The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,—a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,—a forward movement to oppose a part of the…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois articulates the challenging responsibility of Black Americans to critically engage with and, if necessary, challenge the strategies of their own leaders.
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By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
Thus we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy.
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…