If the Negro could speak for himself in the South instead of being spoken for, if he could defend himself instead of having to depend on the chance sympathy of white citizens, how much healthier a growth of democracy the South would have.
Du Bois advocates for the self-representation of Black individuals as essential for a healthier democracy in the South.
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But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.
The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.
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…