To Burghardt and Yolande The Lost and the Found...

Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line. I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there. I have sou

O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,     All night long crying with a mournful cry, As I lie and listen, and cannot understand         The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,     O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?         All night long the water is crying to me. Unresting water, there shall never be rest     Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail, And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;         And the heart shall be weary and wonder and

Careless seems the great Avenger;     History’s lessons but record One death-grapple in the darkness     ’Twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold,     Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the future,     And behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow     Keeping watch above His own. LOWELL. The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America an

From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned! ****** Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? BYRON. Easily the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy of Mr. Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen’s sons,—then it was that his lead

Willst Du Deine Macht verkünden, Wähle sie die frei von Sünden, Steh’n in Deinem ew’gen Haus! Deine Geister sende aus! Die Unsterblichen, die Reinen, Die nicht fühlen, die nicht weinen! Nicht die zarte Jungfrau wähle, Nicht der Hirtin weiche Seele! SCHILLER. Once upon a time I taught school in the hills of Tennessee, where the broad dark vale of the Mississippi begins to roll and crumple to greet the Alleghanies. I was a Fisk student then, and all Fisk men thought that Tennessee—beyond the Veil—

O black boy of Atlanta!     But half was spoken; The slave’s chains and the master’s     Alike are broken; The one curse of the races     Held both in tether; They are rising—all are rising—     The black and white together. WHITTIER. South of the North, yet north of the South, lies the City of a Hundred Hills, peering out from the shadows of the past into the promise of the future. I have seen her in the morning, when the first flush of day had half-roused her; she lay gray and still on the cri

Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside, And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,     Were’t not a Shame—were’t not a Shame for him In this clay carcase crippled to abide? OMAR KHAYYÁM (FITZGERALD). From the shimmering swirl of waters where many, many thoughts ago the slave-ship first saw the square tower of Jamestown, have flowed down to our day three streams of thinking: one swollen from the larger world here and overseas, saying, the multiplying of human wants in culture-lands calls for the wor

I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me, because I am black, Because the sun hath looked upon me: My mother’s children were angry with me; They made me the keeper of the vineyards; But mine own vineyard have I not kept. THE SONG OF SOLOMON. Out of the North the train thundered, and we woke to see the crimson soil of Georgia stretching away bare and monotonous right and left. Here and there lay straggling, unlovely vi

But the Brute said in his breast, “Till the mills I grind have ceased, The riches shall be dust of dust, dry ashes be the feast!     “On the strong and cunning few     Cynic favors I will strew; I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies;     From the patient and the low     I will take the joys they know;     They shall hunger after vanities and still an-hungered go. Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies arise; Brother’s blood shall cry on brother up the dead and

Life treads on life, and heart on heart; We press too close in church and mart To keep a dream or grave apart. MRS. BROWNING. The world-old phenomenon of the contact of diverse races of men is to have new exemplification during the new century. Indeed, the characteristic of our age is the contact of European civilization with the world’s undeveloped peoples. Whatever we may say of the results of such contact in the past, it certainly forms a chapter in human action not pleasant to look back upon

Dim face of Beauty haunting all the world,     Fair face of Beauty all too fair to see, Where the lost stars adown the heavens are hurled,—         There, there alone for thee         May white peace be. Beauty, sad face of Beauty, Mystery, Wonder,     What are these dreams to foolish babbling men Who cry with little noises ’neath the thunder         Of Ages ground to sand,         To a little sand. FIONA MACLEOD. It was out in the country, far from home, far from my foster home, on a dark Sunda

O sister, sister, thy first-begotten, The hands that cling and the feet that follow, The voice of the child’s blood crying yet, Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten? Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow, But the world shall end when I forget. SWINBURNE. “Unto you a child is born,” sang the bit of yellow paper that fluttered into my room one brown October morning. Then the fear of fatherhood mingled wildly with the joy of creation; I wondered how it looked and how it felt—what were its eye

Then from the Dawn it seemed there came, but faint As from beyond the limit of the world, Like the last echo born of a great cry, Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice Around a king returning from his wars. TENNYSON. This is the story of a human heart,—the tale of a black boy who many long years ago began to struggle with life that he might know the world and know himself. Three temptations he met on those dark dunes that lay gray and dismal before the wonder-eyes of the child: the temptat

What bring they ’neath the midnight,     Beside the River-sea? They bring the human heart wherein     No nightly calm can be; That droppeth never with the wind,     Nor drieth with the dew; O calm it, God; thy calm is broad     To cover spirits too.         The river floweth on. MRS. BROWNING. Carlisle Street runs westward from the centre of Johnstown, across a great black bridge, down a hill and up again, by little shops and meat-markets, past single-storied homes, until suddenly it stops again

I walk through the churchyard     To lay this body down; I know moon-rise, I know star-rise; I walk in the moonlight, I walk in the starlight; I’ll lie in the grave and stretch out my arms, I’ll go to judgment in the evening of the day, And my soul and thy soul shall meet that day,     When I lay this body down. NEGRO SONG. They that walked in darkness sang songs in the olden days—Sorrow Songs—for they were weary at heart. And so before each thought that I have written in this book I have set a

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest wonderful. Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare. Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked ma