W.E.B. Du Bois: “And yet it is not weakness,—it is the contradiction of double aims.”

He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.

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…

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.