W.E.B. Du Bois: “And this of me, whose one life fanaticism had been belief in my Negro blood!”

I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.

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.

All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.

By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.