W.E.B. Du Bois: “In Central Park I have seen the upper lip of a quiet, peaceful man curl back in a tigerish snarl of rage because black…”

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.

Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.

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

But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.