To me Jubilee Hall seemed ever made of the songs themselves, and its bricks were red with the blood and dust of toil.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “To me Jubilee Hall seemed ever made of the songs themselves, and its bricks were red with the blood and dust of toil.”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois elaborates on his perception of Jubilee Hall as a physical embodiment of the spirituals, built through the immense labor and suffering of Black people.
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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.
So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?
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.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.