The Souls of Black Folk · Chapter
XIV: The Sorrow Songs explained
Du Bois reflects on the Negro spirituals, or Sorrow Songs, as the most profound artistic expression of the African American experience.
What happens
Du Bois reflects on the Negro spirituals, or Sorrow Songs, as the most profound artistic expression of the African American experience. He traces their origins from Africa, through slavery, to their popularization by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and analyzes their themes of suffering, hope, and spiritual longing.
Themes in this chapter
The Sorrow Songs
The entire chapter is dedicated to the Sorrow Songs as the most authentic expression of the Black soul, conveying suffering, hope, and spiritual depth.
Double Consciousness
The songs reflect the dual experience of being Black in America—joy and sorrow, hope and disappointment—as the slave spoke to the world through veiled and half-articulate messages.
The Veil
The songs are described as veiled and half articulate, with words and music often separated, symbolizing the barrier between the Black experience and outside understanding.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Reflects on the personal and historical significance of the Sorrow Songs, connecting them to his own ancestry and the collective Black experience.
- Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Documented the slave songs of the Sea Islands during the Port Royal experiment, helping to introduce them to a wider audience.
- Alexander Crummell
The song 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' is placed before the life story of Alexander Crummell in the book.
- The Fisk Jubilee Singers
Their pilgrimage popularized the slave songs, raising funds for Fisk University and bringing the music to national and international audiences.
- George L. White
Formed a Sunday-school class of Black children in Nashville, taught them to sing, and was inspired to lead the Fisk Jubilee Singers on their tour.
Key passages
“They that walked in darkness sang songs in the olden days—Sorrow Songs—for they were weary at heart.”
Enslaved people, living in hardship and despair, created sorrowful songs as an emotional outlet.
Introduces the central theme of the chapter: the Sorrow Songs as expressions of suffering.
“Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.”
America's greatest contribution to world culture is not its art but its natural landscapes; however, the Negro spiritual stands as a unique and beautiful exception.
Du Bois elevates the spiritual as America's sole original musical art form.
“They are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.”
The Sorrow Songs express the pain and unfulfilled hopes of an oppressed people, yearning for a better existence.
Summarizes the emotional core of the spirituals as voiced by the enslaved.