W.E.B. Du Bois: “But with all this, it is work in the pure open air, and this is something in a day when fresh air is scarce.”

Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…

If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.

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

But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.