W.E.B. Du Bois: “Does it not have the effect of dissatisfying the young Negro with his environment?”

He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.

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.

To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes…

The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.