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How the Black Church Embraces Tragic History and the Fervor of Faith
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John White/US National Archives/Getty
“It was out in the country, far from home, far from my foster home, on a dark Sunday night. The road wandered from our rambling log‑house up the stony bed of a creek, past wheat and corn, until we could hear dimly across the fields a rhythmic cadence of song, soft, thrilling, powerful, that swelled and died sorrowfully in our ears. I was a country schoolteacher then, fresh from the East, and had never seen a Southern Negro revival. To be sure, we in Berkshire were not perhaps as stiff and formal as they in Suffolk of olden time; yet we were very quiet and subdued, and I know not what would have happened those clear Sabbath mornings had some one punctuated the sermon with a wild scream, or interrupted the long prayer with a loud Amen! And so most striking to me, as I approached the village and the little plain church perched aloft, was the air of i