Rather it has passed to those men who have come to take charge of the industrial exploitation of the New South,—the sons of poor whites fired with a new thirst for wealth and power, thrifty and avaricious Yankees, and unscrupulous immigrants.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Rather it has passed to those men who have come to take charge of the industrial exploitation of the New South,—the sons…”
Editor's note · Context
This passage from "The Souls of Black Folk" identifies the new groups who gained economic control and influence in the post-Reconstruction South.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.
The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.
The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.
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…