Alain Locke and the New Negro Movement

Eugene C. Holmes

Negro American Literature Forum, Vol. 2, No. 3, Protest and Propaganda Literature. (Autumn, 1968), pp. 60-68.

Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-2480%28196823%292%3A3%3C60%3AALATNN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8

Negro American Literature Forum is currently published by St. Louis University.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/slu.html.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.org Wed Oct 10 14:40:29 2007 ALAlN LOCKE AND THE NEW NEGRO MOVEMENT

of the new Negro middle class. But it warns,by every admission a. representation of a. re-eva.lua.tion of the Negro's pa.st and of the Negro himself by Negro intel- lectuals a,nd artists. For the rise of the New Negro Movement coincided with an ever increasing interest in Negro life and chara.cter in the twenties. American litera,ture wa.s being re- eva.luated and (speech given at 52nd Annual Meeting overhauled a,s a revolt against the gen- of the Association for the Study of teel tra.dition and the acquisitive so- Negro Life and History) ciety of the last decades of the nine- teenth century. THE NEW NEGRO MOVEMENT Charles Johnson chasa.cterized Alain Locke a,s "the Dean of this group of The rise of a genuine New Negro fledgling writers of the new and lively Movement was fostered and encoura.ged by generation of the 1920's ." Johnson one person, Alain Leroy Locke, who be- wrote, "A brilliant analyst trained in came its creative editor and its chron- philosophy, a.nd a,n esthete with a flair icler. It may be true that the term for art a,s well as letters, he gave en- Rena.issa.nce, as Sterling Brown has so coura.gement and guidance to these young perceptively pointed out, is a, misnomer writers as an older practitioner too because of the shortness of the life sure of his cra.ft to be discouraged by span of the Harlem movement. Also, the fa.ilure of full acceptance in the pub- New Negro writers were not centered only lishing media of the period."1 Johnson in Ha.rlem and nuch of the best writing referred to Alain Locke as "an important of the deca.de was not always about Har- derof history" of a "dramatic period lem, for most of the writers were not in our na.tiona1 history." Locke had Haslemites. Yet Harlem was the "show this to sa,y about these young writers window," the cashier's till, though it being launched on their careers: "They is no more "'Negro America" tha.n New York sense within their group a spiritual is America,. The New Negro had ternpora,l wea,lth which if they can properly ex- roots in the pa.st and spatial roots pound, will be ample for a new judgment elsewhere in America and the term has and re-appraisal of the race." This, va,lidity only when considered to be a then, is only a part of the backdrop of continuing tradition. what has been ca,lled the Negro Renais- It may be argued thak the so-called Negro Renaissance held the seeds of de- l~he---New Negro: Thirty --Years After- feat for a, number of reasons, among them ward, The Howa.rd University Press, 1955, being the genera,l a,nti-intellectualism 34. sance. Wha.t Charles Johnson referred he had gone to teach in 1912, Locke had to as "tha,t sudden and a,ltogether phe- been working in his way, in concert with nomena,l outburst of emotional expression many friends, to help lay to rest the unma.tched by any comparable period in mawkish and moribund dialect school of American or Negro American history." poetry. William Stanley Braithwa,ite, No one, not even the older Du Bois, Lockets friend and mentor while he was could have been better equipped to have a,t Hasva,rd; William Monroe Trotter, the been the a.rchitect of the New Negro editor; W. E, B. Du Bois, a,ll helped in Movement and ma.ker of history. Phila- hastening the demise of Negro dialect delphia,, Locke's birthplace, was the poetry. Friendly critics such a,s Louis one city where one could speak of a Untermeyer aLso helped by labeling the culture. Negro a,rtists were encouraged tra.ditiona1 dia,lect as "an affecta,tion and Negro litera,ry, musical a,nd painting to plea.se