DOCUMENT IRES-UME TE 000 608 ED 022 755 By-Sterling, Dorothy TIC SOIL OF LEARNING. Pub Date Feb 68 English, Univ. of Wisconsin,Milwaukee. Summer1967. Note-15p.; Speech given atthe NDEA Institute in 1968 Journal Cat-English Journal;v57 n2 p166-80 Feb HC-S068 ORS Price MF-S025 *LITERATURE. NEGROACHIEVEMENT, llEGRO Descriptors-BLACK C0141UNITY,ENGLISH INSTRUCTION. NEGRO LEADERSHIP, EDUCATION, *NEGROES,*NEGRO HISTORY, ATTITWES. *NEGROCULTURE NEGRO ATTITUDES, RACIAL INDUSTRY, RACERELATIONS, RACIAL NEGRO ROLE. NEGROYOUTH, PWLISHING TEXTBOOK BIAS INTEGRATION, *RACIALRECOGNITION. TEACHING. DISCRIMINATION. RACIAL problems, few bookspresenthonestly the Despite currentemphasis on racial the United States.Adolescents' andchidren's books portraying Negro experience in increased over the pasttwo decades.but they Negroes in realisticsituations have that 17 of the total outputof books for youngpeople. Textbooks comprise only few. In recent years. someattempt has been include Negroes or -141 o culture are full primers, but mosthistory texts arestil 'disappointingly made to integrate reng ptbkshers should omissions, andbias." To remedythis situation, of misstatements. about Negroesthat candidlypresent actively encourage newbooks by and through life. Aso. teachers canhelp emphasizeNegro experience contemporary 'exploration of soul:the reading ofNegro literature, or creative teaching.A semester's al contribute to abetter the writing of aterm paper onracial problems can role in Negro's, andconversely the whiteman's, history and understanding of the the article) (LH) America. (Many booksinvolving Negroes arecited throughout Reprinted from The English Journal, February, 1968 U.S. IMPARTMENT OF NUM. EDUCATION it WELFAlf OMCE OF EDUCATION TINS DOCUMENT NAT KEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FRON PERSON OR 0161111ATION INSWING IT.POINTS Of VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARY IIPAISENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. The Soul of Learning "PERMISSION TO INPROINICE THIS OPTIONS MATERIAL NAS MEI GRAITEO gy4old4 aitAl; Dorothy Sterling z&z:vtA/Cm",":1 TO EINC AM OIWllAllS OPERA AUthOt LIMMOM WITH THE IS.oma Rye, New York EMIR REPROINKTIO1 OUSE TIE MC SYSTEM MOMS MISSION ff TIE COPYM6IIT OW1E2." j have been invited to talk to youmany years. Nevertheless, although I felt because I am, presumably, an expertlike an imposter, I couldn't resist the on books for young people on Negrochance to fly to Washington to testify. life and history. That being the case, I wrote what I hoped would be a I ought to tell you how I got to be anstirring statement about the truth gap in expert. I hope it will be a warning to allchildren's literature that prevented both of you. Negro and white youngsters from learn- Lan SIIIIIMer, I reCeived a letter askinging the real facts of American history me to appear as a witness before theand life. For a few days I had Walter House Committee on Education and La-Mitty-like fantasies of arousing Congress bor. The Committee was holding hear-and indeed the nationto action. Re- ings on the treatment of minority groupsality was somewhat different Only two in text and library books used in theor three Congressmen were actually in nation's schools. Its members wanted tothe committee room when I read my hear my views, experiences, and recom-statement, and the television cameramen mendations. When I read the letter, Iwere busy elsewhere. When I finished, thought they had made a mistake. I wasthe acting chairman thanked me politely. even surer of it after I learned that thePublishers' Weekly carried a couple of others who were testifying included thelines, and that was that Commissioner of the U. S. Office of Months later I received the record of Education, presidents of publishing com-the hearings, 2 massive eight-hundred- panies, editors,superintendentsofpage volume which included my five schools, librarians, and representatives ofpages of testimony. I never finished read- a Harlem parents' group. ittg this tome and probably never wilL I ant not now and have never been anThen this spring I received a telephone editor, a teacher, or a librarian. I haven'tcall from Dr. Virginia Burke, University even been 1 member of the PTA forof WisconsinMdwaukee, asking me to 'al to you about the books available Editor's Note: This article is the text of afor young people that concern the speech given at the NDEA Insdtute in English held at the University of WuconsinMd-Negro. Again I protested that I had no waukee, in the summer of 1967. overview of the field and was really only THE SOUL OF LEARNING 167 familiar with my own books. Shere-ing the public library in Los Angeles plied, "But I read your statementto thewhen he was a youngster, seekinga HouseEducation andLabor Com-recognizable reflection of himself and mittee." I was so touched to find thathis world. "What I foundwas of cold somebody had read thestatement that Icomfort, to say the least," he writes. did not have the heart to disillusion Dr."Nothing more inspiring than Our Little Burke. And that, ladies