It is no idle regret with which the white South mourns the loss of the old-time Negro,—the frank, honest, simple old servant who stood for the earlier religious age of submission and humility.
Du Bois critically observes the white South's lament for the "old-time Negro," revealing a desire for a past era of Black submission and humility.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
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.
Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.