Debs is greater than Lincoln. Debs is the spokesman of the great struggling working class of all races, nationalities, creeds, sexes.

Lincoln was the spokesman of the rising capitalist class of the North, who viewed the emancipation of Negro slaves as indispensable to the development and triumph of the manufacturers and bankers of the industrial North, East and West over the slave-holder of the South.

Lincoln merely nominally freed the bodies of Negroes. But Debs would free the bodies and minds of Negroes.

Salvation for a race, nation or class must come from within.

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.

I don't ever remember a single day of hopelessness. I knew from the history of the labor movement, especially of the black people, that it was an undertaking of great trial. That, live or die, I had to stick with it, and we had to win.