W. E. B. Du Bois

Monica M. Elbert

Personal recollections are included in the controversial 1903 work depicting the spirit, status, and problems of African Americans since emancipation.

The Souls of Black Folk

Macy HB

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,-a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people. 

In such a situation, the granting of the ballot to the black man was a necessity, the very least a guilty nation could grant a wronged race, and the only method of compelling the South to accept the results of the war. Thus Negro suffrage ended a civil war by beginning a race feud. And some felt gratitude toward the race thus sacrificed in its swaddling clothes on the altar of national integrity; and some felt and feel only indifference and contempt.

Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land? 

The Souls of Black Folk quotes

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