“To have given each one of the million Negro free families a forty-acre freehold would have made a basis of real democracy in the United States that might easily have transformed the modern world.”

—  W.E.B. Du Bois, book Black Reconstruction

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 602

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 21, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To have given each one of the million Negro free families a forty-acre freehold would have made a basis of real democra…" by W.E.B. Du Bois?
W.E.B. Du Bois photo
W.E.B. Du Bois62
American sociologist, historian, activist and writer 1868–1963

Related quotes

Allen C. Guelzo photo

“In 1863, the United States is really the only free-standing democracy in the world. That all across the stage of world history the forces of reaction have been on the march, ever since Napoleon Bonaparte.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Andre Damon (2013)

Charles Mackay photo

“Cleon hath a million acres,— ne’er a one have I;
Cleon dwelleth in a palace, — in a cottage I.”

Charles Mackay (1814–1889) British writer

"Cleon and I".
Legends of the Isles and Other Poems (1851)

George Washington photo

“I am a citizen of the greatest Republic of Mankind. I see the human race united like a huge family by brotherly ties. We have made a sowing of liberty which will, little by little, spring up across the whole world. One day, on the model of the United States of America, a United States of Europe will come into being. The United States will legislate for all its nationalities.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Attributed to Washington in &quot;Farewell to the United States of Europe: long live the EU!&quot; by André Fontaine at Open Democracy (29 November 2001) http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-europefuture/article_344.jsp. It appears to have originally circulated in French:<br>:: Je suis citoyen de la Grande République de l&#x27;Humanité. Je vois le genre humain uni comme une grande famille par des liens fraternels. Nous avons jeté une semence de liberté et d&#x27;union qui germera peu à peu dans toute la Terre. Un jour, sur le modèle des Etats-Unis d&#x27;Amérique, se constitueront les États-Unis d&#x27;Europe. Les États-Unis seront le législateur de toutes les nationalités.<br>: An anonymous blogger in &quot;Did George Washington predict a &quot;United States of Europe&quot;? (30 January 2010) http://racehist.blogspot.com/2010/01/did-george-washington-predict-united.html showed that it derived from Gustave Rodrigues, Le peuple de l&#x27;action: essai sur l&#x27;idéalisme américain (A. Colin, 1917), p. 207:<br>:: Washington écrivait à La Fayette qu&#x27;il se condérait comme « citoyen de la grande république de l&#x27;humanité » et ajoutait : « Je vois le genre humain uni comme une grande famille par des liens fraternels ». Ailleurs il écrivait, prophétiquement: « Nous avons jeté une semence de liberté et d&#x27;union qui germera peu à peu dans toute la terre. Un jour, sur le modèle des Etats-Unis d&#x27;Amérique, se constitueront les États-Unis d&#x27;Europe. »<br>: A translation by Louise Seymour Houghton ( The People of Action: An Essay on American Idealism (1918) http://books.google.com/books?id=b8Y9AAAAYAAJ) reads:<br>:: Washington wrote to Lafayette that he considered himself a &quot;citizen of the great republic of humanity,&quot; adding: &quot;I see the human race a great family, united by fraternal bonds.&quot; Elsewhere he wrote prophetically: &quot;We have sown a seed of liberty and union that will gradually germinate throughout the earth. Some day, on the model of the United States of America, will be constituted the United States of Europe.&quot; [pp. 209-210]<br>: The first two quotations come from a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette of 15 August 1786 (see above) as quoted in Joseph Fabre&#x27;s Washington, libérateur de l&#x27;Amérique: suivi de Washington et la revolution Américaine (Ch. Delagrave, 1886), and the third is also found in that source where, although placed between quotation marks, it is clearly intended as the author&#x27;s own comments on what &quot;Washington and his friends&quot; were saying to the world by establishing the American Constitution. Gustave Rodrigues mistakenly printed Fabre&#x27;s words as Washington&#x27;s alongside some actual observations of his from a letter to Lafayette, and so created the misquotation. <br class="br">Misattributed

Gloria Steinem photo

“Citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform countries, it is the basis of any real democracy.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Revolution From Within

Abraham Lincoln photo

“The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas's "care-not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are: (1) That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro in every possible event of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." (2) That, "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. (3) That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State makes him free as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made not to be pressed immediately, but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one or one thousand slaves in Illinois or in any other free State.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)

Benjamin R. Barber photo

“Liberal democracy has been one of the sturdiest political systems in the history of the modern West. As the dominant modern form of democracy, it has informed and guided several of the most successful and enduring governments the world has known, not least among them that of the United States.”

Benjamin R. Barber (1939–2017) US political scientist

Source: Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new age (2003), p. 3

John F. Kennedy photo

“We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes?”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Civil Rights Address

Stephen A. Douglas photo

“I hold that a Negro is not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. I hold that this government was made on the white basis; made by the white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men and none others.”

Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) American politician

In 1858 http://stoprepublicans.blogspot.com/2008/06/democrats-held-these-words-to-be-self.html <br class="br">1850s

“The tomb of him who would have made
The world too glad and free.”

Thomas Kibble Hervey (1799–1859) British poet and critic

The Devil's Progress (1849)

John Conyers photo

“I chose the number of the bill, 40, as a symbol of the forty acres and a mule that the United States initially promised freed slaves. This unfulfilled promise and the serious devastation that slavery had on African-American lives has never been officially recognized by the United States Government.”

John Conyers (1929–2019) American politician from Michigan

Reparations, Conyers.house.gov. https://web.archive.org/web/20150829135025/http://conyers.house.gov/index.cfm/reparations

Related topics