The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, - this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American.

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done.

Lord, make us mindful of the little things that grow and blossom in these days to make the world beautiful for us.

There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.

How hard a thing is life to the lowly and yet how human and real is it? And all this life and love and strife and failure, - is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day? The answer lies in each of us. For somewhere in your past ... somewhere some 100 years ago?there rose from the smoldering ashes of slavery?a proud and humble family who suffered and struggled with life. A family who found the strength to endure all the indignities of life in America, and that family had the hope for a taste of her bounties in the future.

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

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