W.E.B. Du Bois: “We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy” alone.”

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.

Yet even then the hard ruthless rape of the land began to tell.

The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.