Jan 1, 1903
He bent to all the gibes and prejudices, to all hatred and discrimination, with that rare courtesy which is the armor of pure souls.
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
Out of the temptation of Hate, and burned by the fire of Despair, triumphant over Doubt, and steeled by Sacrifice against Humiliation, he turned at last home across the waters, humble and strong, gentle and determined.
Jan 1, 1903
No wonder we point to thief and murderer, and haunting prostitute, and the never-ending throng of unhearsed dead!
Jan 1, 1903
You will not wonder at his weird pilgrimage,—you who in the swift whirl of living, amid its cold paradox and marvellous vision, have fronted life and asked its riddle face to face.
Jan 1, 1903
Twenty years he wandered,—twenty years and more; and yet the hard rasping question kept gnawing within him, “What, in God’s name, am I on earth for?” In the narrow New York parish his soul seemed cramped and smothered.
Jan 1, 1903
So the man groped for light; all this was not Life,—it was the world-wandering of a soul in search of itself, the striving of one who vainly sought his place in the world, ever haunted by the shadow of a death that is more than death,—the…
Jan 1, 1903
You might have noted only the physical dying, the shattered frame and hacking cough; but in that soul lay deeper death than that.
Jan 1, 1903
And yet the fire through which Alexander Crummell went did not burn in vain.
Jan 1, 1903
Sometime, we trust—sincerely trust—all such distinctions will fade away; but now the world is as it is.
Jan 1, 1903
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.
Jan 1, 1903
A voice and vision called him to be a priest,—a seer to lead the uncalled out of the house of bondage.
Jan 1, 1903
He heard the hateful clank of their chains; he felt them cringe and grovel, and there rose within him a protest and a prophecy.