Dread and powerlessness in the face of the ever-present threat of death on the lynching tree impelled blacks to cry out from the depth of their spiritual being: Oh, Lord, Oh, My Lord! Oh, My Good Lord! Keep me f’om sinkin’ down! To sink down was to give up on life and embrace hopelessness, like the words of an old bluesman: “Been down so long, down don’t bother me.” It was to go way down into a pit of despair, of nothingness, what Søren Kierkegaard called “sickness unto death,” a “sickness in the self”—the loss of hope that life could have meaning in a world full of trouble. The story of Job
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