W.E.B. Du Bois: “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.”

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

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.

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.

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.