W.E.B. Du Bois: “But let the murderer be black or the thief brown or the violator of womanhood have a drop of Negro blood, and the…”

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.

The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.