In fact, we Negroes are but facing in our own children a world problem: how can we, while maintaining a proper output of goods and furnishing needed services, increase the knowledge of experience of common men and conserve genius for the common weal?
Du Bois reflects on the challenge of balancing economic productivity with the intellectual development of the community.
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The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.
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…
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.