a white audience .'I And, along groups were encouraged. Young Locke wa,s with James Weldon Johnson, who ha.d awase of this personally and a1way.s kept genuine poetic talent, this critics' these artists in mind a,s reminders of coterie saw tha,t dialect poetry ha.d the awakening of Negro art in America.. neither the wit nor the beauty of folk The literary movement ha,d many of its speech, but was only a continuation of origins in Phikdelphia, but, beca,use the stock stereotypes about gentility, of socia.1, economic and politica.1 rea,- humility and buffoonery, and an eva,sion sons, it flowered in New York. For a, of all of the realities of Negro life. racial dilenzma, in Negro art, a racia,l One co~ntera~ction,however, to this solution was necessa,ry. This came in dialect poetry wa,s a conscious reverting the mid-twenties from the inspira.tion to Romanticism and neo-Romanticism which of the New Negro Movement with its cru- reflected a middle-class recognition of sa,de of folk expression in all of the Europeanized esthetic values. In some arts, the drama., pa,inting, sculpture, ways, this was a result of the rejection music and the rediscovery of the folk of the minstrel-buffoon stereotype. In origins of the Negro' s African herita,ge. addition, a,s the middle class Negro be- The ra,cia.l dile-mma. was a. distinct came better educated, there was a,n increase carryover from the same dile-mma en- in his desire to sha,re in the legacy of countered by the Negro writers of the genera,l culture, to participate in it, late nineteenth century. In most of even though in a lesser fashion. As these writers, there wa.s to be found the Sterling Brown put it, in too many in- same tendentious, pedestrian and imita,- stances "these poets were more concerned tive style a,s observed in many of the with making copies of the 'beauty' tha,t pa,inters. There wa,s the dialect poetry was the stock-in-trade of a languishing of Dunbar and his la,ter English poems tradition." These imitators were, for in which he wa,s the exponent of the the most part, only too anxious to a.void romantic tendencies which were to be de- any mention of a Negro tradition or to cried by the next genera.tion of Negro look into their own experiences as Ne- poets. There were the propaganda novels groes. The result, in their poetry, of Frances Ha,rper, Martin Delaney, Fra,nk was escapist, without vitality or under- Webb and William Wells Brown. The novels standing. of Charles Chesnutt were outstanding for Along with this counteraction there their genre, style and impact. The developed in the same period, the move- politica,l essa,ys were all to be merged ment which a,ssisted in the Negro writer's with and channelized into that renascence spiritual ema.ncipation. As Locke him- which came to be know as the New Negro self put it in his last published account Movement. (1952) of the movement: "For from 1912 on, there was brewing the movement that Locke's Early Years in 1925, explicitly became the so-ca,lled Renaissance of the New Negro. The move- As a burgeoning critic and student ment was not so much in itself a, triumph of Negro life in Philadelphia, in Boston of realism, although it had its share of and New York, act Howard University where realists, but a deliberate cessation by Negro authors of their attempts pr ima,ri ly Although the younger Locke hard not to influence majority opinion. By then, always seen eye to eye with the older Negro artists had outgrown the handicaps Du Bois on every issue concerning the of allowing didactic emphasis and prop- Negro's struggle for artistic emancipa,- agandist motives to choke their sense tion, he ha.d aslwa,ys a,dmired "The Souls of artistry. Partly in disillusionrment, of Black Folk" and "Darkwater." He ha,d partly in newly acquired group pride and only sympa,thy for the Litany from whose self-respect, they turned inward to the loins "sprang twin Murder and Black Negro audience in frankly avowed self- Hate ." He knew of Du Bois' biogra,phy of expression." John Brown, he sympathized with the Du Langston Hughes, one of their number, Bois a,tta,ck on the philosophy of Booker