W.E.B. Du Bois: “Our great ethical question today is, therefore, how may we justly distribute the world's goods to satisfy the necessary…”

The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.

All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.