The most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time," W. E. B. Du Bois would write a generation afterward, "amid the broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted hopes of mothers and maidens, and the fall of an empire,-the most piteous thing amid all this was the black freedman who threw down his hoe because the world called him free. What did such a mockery of freedom mean? Not a cent of money, not an inch of land, not a mouthful of victuals,-not even ownership of the rags on his back. Free!
( Richard Kluger )
[ Simple Justice: The History of ]
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