And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped,--ugly, human.
Du Bois critiques the performative nature of white society, revealing their vulnerabilities beneath a facade.
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Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
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…
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