W.E.B. Du Bois: “We did buy seven hundred acres across up yonder, and paid for it; but they cheated us out of it.”

So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.

Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…

Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.

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