Some seer he seemed, that came not from the crimson Past or the gray To-come, but from the pulsing Now,—that mocking world which seemed to me at once so light and dark, so splendid and sordid.
This sentence from The Souls of Black Folk further elaborates on Du Bois's perception of Alexander Crummell as a wise figure deeply connected to the complexities of the present moment.
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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.
They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at…
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.