Jan 1, 1903
No other State in the Union can count a million Negroes among its citizens,—a population as large as the slave population of the whole Union in 1800; no other State fought so long and strenuously to gather this host of Africans.
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
Not only is Georgia thus the geographical focus of our Negro population, but in many other respects, both now and yesterday, the Negro problems have seemed to be centered in this State.
Jan 1, 1903
Just this side Atlanta is the land of the Cherokees and to the southwest, not far from where Sam Hose was crucified, you may stand on a spot which is to-day the centre of the Negro problem,—the centre of those nine million men who are…
Jan 1, 1903
Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?
Jan 1, 1903
Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia?
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
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
And to themselves in these the days that try their souls, the chance to soar in the dim blue air above the smoke is to their finer spirits boon and guerdon for what they lose on earth by being black.
Jan 1, 1903
Herein the longing of black men must have respect: the rich and bitter depth of their experience, the unknown treasures of their inner life, the strange rendings of nature they have seen, may give the world new points of view and make…
Jan 1, 1903
Such souls aforetime have inspired and guided worlds, and if we be not wholly bewitched by our Rhinegold, they shall again.
Jan 1, 1903
The function of the Negro college, then, is clear: it must maintain the standards of popular education, it must seek the social regeneration of the Negro, and it must help in the solution of problems of race contact and cooperation.