W.E.B. Du Bois: “Slowly they became, not white folks, but folks.”

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…

Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.