Z
1035
A 512 r
178 A 616861

STAMATI
.IK
ARTES
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
PALELALTE
18 17
VERITAS
UNIOUS.
ZAL FLUNT
UWUM
TCEBOR
TERULEGA||32
SI-QUÆRIS-PENINSULAM AMŒNAM
CIRCUMSPICE
ALI 33/3) 31.3 3.5+ $
SCIENTIA
OF THE
-$/
$17.
[SHEHERÆRIÐI?
1.
A:
amatay
:
!
"

Reading With a Purpose
A Series of Reading Courses
1. BIOLOGY.
2. ENGLISH Literature.
3. TEN PIVOTAL FIGURES OF HISTORY...A. W. Vernon
4. SOME GREAT AMERICAN BOOKS..Dallas Lore Sharp
5. ECONOMICS
Walton H. Hamilton
6. FRONTIERS OF KNOWLEDGE..... ..Jesse Lee Bennett
7. EARS TO HEAR: A GUIDE FOR MUSIC LOVERS
•
•
•
Daniel Gregory Mason
8. SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS..... H. W. Odum
9. THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES.. Edwin E. Slosson
IO. CONFLICTS IN AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION
William Allen White and Walter E. Myer
II. PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS USE....Everett Dean Martin
12. PHILOSOPHY.
Alexander Meiklejohn
13. OUR CHILDREN.
.M. V. O'Shea
14. RELIGION IN EVERYDAY LIFE..Sir Wilfred Grenfell
15. THE LIFE OF CHRIST.
Rufus M. Jones
16. MENTAL HYGIENE... .Frankwood E. Williams
17. THE APPRECIATION OF SCULPTURE....Lorado Taft
18. THE EUROPE OF OUR DAY. Herbert Adams Gibbons
19. POETRY OF OUR OWN TIMES. Marguerite Wilkinson
20. UNITED STATES IN RECENT TIMES.....F. L. Paxson
21. PLEASURE FROM PICTURES. .Henry Turner Bailey
22. AMERICAN EDUCATION.
William F. Russell
.Lewis Mumford
23. ARCHITECTURE.
24. THE MODERN ESSAY....Samuel McChord Crothers
25. AMERICANS FROM ABROAD......John Palmer Gavit
26. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AS TOLD IN FICTION
•
•
•
•
•
Vernon Kellogg
W. N. C. Carlton
·
•
•
William Stearns Davis
.Raymond Moley
.Barrett H. Clark
27. THE PRACTICE OF POLITICS.
28. THE MODERN DRAMA..
29. THE WESTWARD MARCH OF AMERICAN SETTLEMENt
Hamlin Garland
Harlow Shapley
30. THE STARS..
31. THE FOUNDERS OF THE REPUBLIC. Claude G. Bowers
32. THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES
Paul Scott Mowrer
33. TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELS
William Lyon Phelps
Continued on page 2

Reading With a Purpose
Continued from page 1
34. A STUDY OF ENGLISH DRAMA ON THE STAGE
Walter Prichard Eaton
• • •
35. GOOD ENGLISH..
Virginia C. Bacon
36. ADVENTURES IN FLOWER GARDENING. .S. B. Mitchell
37. FRENCH LITERATURE...
Irving Babbitt
38. THE YOUNG CHILD.
.Bird T. Baldwin
39. INTERIOR DECORATION Dudley Crafts Watson
40. GEOGRAPHY AND OUR NEED OF IT..J. Russell Smith
41. PIVOTAL FIGURES OF SCIENCE... Arthur E. Bostwick
42. GEORGE WASHINGTON.
Albert Bushnell Hart
43. PREHISTORIC MAN. George Grant MacCurdy
44. THE PACIFIC AREA IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
J. B. Condliffe
George H. Locke
45. ENGLISH HISTORY...
47. THE HUMAN BODY AND ITS CARE. Morris Fishbein
48. CAPITAL AND LABOR..
...John A. Fitch
49. JOURNALISM..
Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
50. HOME ECONOMICS.
.Helen W. Atwater
Earnest Elmo Calkins
John Alford Stevenson
51. ADVERTISING..
52. SALESMANSHIP.
·
54. SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE..Hanna Astrup Larsen
55. AMERICAN LIFE IN ARCHITECTURE..Philip N. Youtz
56. INVENTION AND SOCIETY....Waldemar Kaempfert
57. EVOLUTION.
Sir J. Arthur Thomson
•
67. RUSSIA, THE SOVIET WAY.
68. THE NEGRO IN AMERICA.
A
59. SHAKESPEARE.
60. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS.
