White folks goes to college; niggers to the field;
White folks learn to read and write; niggers learn to steal.
Or,
Beauty’s skin deep, but ugly’s to the bone.
Beauty soon fades, but ugly holds its own.
The following is the only song in which I think I detect insincerity. Now the negro may have periods of despondency, but I have never been able to detect them.
THE RAILROAD BLUES.
I got the blues, but I haven’t got the fare,
I got the blues, but I haven’t got the fare,
I got the blues, but I am too damn’d mean to cry.
Some folks say the rolling blues ain’t bad;
Well, it must not ’a’ been the blues my baby had.
Oh! where was you when the rolling mill burned down?
On the levee camp about fifteen miles from town
My mother’s dead, my sister’s gone astray,
And that is why this poor boy is here to-day.
If any of you have high ideas about the universal sacredness of domestic ties, prepare to shed them now. It has often been said that the negro is a backward race. But this is not true. In fact, he is very forward. He had invented trial marriage before sociology was a science.
The following songs are only too realistic:
FIRST.