Publisher's Synopsis
Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show thestrange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the TwentiethCentury. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader;for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colorline. I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of thefaith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hiddenthere.I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, thespiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live andstrive. First, in two chapters I have tried to show what Emancipationmeant to them, and what was its aftermath. In a third chapter I havepointed out the slow rise of personal leadership, and criticizedcandidly the leader who bears the chief burden of his race to-day.Then, in two other chapters I have sketched in swift outline the twoworlds within and without the Veil, and thus have come to the centralproblem of training men for life. Venturing now into deeper detail, Ihave in two chapters studied the struggles of the massed millions ofthe black peasantry, and in another have sought to make clear thepresent relations of the sons of master and man. Leaving, then, thewhite world, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you mayview faintly its deeper recesses, --the meaning of its religion, thepassion 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 achapter of song.Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in otherguise. For kindly consenting to their republication here, in alteredand extended form, I must thank the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, The World's Work, the Dial, The New World, and the Annals of theAmerican Academy of Political and Social Science. Before each chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs, --some echo ofhaunting melody from the only American music which welled up from blacksouls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add that I who speak heream bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within theVeil?