thus phra,sed this literary declaration T. Wa,shington. He supported the Nia,ga,ra of independence: movement and voiced his support for the "We younger Negro artists who create intellectual and literary leadership now intend to express our individua,l which signalled Du Bois' founding of dark-skinned selves without fear or Crisis, the journal of the N.A,A,C,P. shame. If white people are pleased, we In the early years, Locke supplied the are glad. If they are not, it doesn't journal with an annual review of Negro matter. We know we are beautiful. And literature, art and music. And Locke ugly too. If colored are pleased, we joined with those Negro intellectuals are glad. If they are not, their dis- who supported Du Bois a,s the leader of pleasure doesn't mahter either. We build the "talented tenth" movement and of our temples for tomorrow, strong a.s we Negro liberalism. know how, and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves ." Under the directorship of Du Bois, Once again, there was a co-mmon de- Crisis became the instrument which led nominator between the advance-guard to the vocal and verbal expression of elements of the ma,jority and the minor- Negro political and artistic leadership. ity. The ant i-sla,very collaboration Du Bois wa,s one of the first America,n had forged a moral alliance; this was scholars to turn to the new scientific an esthetic one, which spelled out a. approa,ch in the social sciences and final relea,se from propaganda and its this meant new approaches in history shackling co-mmitments both for Negro and sociology by way of philosophy and materials in American art and litera- scientific method. All of this appealed ture and for the Negro artist and writer. to the philosophica.lly trained Locke And from 1925 to the present, realism who knew of Du Bois' history of the and Southern regionalism on the one side, suppression of the African slave tra,de and the promotion of ra,cial self- expres- to America, where he was anxious to sion on the other, have informally but employ the techniques of scientific re- effectively combined to form a new pro- search and its results for the settle- gressive atmosphere in American letters. ment of the Negro problem in America. One of the then new poets, James Locke knew of Du Bois' investigations Weldon Johnson, sensitive, socia,lly a,- of the treahment of Negro soldiers by ware, and a founder of the N,A,A.C.P., the American army in 1918. Locke sup- had a considera,ble influence on the ported Du Bois' ca,lls for the Pan- younger generation of Negro poets. His African Congress of 1919, 1921 a,nd 1923. poems of ra,ce consciousness, his fine And Locke withdrew from his active role commemorative elegy of the fiftieth a,n- in the N.A.A,C.P. when its Board refused niversary of Negro freedom, pra,ised the to support Du Bois' Pan-Africanism. He Negro's contribution to the America,n maintained this support until Du Bois' heritage and they were more -militant return to Atlanta, and supported the "old than anything heretofore written. After man's" founding and editorship in 1940 Du Bois' "Litany of Atlanta," Johnson of Phylon, The Atlanta Review of Race depicted the horrible brutalization of and Culture. To this journal Locke con- lynching in his poetry, "grimly prideful tributed another annual critical review and resistant to the lynch-mad South." of literature by and about Negroes. Opportunity, An American Journa,l of feller-supported General Education Board Negro Life, the organ of the Nationa,l and the Rosenwa.ld Foundation launched Urban Lea,gue, was first edited by Charles the new ra,cia,l ed~ca~tionalphilosophy S. Johnson. This organ was another impe- of the south. By the second decade a, tus to the literary movement with the legasl caste system based on race and establishment in 1924 of cash prizes for color ha,d been openly grafted on the original literasy work. The Crisis prizes democratic conscience of the United were established through the sponsorship Sta,tes. And the representatives of the of Mrs. Amy E. Spingarn and the Opportu- New Negro Movement a,llied themselves to -nity prizes through