W.E.B. Du Bois: “On the other hand, the whites, used to being careless as to the guilt or innocence of accused Negroes, were swept in…”

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.

But the world listened only half credulously until the Fisk Jubilee Singers sang the slave songs so deeply into the world’s heart that it can never wholly forget them again.

But not all the past South, though it rose from the dead, can gainsay the heart-touching witness of these songs.

Mother and child are sung, but seldom father; fugitive and weary wanderer call for pity and affection, but there is little of wooing and wedding; the rocks and the mountains are well known, but home is unknown.