They would prepare themselves with apprehension, indeed, but without dismay--with regret, but with firmness--for one of those desperate struggles which have sometimes occurred in the history of the world.
Du Bois speaks to the resilience required in the face of potential struggles, drawing on historical precedents.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness…
He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.
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 Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.