At the end of Chapter 2, Du Bois chronicles the "death" of the Freedmen's Bureau, and with it the aspirations of recently liberated Black Americans. He states that in his own day and age, the specter of the work this bureau "did not do because it could not" remains; and the present "color-line" is the result of this inadequacy. Du Bois outlines the color line with characteristic imagery and simile:
I have seen a land right merry with the sun, where children sing, and rolling hills lie like passioned women wanton with harvest. And there in the King's Highway sat and sits a figure veiled and bowed, by which the traveler's footsteps hasten as they go. On the tainted air broods fear.
In this passage, Du Bois describes the so-called Promised Land, utilizing imagery to connect his description to that of the Bible, making such connections as the "King's Highway" for the more religiously-oriented reader. He uses simile to compare the rolling hills of the Promised Land to the bosom of a woman, "ripe" for harvest. Despite this imagery and figurative language, the Promised Land is not an unblemished place: the specter of racism and the color line sits blocking the path. Those who can ignore it choose to—but, Du Bois says, they can do so no longer.
