He early appeared on the plantation and found his function as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong, and the one who rudely but picturesquely expressed the longing, disappointment, and resentment of a stolen and oppressed people.
From "The Souls of Black Folk," this passage describes the multifaceted role of the early Black preacher on the plantation.
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Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.
By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.
The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.
He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.