The South interpreted it in different ways: the radicals received it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and political equality; the conservatives, as a generously conceived working basis for mutual understanding.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The South interpreted it in different ways: the radicals received it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois explains the divergent interpretations of the "Atlanta Compromise" by radical and conservative elements within the white South.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.
So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.