The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.
From his seminal work, this passage describes the shift in perception among Black Americans, viewing the ballot not just as a symbol but as the primary instrument for securing full liberty.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.