To Betty Millard, June 6, 1959

 

sheet music for I'll Hear the Trumpet Sound
“I’ll Hear the Trumpet Sound”

You may bury me in the East,

You may bury me in the West,

But I’ll hear that trumpet sound

In that morning. (Sundquist, 522)

 

Transcript:

London, June 6, 1959 

Dear Betty Millard: 

I have thought of you many times in the last ten months but as time rushed on, the more I would have to put in any real letter to you grew and grew until it became just impossible. I have been whirled so miraculously through impossible places and to inconceivable things that their real explanation can only be left to endless talk. Meantime I have grown inconceivably old and in short I didn’t write and I’m not writing now but simply saying that I still live I still remember you and if as is quite likely you have quite forgotten me why then here’s a signature and its trying to say that the French Line “Liberte” leaving London June 25 is due to land me in New York July I

I kiss you

W E B Du Bois

 

Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Betty Millard, June 6, 1959. Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History, Betty Millard Papers.