By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks.
Du Bois critiques the pressures on Black professionals to conform to societal expectations while grappling with their own community's needs.
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He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.
And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.