There is not a village or road that does not behold the sad procession of manacled outcasts whose mournful countenances tell that they are exiled by force from all that their hearts hold dear.
Du Bois paints a stark picture of the realities faced by enslaved individuals and their families.
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The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for…
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.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.