The Negro as Man and Artist
Key Reading: "Soil and Soul," in Brown America, by Edwin R. Embree. p. 233-52. Black Manhattan, by James Weldon Johnson. p. 145-280.

It is unfortunately too easy, especially if one's approach to the Negro is through what is written about him, to forget that behind the problem there stands, after all, a human being. Biography, with its story of human achievement, will help the reader turn toward this human element and see the flesh and blood Negro that controversial literature too often obscures from sight. Here the reader will not only be closest to those basic human values that know no color-line, but will be nearest to the most practical source of social optimism in the dramatic demonstration of the possibilities of Negro achievement in spite of the handicapped start, the closed door, or the unequal chance and limited opportunity, as the case
[p. 41]
may be. For this purpose, the most heroic and dramatic of Negro life stories might have been chosen, such as the biographies of Frederick Douglass, hero and champion of the anti-slavery cause, or of Booker Washington, leader of the Black Reconstruction. But James Weldon Johnson's sprightly and diversified account of Negro achievement, Black Manhattan, has been chosen for two very definite reasons. First because it presents a phalanx of Negro talent and effort so varied, so pioneering, that no reader can fail to gain a much enlarged conception of the Negro's achievement and cultural possibilities. Single biographies can too often be dismissed or discounted as the grand exceptions, but Mr. Johnson's narrative gives such a panorama of past and present achievement that we are forced to see its social significance and the still expanding future. Then, too, the progressive reader will naturally wish to meet to-day's leaders and understand the contemporary trends of Negro advance. Certainly no one can turn away from even the most cursory reading of this book with the smug, complacent feeling that he "knows the Negro" or that the Negro has a fixed circumscribed place in the scheme of life.

It will be revolutionary in most experiences to set these new types of the modern, oncoming Negro over against the Negro that the American
[p. 42]
public already knows. One is typical, but the other is, in the best sense of the word, representative. Provided we know them for what they are, there is little need for tilting broadsides of argument against the comic and sentimental stock Negro characters, still so dear to the public mind and heart. If they ever were representative, they belong to the obsolete past, and but live on in the amusement tradition of the stage, the screen, the sentimental novel, and the stereotyped joke. It is only when they are taken out of their context, and used as patterns of vision and judgment for an easy-going misunderstanding of the Negro of today that they are dangerous and objectionable. Already they have been recanted at their source; and perhaps even they will gradually fade out in spite of their traditional hold. A decade or so ago one could not have imagined a white Southern writer drawing the peasant Negro from careful realistic observation instead of from his own beloved pattern of the plantation tradition. Yet we have books like DuBose Heyward's Porgy and Mamba's daughters, Julia Peterkin's Black April and Scarlet Sister Mary, Guy Johnson's John Henry, Evelyn Scott's The wave -- to name a typical few -- that present a Negro character shattering the hollow sentimentalities of the whole school of plantation romanticists. And now we can
[p. 43]
see that, sincere though they were, these writers of the old school saw even the Old Negro superficially, because they saw him condescendingly and through the self-justifying traditions of the old régime. To the old school, the Negro character was a foil to set off the high lights of the plantation tradition and its proud but defeated cause. To the new school of contemporary Southern writers, for the most part, the Negro is a folk-type to be studied, drawn and interpreted in his own idiom and values.

In this revaluation of Negro life and character which we have just noted, the reader makes his first contact with what is really the outstanding and novel development of the racial situation in the last ten years. It is the rising tide of the cultural recognition of the Negro. It began first in the recognition of the cultural value of the Negro's folk spirit and its hitherto unrecognized folk-gifts. Then followed an appreciative reception of the artistic talents and contribution of the present generation of creative Negro artists, and finally a discovery of the place of the Negro cultural elements in the building of a native American culture. All three phases we must pass in brief review to understand the new significances of the Negro as man and artist.

As the new school of Southern writers and folklorists
[p. 44]
has discovered, the Negro peasant humbly and silently made a great contribution, especially to American folklore, the American dance, and American music. Until lately this influence has not been credited, mainly because these folk-gifts have become an integral part of the spirit and tradition of the Southland, and some of them, like jazz and American folk-song, part of the common spiritual currency of the land. The Negro spiritual, Uncle Remus, a whole strain of distinctive humor, the most typical variety of Southern folk-ballad, the most popular type of Southern song-ballad, and practically all the most characteristic idioms of modern American music and dance forms are traceable to Negro origins. Many of these idioms have been elaborated, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but their Negro origin is conceded, and their originality widely recognized. It is particularly significant that a great part of this recognition, and much of the scientific study which is authenticating it, has come and is coming from the enlightened art and research of the new white South. [7]

But the full cultural recognition of which we
[p. 45]
speak will never come from just the recognition of the Negro's humble and anonymous folk-gifts, most of them from a generation long since dead. We are now in the third generation from the black forefathers who produced the spirituals and Uncle Remus. There is a present-day and much more formal contribution being made in all the arts by a younger generation that has been on the scene since about the end of the World War. Some of the war's galvanizing shocks may have helped precipitate this movement of racial expression through art; but it was primarily, I think, a psychological ripening from within the group itself. It has variously been called the "Negro Renaissance" and the emergence of the "New Negro." The reader will find both the platform and the first fruits of this cultural movement in the collaborated anthology -- The new Negro, published in 1925. It presents the philosophy that Negro life should find a new spiritual dynamic in artistic self-expression; it was addressed primarily to the internal racial audience to save itself from propaganda and exhibitionism, and it proposed emphasizing folk values and basing itself on the folk-tradition in order to avoid imitative dependence on Caucasian and American models. This was more a statement of contemporary trend and mood than an adoption of a formal platform,
[p. 46]
and the productive Negro talent of this generation has by no means unanimously adopted this creed. However, the composite mind and mood of the present generation of Negro artists is decidedly racial in emphasis of subject-matter and less, but noticeably so, in emphasis of style. And many attribute to the inspiration of the racialist motive much of that unusual creative spurt in all the formal arts, particularly poetry, music and drama, which has earned such reputation for the Negro as an important contemporary American artist and culture producer.

