W.E.B. Du Bois: “In the attitude of the American mind toward Negro suffrage can be traced with unusual accuracy the prevalent conceptions…”

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.

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.

Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…

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