W.E.B. Du Bois: “How is the drudgery of the world distributed, by thoughtful justice or the lash of Slavery?”

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.

Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.

The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.