To
Burghardt and Yolande
The Lost and the Found
Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strangemeaning of being black here at the dawning of the Twentieth Century. Thismeaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of theTwentieth Century is the problem of the color line.
I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity, studying my words withme, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is inme, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there.
I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual worldin which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive. First, in twochapters I have tried to show what Emancipation meant to them, and what was itsaftermath. In a third chapter I have pointed out the slow rise of personalleadership, and criticized candidly the leader who bears the chief burden ofhis race to-day. Then, in two other chapters I have sketched in swift outlinethe two worlds within and without the Veil, and thus have come to the centralproblem of training men for life. Venturing now into deeper detail, I have intwo chapters studied the struggles of the massed millions of the blackpeasantry, and in another have sought to make clear the present relations ofthe sons of master and man. Leaving, then, the white world, I have steppedwithin the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeperrecesses,—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 twicetold but seldom written, and a chapter of song.
Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in other guise. Forkindly consenting to their republication here, in altered and extended form, Imust thank the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, The World’s Work, theDial, The New World, and the Annals of the American Acad