W.E.B. Du Bois: “Seeking counsels of our own souls' perfection, we have despised and rejected the possible increasing perfection of…”

But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.

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.

All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.