W.E.B. Du Bois: “Surely Thou, too, art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing!”

But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.

If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.

Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.