In March 1900, William Edward Burghart Du Bois addressed the third annual meeting of the American Negro Academy on “the present outlook for the dark races of mankind.” He cautioned, though
It is natural for us to consider that our race question is a purely national and local affair, confined to nine million Americans and settled when their rights and opportunities are assured. … a glance over the world at the dawn of a new century will convince us that this is but the be-ginning of the problem—that the color line belts the world and that the social problem of the twentieth century is to be the relation of the civilized world to the dark races of mankind. If we start eastward tonight and land on the continent of Africa we land in the center of the greater Negro problem—of the world problem of the black man. (1996 [1900]: 47–48)