W.E.B. Du Bois: “Dust, dust and ashes, fly over my grave, But the Lord shall bear my spirit home.”

Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.

One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Yet even then the hard ruthless rape of the land began to tell.

The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for…