But few have pretended that the present movement for disfranchisement in the South is for such a purpose; it has been plainly and frankly declared in nearly every case that the object of the disfranchising laws is the elimination of the black man from politics.
Du Bois asserts that the stated goals of Southern disfranchisement laws are a pretense, and their true, openly declared purpose is to remove Black men from politics.
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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.
Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness…
Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.