The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.
This passage condemns the historical sexual exploitation of Black women by white men and its devastating impact on the integrity of the Black family and racial identity.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
To me Jubilee Hall seemed ever made of the songs themselves, and its bricks were red with the blood and dust of toil.
The things evidently borrowed from the surrounding world undergo characteristic change when they enter the mouth of the slave.
Then in after years when I came to Nashville I saw the great temple builded of these songs towering over the pale city.