Such natural questions cannot be evaded, nor on the other hand must a Nation naturally skeptical as to Negro ability assume an unfavorable answer without careful inquiry and patient openness to conviction.
In "The Souls of Black Folk," Du Bois asserts that questions about Black education require careful investigation, not prejudiced assumptions.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe.
He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.