“The opposition to Negro education in the South was at first bitter, and showed itself in ashes, insult, and blood; for the South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong; for education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know.” SchoolAmericaEducationKnowledgeLearningSouthAfrican AmericansBlacksReconstruction Book:The Souls of Black Folk Source: The Souls of Black Folk
“Skillfully, and with calculation, the economic problems of Reconstruction were being changed by planters and capitalists to look like problems of politics and social recognition.” RaceClassEconomicsReconstructionIdentity PoliticsSocial Recognition Author:W.E.B. Du Bois
“It was not, then, race and culture calling out of the South in 1876; it was property and privilege, shrieking to its own kind, and privilege and property heard and recognized the voice of its own.” CultureRacePropertyPrivilegeReconstructionJim Crow Book:Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 Source: Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880
“The white people of the South are essentially a fine kindly breed, the same sort of human beings that one finds the world over.” HistoryRacismRace RelationsReconstructionSouthernersLynchingsPoor Whites Book:Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 Source: Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880
“It was rather a choice between suffrage and slavery, after endless blood and gold had flowed to sweep human bondage away. Not a single Southern legislature stood ready to admit a Negro, under any conditions, to the polls; not a single Southern legislature believed free Negro labor was possible without a system of restrictions that took all its freedom away; there was scarcely a white man in the South who did not honestly regard Emancipation as a crime, and its practical nullification as a duty. 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.” SlaverySouthVotingAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsReconstructionSuffrageVoting Rights Book:The Souls of Black Folk Source: The Souls of Black Folk