Working list of Du Bois quotations drawn from the collection, organized by chapter section. Each entry includes the quote, source article, and suggested placement.
"The object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested to-day toward colored people. It takes its name from the fact that the editors believe that this is a critical time in the history of the advancement of men."
Source: "The Crisis" (Vol. 1, No. 1, Nov. 1910) Use: Opening section — establishes Du Bois's founding vision in his own words. Could open the entire chapter.
"Its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempt to gain these rights and realize these ideals."
Source: "The Crisis" (Vol. 1, No. 1, Nov. 1910) Use: Opening section — the programmatic ambition.
"Some good friends of the cause we represent fear agitation. They say: 'Do not agitate—do not make a noise; work.' … A toothache is agitation. Is a toothache a good thing? No. Is it therefore useless? No. It is supremely useful, for it tells the body of decay, dyspepsia and death."
Source: "Agitation" (Vol. 1, No. 1, Nov. 1910) Use: Opening or Establishing section — captures Du Bois's rhetorical style and combative editorial posture from the very first issue.
"The function of this Association is to tell this nation the crying evil of race prejudice. It is a hard duty but a necessary one—a divine one. It is Pain; Pain is not good but Pain is necessary."
Source: "Agitation" (Vol. 1, No. 1, Nov. 1910) Use: Establishing section — distills the NAACP/Crisis mission.
"This is The Crisis of the world. … Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy."
Source: "Close Ranks" (Vol. 16, No. 3, Jan. 1918) Use: War section — the controversial editorial that drew sharp criticism.
"We are returning from war! … For bleeding France and what she means and has meant and will mean to us and humanity and against the threat of German race arrogance, we fought gladly and to the last drop of blood; for America and her highest ideals, we fought in far-off hope; for the dominant southern oligarchy entrenched in Washington, we fought in bitter resignation."
Source: "Returning Soldiers" (Vol. 18, No. 1, May 1919) Use: War section — the record-selling issue, shows Du Bois's rhetorical power.
"We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting. Make way for Democracy! We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America, or know the reason why."
Source: "Returning Soldiers" (Vol. 18, No. 1, May 1919) Use: War section — the most quotable passage in the collection. Could close the War section.
"It lynches. … It disfranchises its own citizens. … It encourages ignorance. … It steals from us. … It insults us."
Source: "Returning Soldiers" (Vol. 18, No. 1, May 1919) Use: War section — shows Du Bois's rhetorical structure (the anaphoric indictment).
"The leaders of the race are powerless to prevent his going. They had nothing to do with it, and, indeed, all of them, for obvious reasons, are opposed to the exodus. The movement started without any head from the masses, and such movements are always significant."
Source: "The Migration of Negroes" (Vol. 14, No. 2, Jun. 1917), quoting a Mississippi preacher Use: War/Migration section — captures the grassroots nature of the Great Migration.
"If you thought you might be lynched by mistake, would you remain in South Carolina? Ask yourself that question if you dare."
Source: "The Migration of Negroes" (Vol. 14, No. 2, Jun. 1917), quoting the Columbia, S.C. State Use: War/Migration section — a white Southern newspaper admitting the truth. Powerful because it comes from a white source.
"A little girl writes us … 'I want to learn more about my race, so I want to begin early. … I hate the white man just as much as he hates me and probably more!' Think of this from twelve little years! And yet, can you blame the child?"
Source: "The True Brownies" (Vol. 18, No. 6, Apr. 1919) Use: War section (Brownie's Book passage) — Du Bois's motivation for creating a children's magazine.
"It will seek to teach Universal Love and Brotherhood for all little folk—black and brown and yellow and white."
Source: "The True Brownies" (Vol. 18, No. 6, Apr. 1919) Use: War section — concise statement of The Brownie's Book's purpose.
"All Negro governments and groups and all Negro organizations interested in the peoples of African descent will be invited to participate."
Source: "Pan-Africa" (Vol. 21, No. 3, Jan. 1921) Use: War section — Du Bois's internationalist ambition.
"There have been times when we writers of the older set have been afraid that the procession of those who seek to express the life of the American Negro was thinning and that none were coming forward to fill the footsteps of the fathers. … But even as we ask 'Where are the young Negro artists to mold and weld this mighty material about us?'—even as we ask, they come."
Source: "The Younger Literary Movement" (Vol. 27, No. 4, Feb. 1924) Use: Harlem Renaissance section — Du Bois welcoming the new generation.
"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."
Source: "Criteria of Negro Art" (Vol. 32, No. 6, Apr. 1926) Use: Harlem Renaissance section — the defining statement of Du Bois's aesthetic philosophy.
"What do we want? What is the thing we are after? … We who are dark can see America in a way that white Americans can not. And seeing our country thus, are we satisfied with its present goals and ideals?"
Source: "Criteria of Negro Art" (Vol. 32, No. 6, Apr. 1926) Use: Harlem Renaissance section — connects art to political vision.
