W.E.B. Du Bois: “The vision of life that rises before these dark eyes has in it nothing mean or selfish.”

The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.

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.

Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.

Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.