W.E.B. Du Bois: “An institution such as that was well-nigh as difficult to end as to begin.”

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

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness…

Yet even then the hard ruthless rape of the land began to tell.

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