W.E.B. Du Bois: “Through all our bitter tears we knew how beautiful it was to die for that which our souls called sufficient.”

Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.

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.

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

So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?