W.E.B. Du Bois: “I did not love it then; it seemed a ludicrous thing to love; but her I loved, my girl-mother, she whom now I saw…”

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

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.

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

He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.