Black passengers getting off in Washington had nothing to worry about. But for those continuing south, the crews who ran the train, the porters who h… - Isabel Wilkerson

He had learned that fear when he was little and once passed the white people’s church. The kids came out of the church when they saw him. They threw rocks and bricks and called him the vilest names that could spring from a southern tongue. And he asked his grandparents, ‘What kind of god they got up inside that church?

They fly from the land: W. H. Stillwell, “Exode,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, March 12, 1881. The stanza reads: “They fly from the land that bore them, as the Hebrews fled the Nile; from the heavy burthens [sic] o’er them; from unpaid tasks before them; from a serfdom base and vile.

It is important for our white citizens always to remember that the Negroes alone of all our immigrants came to America against their will by the special compelling invitation of the whites; that the institution of slavery was introduced, expanded and maintained by the United States by the white people and for their own benefit; and they likewise created the conditions that followed emancipation. Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro’s making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance.…