W.E.B. Du Bois: “Lastly, among such conditions of life there are few incentives to make the laborer become a better farmer.”

This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of…

He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.

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