Political Quotes

W.E.B. Du Bois: So the black boy asked of sky and sun and flower the never-answered Why? and loved, as he grew, neither the world nor…

On the recordJanuary 1, 1903
So the black boy asked of sky and sun and flower the never-answered Why? and loved, as he grew, neither the world nor the world’s rough ways.
Said by
W.E.B. Du Bois

Editor's note · Context

In The Souls of Black Folk, this sentence captures a young Black boy's profound existential questioning and growing disillusionment with the world due to his experiences.

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Jan 1, 1903

To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes…

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The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.

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With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…

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The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.

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