W.E.B. Du Bois: “From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned! ****** Hereditary bondsmen!”

Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!

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.

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

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.