By taking away their best equipped teachers and leaders, by slamming the door of opportunity in the faces of their bolder and brighter minds, will you make them satisfied with their lot? or will you not rather transfer their leading from the hands of men taught to think to the hands of untrained demagogues?
W.E.B. Du Bois: “By taking away their best equipped teachers and leaders, by slamming the door of opportunity in the faces of their…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois warns of the dangerous consequences of suppressing Black intellectual leadership and denying educational opportunities.
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Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.
The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for…