No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth,—What shall be done with Negroes?
W.E.B. Du Bois: “No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth,—What…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois observes that the question of what to do with Black people immediately arose as Union armies advanced into the South during the Civil War.
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He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.
Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.
The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the…