“All this life and love and strife and failure––is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?” –– The Wisdom of WEB Du Bois The first half of the twentieth century in the United States and much of the world was an era when racial and ethnic differences determined even the most uncontrived actions. Stepping into a restaurant, boarding a train, engaging in sexual relationships, or running or voting for a public office were all ruled by notions of differences between groups. Race remained an element that tempted society in general and historians in particular to half-truths, shortsightedness, and outright falsifications. However, as W.E.B. Du Bois noted in his many observations on the nature of history, it was important to realize that the record of human interaction was much more than an account of entanglements between people with varying shades of skin color. It was also the log of humankind’s ability or inability to rise above age-old phobi...