and gentlemen,Ethiopian Cousin was on the shelves, and is how I became an expert. I read almost evnry book in theroom to make sure. Moreover, Our Little Ethio- I have had a general impression, whichpian Cousin was notme and his world 1.perhaps you share, that there has beenwas not mine." an outpouring of books about Negroes Two decades later, when his children for young people. The impression haswere growing up, all he could locate for certainly, been bolstered byan outpour-them was The Pickaninny Twins. Try- ing of book lists. In Erwin Salk's handying to provide them with something less Layman's Guide to Negro History (Mc-damaging, he began to write children's Graw-Hill), he notes more thana dozenbooks with Negro characters and themes. bibliographiel piepared by publicli-In the thirties he had the field almostto braries in New York, Chicago, Phil-himself.Hisfirst book, You Can't adelphia, Milwaukee, by the AmericanPet A Possum, published in 1934,was Friends Service Committee, the Amer-marred by stereotyped illustrations, but ican Jewish Committee, etc. While doinghe continued with Sad-Faced Boy,,Lone- my homework for this confrontation, Isome Boy, The Fast Sooner Hound (all discovered several others, includingtwoHoughton Mifflin) and others. In addition that I think you'll find particularlyuse-to fiction, he edited Golden Slippers ful: "Books by and about the American(Harper), an anthology of Negropoetry Negro," selected by Young Adult Li-for young people,wrote We Have To- brarians at the Countee Cullen Branchmorrow (Houghton), a book of biog- of the New York Public Library, andraphies, and The Story of the Negro "Bibliography of Materials by and about(Knopf). Negro Americans for Young Readers," Langston Hughes collaborated with prepared by Atlanta University, for theBontemps on Popo and Fifina,a story U. S. Office of Education. with a Haitian setting, and prepareda But aside from the lists, what about thecollection of his own poetry foryoung books themselves? Are there enoughpeople, The Dream Keeper (Knopf). booksand enough good booksthatThen Jesse Jackson came along with present honestly the Negro experience insome boys' stories:Call Me Charley the United States? (Harper) and Anchor Man (Harper), Thirty years agoand indeed foraEllen Tarry wrote My Dog Rinty (Vi- long timebefore thatbooks aboutking), about a boy and his dog in Harlem, Negroes were, to borrow a phrase fromand Ernest Crichlow and Jerrold Beim Hollywood, box-officepoison. Therecollaborated on Two Isa Team (Har- were exceptions, of course. Uncle Tom'scourt), thefirst"integrated" picture Cabin sold well. A century after its pub-book, and for a long time the onlyone. lication, Ralph Ellisonwon a National Book Award for Invisible Man (RandomTN 194/, Shirley Grahamwon an award House). In between a handful of Negro for the "best book combatting in- writers managed to break into print tolerance in America" with There Was In an article titled, "Uncle Remus,Once a Slave (Messier), and thousands of Farewell," Arna Bontemps tells of haunt-people encountered Frederick Douglass 168 ENGLISHJOURNAL for the first time. I know, because I wasHarriet Tubman (Doubleday) and a year one of those people.With my children,later came Ann Petry's excellent biog- I continued to read her groundbreakingraphy, Haniet Tubman: Conductor 9f string of biographiesof Phillis Wheat-the Underground Railroad. ley, Benjamin Banneker, Jean Baptiste du The flurry didn't last long. The white Sable,GeorgeWashingtonCarver,South, you will remember, soon reacted Booker T. Washington. I remember lis-tothe Supreme Court with a loud tening to a radio adaptation of herStory"Never!" This was the period when of Phi llis Wheatley (Messner) with aWhite Citizens Councils mushroomed, Negro friend. My friend burst into tearswhen the Klan was revived, and southern during the program. "Why didn't some-librarians were attacked if they displayed body tell me about this?" she sobbed. a copv ofGarth Williams' The Rabbits' In addition to these Negro authors, aWedding (Harper), a picture book de- small number of white writerspeoplescribing the marriage of a black rabbit like Marguerite de Angeli, Adele De-and a white rabbit. Leeuw, Florence Means, Hope Newell I can speak at first hand about these (I think they're all white)began toyears In 1955 I went toSouth Carolina tackle the problems of prejudice andto work on a biographyof Robert Smalls, explore Negro history. In 1951 Elizabetha slavewho became a Civil War hero Yates won the Newbery Medalforand, later, a Congressman from South Amos Fortune, Free Man (Dutton), aCarolina. The reconstruction period, as biography of a slaveineighteenth-it emerged from my research, wastotally century New England whoearned hisat variance with thethen cherished no- freedom. It's a well-written, carefullytion of "the tragic era." When myeditor researched book, but I was a bit suspi-read the manuscript of Captain ofthe cious about the thinking behindthePlanter (Doubleday), she was frankly award. Almost until the end, Amos For-reluctant to publish it.