61. RUSSIAN LITERATURE.
62. FARM LIFE..
63. REPRESENTATIVE TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICANS
M. A. DeWolfe Howe
64. SHORT STORY WRITING.... Blanche Colton Williams
65. LATIN AMERICA.
James G. McDonald
66. UNEMPLOYMENT..
Aaron Director
Robert C. Brooks
Alain Locke
•
•
•
.Felix E. Schelling
•
Isaiah Bowman
Avrahm Yarmolinsky
Clarence Poe
Prices: cloth, 50c each; paper, 35c each
Special prices for quantity orders
READING WITH A PURPOSE NO. 6 8
THE
NEGRO IN AMERICA
BY ALAIN LOCKE

|
CHICAGO
1
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
1933
COPYRIGHT, 1933, BY THE
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
520 N. MICHIGAN AVE., CHICAGO
PUBLISHED JUNE, 1933
Cuts by courtesy A. & C. Boni
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
Cont
Finest
心
​2
WHY THIS COURSE
IS PUBLISHED
T
as a
HERE is a growing interest in the American
Negro as an individual, as a citizen, as a con-
tributor to American life, and a growing desire to
understand his own point of view upon the problem
which is himself. For people who wish to have a
better understanding of this problem, black and
white, north and south, this course has been pre-
pared. Dr. Locke has introduced six books for
reading, five of them by Negroes, and in his Study
Outline for the more serious student, two addi-
tional books have been included. All these books
should be available in any general library or may
be obtained through any good bookstore.
If you wish to continue your reading in this
field, the librarian of your Public Library will be
glad to make suggestions. For planned reading on
other subjects you are referred to the other courses
in the Reading with a Purpose series (listed else-
where in this pamphlet) and to your Public Li-
brary.
THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
5
3
THE AUTHOR
I'
T WAS a difficult problem-the selection of
an author to present the Negro through a
reading course. Should he be a conservative
or should he represent that advance guard of
writers and scholars which sees the Negro in the
light of the new social and economic problems he
presents? Should he be a Negro or a white man?
Among the many possible authors was Dr. Alain
Locke, Rhodes scholar at Oxford, 1907-10,
student at the University of Berlin, 1910-11,
holder of a Ph.D. from Harvard, who has been
for some years Professor of Philosophy at
Howard University, Washington, D. C. Dr.
Locke, as was to be expected, has chosen to pre-
sent the "new Negro," and the opinions set forth
in the following pages, while they excellently rep-
resent the modern group to which the author
belongs, may fail to find full acceptance among
many more conservative readers of both races.
If the booklet arouses thought, provokes argu-
ment, so much the better; it will then have achieved
its real purpose, which is not to convince persons of
the soundness of Dr. Locke's opinions but to
stimulate them to go further in their reading,
weigh and balance, and reach their own conclu-
sions.
7
8
READING WITH A PURPOSE
In this third generation of freed men the "new
Negro" is at last permitted to see a definite place
accorded him in the world of affairs. He, too, is
finding his place in the sun, but his contributions
through his changed status have needed interpre-
tation. Dr. Locke has long been a keen spokes-
man for and critic of the promotion of the cultural
and artistic gifts of his race. In his own words,
"It requires great spiritual elevation to get free
of the blinding partisanships that befog both sides
of the color line; just as it takes almost the long-
range perspective of eternity to see and understand
the puzzling paradoxes of America's so-called race
problem."
:
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
O
NE-TENTH of the population of "these
United States" is black, brown or yel-
low, of Negro descent and remotely of
African derivation,¹ and, according to the relative
rates of population growth, this racial ratio prom-
ises to remain nearly constant indefinitely. To
visualize this ratio, it has been aptly suggested
that we think of the Negro as "America's tenth
man." But the Negro's true significance only be-
comes evident when to this numerical importance
we add that which he has always had as a national
issue and which he still has as a present-day minor-
ity problem. As the "bone of contention" in the
slavery controversy, the "ward of democracy"
throughout the Reconstruction, and the "problem"
of interracial adjustment in the contemporary so-
cial order, the Negro has been by some irony of
fate throughout American history the human crux
of our practical problems of political and social
democracy.
•

The importance of being a problem, however,
is a handicapping, not a stimulating, importance,
and the black minority would gladly be relieved of
1
¹ By the last census (1930), the total Negro population is
11,891,143-9.7 per cent of the total population.
