Jan 1, 1903
You may marshal strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries, lacking though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen!
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.
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Jan 1, 1903
Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours.
Jan 1, 1903
And as the black third of the land grows in thrift and skill, unless skilfully guided in its larger philosophy, it must more and more brood over the red past and the creeping, crooked present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt and revenge…
Jan 1, 1903
Such waste of energy cannot be spared if the South is to catch up with civilization.
Jan 1, 1903
The dangerously clear logic of the Negro’s position will more and more loudly assert itself in that day when increasing wealth and more intricate social organization preclude the South from being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp…
Jan 1, 1903
Here, then, is the plain thirst for training; by refusing to give this Talented Tenth the key to knowledge, can any sane man imagine that they will lightly lay aside their yearning and contentedly become hewers of wood and drawers of water?
Jan 1, 1903
By taking away their best equipped teachers and leaders, by slamming the door of opportunity in the faces of their bolder and brighter minds, will you make them satisfied with their lot? or will you not rather transfer their leading from…
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
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
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
It will demand broad-minded, upright men, both white and black, and in its final accomplishment American civilization will triumph.
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.