W.E.B. Du Bois

Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live,—a Negro and a Negro’s son.

Holding in that little head—ah, bitterly!—he unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand—ah, wearily!—to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land…

I held my face beside his little cheek, showed him the star-children and the twinkling lights as they began to flash, and stilled with an even-song the unvoiced terror of my life.

So sturdy and masterful he grew, so filled with bubbling life, so tremulous with the unspoken wisdom of a life but eighteen months distant from the All-life,—we were not far from worshipping this revelation of the divine, my wife and I.

Her own life builded and moulded itself upon the child; he tinged her every dream and idealized her every effort.

I hear now that Voice at midnight calling me from dull and dreamless trance,—crying, “The Shadow of Death!

Only in the chamber of death writhed the world’s most piteous thing—a childless mother.

I am no coward, to shrink before the rugged rush of the storm, nor even quail before the awful shadow of the Veil.

Is not this my life hard enough,—is not that dull land that stretches its sneering web about me cold enough,—is not all the world beyond these four little walls pitiless enough, but that thou must needs enter here,—thou, O Death?

Wast thou so jealous of one little coign of happiness that thou must needs enter there,—thou, O Death?

He knew no color-line, poor dear—and the Veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun.

They were not wicked men,—the problem of life is not the problem of the wicked,—they were calm, good men, Bishops of the Apostolic Church of God, and strove toward righteousness.