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Clark Atlanta University "Hold sacred strong and purposeful art"Author(s): Phillip Luke Sinitiere Source: Phylon (1960-) , Vol. 56, No. 1, Special Volume: Remembering the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of W.E.B. Du Bois and the 50th Anniversary of the Death of Martin Luther King, Jr. (SUMMER 2019), pp. 156-179 Published by: Clark Atlanta University Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26743835 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Clark Atlanta University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Phylon (1960-) This content downloaded from 158.135.1.178 on Mon, 04 May 2020 17:37:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 156 Phylon 56 “Hold sacred strong and purposeful art”: W. E. B. Du Bois and Poetry Phillip Luke Sinitiere College of Biblical Studies-Houston Abstract Artist and writer Lorraine Hansberry spoke at a Carnegie Hall tribute event in February 1964 on what would have been W. E. B. Du Bois’s 96th birthday. He had died in Ghana the previous August. Hansberry’s speech considered the intellectual and social shape of Du Bois’s legacy. “I think his legacy bids us pay attention to the genuine needs of humankind and not to the frivolities which are the playthings of the parasites,” she said, and “to honor thought and thinking; to keep always as our counsel distinguished scholarship and hold sacred strong and purposeful art; such as beautifully crafted and humanly involved writing.” In reply to Hansberry’s counsel to “hold sacred strong and purposeful art,” this article explores W. E. B. Du Bois and poetry. The phrase “W. E. B. Du Bois and poetry” refers to two artistic dimensions of this idea. First, this article examines Du Bois’s relationship to poetry through his editorship at numerous journals, including The Crisis and Phylon. Second, it histori- cizes poetry about Du Bois written during his lifetime and after his death as a way to understand his legacy. Collectively, therefore, this article accounts for Du Bois’s intellectual production over time as a literary artist and curator alongside of the historical and cultural conditions that created poetic responses to it. Mapping out the historical contours of Du Bois and poetry produces greater understanding of his cultural legacy’s aesthetic significance from the horizon of his 150th birthday. Du Bois was a social scientist and a political leader who considered art—especially literature— to be a vehicle for enunciating and effecting social, political, and economic ideas. Darwin T. Turner (1974) Introduction old. Ossie Davis, one of the event’s orga- nizers, wished for the ceremony to high- At Carnegie Hall on February 23, light the “cultural significance of the 1964, on what would have been his most illustrious Afro American scholar 96th birthday, friends and supporters of our time” and creatively demonstrate gathered in a memorial service to honor “a proper sense of Dr. DuBois’ intel- the life and legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois. lectual contributions to American life” The esteemed Black scholar had died in (Souvenir Program 1964). Ghana the previous August at 95 years Several presenters at the commemo- This content downloaded from 158.135.1.178 on Mon, 04 May 2020 17:37:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Phillip Luke Sinitiere 157 ration mentioned Du Bois’s cultural and Du Bois written during his lifetime and aesthetic work, including noted histo- after his death. This essay does not ana- rian John Hope Franklin, who keynot- lyze Du Bois’s poetry itself, a dimension ed the gathering. A young playwright of his literary life that scholars have ex- named Sylvester Leaks staged “In These plored previously. Rather, it accounts My Words,” a performance about Du for his intellectual labor over time as Bois’s intellectual and cultural legacy, a literary artist, his efforts as a poetry and Eslanda Robeson, a radical activist curator, and it analyzes as cultural ar- and writer, delivered comments. Art- tifacts poems written about him. This ist and writer Lorraine Hansberry also article, therefore, is not about nor does spoke at the tribute event, who’s speech it produce literary criticism as such. It considered the intellectual and social covers the history of Du Bois’s intellec- shape of Du Bois’s legacy. “I think his tual production as a literary artist and legacy bids us pay attention to the genu- curator alongside of the historical and ine needs of humankind and not to the cultural conditions that created poetic frivolities which are the playthings of responses to it. Mapping out the his- the parasites,” she said, and “to honor torical contours of Du Bois and poetry thought and thinking; to keep always as produces