The Souls of Black Folk - Dr. Earl Wright II

The Souls of Black Folk16IIOf the Dawn of FreedomCareless seems the great Avenger;History’s lessons but recordOne death-grapple in the darkness‘Twixt old systems and the Word;Truth forever on the scaffold,Wrong forever on the throne;Yet that scaffold sways the future,And behind the dim unknownStandeth God within the shadowKeeping watch above His own.—LowellTHE PROBLEM of the twentieth century is the problem of the colorline,—therelation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asiaand Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase ofthis problem that caused the Civil War; and however much theywho marched South and North in 1861 may have fixed on thetechnical points, of union and local autonomy as a shibboleth, allnevertheless knew, as we know, that the question of Negro slaverywas the real cause of the conflict. Curious it was, too, how thisdeeper question ever forced itself to the surface despite effort anddisclaimer. No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soilthan this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth,—Whatshall be done with Negroes? Peremptory military commands this