W.E.B. Du Bois: “Quite--quite craven is my fear, I admit; but the terrible thing is--these things do happen!”

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

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.

In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.