The old leaders of Negro opinion, in the little groups where there is a Negro social consciousness, are being replaced by new; neither the black preacher nor the black teacher leads as he did two decades ago.
Du Bois observes a shift in leadership within the Black community, noting the declining influence of traditional figures like preachers and teachers.
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It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.
Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.