W.E.B. Du Bois: “The Negro church has done much to stop this practice, and now most marriage ceremonies are performed by the pastors.”

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…

With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…

In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.

The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.