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honestly and effectively; to push the matter of civil rights; to organize business cooperation; to build schoolhouses and increase the interest in education; to bring Negroes and labor unions into mutual understanding; to study Negro History; to attack crime among us . . . to do all in our power by word and by deed to increase the efficiency of our race, the enjoyment of its manhood rights, and the performance of its just duties. This is a large program. It cannot be realized in a short time . . . (But) this is the critical time."1

DuBois correctly predicted then that the struggle of the 20th Century would be the struggle of the color line.

From before DuBois' time until today, Black Americans have generally followed his prescription for action, pursuing civil rights, economic justice, and entrance into the mainstream of American life.

The years since then saw gains won at lunch counters and movie theatres and polling places, and the fabric of legal segregation was destroyed. What had begun as a movement for
elemental civil rights has now become largely a political and an economic movement, and black men and women hold office and weld power in numbers we never dreamed of before.

Despite impressive increases in the number of Black people holding public office, and despite our ability to sit and eat and ride and vote in places which used to bar Black faces, in some ways non-white Americans are worse off in the present than in the

1. W.E.B. DuBois, The Voice of the Negro (Atlanta).

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