W.E.B. Du Bois: “Indeed, the characteristic of our age is the contact of European civilization with the world’s undeveloped peoples.”

They came to New York and Henry Ward Beecher dared to welcome them, even though the metropolitan dailies sneered at his “Nigger Minstrels.” So their songs conquered till they sang across the land and across the sea, before Queen and…

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

Then in after years when I came to Nashville I saw the great temple builded of these songs towering over the pale city.

The ten master songs I have mentioned tell in word and music of trouble and exile, of strife and hiding; they grope toward some unseen power and sigh for rest in the End.