Imagine spending your life looking for insults or for hiding places from them--shrinking (instinctively and despite desperate bolsterings of courage) from blows that are not always but ever; not each day, but each week, each month, each year.
Du Bois poignantly describes the psychological toll of constantly facing racism and discrimination.
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Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.
By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.