With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?
This quote describes the varied and often painful psychological responses of other Black boys to racial oppression, from sycophancy to bitter questioning of their existence.
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The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
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.
This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.