greater understanding of his our counsel distinguished scholarship cultural legacy’s aesthetic significance and hold sacred strong and purpose- from the horizon of his 150th birthday. ful art; such as beautifully crafted and humanly involved writing” (Hansberry Part 1: Du Bois’s Literary Art 1964). Observing how previous generations Du Bois’s books and essays document commemorated anniversaries of Du that he believed deeply in the power, Bois’s life and legacy demonstrates not possibility, and beauty of language. He only the wide-ranging dimensions of enlisted art as a tool in his life-long in- his publications and work as an activist, surgency against White Supremacy. Af- but also the ways that scholars and art- ricana Studies scholar Reiland Rabaka ists created meaning from the expansive outlines the importance of undertaking record of his intellectual production. In a broader analysis of Du Bois’s aesthet- reply to Hansberry’s counsel to “hold ics. He writes that “a truly comprehen- sacred strong and purposeful art,” this sive understanding of Du Bois simply article explores W. E. B. Du Bois and po- cannot be gained without engaging him etry. The phrase “W. E. B. Du Bois and as an artist and, even more, as an art- poetry” refers to two artistic dimensions ist who was in constant dialogue with, of this idea. First, this article examines influenced by, and incessantly influ- Du Bois’s relationship to poetry through encing other artists” (Rabaka 2014, 42). his editorship at The Crisis and Phylon, The intellectual benefit of studying Du journals with which he was associated Bois and aesthetics is on the one hand a during the first half of the twentieth question of historiography. On the oth- century. Second, as a way to understand er hand, as Rabaka points out, under- his legacy, it historicizes poetry about standing Du Bois as one of the foremost This content downloaded from 158.135.1.178 on Mon, 04 May 2020 17:37:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 158 Phylon 56 scholars of cross-disciplinary practice Rusert term the “aesthetics of the color spotlights both his capacious creativ- line” (2018, 16). ity and the legacy of liberation encoded On the occasion of his 150th birth- within his aesthetic interventions. day, this essay insists on remembering Du Bois often discussed literary art Du Bois’s literary artistry as a historian- through the lens of propaganda. The poet. Literary scholar Keith Byerman most well-known commentary on this comments in Seizing the Word: History, conviction appeared in his 1926 Cri- Art, and Self in the Work of W. E. B. Du sis essay “Criteria of Negro Art.” He Bois that Du Bois’s poetry prioritized argued that as propaganda art is a re- “the truth content of literature” which source upon which artists draw to com- resulted in “putting words together in municate with beauty and creativity the certain conventional sound and im- truth that Black people are human be- age combinations” (1994, 108, 110). ings. Relatedly, he insisted that artistic Literary historian Arnold Rampersad, communication across modalities of ex- on the other hand, points to Du Bois’s pression underwrote an aesthetics of re- “poetic reverence for the word” in The sistance. Du Bois reasoned that the vari- Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois. ous forms protest and propaganda took Such artistic obsession translated into should reckon creatively yet insurgent- centering the imagination as a vehicle ly with White Supremacy’s anti-Black not only for self-expression, but also for obsessions (Du Bois 1926; Kirschke and creatively resisting racism and White Sinitiere 2014). Supremacy. Rampersad writes that Du The currency of his 1926 article con- Bois’s poetry “gave voice to his private textually connects to the Harlem Renais- thoughts” and spotlighted “the depth sance. However, the larger question of of his soul-searching and the dignity of art, aesthetics, and propaganda was an his motives.” He further states that Du inquiry over which Du Bois poured for Bois’s creative work “extend[ed] the the entirety of his career. Propaganda at range of his public expression” that ap- its best translated qualitative social sci- peared more frequently in scholarly and ence, scholarship, and historical inter- journalistic forums (1990, ix, 104, 109). pretation into creative, innovative, aes- Echoing Rampersad, historian Herbert thetic expressions accessible to public Aptheker contended that “Du Bois’s po- audiences (Du Bois 1935; Du Bois 1944; etry welled up from his sense of outrage Johnson and Johnson 1991; Hutchin- at oppression and injustice” that it “al- son 1995; Beavers 2000; Williams 2014; ways conveys an intensity of emotion, Kirschke and Sinitiere 2014).
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