W.E.B Du Bois writes about two of his experiences that relate to being black at the dawning of the Twentieth Century, right after the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery. He recalls early in the passage that the “shadow” of being a person of color was not “swept across” him until he was in school. Du Bois later witnessed the visual impact of this on his trip through the Black Belt, an area highly populated with African Americans due to it’s rich soil. He recounts his experience through the lens of a passenger in a Jim Crow train car. He explains how different people were living after being freed and how the land echoed the feelings of it’s occupants.
