W.E.B. Du Bois: “What I had to show was that no real reorganization of industry could be permanently made with the majority of mankind…”

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.

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.

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

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