W.E.B. Du Bois: “Thus did the United States government definitely assume charge of the emancipated Negro as the ward of the nation.”

But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.

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…

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.

The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the…