W.E.B. Du Bois: “Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than…”

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.

He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

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.

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