W.E.B. Du Bois: “Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her…”

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness…

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.

Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.