W.E.B. Du Bois: “Sometime, we trust—sincerely trust—all such distinctions will fade away; but now the world is as it is.”

So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?

Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.

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.

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