I ask to help in social uplift.
"Why—er—we will write you."
I enter the free field of science. Every laboratory door is closed and no endowments are available.
I seek the universal mistress, Art; the studio door is locked.
I write literature. "We cannot publish stories of colored folks of that type." It's the only type I know.
This is my life. It makes me idiotic. It gives me artificial problems. I hesitate, I rush, I waver. In fine,—I am sensitive!
My pale friend looks at me with disbelief and curling tongue.
"Do you mean to sit there and tell me that this is what happens to you each day?"
Certainly not, I answer low.
"Then you only fear it will happen?"