He muttered to me with the murmur of many ages, when he said: “White man sit down whole year; Nigger work day and night and make crop; Nigger hardly gits bread and meat; white man sittin’ down gits all.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “He muttered to me with the murmur of many ages, when he said: “White man sit down whole year; Nigger work day and night…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois quotes a Black laborer expressing the injustice of their situation compared to white landowners.
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So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.
Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…
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