W.E.B. Du Bois: “Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded…”

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.

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.

Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.