W.E.B. Du Bois: “Such waste of energy cannot be spared if the South is to catch up with civilization.”

Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.

Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a…