The shrieks and agony often witnessed on such occasions proclaim, with a trumpet tongue, the iniquity of our system.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The shrieks and agony often witnessed on such occasions proclaim, with a trumpet tongue, the iniquity of our system.”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois vividly describes the emotional toll of slavery on families and communities.
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But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…
So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.