To-day Sam’s grandson “takes up” with a woman without license or ceremony; they live together decently and honestly, and are, to all intents and purposes, man and wife.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “To-day Sam’s grandson “takes up” with a woman without license or ceremony; they live together decently and honestly, and…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois illustrates the evolution of informal unions among African Americans, likening them to marriage despite the lack of formal ceremonies.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…
So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.
Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…