W.E.B. Du Bois: “I saw life through all its paradox and contradiction of streaming eyes and mad merriment.”

The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for…

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.

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

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.