It has birthed the haunting prostitute, the brawler, and the beast of burden; but it has also given the world an efficient womanhood, whose strength lies in its freedom and whose chastity was won in the teeth of temptation and not in prison and swaddling clothes.
Du Bois contrasts the negative outcomes of oppression with the emergence of strong, empowered women.
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Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
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.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.