But what of black women?... I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the resilience and strength of black women in overcoming immense challenges and hardships.
W. E. B. Du Bois highlights the unique struggles faced by black women and suggests that their ability to rise above such adversity speaks to their exceptional strength and resilience. The phrase 'devilish fire' symbolizes the brutal oppression and challenges that black women have endured, implying that their strength is forged in hardship like no other.
In practice
Use this quote when discussing the impact of racism and sexism on black women's lives.
Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.'
Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it - this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.
School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
For most people, it is enough for the world to know that they aspire. The world does not ask what their aspirations are, trusting that those aspirations are for the best and greatest things. But with regard to the Negroes in America, there is a feeling that their aspirations in some way are not consistent with the great ideals.
For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.
The ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences.
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
As someone who wasn't heavily supported or resourced as a young person when I was going through the hardest times of my life, I'm used to operating outside of systems. The trans movement has always been that way.
I am ready to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may obtain liberty and peace.
I condemn racism on all levels, whether personal or systemic.
And whatever our faith - whatever our faith, one belief should bind us all: The measure of our character is our willingness to give of ourselves for others and for our country.
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