"We black folk may help for we have within us as a race new stirrings; stirrings of the beginning of a new appreciation of joy, of a new desire to create, of a new will to be."
Source: "Criteria of Negro Art" (Vol. 32, No. 6, Apr. 1926) Use: Harlem Renaissance section — lyrical register, shows Du Bois the prose stylist.
"We shall stress Beauty—all Beauty, but especially the beauty of Negro life and character; its music, its dancing, its drawing and painting and the new birth of its literature."
Source: "The New Crisis" (Vol. 30, No. 1, May 1925) Use: Harlem Renaissance section — Du Bois's programmatic commitment to art.
"The Crisis is going to be more frankly critical of the Negro group. … We are seriously crippling Negro art and literature by refusing to contemplate any but handsome heroes, unblemished heroines and flawless defenders."
Source: "The New Crisis" (Vol. 30, No. 1, May 1925) Use: Harlem Renaissance section — shows Du Bois's willingness to criticize his own community.
"The editor of The Crisis considers himself a Socialist but he does not believe that German State Socialism or the dictatorship of the proletariat are perfect panaceas. He believes with most thinking men that the present method of creating, controlling and distributing wealth is desperately wrong; that there must come and is coming a social control of wealth; but he does not know just what form that control is going to take."
Source: "The Negro and Radical Thought" (Vol. 22, No. 3, Jan. 1921) Use: Economic Crisis section — Du Bois's socialist self-identification with characteristic intellectual honesty about uncertainty.
"How far can the colored people of the world, and particularly the Negroes of the United States, trust the working classes?"
Source: "The Negro and Radical Thought" (Vol. 22, No. 3, Jan. 1921) Use: Economic Crisis section — the central question of Du Bois's engagement with socialism.
"The thinking colored people of the United States must stop being stampeded by the word segregation. The opposition to racial segregation is not or should not be any distaste or unwillingness of colored people to work with each other, to cooperate with each other, to live with each other. The opposition to segregation is an opposition to discrimination."
Source: "Segregation" (Vol. 41, No. 1, Jan. 1934) Use: Final Struggles section — the provocative opening of the editorial that triggered his departure.
"It is the race-conscious black man cooperating together in his own institutions and movements who will eventually emancipate the colored race, and the great step ahead today is for the American Negro to accomplish his economic emancipation through voluntary determined cooperative effort."
Source: "Segregation" (Vol. 41, No. 1, Jan. 1934) Use: Final Struggles section — Du Bois's late vision of economic self-determination.
"So long as I sit by quietly consenting, I share responsibility. If I criticize within, my words fall on deaf ears. If I criticize openly, I seem to be washing dirty linen in public. There is but one recourse, complete and final withdrawal."
Source: "Dr. Du Bois Resigns" (Vol. 41, No. 8, Aug. 1934) Use: Final Struggles section — Du Bois's own explanation, in the sharpest possible terms.
"Today this organization, which has been great and effective for nearly a quarter of a century, finds itself in a time of crisis and change, without a program, without effective organization, without executive officers, who have either the ability or disposition to guide the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the right direction."
Source: "Dr. Du Bois Resigns" (Vol. 41, No. 8, Aug. 1934) Use: Final Struggles section — Du Bois's indictment of the organization he helped build.
"He created, what never existed before, a Negro intelligentsia, and many who have never read a word of his writings are his spiritual disciples and descendants. Without him the Association could never have been what it was and is."
Source: "Dr. Du Bois Resigns" (Vol. 41, No. 8, Aug. 1934), NAACP Board resolution Use: Final Struggles or Closing — the NAACP's own assessment of Du Bois's impact. Powerful because it comes from the organization that forced him out.
"He has been charged with dishonesty and graft, but he seems to me essentially an honest and sincere man with a tremendous vision, great dynamic force, stubborn determination and unselfish desire to serve; but also he has very serious defects of temperament and training: he is dictatorial, domineering, inordinately vain and very suspicious."
Source: "Marcus Garvey" (Vol. 21, No. 2, Dec. 1920) Use: War section (Garvey passage) — shows Du Bois's capacity for fair-minded assessment of a rival.
"All this, we admit, is an enormous task for a magazine of 52 pages, selling for 15 cents and paying all of its own expenses out of that 15 cents and not out of the bribes of Big Business."
Source: "The New Crisis" (Vol. 30, No. 1, May 1925) Use: Closing section — captures the material constraints and independence of The Crisis, good for framing the collection.
Total quotations gathered: 28 Sources: 10 articles spanning 1910–1934 Coverage by section:
- Opening/Mission: 4 quotations (Q1–Q4)
- War and Aftermath: 9 quotations (Q5–Q13)
- Harlem Renaissance: 6 quotations (Q14–Q19)
- Economic Crisis: 2 quotations (Q20–Q21)
- Final Struggles: 6 quotations (Q22–Q27)
- Closing: 1 quotation (Q28)
Next step: Select ~12–15 of these for integration into the revised chapter. Not all will be used — some are alternatives for the same placement.