One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.

Written on 26 June 1957, what he said was his final message to the world. It was read at his funeral in 1963. As reported in: W. E. B. Du Bois: Scholar and Activist (Infobase Publishing, 2009), p. 102