W.E.B. Du Bois: “Children scream and run and frolic, and all is good and human and beautiful and ugly and evil, even as Life is…”

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.

With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…

But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.

Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.