W.E.B. Du Bois: “The clang of the door of opportunity thus knelled in the ears of the colored house servant whirled the whole face of…”

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.

With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…

Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!

Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.