In vain were they ordered back, in vain were bridges hewn from beneath their feet; on they trudged and writhed and surged, until they rolled into Savannah, a starved and naked horde of tens of thousands.
Du Bois vividly describes the desperate plight of freedmen as they sought refuge during the Civil War.
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But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.
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The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the…