And after the first flush of freedom wore off, and his true helplessness dawned on the freedman, he came back and picked up his hoe, and old master still doled out his bacon and meal.
Du Bois illustrates the harsh reality that many freedmen, facing destitution, were compelled to return to a system of economic dependence reminiscent of slavery.
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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.
Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to…
But not all the past South, though it rose from the dead, can gainsay the heart-touching witness of these songs.
Words and music have lost each other and new and cant phrases of a dimly understood theology have displaced the older sentiment.