that of Ca,spar a, man with Du Bois, Locke, Charles Holstein. Additional prizes were offered Johnson a.nd James Weldon Johnson. later by Ca,rl Van Vechten through ODDOT- V iL tunity a.nd by Carl Brandt through Crisis. Locke ' s Leadership at Howard Also through Crisis, the Chwles W. Chesnutt Honora,rium was given. These Locke ha,d the anspicious fortune prizes were given for many years and ha,d to begin his educational experience at quite an effect upon the younger writers. Howa,rd University, where, a.s an in- The title poem to Langston Hughes' first structor in education and philosophy, volume won an Opportunity prize. "The he came into conta,ct with ma,ny scholars New Negro wa.s the distillation of the who greeted the Harvard, Oxford, Berlin ferment of the preceding decade." trained youth of twenty-five. Meeting The post-wa,r decade which ushered a,nd working with Ernest E. Just, the in the Harlem Renaissance was the age English tea,cher turned zoologist, wa,s of triumph for big business a.nd the an event and the two became insepa,rable consolida,tion of industry and monopoly friends until Just's untimely death in capitalism on a world wide sca,le. This 1941. The young Locke was a,ccepted a,& wa,s conducted by white capital with acclaimed by the first Negro to teach Negro and i-mmigrant labor, a mass of sociology, the former classicist and cheap and potentially efficient la,bor, ma,thematicia.n, Kelly Miller . There unlimited natural power and a use of were many others, such as his class- unequalled technique, rea,ching all of mate, Montgomery Gregory, with whom he organized the Howard Pla,yers Together the markets of the world and 1ea.ding . these Negro scholars organized into a, to the emergence of America a,s a. force group known a,s the Sanhedrin under the in twentieth century world imperialism. joint leadership of Locke and Miller. The profits promised by the exploi- Locke organized the first literary tations of this qua,si-colonialism were endangered by la,bor difficulties; whole- journa,l, the Stylus, from its beginning untiL its demise. He helped in the sale scabbing by Negroes threa,tened to - flare into ra,ce was. Relations between organization of the art ga,llery and the music depa,rtment for he saw that Southern poor whites and Negroes became general and cultura,l education wa,s increasingly exa,cerba,ted. The northward a, desideratum for Negro students. His emigrations to the cities depleted the rural south and made new ghettoes in own educa,tional philosophy predisposed the north. The sha,dows of ra,ce riots him to manifest the broad approa,ch a.nd a,nd lynchings remained. And they sea,red. an interdisciplina,ry point of view. In The Vardamans and TilLnans still ruled doing so, he devoted much of his own the Congress. The Thomas Nelson Pages teaching to the new science of anthro- and Dixons were in the ascendancy in pology, social conflict and socia,l the- literature. There wa,s bound to be an ory. He wrote --Race and Culture Conflict inevitable conflict between the new in 1916. gradua,tes of the Negro colleges and No one could have been better e- the northerners who had supported the quipped for the lea,dership and sponsor- new schools, a.11 of which wa,s symbolized ship of the New Negro Movement tha,n in the struggle and conflicts between Locke, who described himself "more of a Booker T . Washington and Dr. W. E, B. philosophical midwife to a generation Du Bois. The organization of the Rocke- of younger Negro poets, writers a,nd artists than a professional philosopher." The harsh effects of slavery had to For years he had been encouraging art- be viewed as contributing to the recog- ists and musicia,ns to study the African nition of the Negro's role as participant sources a,t first hand. He was an avid and contributor to American culture. collector of Africana. He wrote expert- "Just as slavery may now (1952) in per- ly about the lost ancestral arts of spective be viewed as having first Africa, and tra.ced the influence of Af- threatened our democratic institutions rican art on European artists in the and then forced them to more consistent