W.E.B. Du Bois: “History is but the record of such group-leadership; and yet how infinitely changeful is its type and character!”

The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.

Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.

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.

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.