And the Negro knew full well that, whatever their deeper convictions may have been, Southern men had fought with desperate energy to perpetuate this slavery under which the black masses, with half-articulate thought, had writhed and shivered.
Du Bois asserts that Black people understood the profound commitment of Southern society to maintaining slavery, despite any claims to the contrary.
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The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a…
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of…