At the age of marriage,--always prematurely anticipated under slavery--she was mated as the stock of the plantation were mated, not to be the companion of a loved and chosen husband, but to be the breeder of human cattle for the field or the auction block.
Du Bois critiques the dehumanizing practices of slavery that commodified Black women.
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A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.