W.E.B. Du Bois: “Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical…”

Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!

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.

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe.

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.