W.E.B. Du Bois: “This widespread custom of two centuries has not been eradicated in thirty years.”

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.

The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.

In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.

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.