W.E.B. Du Bois: “There has arisen among us a movement to make the Public School primarily the hand-maiden of production.”

By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.

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.

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.

The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the…