Jan 1, 1903
With all their larger vision and deeper sensibility, these men have usually been conservative, careful leaders.
W.E.B. Du Bois
The Public Record
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, writer, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. He completed graduate work at Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate. He was a professor at Atlanta University and over the course of his life wrote many books and articles. He spent the last years of his life in Ghana and died in Accra on August 27, 1963.
gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1903
Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls.
Jan 1, 1903
From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension.
Jan 1, 1903
Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia?
Jan 1, 1903
If white people need colleges to furnish teachers, ministers, lawyers, and doctors, do black people need nothing of the sort?
Jan 1, 1903
That the present social separation and acute race-sensitiveness must eventually yield to the influences of culture, as the South grows civilized, is clear.
Jan 1, 1903
It will demand broad-minded, upright men, both white and black, and in its final accomplishment American civilization will triumph.
Jan 1, 1903
But the very voices that cry hail to this good work are, strange to relate, largely silent or antagonistic to the higher education of the Negro.
Jan 1, 1903
Strange to relate! for this is certain, no secure civilization can be built in the South with the Negro as an ignorant, turbulent proletariat.
Jan 1, 1903
Suppose we seek to remedy this by making them laborers and nothing more: they are not fools, they have tasted of the Tree of Life, and they will not cease to think, will not cease attempting to read the riddle of the world.
Jan 1, 1903
They walk up and down the streets, meet and gossip with friends, stare at the shop windows, buy coffee, cheap candy, and clothes, and at dusk drive home—happy? well no, not exactly happy, but much happier than as though they had not come.