Above all, nothing is more convenient than to heap on the Freedmen’s Bureau all the evils of that evil day, and damn it utterly for every mistake and blunder that was made.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Above all, nothing is more convenient than to heap on the Freedmen’s Bureau all the evils of that evil day, and damn it…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois criticizes the tendency to unfairly blame the Freedmen's Bureau for all the failures and problems of the Reconstruction era.
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This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of…
Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.