W.E.B. Du Bois: “All the colors of the sea lie about us--gray and yellowing greens and doubtful blues, blacks not quite black, tinted…”

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.

Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of…

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.