W.E.B. Du Bois: “And yet the third time the woman shrank at the thunder in her ears, and whispered: "Dear God, I am black!”

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

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe.

He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.