W.E.B. Du Bois: “I did not love it then; it seemed a ludicrous thing to love; but her I loved, my girl-mother, she whom now I saw…”

Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…

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…

Would America have been America without her Negro people?

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