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.
Du Bois describes the profound sorrow and hidden aspirations embedded within the spirituals.
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The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.
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.
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.