The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom.
From his seminal work, this passage enumerates the overwhelming obstacles and confusing circumstances that confronted newly freed Black individuals during Reconstruction.
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The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.
By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.