W.E.B. Du Bois: “I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.”

A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.

This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of…

Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.

The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.