African-American Literature

Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folks offers the reader glimpses into the heart and mind of black men and women living in the post-reconstruction south when the splendor that had resided especially in the cotton market, had all but disappeared. The disappearance of the cotton market left in its wake thousands of black men and women the legacy of the laborers that built the place still laboring and still slaves to the land and the landlord. In Chapter 7 "Of The Black Belt" Du Bois describes an area in the south that is filled with black people mostly renting land from the heirs of fine plantations, the heirs who all had better places to be but still collect rents that equal a man's annual wages if they do not exceed them. The epigraph of the chapter the song "Bright Sparkles" references grave goods associated with the...
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