W.E.B. Du Bois: “For this, their promise, and for their hard past, I honor the women of my race.”

Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.

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

The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.

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…