W.E.B. Du Bois: “How were they to be protected from those who did not believe in their freedom and were determined to thwart it?”

Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.

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.

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?

Would America have been America without her Negro people?