W.E.B. Du Bois: “The black beggar is never turned away without a good deal more than a crust, and a call for help for the unfortunate…”

Thus we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.

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

He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.