W.E.B. Du Bois: “The centre of this spiritual turmoil has ever been the millions of black freedmen and their sons, whose destiny is so…”

So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.

I know little of music and can say nothing in technical phrase, but I know something of men, and knowing them, I know that these songs are the articulate message of the slave to the world.

The things evidently borrowed from the surrounding world undergo characteristic change when they enter the mouth of the slave.

They are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.