W.E.B. Du Bois: “There is Hate behind it, and Cruelty and Tears.”

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.

So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.

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…

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.