A hasty roll call of this generation is necessary, not only to indicate its scope, but to give the reader clues to the significant names. The work of the writers mentioned can be sampled in the two anthology collections on our list, The new Negro, and the Anthology of American Negro literature, edited by V. F. Calverton. Such a list must include James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Sterling Brown, among the poets; Willis Richardson, Angelina Grimke, Eulalie Spence, John Matheus, playwrights; Rudolph Fisher, Langston Hughes, Burghardt DuBois, Nella Imes, Claude McKay, Weldon Johnson, Eric Walrond, novelists and short-story writers; Archibald Motley, William Johnson, Edward
[p. 47]
Harleston, Lesesne Wells, Hale Woodruff, Laura Wheeler, painters; Richmond Barthe, Sargent Johnson, Meta Warrick, May Howard Jackson, sculptors; Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes, Marion Anderson, Abbie Mitchell, singers; Will Marion Cook, Hall Johnson, William Grant Still, Rosamond Johnson, Henry T. Burleigh, composers -- to mention only better known names. To this list the names of the pioneer Negro historian, Carter Woodson, must certainly be added, and that of the early forerunner, Dr. DuBois, author of Souls of black folk. To most of these artists racial expression is paramount, and the search for racial idiom important, although many of them are far from being narrow racialists in the scope and spirit of their work.

It is this development which will earn and is earning, first from the cultured minority, but later inevitably from the whole body of public opinion, a new estimate of the Negro and his capabilities. For genius and creative talent, exceptional enough numerically among all peoples, are the pivot of progress and the foundation of group prestige. The widespread dis-esteem of the Negro could only have continued so long after the lapse of slavery because of the lack of representatives to match the best in the more seasoned and favored culture of the white man. But it will not be possible
[p. 48]
very much longer to compare the Negro at his worst with his fellow-American at his best, as has been the popular habit; for there will stand out on the highest levels unchallengeable instances where the Negro has attained cultural distinction and demonstrated all the potentialities of which any group has shown itself capable. Thus the new confidence which pervades this young advance-guard of cultural progress, and the new spirit of pride and self-esteem which it is engendering in the race itself. Yesterday Negroes were apologetically suppressing their racial characteristics, physical as well as emotional; today, on the whole, they are following the leadership of these enlightened spokesmen, and are emphasizing them with little or no apology.

A final phase of this movement has important bearing upon the problems and aims of American art and culture in general. It not only involves the question whether there can be a distinctive native American art, but whether America is to accept the "melting-pot" conception of her culture or the "reciprocity" notion. Many other cultural traditions richer and more developed than the Negro's have been transplanted to the American continent. But too many of them have gone literally to the melting-pot and lost their cultural distinctiveness and identity. But with the Negro it has
[p. 49]
been a different story. Persecution, suffering, with their greater discipline and pressure, have intensified the Negro heritage, and caste prejudice has isolated it from the powerful standardizing processes of American life. The Negro folk spirit has thus been less the victim of the quick ease and superficial spread that too often have parched the spiritual heritage of other stocks in the shallow soil of American materialism. So when America began to tire of being a cultural province of Europe, and began to think of building a distinctive and native American art, it became evident that with the almost complete obliteration of the American Indian and the lapse of most of the folk cultures that could have been preserved, we still had in the Negro folk spirit and its idioms a vital folk tradition in the land.

Obviously here was a promising mine or reservoir of materials for a native American art. Musicians, from Stephen Foster and Dvorák, on to Carpenter and Gershwin, dramatists like Eugene O'Neill, Marc Connelly, and Paul Green, poets like Vachel Lindsay and a host of others, novelists like Ellen Glasgow, DuBose Heyward, Julia Peterkin, took up the study and use of Negro materials as experimental and promising steps in the development of a native American art idiom. In American art of the present day, Negro forms and
[p. 50]
tradition are enjoying a belated but well-deserved victory. For by a curious irony these rejected elements in our social democracy are becoming the cornerstones of the new American art. And thus we have the most promising phenomenon of the whole situation -- a new collaboration, deliberate, purposeful, respectful, between the best elements of each race, the black artist promoting Negro art as racially representative, the white artist, as nationally characteristic.

Who can predict what the final effect of such a situation will be? Of course, it is as yet only a promise, a trend scarcely beyond its first strides. But, if successful, it will establish for other traditions, dormant in the mass-conformity of our national culture, a new principle of cultural diversity and reciprocity. And certainly, apart from the enrichment of American life, this would be one of the great solvents of racial antagonism and misunderstanding. If they will but see it, because of their complementary qualities, the two racial groups have great spiritual need, one of the other. It would be truly significant in the history of human culture, if two races so diverse should so happily collaborate, and the one return for the gift of a great civilization the reciprocal gift of the spiritual cross-fertilization of a great and distinctive national culture. At all events, the future
[p. 51]
history of the interaction between the Negro and his American setting will bear watching as having quite as important potentialities for America at large as for the Negro in particular.

Notes

[p. nts]

Note from page 44: 7 These statements are by no means universally accepted. For another point of view on the source of the spirituals, see G. P. Jackson's White spirituals in the Southern uplands, Univ. of N. C. Press, 1933, chap. xx. For other theories on folklore origins, see Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, U. S. Bureau of American Ethnology, 19th annual report. -- Pub.