The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the
ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but
confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the
beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which
his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the
message of another people. This waste of double aims, this
seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad
havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand
thousand people,--has sent them often wooing false gods and
invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even
seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.
Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in
one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few
men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning
faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so
far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of
all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice;
Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter
beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites.
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