W.E.B. Du Bois: “Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by…”

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

But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.

To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes…

One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.