W.E.B. Du Bois: “In industry, monarchy and the aristocracy rule, and there are those who, calling themselves democratic, believe that…”

Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.

I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.

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.

Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.