For some time men doubted as to whether the Negro could develop such leaders; but to-day no one seriously disputes the capability of individual Negroes to assimilate the culture and common sense of modern civilization, and to pass it on, to some extent at least, to their fellows.
This passage from "The Souls of Black Folk" refutes historical doubts about the capacity of Black individuals to develop leaders and contribute to modern civilization.
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Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.
With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…
Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.