And yet it was singular that few thought of two Johns,—for the black folk thought of one John, and he was black; and the white folk thought of another John, and he was white.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “And yet it was singular that few thought of two Johns,—for the black folk thought of one John, and he was black; and the…”
Editor's note · Context
In "The Souls of Black Folk," this passage highlights the profound racial segregation of thought and identity within a Southern community, even when referring to individuals with the same name.
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So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.
The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.
The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the…