W.E.B. Du Bois: “A voice and vision called him to be a priest,—a seer to lead the uncalled out of the house of bondage.”

So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.

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.

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.