W.E.B. Du Bois: “Surely not and surely, too, the remedy for absolutism lies in calling these same minorities to council.”

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

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

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?

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…