And so thoroughly did he learn the speech and thought of triumphant commercialism, and the ideals of material prosperity, that the picture of a lone black boy poring over a French grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to him the acme of absurdities.
Du Bois critically observes how Booker T. Washington's immersion in commercial ideals led him to dismiss traditional intellectual pursuits as impractical.
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To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
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.
Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.