I have sought here to
sketch, in
vague, uncertain
outline, the
spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and
strive. First, in two chapters I have tried to show what Emancipation meant to them, and what was its
aftermath. In a third
chapter I have pointed out the slow rise of
personal leadership, and criticized candidly the
leader who bears the chief
burden of his race to-day. Then, in two other chapters I have sketched in
swift outline the two worlds within and without the Veil, and
thus have come to the
central problem of training men for life. Venturing now into deeper detail, I have in two chapters
studied the struggles of the massed millions of the black peasantry, and in another have sought to make clear the present relations of the sons of
master and man. Leaving, then, the white world, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,-the
meaning of its
religion, the
passion of its
human sorrow, and the
struggle of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a
tale twice told but
seldom written, and a
chapter of song.
Some of these thoughts of
mine have seen the light before in other
guise. For kindly consenting to their republication here, in
altered and extended form, I must thank the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, The World's Work, the Dial, The New World, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Before each
chapter, as now printed, stands a
bar of the Sorrow Songs,-some echo of haunting
melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And, finally,
need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil?