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f959192 Eastward and westward storms are breaking,--great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. I will not believe them inevitable. violence war faith wisdom hate-crimes civil-unrest faith-in-humanity peacism political-aggression political-turmoil syrian-civil-war we-can-do-better intolerance war-crimes black-history-month national-history-day nonviolent-conflict-resolution hope-for-the-future ukraine bigotry peace-movement cruelty prophecy peace crimean-war diplomacy russia W.E.B. Du Bois
c6d7790 I sit with and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with and , where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon and ... and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. shakespeare truth aurelius balzac dumas marcus-aurelius veil honoré-de-balzac aristotle william-shakespeare W.E.B. Du Bois
5e8cf36 The opposition to Negro education in the South was at first bitter, and showed itself in ashes, insult, and blood; for the South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. W.E.B. Du Bois
a146db4 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. W.E.B. Du Bois
b174bcf Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest wonderful. Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare. Thus in Thy good time may infini.. W.E.B. Du Bois
e114100 You will not wonder at his weird pilgrimage,-who who in the swift whifl of living, amid its cold paradox and marvelous vision, have fronted life and aked its riddle face to face. And if you find that riddle hard to read, remember that yonder black boy finds it just a little harder; if it is difficult for you to find and face your duty, it is a shade more difficult for him; if your heart sickens in the blood and dust of battle, remember that.. W.E.B. Du Bois
c08ac07 Not even ten additional years of slavery could have done so much to throttle the thrift of the freedmen as the mismanagement and bankruptcy of the series of savings banks chartered by the Nation for their especial aid. corruption legacy W.E.B. Du Bois
09b68f7 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 Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? talking-about-race W.E.B. Du Bois
c2625de It was not, then, race and culture calling out of the South in 1876; it was property and privilege, shrieking to its own kind, and privilege and property heard and recognized the voice of its own. reconstruction jim-crow privilege property race W.E.B. Du Bois
676922e Out of the temptation of Hate, and burned by the fire of Despair, triumphant over Doubt, and steeled by Sacrifice against Humiliation, . . . He bent to all the gibes and prejudices, to all hatred and discrimination with that rare courtesy which is the armor of pure souls. . . . he simply worked, inspiring the young, rebuking the old, helping the weak, guiding the strong. soul W.E.B. Du Bois
9d3fd21 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. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the wo.. W.E.B. Du Bois
788a010 All life long crying without avail, As the water all night long is crying to me. W.E.B. Du Bois
e37f92d When now we turn and look five miles above, there on the edge of town are five houses of prostitutes,--two of blacks and three of whites; and in one of the houses of the whites a worthless black boy was harbored too openly two years ago; so he was hanged for rape. And here, too, is the high whitewashed fence of the "stockade," as the county prison is called; the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals,--the black folks say that o.. injustice systemic-racism legacy W.E.B. Du Bois
4af0a06 Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But here ninety-six per cent are toiling; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of carele.. poverty W.E.B. Du Bois
f4e3541 What in the name of reason does this nation expect of a people, poorly trained and hard pressed in severe economic competition, without political rights, and with ludicrously inadequate common-school facilities? What can it expect but crime and listlessness, offset here and there by the dogged struggles of the fortunate and more determined who are themselves buoyed by the hope that in due time the country will come to its senses? prejudice poverty W.E.B. Du Bois
73ffd64 John," she said, "does it make every one--unhappy when they study and learn lots of things?" He paused and smiled. "I am afraid it does," he said." W.E.B. Du Bois
a2f8c1a VI. LOOKING BACKWARD How the planters, having lost the war for slavery, sought to begin again where they left off in 1860, mere substituting for the individual ownership of slaves, a new state serfdom of black folk. W.E.B. Du Bois
cebc9a6 There is in this world No such force as the force of A person determined to rise. W.E.B. Du Bois
19a9736 He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. W.E.B. Du Bois
23e1416 The white economic and political elite often failed to recognize blacks as American, just as blacks often failed to recognize their potential for advancement outside of the limited opportunities afforded them by whites. black-history W.E.B. Du Bois
93c90d9 Only in the chamber of death writhed the world's most piteous thing--a childless mother. W.E.B. Du Bois
bd1c8b5 the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,--a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and .. W.E.B. Du Bois
aad52ec its police system was arranged to deal with blacks alone, and tacitly assumed that every white man was ipso facto a member of that police. W.E.B. Du Bois
c03f427 At best, the natural good-nature is edged with complaint or has changed into sullenness and gloom. And now and then it blazes forth in veiled but hot anger. W.E.B. Du Bois
20fce63 He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. W.E.B. Du Bois
