In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois emphasizes how the yearning for liberty permeated every aspect of the spiritual and emotional life of enslaved African Americans.
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Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.
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.
Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.