If we could scan the calendar of thousands of lesser men, in like comparison, the result would be the same; but we cannot do this because of the deliberately educated ignorance of white schools by which they remember Napoleon and forget Sonni Ali.
He critiques the educational system that emphasizes European figures while neglecting significant leaders from African history.
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So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
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.
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…
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.