early twentieth century. He knew a maturity, the artistic and cultural great dea,l a,bout African influences in impact of the Negro must be credited Haiti and other Camribbeanislands and with producing unforeseen constructive he consistently pointed out African in- pressures a,nd genera,ting unexpected fluences on the Negro American, both creative f errnent in the literary a.nd before and after the abolition of sla,v- artistic culture of America. In cutting ery. the Negro loose from his ancestral Alain Locke did not make many orig- culture, slavery set up a unique and inal researches into American Negro unprecedented situation between the history or into the golden lore of Af- Anglo-Saxon ma,jority and the Negro rican history, but he grew in sta,ture minority group. The peculiar condi- a,s he learned more and more of this tions of America,n slavery so scrambled history. It taught him that the Negro Africans from the diverse regions a,nd scholar's ability to withstand the in- culture of our entire continent tha,t firrnities of the American scene is a, with the original background culture, dialectic phase of the democratic pro- triba,l to begin with, neither a minority cess. And this dialectic must neces- language nor a,n ancestral tradition re- sarily aid in bringing into fruition -mains. The American Negro was left no the dream of a, community of Negro schol- alternative but to share the 1angua.ge ars. This was his sensitivity a,bout and tradition of the ma,jority culture. 11 2 American history and it led him to a,n Locke believed that, despite his- identification with the great lea,der, torical interludes, the Negro's values, the self-taught Frederick Douglass , idea,ls and objectives , have a,lwa,ys been about whom he wrote a biography. Locke integrally a.nd unreservedly Amer ica,n. was deeply a,ppreciative of Du Bois' He wrote, "The crucia.1 factors in group scientific approa.ch to history and relationships are social a,ttitudes a,nd Carter G. Woodson's pioneer scientific literature--recording and reflecting work in the history of slavery and the these in preference even in social fa,ct-- Negro past. His contributions to the becomes the most revealing medium."3 New Negro Movement always turned out to be re-eva,luations of Negro history a,s The Works of Locke it a,ffected the Negro writer, the Negro Locke wrote more than a dozen books schola.r, and the lives of all sensitive- and articles after 1921 on Negro art, ly aware Negroes. music and literature, tra,cing these As an a,uthor, Locke knew that the developments from the easliest times, story of the Negro writer had to be from 1760 up to 1920. He began with told, because of the social history in- the first Negro poets, essayists and volved. He came to see that the posi- novelists, showing that the earliest tion of the Negro in American culture indictments of sla.very from the artic- had come to mean a great deal more than ulate free Negro displayed signs of a, merely the a,rtistic activity of the strong race consciousness. He showed Negro minority. It came to mean for that if slavery had molded the emotiona,l hirn a pointing towa,rd a goal of a "na.- and folk life of the Negro, that a,lso tively cha,racteristic national litera- it wars the a,nti- s lavery movement which ture as being one of the crucial issues "~ of cultural de.mocracy." And this had Litera.ture," --New World Writing, Vol. I, to be eva.luated aga,inst the slavery and (1951) p. 19, New American Library. anti-slavery ba,ckground from which this %bid. literature emerged. - developed the intellect of the Negro profits and spoils of the was. In too and pushed him forward to articula,te, many insta.nces, the "New Negro" ha.d disciplined expression. The edifice served in too large a measure a,s a of chattel slavery was shaken to its means of amusement, to be fawned upon foundation by the combined efforts of a,nd idolized. Many of the New Negroes the literary and ora,torical efforts of were unwilling victims of an inverted Negro leaders and self-taught fugitive ra.cia,listic na,tiona81ism, looking upon slaves. The emergence of the "slave themselves a,s