W.E.B. Du Bois: “How far may men fight for the beginning of comfort, out beyond the horrid shadow of poverty, at the cost of starving…”

The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.

To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes…

By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.

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.