There were, of course, exceptions to this,—cases of personal kindness and forbearance; but in the vast majority of cases the rule was to extract the uttermost farthing from the mass of the black farm laborers.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “There were, of course, exceptions to this,—cases of personal kindness and forbearance; but in the vast majority of cases…”
Editor's note · Context
This passage from "The Souls of Black Folk" summarizes the pervasive economic exploitation of Black farm laborers in the post-slavery South.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
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.
The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.
And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe.
With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…