“Feeling the capacity to be,

to live,

to act,

to pour out the spirit of their souls into concrete and objective form with a high fervor born of their racial characteristics,

they glide through our complex civilization like wailing ghosts;

they spin like fiery planets lost from their orbits;

they wither and die like trees ripped from native soil.”

— excerpt from Book Three: Fate of Native Son by Richard Wright, 1940