The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition.

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.

This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.

My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that after all I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage

Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience.

There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.