The first great essential is that the civilized world believe in its possibility.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The first great essential is that the civilized world believe in its possibility.”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois stresses the importance of global belief in the possibility of an independent African state.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
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.
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.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.