W.E.B. Du Bois: “Quite--quite craven is my fear, I admit; but the terrible thing is--these things do happen!”

A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.

By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.

With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…