W.E.B. Du Bois: “They despise the submission and subserviency of the Southern Negroes, but offer no other means by which a poor and…”

Of death the Negro showed little fear, but talked of it familiarly and even fondly as simply a crossing of the waters, perhaps—who knows?—back to his ancient forests again.

Then in after years when I came to Nashville I saw the great temple builded of these songs towering over the pale city.

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.

The words that are left to us are not without interest, and, cleared of evident dross, they conceal much of real poetry and meaning beneath conventional theology and unmeaning rhapsody.