I strode above the stricken, bleeding men, The rampart 'ranged against the skies, And shouted: "Up, I say, build and slay; Fight face foremost, force a way, Unloose, unfetter, and unbind; Be men and free!
In this call to action, Du Bois urges people to rise up and fight for their freedom and rights, embodying a spirit of resistance.
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Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.