The Souls of Black Folk (Original Classic Edition)

by W.E.B. Du Bois

Then in war-time came the singular Port Royal experiment after the capture of Hilton Head, and

perhaps for the first time the North met the Southern slave face to face and heart to heart with no third witness. The Sea Islands of the Carolinas, where they met, were filled with a black folk of primitive type, touched and moulded less by the world about them than any others outside the Black Belt. Their appearance was uncouth, their language funny, but their hearts were human and their singing stirred men with a mighty power. Thomas

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.” When, struck with a sudden poverty, the United States refused to fulfill its promises of land to the freedmen, a brigadier-general went down to the Sea Islands to carry the news. An old woman on the outskirts of the throng began singing this song; all the mass joined with her, swaying. And the soldier wept.

“The Passing of the First-Born”—“I hope my mother will be there in that beautiful world on high.”

Life was a “rough and rolling sea” like the brown Atlantic of the Sea Islands; the “Wilderness” was the home of God, and the “lonesome valley” led to the way of life.

“Winter’ll soon be over,” was the picture of life and death to a tropical imagination.

The sudden wild thunderstorms ...

awed and impressed the Negroes—at times the rumbling seemed to them “mournful,” at times imperious: “My Lord calls me, He calls me by the thun...

“Dere’s no rain to wet you, Dere’s no sun to burn you, Oh, push along, believer, I want to go home.”

and he rebukes the devil of doubt who can whisper: “Jesus is dead and God’s gone away.”

There’s a little wheel a-turnin’ in-a-my heart.”

“Oh, the stars in the elements are falling, And the moon drips away into blood, And the ransomed of the Lord are returning unto God, Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Before the Pilgrims landed we were here. Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with yours: a gift of story and song—

the gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil, and lay the foundations of this vast economic empire two hundred years earlier

Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to despise not Justice, Mercy, and Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this work and striving? Would America have