W.E.B. Du Bois: “It was my first introduction to a Negro world, and I was at once marvelously inspired and deeply depressed.”

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

Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.

Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.

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…