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

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), The Forethought

Context In the opening note of his essay collection on Black life in the United States a generation after Emancipation, Du Bois named racial division as the century's central issue.

Portrait of W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du BoisUnited States · 1868–1963
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