9
1
10
READING WITH A PURPOSE
it. Yet not until social justice and consistent democ-
racy are worked out in America will the Negro as
America's most chronic social problem cease to
have an unnatural and disproportionate promi-
nence. This summary and outline reading course
are designed to help the reader interested in the
problem of the Negro minority achieve historical
perspective, social insight and progressive under-
standing with respect to it, and, equally important,
to lead him to some acquaintance with the human
elements and achievements of the people behind
the problem.
If ever the story of the American Negro can
be divorced from the controversial plane of the
race problem-and some day it will-the story
will then be told and appreciated as one of the
impressive epics of human history. For, in the
final analysis, it is a great folk-epic. In order that
the reader may have panoramic perspective, let
us review the main stages of this racial epic in
its tragic, but momentous and inspiring three-
hundred-year course through the decades of Amer-
ican history. We review it not solely to gratify
historical curiosity or to evoke sentimental inter-
est, but because the one safe intellectual approach
to a social problem is through a sound historical
perspective. Since this, too, is a most effective cure
for prejudice and social misunderstanding, the
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
11
wide-scale cultivation of such an approach seems
obviously one of the outstanding practical hopes
of the Negro and one of the great progressive
needs of democracy.
To comprehend the Negro in America one must
trace his path for seven or eight human generations
through a long inferno of slavery and a yet un-
finished social purgatory of testing struggle and
development. The black man's Odyssey began with
the terrific toll of a wholesale transplanting from
Africa, rapidly succeeded by burdensome, yet
transforming, tasks. The Negro endured titanic.
toil, the complete transformation of his ways of
life, and the stress of an unplanned, begrudged,
but quite redeeming, assimilation of the white
man's civilization and religion. Patience, adapta-
bility, loyalty and smiling humility gave him the
subtle victory of survival against great odds; and
the first act of slavery climaxed with the welding
of patriarchal ties between master and slave.
But the tragic second act was already pushing
the first off the historical scene. Slavery deepens
and spreads; the black victim must descend to its
abysses in the Lower South, nurturing almost hope-
lessly, but for religion, the underground hope of
freedom. And then, as the vexing question of hu-
man property begins to divide the political and
legal councils of the nation, the fugitive slave sets
12
READING WITH A PURPOSE
fire to the tinder of abolitionism and moral reac-
tion, and suddenly out of the first great crisis
comes the Civil War and slave emancipation.
But after the first blind leap of the black masses.
into the hopeful chaos and opportunities of free-
dom, Negro life was destined to drag through the
Reconstruction and its heavy series of ordeals.
First there was the difficult lesson of self-
maintenance, clumsily but ploddingly learned;
then the still heavier task of education, feverishly
and unevenly achieved; then confusion and set-
back, patiently endured, under the storm of Re-
construction reaction and mob violence; then a
slow, dogged retreat from serfdom and partial
defeat on the tenant farms to the labor marts of
the towns and cities; more patient endurance of
the loss of the newly won franchise and the civil
rights of full citizenship; and eventually a new
mass concentration and survival in the city's black
ghettos, under steady odds of economic discrimina-
tion and segregation.
Finally, with another war, another crisis and
its new opportunities came. This time it was the
surge forward into the World War's rapid ex-
pansion of life and labor, and a consequent en-
largement of life, economic and cultural, in the
new centers. But the anticipated rewards of the
Negro's patriotic response to the idealism of
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
13
the "War to Save Democracy" were not measur-
ably realized and, spurred by the bitter disillusion-
ments of post-war indifference, there came that
desperate intensification of the Negro's race con-
sciousness and attempt at the recovery of group
morale through a racialist program of self-help
and self-determination which has been the out-
standing development in Negro life during this
generation. With this phase came the beginnings
of independent economic enterprise, a growing
disposition for political action and the recovery
of civil rights and political participation; and
finally on the horizon a mounting wave of new
social and economic realism. It is with this new
temper and attitude that the Negro confronts the
present crisis, with its crossroads dilemma of
either slow progress by patient advance and inter-
racial cooperation or of problematic but tempting
quick progress through joining issues with the
forces of radical proletarian reform. This is the
point at which we contemporary spectators stand,
survey and wonder. Certainly the past of the
Negro in America has been an epical adventure,
pursued against great odds and opposition, but
favored, almost providentially at critical times, by
saving alliances with the forces of moral and social
liberalism, all combining to achieve a gradually
ascending scale of achievement and progress.
