W.E.B. Du Bois: “Now, is this a minor matter which has no influence on the main question of the industrial and intellectual development…”

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.

He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.

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