Especially is this noticeable in the South, where theology and religious philosophy are on this account a long way behind the North, and where the religion of the poor whites is a plain copy of Negro thought and methods.
From "The Souls of Black Folk," this passage critiques the theological stagnation in the South and identifies the unacknowledged influence of Black religious practices on poor white communities.
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In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.
To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes…
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.