W.E.B. Du Bois: “Sleep, then, child,—sleep till I sleep and waken to a baby voice and the ceaseless patter of little feet—above the Veil.”

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…

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?

But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.