W.E.B. Du Bois: “What is the cause of the undoubted reaction and alarm that the citizens of democracy continually feel?”

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.

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

So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?