The most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time, amid the broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted hopes of mothers and maidens, and the fall of an empire,—the most piteous thing amid all this was the black freedman who threw down his hoe because the world called him free.
Reflecting on the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Du Bois identifies the profound tragedy of freedmen who gained legal freedom but lacked the means for true independence.
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