After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.
This quote introduces the concept of the "seventh son" and "second-sight" for Black Americans, who are born with a "veil" that shapes their perception in a world that denies their true self-consciousness.
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But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a…
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.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.