W.E.B. Du Bois: “Why, then, devour your own vitals if I answer even as proudly, "I am black!”

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.

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…

One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.