W.E.B. Du Bois: “I think I never before quite realized the place of the Fence in civilization.”

So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.

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

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

Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…