W.E.B. Du Bois: “But the Brute said in his breast, “Till the mills I grind have ceased, The riches shall be dust of dust, dry ashes be…”

But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?