having a,rrived, and narrative" supplied the incandescent priding themselves that they could sing, spark to be added to the abolitionist pamintand write a,s well as their white- tinder . skinned pa.trons . In making America aware of the Negro artist and his work, an important Rediscovery of African Past part was pla,yed by the Harlem Number (1925) of the Survey Graphic which wa,s But, the movement was a true "ren- edited by Locke. This issue of the a,issancer' in amnothersense--the antiq- Survey conta.ined a. hundred pages. uity which Negroes wanted to revive from There were twenty contributors, fifteen a "lost" African past. However they Negro and five white and twelve belonged might shase in the leavings of their to the Harlem group. Among the articles new found prosperity, if they were to were "Enter the New Negro," "The Making rediscover their ra.cial souls, they ha.d of Harlem," "Bla,ck Workers and the City," to go ba,ck, at lea,st mentally, to the "Jazz at Home, " "Negro Art and America,, " African pa.st. There were the successes "The Negro Digs Up His Past," "The Rhythm and the fa.ilures of Du Bois' lea.dership of Harlem," and many others appertaining in the 1921, 1923 a.nd 1925 Pan-Africa,n to Harlem. This issue of the Survey had Congresses. The efforts of Locke to the largest circula.tion of any in its instill in the younger poets, a,rtists history. Severa,l editions had to be and m~sicia~ns,some sense of this Africa.n run off before the demand wa.s satisfied. herita,ge bore fruit in the work of In Black Manhattan, James Weldon Johnson Toomer, Cullen, McKay and Hughes. in 1926, wrote, "It was a revela,tion to The most developed poet and literary New York a.nd the country. Laster the figure of the New Negro movement, Lang- sympos ium, s omewha,t enlarged, wa,s brought ston Hughes, wrote on all manners of out a.s a, book, entitled -The -New -,Negro subjects and always movingly of Africa. under the editorship of Alain Locke. In 1926, "Weary Blues1' and in 1927, It remains one of the most important "Fine Clothes to the Jew," Hughes dis- books on the Negro ever published." played his artistry of particula,r power The movement, for a while,did thrive and beauty pursuing his own course more in Harlem. Then the "influence of than any other of the New Negroes. Locke's essays and of the movement in Hughes' antecedents were bound up in a general, spread outward over the country, family tradition where the struggle for touching writers in Missouri, Mississip- freedom was always a strong rnemory and pi, in Boston, Phil delphia, and Na,sh- inspiration. A grandfather died fight- ville and Chicago." fi ing beside John Brown. An uncle was a Unknowingly, there was being culti- Reconstruction Congressman and the first vated a middle class nationalism within Dean of the Howard Law School. Even the protective folds of the capita,list Hughes1 blues, melodious and rhythmic ethos. The majority did not rebel, but are full of African feeling as in "Home- rather hearkened to the voice of bour- sick Blues": geois authority. Amer ican capitalism had prospered in the redivision of the De railroa~dbridge's A sa,d song in de a,ir Every time de trains pa,ss I wants to go somewhere. 4Negro Ca,ravan, edited by Sterling Brown, Arthur P. Da,vis and Ulysses Lee, The black world of America, and Dryden Press, 1941, p. 16. Africa came to have a new meaningful na,tionalistic pride for so many of race conscious a.nd challenging. In these poets. It was not alwa,ys very Cullen's "Shroud of Color," his sense deep or couched in any scientific an- of ra,ce is one of loya,lty, pride and thropological understanding, but no group consciousness, "alnost thah one ma,tter, there was precious little under- of a, chosen people." standing a,t the time for anyone. Wha,t mattered wa,s that this flowering wa,s a, Lord, I would live persuaded by true rena,issance of feeling, a prideful mine own evocation of the dark image of Africa, I cannot platy the recreant to germinated from a fructified seedbed these ! but one which took on a new form and My spirit ha,s come home, tha,t content . sa,iled the doubtful seas.

