One ever feels his
twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts,
two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark
body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn
asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this
strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge
his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he
wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not
Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the
world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a
flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood
has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it
possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American,
without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without
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.
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