Must this, and that fair flower of Freedom which, despite the jeers of latter-day striplings, sprung from our fathers’ blood, must that too degenerate into a dusty quest of gold,—into lawless lust with Hippomenes?
Reflecting on the legacy of freedom, Du Bois questions whether its noble origins will be corrupted by the pursuit of wealth and unchecked desires.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
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…
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
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…