One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment. Instead roars the crash of hell...

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About W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois was a 19th-century American sociologist and activist. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, writer, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • History — Lessons from the past and the arc of human civilisation
  • Politics — Governance, civic duty, and the structures of power
  • Power — The dynamics of influence, authority, and leadership

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