W.E.B. Du Bois: “Are Negroes human, or, if human, developed far enough to absorb, even under benevolent tutelage, any appreciable part of…”

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.

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

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.

By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.