“I honor the women of my race. Their beauty, their dark and mysterious beauty of midnight eyes, crumpled hair, and soft, full-featured faces- is perhaps more to me than to you, because I was born to its warm and subtle spell but their worth is yours as well as mine. No other women on earth could have emerged from the hell of force and temptation which once engulfed and still surrounds black women in America with half the modesty and womanliness they still retain. I have always felt like bowing myself before them in all abasement, searching to bring some tribute to these long-suffering victims, these burdened sisters of mine, whom the world, the wise, white world, loves to affront and ridicule and wantonly insult.”
W.E.B. Du Bois in “The Damnation of Women” (an essay)
(via leebasays)