The lines introducing the essay are from the poem "The Crying of Waters" by Arthur Symons and the bar of musical notes is from the Negro Spiritual "Nobody knows the Trouble I've Seen".
Youtube link of Paul Robeson singing "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EJSkJlh_fg
Du Bois asks in this important essay "How does it feel to be a problem?"
According to Du Bois people do not verbalize this question, but he could sense them framing that unasked question. Du Bois wrote the original article on which this essay is based in 1897 on the brink of a new century in a still influential popular mainstream (white) magazine. In 1897 the current Mississippi Constitution was seven years old, Jackson State University was twenty years and less than five years away from a permanent move to its current Lynch Street location. Reconstruction had ended 20 years earlier and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the Mississippi Plan demonstrated how desperately some whites wanted to solve the "Negro Problem". But amid the violence, terror and repressions African Americans in Mississippi were building institutions, churchs, schools, banks and businesses. I think of Sterling A. Brown's poem, "Strong Men" when I recall this era.
They chained you In coffles, They huddled you spoon-fashion in filthy hatches, They sold you to give a few gentlemen ease. They broke you in like oxen, They scourged you, They branded you, They made your women breeders, They swelled your numbers with bastards. . . . They taught you the religion they disgraced. You sang: Keep a-inchin' along Lak a po' inch worm. . . . You sang: Bye and bye I'm gonna lay down dis heaby bad . . . You sang: Walk togedder, chillen, Dontcha git weary. . . . The strong men keep a-comin' on The strong men git stronger. They point with pride to the roads you built for them They ride in comfort over the rails you laid for them They put hammers in your hands And said — Drive so much before sundown. You sang: Ain't no hammah In dis lan', Strikes lak mine, bebby, Strikes lak mine. They cooped you in their kitchens, They penned you in their factories, They gave you the jobs that they were too good for, They tried to guarantee happiness to themselves By shunting dirt and misery to you. You sang: Me an' muh baby gonna shine, shine Me an' muh baby gonna shine. The strong men keep a-comin' on The strong men git stronger. . . . They bought off some of your leaders You stumbled, as blind men will. . . . They coaxed you, unwontedly soft-voiced. . . . You followed a way. Then laughed as usual. They heard the laugh and wondered; Uncomfortable; Unadmitting a deeper terror. . . . The strong men keep a-comin' on Gittin' stronger. . . . What, from the slums Where they have hemmed you What, from the tiny huts They could not keep from you — What reaches them Making them ill at ease, fearful? Today they shout prohibition at you "Thou shalt not this." "Thou shalt not that." "Reserved for whites only" You laugh. One thing they cannot prohibit — The strong men . . . coming on The strong' men gittin' stronger. Strong men. . . . Stronger. . . . |
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