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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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.
They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at…
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.