W.E.B. Du Bois: “We would see spring, summer, and the red riot of autumn, and then in winter, beneath the soft white snow, sleep and…”

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

They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at…

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe.

The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.