W.E.B. Du Bois: “How long shall the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our hearts for vengeance?”

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

The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.

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.