Literary Rena.issance and the Hughes ' "Bra,ss Spittoons" tells of "New Negro"' the distastefbl ta,sks of menial labor:

The Harlem Renaissance, substantive- Hey, Boy! ly, transformed the Negro as subject A bright bowl of brass is beautiful and as astist from the old stereotype to the Lord into the New Negro, -militant, no longer Bright polished bra,ss like the obsequious, more of a paragon because cymbals he had shown tha,t he wa,s nearly on equal Of King David's dancers terms with his white counterpast. He Like the wine cups of Solomon. won coveted prizes, fellowships, he wa,s being published a,nd he won his spurs the These poets, in their different hard wag in crea,tive writing. These ways, were all influentia,l in the twen- artists were not organized but theirs wa,s ties and thirties, influencing an entire a strong spirit of cohesion, a, bond of generation of younger poets. Cullen and group consciousness, toward some goa,l Toomer in New York and all over America, of a,chievement which would make the Hughes in New York and all over the Negro artist proud of his work. It was world, McKay in New York and the social- a self-confidence which grew and pro- ist world, Sterling Brown at Howard and liferated into an outburst of emotional all over the South, a,ll expressing idea,s expression, never ma,tched by any compa- that were representative of the Negro rable period in American history. The movement. In "Strong Men," Brown pens: new generamtionof writers began to carve out a, niche in the hitherto impermea.ble They dragged you from your homeland, wa,lls of American litera,ry culture. They cha,ined you in coffles Hence the self-confidence, the se1f-a.s- They broke you in like oxen surance and the pride of craftsmanship. They scourged you The New Poetry Movement embraced They branded you every fa.cet of Negro experience from You sang: lyricism, African heritage, socia,l pro- Keep a,- inch in' a,long test, folk song and blues, Negro heroes Lak a pot inch worm . . . and episodes, lynchings, race riots, You sang: treatment of the Negro masses (frequently Wa,lk togedder , chillen, of the folk, less often of the workers), Dontcha, get weary and. franker and deeper self-revelation, The strong men keep a comin1 on social injustice and intolerance. Claude The strong men get stronger. McKay's famous "If We Must Die" became After Frederick Douglass 's fiction- the touchstone for the dynamics of the a,lized Madison Wa,shington and the short social forces and conflicts of the stories of William Wells Brown and Ches- twenties. His was the answer to the nutt, the Negro a~sshort story writer growing crescendo of race riots and could only emerge from a, vacuum even lynchings which characterized the times. though the short story as literary genre Toomer's eloquent outcries in Cane were had taken creditable form in America. Negro writers were unable to gain any of writing. Eric Walrond's "Tropic entree into the magazines. Charles Ches- Death," Langston Hughes' "Ways of White nutt's experiences in 1887 with the Folks1' came close to penetrating into Atlantic Monthly when the editors did the innermost workings of Negro life not wish to publicize his racial iden- which were overlooked by the racial tity was an infamous blot on American idealists who wrote cloyingly of the new literature. Chesnutt's story "The Negro middle class escapists. Goophered Grapevine" was accepted by Perhaps the novel as an art form was Walter Hines Page and later Page ac- grist to the -mill of the Negro writer at cepted "The Wife of His Youth," and only any time or place, whenever he began to belatedly admitted that the author was write about his own experiences or those a Negro, cla,irning to the editor of the of others. The earliest Negro novelists, magazine Critic that he did not want to William Wells Brown and Martin Delaney, do damage to the author' s reputation. wrote as pleaders for a cause and as Dunbar's stories were popular because of Sterling Brown wrote, "their successors the planta,tion tradition of his dialect have almost followed their example ." The style and they did not offend. inferior propaganda novels such as Frances In the late twenties, Langston Hughes Harper's --Iola, Leroy or Shadows Uplifted faced the problem when Esquire published and Dunba,rts four conventional novels were "A Good Job Gone." Hughes wrote about not comparable to Chesnutt's novels of this in "Fighting Words" : social realism. James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography Here are our problems: In the --of an Ex-Coloured -Man was a purpose work, first place, Negro books are con- the first "pa,ssing novel." Du Bois' sidered by editors and publishers ---Quest of the silver Fleece had virtues as exotic. Negro material is pla,ced, but it wa,s not artistic. Nella Larsen's like Chinese material or Bali mate- Quicksand, Jessie