Yet did we build of iron, bricks, and blood; We built a day, a year, a thousand years, Blood was the mortar,--blood and tears, And, ah, the Thing, the Thing of wings, The wingéd, folding Wing of Things Did furnish much mad mortar For that tower.
This quote metaphorically describes the construction of a future built on the sacrifices of those who came before, emphasizing the importance of their struggles.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
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.