Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/538

 I saw in vision The worm in the wheat; And in the shops nothing For people to eat; Nothing for sale in Stupidity Street.

The Souls of Black Folk

(Professor in the University of Atlanta, born 1868; a prominent advocate of the rights of his race)

In the Black World, the Preacher and Teacher embodied once the ideals of this people,—the strife for another and a juster world, the vague dream of righteousness, the mystery of knowing; but today the danger is that these ideals, with their simple beauty and weird inspiration, will suddenly sink to a question of cash and a lust for gold. Here stands this black young Atalanta, girding herself for the race that must be run; and if her eyes be still toward the hills and sky as in the days of old, then we may look for noble running; but what if some ruthless or wily or even thoughtless Hippomenes lay golden apples before her? What if the negro people be wooed from a strife for righteousness, from a love of knowing, to regard dollars as the be-all and the end-all of life? What if to the Mammonism of America be added the rising Mammonism of the re-born South, and the Mammonism of this South be reinforced by the budding Mammonism of its half-awakened black millions? Whither, then, is the new-world quest of Goodness and Beauty and Truth gone glimmering?