perhaps, having already reached conclusions in our own minds, we are loth to have them disturbed by facts. - W. E. B. Du Bois

Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries, lacking though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen!

"When now we turn and look five miles above, there on the edge of town are five houses of prostitutes, — two of blacks and three of whites; and in one of the houses of the whites a worthless black boy was harbored too openly two years ago; so he was hanged for rape. And here, too, is the high whitewashed fence of the "stockade," as the county prison is called; the white folks say it is ever full of black criminals, — the black folks say that only colored boys are sent to jail, and they not because they are guilty, but because the State needs criminals to eke out its income by their forced labor."

To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.