W.E.B. Du Bois: “And to all this must be added the obvious fact that a slave ancestry and a system of unrequited toil has not improved…”

The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.

I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.

A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.