I have recently started rereading The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. It was given to me a few years ago by a good friend of mine but was relegated to my ever growing list of “Things I have started but have yet to finish”. Last night I was particularly struck by the final paragraph of the “Of the Dawn of Freedom” chapter. This passage confirms his intellect and command of the English language to me. Not to mention its eloquence.
I have seen a land right merry with the sun, where children
sing, and rolling hills lie like passioned women wanton with
harvest. And there in the King’s Highway sat and sits a figure
veiled and bowed, by which the traveller’s footsteps hasten as
they go. On the tainted air broods fear. Three centuries’
thought has been the raising and unveiling of that bowed
human heart, and now behold a century new for the duty and
the deed. The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem
of the color-line.
W.E.B. Du Bois
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