I. W. E. Burghardt DuBois
W. E. B. DuBois
The name of no Negro author is more widely known than that of W. E. Burghardt DuBois. Editor, historian, sociologist, essayist, poet—he is celebrated in the Five Continents and the Seven Seas. It is in his impassioned prose that DuBois is most a poet. The Souls of Black Folk throbs constantly on the verge of poetry, while the several chapters of Darkwater end with a litany, chant, or credo, rhapsodical in character and in free-verse form. 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,[6] 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: