idnapped and put on a chain gang for seven years by Joe Turner simply because he was black. Bynum tries to explain what Turner wanted with Loomis:
What he wanted was your song. He wanted to have that song be his. He thought by catching you he could learn that song. Every nigger he catch he's looking for the one he can learn that song from. Now he's got you bound up to where you can't sing your own song. Couldn't sing it them seven years 'cause you was afraid he would snatch it from under you. But you still got it. You just forgot how to sing it (Wilson 73).
We see, then, that the song of Loomis, insofar as it symbolizes the song of all blacks of that era, is something held back from the white man, something held deep within the soul---if not the soul itself---
...