botanical metaphor to illustrate that social progress for a group is an organic, gradual process, not an instantaneous uplift, with historical roots remaining influential.
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Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.