W.E.B. Du Bois: “An immediate abolition of slavery would bring ruin upon the whites, and misery upon the blacks, in the southern states.”

But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.

If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?