Curiously incongruous elements were left arrayed against each other,—the North, the government, the carpet-bagger, and the slave, here; and there, all the South that was white, whether gentleman or vagabond, honest man or rascal, lawless murderer or martyr to duty.
This passage describes the conflicting interests and groups present in the post-Civil War South.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.