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Selected Writings of J. Saunders Redding, 1942-1977

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Selected Writings of J. Saunders Redding, 1942-1977 University of Kentucky UKnowledge African American Studies Race, Ethnicity, and Post-Colonial Studies 1992 A Scholar's Conscience: Selected Writings of J. Saunders Redding, 1942-1977 J. Saunders Redding Faith Berry Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Redding, J. Saunders and Berry, Faith, "A Scholar's Conscience: Selected Writings of J. Saunders Redding, 1942-1977" (1992). African American Studies. 9. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_african_american_studies/9 A SCHOLAR?§ CONSCIENCE A SCHOLAR?§ CONSCIENCE Selected Writings of Jo SAUNDERS REDDING 1942-1977 Edited with an Introduction by FAITH BERRY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Unless otherwise specified, the material in this volume is reprinted by permission of j. Saunders Redding and his literary agent. Copyright © 1992 by Faith Berry Published by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Redding, J. Saunders (Jay Saunders), 1906- A scholar's conscience : selected writings of J. Saunders Redding, 1942-1977 I edited with an introduction by Faith Berry. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8131-1770-4 (alk. paper)-ISBN 0-8131-0806-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Afro-Americans. 2. Afro-Americans-Fiction. 3. Redding, ]. Saunders (Jay Saunders), 1906- . 4. Afro-Americans-Biography. I. Berry, Faith. II. Title. E18S.R39 1991 973'.0496073-dc20 91-23200 This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. @ To the family of the late J. SAUNDERS REDDING If modern scholars are to deserve the name of scholar-of moralist, of humanist, of philosopher-they must begin to show a vital concern with what happens to knowledge, with how it is used and why. The essence of true wisdom is distilled in the conscience. It is time that the scholars' conscience spoke out to the world. 1 Saunders Redding American Scholar, 1953 _______ CONTENTS _______ Acknowledgments IX Introduction 1 I. Autobiographical Selections "A Writer's Heritage" 15 From No Day of Triumph 19 From On Being Negro in America 49 "My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience" 56 II. Fiction "Lay the Burden Down" 58 From Stranger and Alone III. History "The Rationale of Fear" 63 From They Came in Chains IV. Biography "Faith" 98 From The Lonesome Road V. Journalism From the Afro-American 112 VI. Travelogue/Dialogue International From An American in India 122 From "Report from India" 128 From "The Meaning of Bandung" 131 From "Misled about Africa" 134 From "Home to Africa" 136 VII. Criticism Book Reviews, Essays, Lectures: A Miscellany 140 Selected Bibliography of J. Saunders Redding 219 Index 230 Books by Faith Berry Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings by Langston Hughes (edited with introduction) Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem, a biography ___ ACKNOWLEDGMENT§ ___ Grateful acknowledgment is extended to the staff of the Library of Con­ gress, where I began research for this manuscript. At the Strozier Library of Florida State University, where I completed my research, special thanks to the administrators and to the following staff members who made my task easier in numerous helpful ways: Elizabeth Fairley, Carolyn Reynolds, Tom Kupcek, and Chris Schappels, all of the Interlibrary Loan department, and Joseph Evans and Chester Wright of the Microfilms section. For manuscript materials by and about J. Saunders Redding at Brown University and for gracious assistance in documenting information, I thank Martha Mitchell, university archivist of the John Hay Library. I am grateful to Professor Charles Nichols of Brown University and Professors Elisabeth Muhlenfeld and Bertram Davis of Florida State Uni­ versity for reading portions of the manuscript and making helpful editorial comments. At my institution, Florida Atlantic University, I was aided by the willing and efficient staff of the S. E. Wimberly Library. I am also indebted to Dean Sandra Norton of the College of Arts and Humanities and Mary Faraci, chairperson of the Department of English and Comparative Liter­ ature, for encouragement and cooperation during the production stage of the manuscript. An able and efficient graduate student, Jeannette Lawson, provided invaluable clerical assistance. The project began as a labor of commitment without financial aid, although midway through I was the fortunate recipient of a fellowship from the McKnight Foundation/Florida Endowment Fund, which permitted additional research time and access to archives. My thanks to Elizabeth McKee of Harold Matson Co. for her help during early stages of the manuscript. I am indebted to J. Saunders Redding for his concurrence with my editorial selections, for making unpublished material available to me, and for permission to reprint "My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience," "The Negro Author: His Publisher, His Public and His Purse," "Richard Wright: An Evaluation," "The Negro Writer as Artist," "Of Men and the Writing of Books," "W.E.B. Du Bois: A Mind Matched with Spirit," "American Foreign Policy and the Third World" [Statement before Senate Foreign Relations Committee], an excerpt from "Some Remarks: On Humanism, the Humanities and Human Beings," "Absorption with Black­ ness Recalls Movement of the '20s," and excerpts from No Day of Triumph, X Acknowledgments They Came in Chains, Stranger and Alone, On Being Negro in America, An American in India, and The Lonesome Road. Permission was also obtained from Afro-American newspapers for columns and book reviews; American Scholar for excerpts from "The Wonder and the Fear," "Report from India," "The Meaning of Bandung," and "Home to Africa"; American Studies International (formerly American Studies: An International Newsletter) for "The Black Revolution in American Studies"; Crisis for ''The Black Arts Movement: A Modest Dissent"; Dodd, Mead and Co. and Jay Martin for a selection from A Singer in the Dawn: Reinterpretations ofPaul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Jay Martin; Mississippi Quarterly for an excerpt of "James Weldon Johnson and the Pastoral Tradition"; and Morrow and Co., Stanton L. Wormley, and the Estate of the late Lewis H. Fenderson for "A Writer's Heritage." My respectful appreciation to Mrs. Esther Redding for beneficial information at various stages of the manuscript and kind hospitality when I visited Ithaca, New York; my enduring homage to J. Saunders Redding, whose full cooperation and wise counsel gave me added incentive to complete this anthology, which he read but did not live to see in print. To my parents, and family-thanks, as always, for being an inspiration. ___ INTRODUCTION ___ If black America can be said to have its modern Renaissance man, ). Saunders Redding clearly deserved that distinction. Though he wrote no drama or poetry, his work as novelist, essayist, biographer, historian, and critic was filled with both. One might say of him, as Dryden said of Shakespeare, that "when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too." A Shakespearean scholar himself, Redding was, however, best known as one of the first great scholars of Afro-American literature. He resisted the term "black scholar," in the conviction that humanists should not be defined by a color line. His own study of literature, far from being confined to race, covered instead a wide literary map in which national literatures, events, and authors do not exist in isolation. In prac­ tice, this means that as a critic he judged the poetry of Phillis Wheatley with an awareness of Alexander Pope, the novels of William Wells Brown with a knowledge of Charles Brockden Brown, and the speeches of Frederick Douglass with a recognition of William Lloyd Garrison. Redding traced the importance ofliterary development among a host of Afro-American writers in that same way, from the earliest known works of jupiter Hammon in the eighteenth century to those of contemporary authors in the twentieth. As social historian he examined American culture across racial and national boundaries, knowing that its meaning is most likely to be found in influences and confluences, both black and white, past and present. His writings probed the influence of the spirituals and blues on American culture, the relationship of Afro-American history to Afro-American liter­ ature, and the frequent exploitation and misrepresentation of racial mate­ rial by Euro-American artists and writers. His conception of Afro-American culture was, above all else, an affirmation of its link to the American experience. Hence, his unyielding belief that it must be studied and assessed in that context. He was born October 13, 1906, in Wilmington, Delaware, and chris­ tened James
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