W.E.B. Du Bois: “Plain instructions went out from Washington: the laborers must be free to choose their employers, no fixed rate of wages…”

This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of…

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.

But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.