W.E.B. Du Bois: “It would certainly be soothing if one could readily believe all this; and yet there are too many ugly facts for…”

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.

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…

By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.

Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.