But, after all, is not this simply the writhing of the age translated into black,—the triumph of the Lie which today, with its false culture, faces the hideousness of the anarchist assassin?
Du Bois poses a rhetorical question, suggesting that the struggles faced by Black people reflect a universal societal crisis of falsehood and moral decay.
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The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.
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…
By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.
The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.