Michael, haul the boat ashore, Then you’ll hear the horn they blow, Then you’ll hear the trumpet sound, Trumpet sound the world around, Trumpet sound for rich and poor, Trumpet sound the Jubilee, Trumpet sound for you and me.
W.E.B. Du Bois
The Public Record
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, writer, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. He completed graduate work at Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate. He was a professor at Atlanta University and over the course of his life wrote many books and articles. He spent the last years of his life in Ghana and died in Accra on August 27, 1963.
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Dust, dust and ashes, fly over my grave, But the Lord shall bear my spirit home.
Life was a “rough and rolling sea” like the brown Atlantic of the Sea Islands; the “Wilderness” was the home of God, and the “lonesome valley” led to the way of life.
Purely secular songs are few in number, partly because many of them were turned into hymns by a change of words, partly because the frolics were seldom heard by the stranger, and the music less often caught.
The last master song is the song of songs—“Steal away,”—sprung from “The Faith of the Fathers.
The third song is the cradle-song of death which all men know,—“Swing low, sweet chariot,”—whose bars begin the life story of “Alexander Crummell.” Then there is the song of many waters, “Roll, Jordan, roll,” a mighty chorus with minor…
Ten master songs, more or less, one may pluck from the forest of melody-songs of undoubted Negro origin and wide popular currency, and songs peculiarly characteristic of the slave.
The white people of Altamaha are not spending their money on black folks to have their heads crammed with impudence and lies.
Nevertheless, he struggled hopefully on, and seemed to see at last some glimmering of dawn.
Now I like the colored people, and sympathize with all their reasonable aspirations; but you and I both know, John, that in this country the Negro must remain subordinate, and can never expect to be the equal of white men.
He had come to save his people, and before he left the depot he had hurt them.
What difference does it make whether a man be baptized in river or washbowl, or not at all?