W.E.B. Du Bois: “To me Jubilee Hall seemed ever made of the songs themselves, and its bricks were red with the blood and dust of toil.”

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.

Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.

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…

Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.