W.E.B. Du Bois: “Here we have, then, nearly twenty-five hundred Negro graduates, of whom the crucial query must be made, How far did…”

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.

But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.

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?