Whiteness is ownership of the earth.

The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?

[We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds.

A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.

For education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.