W.E.B. Du Bois: “The simplest object would be rule for the Pleasure of One, namely the Ruler; or of the Few--his favorites; or of…”

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.

So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.

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.

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.