W.E.B. Du Bois: “After the war and emancipation, the great form of Frederick Douglass, the greatest of American Negro leaders, still led…”

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?

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

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.

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.