W.E.B. Du Bois: “Slavery, then, was to him the dark triumph of Evil over him.”

Like all primitive folk, the slave stood near to Nature’s heart.

Words and music have lost each other and new and cant phrases of a dimly understood theology have displaced the older sentiment.

Of death the Negro showed little fear, but talked of it familiarly and even fondly as simply a crossing of the waters, perhaps—who knows?—back to his ancient forests again.

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.