having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in
the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to
husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These
powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely
wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty
Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy
and of Egypt the Sphinx. Through history, the powers of
single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and
die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their
brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emanci-
pation, the black man's turning hither and thither in hesitant
and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose
effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness.
And yet it is not weakness,--it is the contradiction of double
aims. The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan--on the
one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere
hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand
to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde--
could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but
half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of
his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward
quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other
world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly
tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the
paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-
told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which
would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and
blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the