I have seen twelve-year-old boys working in chains on the public streets of Atlanta, directly in front of the schools, in company with old and hardened criminals; and this indiscriminate mingling of men and women and children makes the chain-gangs perfect schools of crime and debauchery.
Du Bois provides a stark eyewitness account of the chain-gang system in the South, highlighting its detrimental effects on youth.
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Some, like “Near the lake where drooped the willow,” passed into current airs and their source was forgotten; others were caricatured on the “minstrel” stage and their memory died away.
Words and music have lost each other and new and cant phrases of a dimly understood theology have displaced the older sentiment.
But the true Negro folk-song still lives in the hearts of those who have heard them truly sung and in the hearts of the Negro people.
Their appearance was uncouth, their language funny, but their hearts were human and their singing stirred men with a mighty power.