W.E.B. Du Bois: “Without wider, deeper intelligence among the masses Democracy cannot accomplish its greater ends.”

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

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.

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

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…