19
states between 1880 and 1900, did not allow blacks to share the same public accommodations as
whites, and it would have been foolhardy for Seymour to try. He could have served Weber in the
dining car, but not sat next to him. Seymour was proud and thirsted for equality, but he also
wasn’t stupid, and he knew the reality how things worked. But if Seymour had somehow been
able to be on that train, imagine what tales he might have told Weber about the absence of a
landless class in the United States, or about places to visit while in New Orleans.
****
Now try imagining all the preceding figures and events in the present tense.
REFERENCES
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Baker, Houston Jr. 1991. Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s
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Benjamin, Walter. 1969. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Pp. 253-64 in Walter Benjamin,
Illuminations. Translated by Harry Zohn, edited by Hannah Arendt. New York:
Schocken.
Burgess, Stanley and Gary McGee, eds. 1988. Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic
Movements. Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan.
Cox, Harvey. 1995. Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and Reshaping of
Religion in the Twenty-First Century. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub.
Davenport, Frank. 1905. The Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals: A Study in Mental and
Social Evolution. London: MacMillan.
Diggins, John Patrick. 1999. Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy. New York: Basic
Books.
DuBois, W.E.B. 1969. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: The New American Library-Signet
Classics.
Convention