W.E.B. Du Bois: “Out of little, unspoiled souls rise up wonderful resources and healing balm.”

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at…

A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.

Yet even then the hard ruthless rape of the land began to tell.