new. Such souls
aforetime have inspired and guided worlds, and if we be not wholly
bewitched by our Rhinegold, they shall again. Herein the longing of
black men must have respect: the rich and bitter depth of their
experience, the unknown treasures of their inner life, the strange
rendings of nature they have seen, may give the world new points of
view and make their loving, living, and doing precious to all human
hearts. And to themselves in these the days that try their souls, the
chance to soar in the dim blue air above the smoke is to their finer
spirits boon and guerdon for what they lose on earth by being black.

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move
arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women
glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing
between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon
Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all
graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I
dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly
America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red
hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high
Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?

VII

Of the Black Belt

I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black,
Because the sun hath looked upon me:
My mother's children were angry with me;
They made me the keeper of the vineyards;
But mine own vineyard have I not kept.

THE SONG OF SOLOMON.

Out of the North the train thundered, and we woke to see the crimson
soil of Georgia stretching away bare and monotonous right and left.
Here and there lay straggling, unlovely villages, and lean men loafed
leisurely at the depots; then again came the stretch of pines and clay.
Yet we did not nod, nor weary of the scene; for this is historic
ground. Right across our track, three hundred and sixty years ago,
wandered the cavalcade of Hernando de Soto, looking for gold and the
Great Sea; and he and his foot-sore captives disappeared yonder in the
grim forests to the west. Here sits Atlanta, the city of a hundred
hills, with something Western, something Southern, and something quite
its own, in its busy life. Just this side Atlanta is the land of the
Cherokees