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Of The Sorrow Songs

© Nichel Anderson

"I walk through the churchyard To lay this body down; I know moon-rise, I know star-rise; I walk in the moonlight, I walk in the starlight; I 'll lie in the grave and stretch out my arms, I 'll go to judgment in the evening of the day, And my soul and thy soul shall meet that day, When I lay this body down."
~ NEGRO SONG.

In the last essay to be reviewed from W.E.B. Du Bois' literary collection, I am emotional moved to have saved "Of The Sorrow Songs" for last. Du Bois masterfully outlined the deep-rooted issues concerning the country on social/political agendas. "Of The Sorrow Songs" allows the reader to not only read the message presented but rather to feel the compassion and intent of the message:

THEY that walked in darkness sang songs in the olden days-Sorrow Songs-for they were weary at heart. And so before each thought that I have written in this book I have set a phrase, a haunting echo of these weird old songs in which the soul of the black slave spoke to men. Ever since I was a child these songs have stirred me strangely. They came out of the South unknown to me, one by one, and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine. Then in after years when I came to Nashville I saw the great temple builded of these songs towering over the pale city.

To me Jubilee Hall seemed ever made of the songs themselves, and its bricks were red with the blood and dust of toil. Out of them rose for me morning, noon, and night, bursts of wonderful melody, full of the voices of my brothers and sisters, full of the voices of the past.

Du Bois takes us back to that quiet and hallow place to see how the life of a southern Negro transformed over time - to an individual of influence. Du Bois tries and successfully accomplishes showing us the true meaning of the harsh realities that people of a different culture had to endure over time. W.E.B. Du Bois talks of the tales of lives lost and ruined; the racial issues of the times and the brutality that American Negro exhibits everyday:

Away back in the thirties the melody of these slave songs stirred the nation, but the songs were soon half forgotten. Some, like "Near the lake where drooped the willow," passed into current airs and their source was forgotten; others were caricatured on the "minstrel" stage and their memory died away. 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.