From the Zulus to the Waganda, we find the mother the most influential counsellor at the court of ferocious sovereigns, like Chaka or Mtesa; sometimes sisters take her place.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “From the Zulus to the Waganda, we find the mother the most influential counsellor at the court of ferocious sovereigns…”
Editor's note · Context
This quote illustrates the significant role of mothers in African societies, even in the face of powerful rulers.
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Thus we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.
He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.