W.E.B. Du Bois: “And yet it is the centre of a hundred cabin homes; and sometimes, of a Sunday, five hundred persons from far and near…”

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.

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…

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.

So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.