But with the carrying out of the crop-lien system, the deterioration of the land, and the slavery of debt, the position of the metayers has sunk to a dead level of practically unrewarded toil.
Du Bois describes how the crop-lien system and land degradation led to the economic subjugation and unrewarded labor of black tenant farmers.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
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…
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.