The most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time, amid the broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted hopes of mothers and maidens, and the fall of an empire,—the most piteous thing amid all this was the black freedman who threw down his hoe because the world called him free.
Reflecting on the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Du Bois identifies the profound tragedy of freedmen who gained legal freedom but lacked the means for true independence.
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So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.