W.E.B. Du Bois

From the low doorway the mother silently watched her boy at play, and at nightfall sought him eagerly lest the shadows bear him away to the land of slaves.

So his young mind worked and winced and shaped curiously a vision of Life; and in the midst of that vision ever stood one dark figure alone,—ever with the hard, thick countenance of that bitter father, and a form that fell in vast and…

Thus the temptation of Hate grew and shadowed the growing child,—gliding stealthily into his laughter, fading into his play, and seizing his dreams by day and night with rough, rude turbulence.

So the black boy asked of sky and sun and flower the never-answered Why? and loved, as he grew, neither the world nor the world’s rough ways.

Strange temptation for a child, you may think; and yet in this wide land to-day a thousand thousand dark children brood before this same temptation, and feel its cold and shuddering arms.

For them, perhaps, some one will some day lift the Veil,—will come tenderly and cheerily into those sad little lives and brush the brooding hate away, just as Beriah Green strode in upon the life of Alexander Crummell.

He heard the hateful clank of their chains; he felt them cringe and grovel, and there rose within him a protest and a prophecy.

A voice and vision called him to be a priest,—a seer to lead the uncalled out of the house of bondage.

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.

Sometime, we trust—sincerely trust—all such distinctions will fade away; but now the world is as it is.

And yet the fire through which Alexander Crummell went did not burn in vain.

Their appearance was uncouth, their language funny, but their hearts were human and their singing stirred men with a mighty power.