The Lost and the Found




The Forethought

Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience
may show the strange meaning of being black here at the
dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without
interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth
Century is the problem of the color line. I pray you, then,
receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me,
forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion
that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there.

I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline,
the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans
live and strive. First, in two chapters I have tried to show
what Emancipation meant to them, and what was its aftermath.
In a third chapter I have pointed out the slow rise of personal
leadership, and criticized candidly the leader who bears the
chief burden of his race to-day. Then, in two other chapters I
have sketched in swift outline the two worlds within and
without the Veil, and thus have come to the central problem
of training men for life. Venturing now into deeper detail, I
have in two chapters studied the struggles of the massed
millions of the black peasantry, and in another have sought to
make clear the present relations of the sons of master and
man. Leaving, then, the white world, I have stepped within