W.E.B. Du Bois: “The best families had their drunkards and the worst had little else.”

Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.

Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.