W.E.B. Du Bois: “Such souls aforetime have inspired and guided worlds, and if we be not wholly bewitched by our Rhinegold, they shall…”

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness…

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

So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.