W.E.B. Du Bois: “Taxation without representation is the rule of their political life.”

Yet even then the hard ruthless rape of the land began to tell.

The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for…