W.E.B. Du Bois: “Why, then, devour your own vitals if I answer even as proudly, "I am black!”

In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.

Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.