W.E.B. Du Bois: “The Preacher is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil.”

But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.

Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.

One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.