Below Macon the world grows darker; for now we approach the Black Belt,—that strange land of shadows, at which even slaves paled in the past, and whence come now only faint and half-intelligible murmurs to the world beyond.
Describing his journey south, Du Bois characterizes the "Black Belt" as a place of historical suffering and ongoing isolation.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes…
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness…
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.