d67ac9e And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough one-ness with his age is a mark of the successful man. It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force. W.E.B. Du Bois
11ebc66 I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there. W.E.B. Du Bois
9f436e7 By the middle of the eighteenth century the black slave had sunk, with hushed murmurs, to his place at the bottom of a new economic system, and was unconsciously ripe for a new philosophy of life. Nothing suited his condition then better than the doctrines of passive submission embodied in the newly learned Christianity. Slave masters early realized this, and cheerfully aided religious propaganda within certain bounds. The long system of re.. W.E.B. Du Bois
0ea5ac9 What are these songs, and what do they mean? I know little of music and can say nothing in technical phrase, but I know something of men, and knowing them, I know that these songs are the articulate message of the slave to the world. They tell us in these eager days that life was joyous to the black slave, careless and happy. I can easily believe this of some, of many. But not all the past South, though it rose from the dead, can gainsay th.. W.E.B. Du Bois
e93a366 Not for me,--I shall die in my bonds,--but for fresh young souls who have not known the night and waken to the morning; a morning when men ask of the workman, not "Is he white?" but "Can he work?" When men ask artists, not "Are they black?" but "Do they know?" W.E.B. Du Bois
27c6ce7 perhaps, having already reached conclusions in our own minds, we are loth to have them disturbed by facts. W.E.B. Du Bois
ac7ab90 Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries, lacking though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen! truth righteous-anger W.E.B. Du Bois
7dbe702 The dangerously clear logic of the Negro's position will more and more loudly assert itself in that day when increasing wealth and more intricate social organization preclude the South from being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk. Such waste of energy cannot be spared if the South is to catch up with civilization. And as the black third of the land grows in thrift and skill, unless skilfully guided in it.. W.E.B. Du Bois
3fa3d93 One ever feels his two-ness--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. W.E.B. Du Bois
1345400 IX. THE PRICE OF DISASTER The price of the disaster of slavery and civil war was the necessity of quickly assimilating into American democracy a mass of ignorant laborers in whose hands alone for the moment lay the power of preserving the ideals of popular government; of overthrowing a slave economy and establishing upon it an industry primarily for the profit of the workers. It was this price which in the end America refused to pay and tod.. slavery reconstruction democracy W.E.B. Du Bois
c174b9b We may say, for instance, that nearly two-thirds of them cannot read or write. This but partially expresses the fact. They are ignorant of the world about them, of modern economic organization, of the function of government, of individual worth and possibilities,--of nearly all those things which slavery in self-defence had to keep them from learning. W.E.B. Du Bois
f5be249 The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization. Such an institution the South of to-day sorely needs. She has religion, earnest, bigoted:--religion that on both sides the Veil.. W.E.B. Du Bois
7050fcb VIII. TRANSUBSTANTIATION OF A POOR WHITE How Andrew Johnson, unexpectedly raised to the Presidency, was suddenly set between a democracy which included poor whites and black men, and an autocracy that included Big Business and slave barons; and how torn between impossible allegiances, he ended in forcing a hesitant nation to choose between the increased political power of a restored Southern oligarchy and votes for Negroes. W.E.B. Du Bois
531113a And the final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brick mason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living, not sordid money-getting... The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not fame. learning education school W.E.B. Du Bois
82b12b2 Thus all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent. history writing propaganda W.E.B. Du Bois
a8e0b25 Those whose eyes twenty-five and more years before had seen "the glory of the coming of the Lord," saw in every present hindrance or help a dark fatalism bound to bring all things right in His own good time. The mass of those to whom slavery was a dim recollection of childhood found the world a puzzling thing: it asked little of them, and they answered with little, and yet it ridiculed their offering. Such a paradox they could not understan.. progress hope obstacles W.E.B. Du Bois
4fad855 What rent do you pay here?" I inquired. "I don't know,--what is it, Sam?" "All we make," answered Sam. It is a depressing place,--bare, unshaded, with no charm of past association, only a memory of forced human toil,--now, then, and before the war. They are not happy, these black men whom we meet throughout this region. There is little of the joyous abandon and playfulness which we are wont to associate with the plantation Negro." sharecropping stereotype W.E.B. Du Bois
93225c8 with growing exploitation, until they fought slavery to save democracy and then lost democracy in a new and vaster slavery. W.E.B. Du Bois
fa03dfa Now it happens that both master and man have just enough argument on their respective sides to make it difficult for them to understand each other. The Negro dimly personifies in the white man all his ills and misfortunes; if he is poor, it is because the white man seizes the fruit of his toil; if he is ignorant, it is because the white man gives him neither time nor facilities to learn; and, indeed, if any misfortune happens to him, it is .. race-relations misunderstanding W.E.B. Du Bois
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