In vain were they ordered back, in vain were bridges hewn from beneath their feet; on they trudged and writhed and surged, until they rolled into Savannah, a starved and naked horde of tens of thousands.
Du Bois vividly describes the desperate plight of freedmen as they sought refuge during the Civil War.
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Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a…
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.
Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.