The passing of a great human institution before its work is done, like the untimely passing of a single soul, but leaves a legacy of striving for other men.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The passing of a great human institution before its work is done, like the untimely passing of a single soul, but leaves…”
Editor's note · Context
This passage reflects on the enduring impact when significant human endeavors conclude prematurely, leaving tasks for future generations.
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He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.
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.
Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a…
Thus we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy.