W.E.B. Du Bois: “He knew no color-line, poor dear—and the Veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun.”

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…

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.

Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.