When I finally walked out of that hotel and out of menial service forever, I felt as though, in a field of flowers, my nose had been held unpleasantly long to the worms and manure at their roots.
Du Bois describes the profound sense of liberation he felt upon leaving menial service behind.
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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…
In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!