W.E.B. Du Bois: “Is the appeal from a numerous-minded despot to a smaller, privileged group or to one man likely to remedy matters…”

By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.

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

I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.

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…