W.E.B. Du Bois: “Menial service is an anachronism,--the refuse of mediaeval barbarism.”

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.

The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.

In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.

The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the…