To natural viciousness and vagrancy are being daily added motives of revolt and revenge which stir up all the latent savagery of both races and make peaceful attention to economic development often impossible.
Du Bois describes the escalating social tensions and their impact on the potential for economic and social progress in the South.
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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.
The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.
Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.
Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.