W.E.B. Du Bois: “To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.

Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…

Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.