W.E.B. Du Bois: “Out of this may come strength, poise, self-dependence, and out of it, too, may come bewilderment, cringing deception…”

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.

The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.