Careless seems the great Avenger; History’s lessons but record One death-grapple in the darkness ’Twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above His own.
This quote reflects Du Bois's belief in the ongoing struggle between truth and injustice throughout history.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
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.
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.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.