W.E.B. Du Bois: “These super-men and world-mastering demi-gods listened, however, to no low tongues of ours, even when we pointed…”

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

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

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.

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?