W.E.B. Du Bois: “The question was, then, he added reflectively, looking at the low discolored ceiling, what part the Negroes of this land…”

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.

Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…

Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…