gentle reader for the problem of the twentieth century

To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem?Īnd yet, being a problem is a strange experience,-peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town or, I fought at Mechanicsville or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil?Īt these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,Īnd the fire of the end begin to burn in the west Īnd the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,Īs the water all night long is crying to me.īetween me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. Unresting water, there shall never be rest O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?Īll night long the water is crying to me. The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea, O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,Īll night long crying with a mournful cry,Īs I lie and listen, and cannot understand Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in other guise.įor 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.īefore 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.Īnd, 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? 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.Īll this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom written, and a chapter of song. 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.

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. 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. I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive.įirst, in two chapters I have tried to show what Emancipation meant to them, and what was its aftermath. 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. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.

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.

Gentle reader for the problem of the twentieth century