Shortly after this I was made a member of the boys choir, it being found that I possessed a clear, strong soprano voice. I enjoyed the singing very much.

My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.

O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?

But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.

Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race; through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy, they will liberally assist in his elevation.

As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.

...evil is a force and, like the physical and chemical forces, we cannot annihilate it; we may only change its form. We light upon one evil and hit it with all the might of our civilization, but only succeed in scattering it into a dozen of other forms