Holding in that little head—ah, bitterly!—he unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand—ah, wearily!—to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie.
In a poignant reflection on his son's future, Du Bois expresses the bitter reality of racial oppression and the false promise of freedom for Black people in America.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.