Is it not the tendency, born of Reconstruction and Reaction, to found a society on lawlessness and deception, to tamper with the moral fibre of a naturally honest and straightforward people until the whites threaten to become ungovernable tyrants and the blacks criminals and hypocrites?
Du Bois asks if the societal decay, marked by lawlessness and deception, is responsible for corrupting both white and Black moral character in the post-Reconstruction South.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Then in after years when I came to Nashville I saw the great temple builded of these songs towering over the pale city.
Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things.
The ten master songs I have mentioned tell in word and music of trouble and exile, of strife and hiding; they grope toward some unseen power and sigh for rest in the End.
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.