W.E.B. Du Bois: “Such possible voters must be regarded, not as sharers of a limited treasure, but as sources of new national wisdom and…”

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.

I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.

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

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.