its a figure, veiled and bowed, by which
the traveler's footsteps hasten as they go. On the tainted air broods
fear. Three centuries' thought has been the raising and unveiling of
that bowed human heart, and now, behold, my fellows, a century new
for the duty and the deed. The problem of the twentieth century is the
problem of the color line.

OF THE TRAINING OF BLACK MEN by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

From the shimmering swirl of waters where many, many thoughts ago the
slave-ship first saw the square tower of Jamestown have flowed down to
our day three streams of thinking: one from the larger world here and
over-seas, saying, the multiplying of human wants in culture lands calls
for the world-wide co-operation of men in satisfying them. Hence arises
a new human unity, pulling the ends of earth nearer, and all men, black,
yellow, and white. The larger humanity strives to feel in this contact
of living nations and sleeping hordes a thrill of new life in the world,
crying, If the contact of Life and Sleep be Death, shame on such Life.
To be sure, behind this thought lurks the afterthought of force and
dominion,--the making of brown men to delve when the temptation of beads
and red calico cloys.

The second thought streaming from the death-ship and the curving river
is the thought of the older South: the sincere and passionate belief
that somewhere between men and cattle God created a tertium quid, and
called it a Negro,--a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable
within its limitations, but straitly foreordained to walk within the
Veil. To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought,--some of
them with favoring chance might become men, but in sheer self-defense we
dare not let them, and build about them walls so high, and hang between
them and the light a veil so thick, that they shall not even think of
breaking through.

And last of all there trickles down that third and darker thought, the
thought of the things themselves, the confused half-conscious mutter
of men who are black and whitened, crying Liberty, Freedom,
Opportunity--vouchsafe to us, O boastful World, the chance of living
men! To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought: suppose,
after all, the World is right and we are less than men? Suppose this mad
impulse within is all wrong, some mock mirage from the untrue?

So here we stand among thoughts of human unity, even through conquest
and slavery; the inferiority of black me