W.E.B. Du Bois: “Better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you.”

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.

Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.