W.E.B. Du Bois: “Sometime, we trust—sincerely trust—all such distinctions will fade away; but now the world is as it is.”

The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.

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.

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…