Ad Ninam May 12, 1896...

These are the things of which men think, who live: of their own selves and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and service; of rule and reason and women and children; of B...

I believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and ...

I was born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The house was quaint, with clapboards running up and down, neatly trimmed, and there ...

O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days⁠— Hear us, good Lord! Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mock...

High in the tower, where I sit above the loud complaining of the human sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk. Of th...

Dark daughter of the lotus leaves that watch the Southern Sea! Wan spirit of a prisoned soul a-panting to be free! The muttered music of thy streams, the whisper of the deep, Have kissed each other in...

“Semper novi quid ex Africa,” cried the Roman proconsul, and he voiced the verdict of forty centuries. Yet there are those who would write world history and leave out of account this most marvelous of...

Her soul was beautiful, wherefore she kept it veiled in lightly-laced humility and fear, out of which peered anxiously and anon the white and blue and pale-gold of her face,⁠—beautiful as daybreak or ...

For fifteen years I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of plann...

Three bishops sat in San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York, peering gloomily into three flickering fires, which cast and recast shuddering shadows on book-lined walls. Three letters lay in their la...

The lady looked at me severely; I glanced away. I had addressed the little audience at some length on the disfranchisement of my people in society, politics, and industry and had studiously avoided th...

It was in Waco, Texas. The convict guard laughed. “I don’t know,” he said, “I hadn’t thought of that.” He hesitated and looked at the stranger curiously. In the solemn twilight he got an impression of...

The ruling of men is the effort to direct the individual actions of many persons toward some end. This end theoretically should be the greatest good of all, but no human group has ever reached this id...

In the Land of the Heavy Laden came once a dreary day. And the King, who sat upon the Great White Throne, raised his eyes and saw afar off how the hills around were hot with hostile feet and the sound...

I remember four women of my boyhood: my mother, cousin Inez, Emma, and Ide Fuller. They represented the problem of the widow, the wife, the maiden, and the outcast. They were, in color, brown and ligh...

I am dead; Yet somehow, somewhere, In Time’s weird contradiction, I May tell of that dread deed, wherewith I brought to Children of the Moon Freedom and vast salvation. I was a woman born, And trod th...

If a man die shall he live again? We do not know. But this we do know, that our children’s children live forever and grow and develop toward perfection as they are trained. All human problems, then, c...

Softly, quite softly⁠— For I hear, above the murmur of the sea, Faint and far-fallen footsteps, as of One Who comes from out beyond the endless ends of Time, With voice that downward looms thro’ singi...

For long years we of the world gone wild have looked into the face of death and smiled. Through all our bitter tears we knew how beautiful it was to die for that which our souls called sufficient. Lik...

Name of God’s Name! Red murder reigns; All hell is loose; On gold autumnal air Walk grinning devils, barbed and hoofed; While high on hills of hate, Black-blossomed, crimson-sky’d, Thou sittest, dumb....

He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world⁠—“nothing!” as...

O Truce of God! And primal meeting of the Sons of Man, Foreshadowing the union of the World! From all the ends of earth we come! Old Night, the elder sister of the Day, Mother of Dawn in the golden Ea...

For Joseph Pulitzer, October 29, 1911. ↩...