W.E.B. Du Bois: “Considering carefully this series of happenings the American Negro sensed an approaching crisis and faced a puzzling…”

The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe.

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

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.