W.E.B. Du Bois: “But they will guide her over and beyond them, and leave her kneeling in the Sanctuary of Truth and Freedom and broad…”

Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.

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

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.