W.E.B. Du Bois: “He had whatever education the race possessed and his white father, no longer able to sell him, often helped him with…”

The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.

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.

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.