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“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas…”

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), chapter VI

Context In the chapter “Of the Training of Black Men”, Du Bois defended higher education for Black Americans at a time when industrial training was widely favored.

Portrait of W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du BoisUnited States · 1868–1963
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“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”
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“Education must not simply teach work — it must teach Life.”
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“Work, culture, liberty — all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each…”
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“We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil, and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America.”
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