Fauset's --Plum Bun and rial into a certain classifica,tion. Walter White ' s Flight, all mitten in the Magazine editors will tell you, "We twenties, were "passing" novels. White's can use but so many Negro stories a ----Fire in the ~1in-tha,d the virtue of being year." (That "so many" meaning very the first anti-lynch novel written by a few.) Fublishers will say, "We a,l- Negro in the twenties. Du Bois ' -Dark ready have one Negro novel on our Princess (1928), pa,rt fantasy and past list this fa,ll." . . . . When we fiction, called for a union of the dazker cease to be exotic, we do not sell nations and also criticized the weaknesses well. of the Negroes' struggles for freedom and America,'~handling of the race problem. These ha,ve been the circumscriptions The New Negro Movement produced the placed on the Negro short story writer first really competent novelists--Fisher, on a,ll sides in the publishing world. Walrond, Cullen, McKay, Thurman and When the Negro writer published in Hughes. The forefield of this New Negro either Crisis or ~~~ortuni~~,the pay was literature was an artistic awakening. paltry and the stories were ty-ped. The Publishers ma,y have had only one Negro stories were concerned with lynchings, on their lists, but as the late E. Frank- race riots, race praise or passing. lin Frazier pointed out, the audience was Rudolph Fisher 's ''High Ya,llerHwon the not Negro, but white. These writers were first prize in the 1925 Crisis contest. very important in the development of the Later in the same year, Atlantic Monthly Negro novelist a,s a, craftsman. With published his story, "The City of Refuge." these new writers there was great fire Many other new writers of the Movement and enthusiasm, a creative dynamism of wrote well constructed stories which won self-conscious racialistic expression Crisis and Opportunity prizes--Arthur which at the time was a healthy manifes- Huff Fauset, John Matheus, Eugene Gordon, tation of the proble-rn which beset the Marita Bonner, Edwin Sheen and Jean Negro people. Thurman, in Infants --of the Toomer. Unlike Fisher, most of these Spring, satirized the exaggerations and writers did not continue their careers Bohemian a,spects of the movement. Fisher, a physician, the first Negro to In 1930, James Weldon Johnson in write a detective story and a writer of Black Manhattan wrote: "Harlem is still social comedy, in --Walls of Jericho, wrote in the process of making. It is still of Harlem jive, a socially intelligent new and mixed; so mixed that one mag get satire of the foibles of the new Negro many different views--which is all right -middle class. so long a,s one view is not taken to be The Negro had come to stay as a the whole picture. This many-sided a,s- novelist and the novelists of the New pect, however, makes it one of the most Negro Movement prepared the way for all interesting co-munities in America. But of those who were to come later. The Harlem is more than a co-munity, it is a genius of Wright burgeoned out of the large-scale labora,tory experiment in the thirties. Many, like Ellison, relied race problem and from it a good many fa,cts heavily on the New Negro novelists' ex- have been found .lr periences. The writers of the Federal And Ala,in Locke, more prophetic and Writers Project of the thirties looked Ca,ssandra,-like than he could have ever back only a decade to their New Negro pre- known, in the la,st a,rticle written before cursors. As Sterling Brown wrote in his his death, said, "It is to this -mirror essay, "The New Negro in Literature (1925- that I turn for the salient changes of 1955)," "Negro authors of the thirties, ma,jority attitudes toward the Negro, and like their compatriots, faced reality equally important, for a view of the more squarely. For the older light-heart- Negro's cha,nged attitude towasd himself . edness, they substituted sober self- For the Negro seerns at last on the verge searching; for the bravado of false of proper cultural recognition and a, Africanism and Bohemianism, they substi- fraternal acceptance as a welcome pastic- tuted attempts to understand Negro life ipant and collabora,tor in the American in its workaday aspects in the here and arts. Should this become the rea,lized now . . . Alert to the changing times, goa,l, the history of the Negro's strange a few critics--Alain Locke among them-- and tortuous ca,reer in Arner ican literature charted new directions. "5 may become also the story of America's hard-won but easily endured atta,inment of 5~he---New Negro Thirty --Years After- cultural democra,cy. l1 ward, The Howard University Press, 1955, 32. Eugene C. HoLmes Department of Philosophy Howard University Wa,shington, D, C,

Negro American Literature Forum Non-prof it Org. School of Education U.S. Postage Indiana State University Terre Haute, Indiana 47809 Permit No. 48 Terre Haute, Ind.