It behooves the United States, therefore, in the interest both of scientific truth and of future social reform, carefully to study such chapters of her history as that of the suppression of the slave-trade.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “It behooves the United States, therefore, in the interest both of scientific truth and of future social reform…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois advocates for a thorough examination of American history to inform future social reforms, particularly regarding slavery.
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Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.