W.E.B. Du Bois: “Why has civilization flourished in Europe, and flickered, flamed, and died in Africa?”

So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.

Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.