W.E.B. Du Bois: “Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies arise; Brother’s blood shall cry on brother up the dead and empty…”

One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!

They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at…

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