On the recordJanuary 1, 1903
Behind the mists of ruin and rapine waved the calico dresses of women who dared, and after the hoarse mouthings of the field guns rang the rhythm of the alphabet.
Said by
W.E.B. Du Bois
Source
gutenberg.orgBehind the mists of ruin and rapine waved the calico dresses of women who dared, and after the hoarse mouthings of the field guns rang the rhythm of the alphabet.
This passage vividly contrasts the devastation of the Civil War with the quiet, determined efforts of women who brought education to the post-war South.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
Thus we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy.
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.
By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.