W.E.B. Du Bois: “The cry there is, want of labor, notwithstanding capital has the pauperism of the old world to press into its grinding…”

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.

One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.

So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.