Some, like “Near the lake where drooped the willow,” passed into current airs and their source was forgotten; others were caricatured on the “minstrel” stage and their memory died away.
Du Bois describes how some slave songs were assimilated into popular culture with forgotten origins, while others were debased through minstrelsy.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.