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.
Jan 1, 1903
In that little valley was a strange stillness as I rode up; for death and marriage had stolen youth and left age and childhood there.
Jan 1, 1903
They were never vulgar, never immoral, but rather rough and primitive, with an unconventionality that spent itself in loud guffaws, slaps on the back, and naps in the corner.
Jan 1, 1903
In its place stood Progress; and Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly.
Jan 1, 1903
And their weak wings beat against their barriers,—barriers of caste, of youth, of life; at last, in dangerous moments, against everything that opposed even a whim.
Jan 1, 1903
The mass of those to whom slavery was a dim recollection of childhood found the world a puzzling thing: it asked little of them, and they answered with little, and yet it ridiculed their offering.
Jan 1, 1903
Those whose eyes twenty-five and more years before had seen “the glory of the coming of the Lord,” saw in every present hindrance or help a dark fatalism bound to bring all things right in His own good time.
Jan 1, 1903
I loved my school, and the fine faith the children had in the wisdom of their teacher was truly marvellous.
Jan 1, 1903
The longing to know, to be a student in the great school at Nashville, hovered like a star above this child-woman amid her work and worry, and she studied doggedly.
Jan 1, 1903
What do you want a month?” “Oh,” thought I, “this is lucky”; but even then fell the awful shadow of the Veil, for they ate first, then I—alone.
Jan 1, 1903
She had about her a certain fineness, the shadow of an unconscious moral heroism that would willingly give all of life to make life broader, deeper, and fuller for her and hers.
Jan 1, 1903
Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless…