W.E.B. Du Bois: “He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition…”

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.

Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.