She was absolutely illiterate, with no knowledge of geography, and yet year after year she penetrated the slave states and personally led North over three hundred fugitives without losing a single one.
Du Bois highlights the remarkable achievements of a woman who led many fugitives to freedom despite her lack of formal education.
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Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.
The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.