W.E.B. Du Bois: “And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps…”

This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of…

The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.

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

They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at…