The mass of “gospel” hymns which has swept through American churches and well-nigh ruined our sense of song consists largely of debased imitations of Negro melodies made by ears that caught the jingle but not the music, the body but not the soul, of the Jubilee songs.
In "The Souls of Black Folk," this passage offers a sharp critique of American gospel hymns as inferior imitations that fail to capture the essence of original Black melodies.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.