W.E.B. Du Bois: “Everywhere stand the pines--the little dark and steadfast pines that smile not, neither weep, but wait and wait.”

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…

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

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.

By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.