W.E.B. Du Bois: “But now and then the crisscross rails or straight palings break into view, and then we know a touch of culture is near.”

Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…

Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.

The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.