W.E.B. Du Bois: “Upon this African mother-idea, the westward slave trade and American slavery struck like doom.”

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.

Yet even then the hard ruthless rape of the land began to tell.

All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.

The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.