In all this work Dr. DuBois is the spokesman of perhaps as many millions of souls as any man living.
“A Litany at Atlanta” placed as an epilogue to “The Shadow of the Years” in Darkwater[1] should be read as the litany of a race. Modern literature has not such another cry of agony:
A LITANY AT ATLANTA
O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful
days—
Hear us, good Lord!
Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery in Thy Sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy Heaven, O God, crying:
We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!
We are not better than our fellows, Lord; we are but weak and human men. When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed,—curse them as we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done to innocence and weakness, to womanhood and home.
Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!
And yet, whose is the deeper guilt? Who made these devils? Who nursed them in crime and fed them on injustice? Who ravished and debauched their mothers and their grandmothers? Who bought and sold their crime and waxed fat and rich on public iniquity?
Thou knowest, good God!
- ↑ Published by Harcourt, Brace & Company, by whose kind permission I use this selection.