14
READING WITH A PURPOSE
On the other side, the story is equally dramatic
if read in forward-looking perspective. It is the
long Odyssey of the white mind, wandering
through the mazes of self-made dilemmas, in
search of a way out into the consistent practice of
democracy.
Out of the Civil War, inevitable consequence of
the deepening hold of slavery, emancipation came
as a strategic blow at the seceded South; half a
national economy had to be overturned and the
freed Negro masses became the helpless, burden-
some wards of the Federal government. Meshed
in with the aftermath of war and slavery came
then a conflicting flow and ebb of forces, now
favorable, now unfavorable, to the interests of
the Negro.
In 1895, however, a leader in black reconstruc-
tion caught the approval of the South and the
favor of Northern captains of industry by an ap-
peal for advancing the South through improving
the industrial and economic condition of the
Negro. There followed a great revival of philan-
thropic interest and aid in the education of the
Negro; but along with it a very prevalent and pos-
sibly dangerous acceptance of Booker Washing-
ton's strategic compromise of bi-racialism:-"In
all things vital and economic, we can be one as the
hand, while in things social we can be separate
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
15
as the fingers." There followed a decade and
more of common, constructive, enthusiastic effort
to truss up the sagging economy of the rural South-
ern Negro, but the odds of a bad system of land
tenant farming, an unscientific type of agriculture,
continued exploitation and the inroads of the grow-
ing industrialization of the South all combined to
cause a steady trek of the Negro population from
the land toward the cities. This caused or coin-
cided with another reaction of Southern opinion
and a flare of race riots and increased racial
tension, bridged only at a desperate moment in
1919 by the adoption of the new machinery of
local interracial commissions to allay popular an-
tagonism and bring the better elements of both
races together in common counsel and constructive
community effort.
- K
To this movement we owe the emergence of the
new liberal South. But the large-scale migration
of Negroes from the South to Northern centers
shortly afterward led to increased friction in these
communities, and merely shifted the areas and
issues of racial tension. In fact, a problem con-
ventionally regarded as sectional suddenly and un-
mistakably became national, and a new phase of
the race problem began. We still confront a seri-
ously divided white mind, no longer split section-
ally, but divided now into nation-wide liberal and
18.04.
16
READING WITH A PURPOSE
reactionary camps. A liberal element in the South,
small but influential, has recanted the traditional
antagonisms and code of the old régime, and in
liberal circles, North and South, an enlightened
minority is showing an increased willingness to
welcome Negro advance, to join cooperatively
with Negro leadership in programs of racial and
community improvement, and to extend recogni-
tion and reciprocity to the advance-guard elements
of Negro life. Over against this, however, is a
white mass mind still reactionary and strongly
racial; this time largely over labor rivalry and for
economic reasons. In fact, segregation policies
and labor discrimination have now become the
crucial practical issues in the contemporary racial
situation. And although this reactionary body of
opinion is not as militant as the older traditional
opposition, its wide distribution, North and South,
is a threatening aspect in the present and near
future.
These are but high lights in the history of the
shifting attitudes of the white majority mind, as
it has grappled and fumbled, relaxed and grown
tense again, in reaction to the steadily changing
situations of the steadily advancing black minority.
Students of the question are generally agreed
that the effect of the Negro's presence in this
country has been about as marked as the ad-
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
17
-
mittedly great and transforming influence of
America upon the Negro. There is this double
strand running through the whole scheme of the
American race problem, and the student should x
bear constantly in mind the parallelism by which
every white move has its black counterpart, every
black stitch, its white counter-stitch. Whenever
we think of the situation as a minority problem, we
must instantly think of it also in its other aspect as
a majority problem. This is factual warrant for
preferring to regard the dilemmas and difficulties
of this minority-majority interaction as the Ameri-
can race problem rather than as the "Negro prob-
lem." In every historical crisis its consequences
have turned out to be just as national as they
have been racial; and it should be obvious that
from no one side of the equation alone can its
progressive solution be carried forward.
We now invite the reader, after this panoramic
introduction, to more detailed and critical survey
of the problem in its three main periods of his-
torical development: the period of Slayery; the
period of Reconstruction, and the period of our
own time. Two alternative plans of reading are
suggested; each to be prefaced for background
and perspective by selected chapters of key read-
ing. After this introductory material, the books
recommended may either be read in the order
•
18
READING WITH A PURPOSE
listed or the more systematic study course (See
Study Outline, p. 61.) may be followed. The latter
is recommended for formal study groups who may
wish to combine discussion with their reading, or
for individuals desiring a closer scrutiny of the
details of the subject.
THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY
KEY READING: "The Seven Labors of the New
World," in The Negro in
American civilization, by
Charles S. Johnson. p. 3-15.
"The New Race," in Brown
America, by Edwin R. Em-
bree. Chap. I, p. 3-24.
To understand the historical roots of the race.
question, we must look briefly but deeply at the
institution of slavery in its relation to the funda-
mental institutions of America. When the Ameri-
can colonists, in their hard task of conquering the
new continent, reached out desperate hands to the
African slave trade for conscripted slave labor,
they took hold of the most fateful strand in Ameri-
can history. Simultaneously with the founding of
a country destined to become a great political
democracy, they imported democracy's greatest
antithesis, and what almost became democracy's
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
19
nemesis. The inclusion of the white indentured
servant in the colonial scheme, and the close
identity of the earliest Negro importees with this
same status, show that the principle of economic
caste was basic in some of the colonies and their
tradition. This inconsistency of institutions thrust
a fundamental dilemma into American society and
history. The presence of the Negro simply al-
lowed it to develop into a deeper and more tragic
scheme than mere class exploitation. Indeed the
Negro took the brunt of the system and enabled
it to be diverted from the backs of the poor white
settlers. Seen in clear retrospect, the die of
slavery was cast not by difference in race, but by
undemocratic ideas and practices in the early
scheme of American society.
Slavery is clearly seen in its true light, with the
human issues dominant and the racial factor almost
irrelevant, only as it came into the American
scheme and again as it passed out. In the two
hundred and fifty years between, as the particular
plight of the black man, slavery could mask its in-
consistencies behind the black exception, and save
the face of professions of principle basically
contradicted, however, for many generations.
Thomas Jefferson, clear-sighted democrat that he
was, said he "trembled for his country" when he
considered slavery; and a contemporary philoso-
20
READING WITH A PURPOSE
pher agrees when he says: "Slavery proved to be
the first great institutional test of the equality
doctrine." 1 Driving this fact home, with refer-
ence to the Negro, another writer justly says:
"One of the significant contributions made by the
Negro to American life has been the way in which
his presence has helped in the development and
extension of the American idea of democracy."
11 2
The average American mind, however, without
historical perspective on the issue of slavery, makes
the Negro bear both the brunt and the blame of
the situation; as if his very presence in the body
politic had constituted the race problem. Booker
Washington's shrewd pleasantry that Negroes
were the only element of the American population
that came here by special and urgent invitation has
scarcely sufficed to drive home the sober realiza-
tion that the Negro was desperately needed, and
humbly but importantly effective in the settlement
of the New World. His warrant for being here
is beyond question, doubly so because his mass
service of basic labor was unrequited for seven
or eight generations. It is estimated that before
1800 the number of Negroes brought to America
was more than twenty times that of all Europeans
Smith, T. V. The American philosophy of equality. p. 85.
2 King, W. J. The Negro in American life. p. 66.
1
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
21
combined. The terrific toll of lives taken can be
realized better from the fact that in the first
census of 1790 the black population was within
decimals of being 20 per cent of the total. "The
wealth of the New World," says Embree, "came
largely by the sweat of this new race." And in his
Gift of black folk, W. E. B. Du Bois rightly rates.
the contribution of the Negro's labor as his first.
and greatest gift. No matter how the benefits be
computed, it remains a fact that the Negro's half-
begrudged share in American civilization was
bought and paid for in advance.
We must take another brief glance at the effects
of slavery before leaving the subject for other
issues in which, as moderns, we have naturally
keener, more direct, interest. Slavery planted the
Negro deep in the subsoil of American life, and
made him culturally a basic American. Mr. Em-
bree's chapters vividly sketch this transformation;
he calls it the "making of a new race." Certainly
slavery was the rudest but most effective school of
"Americanization." The domestic and rural form
of American slavery made it peculiarly intimate in
its group contacts, and forced the rapid assimila-
tion of the white man's civilization, language, re-
ligion and folk-ways. This cultural transfusion
was further reenforced by considerable inter-
¹Johnson, C. S. The Negro in American civilization. p. 5.
1
22
READING WITH A PURPOSE
breeding and admixture of blood, with the ac-
cumulative effect of leaving, according to the
rough analysis of the census, about twenty per cent
of the Negro population mulatto. Scientific in-
vestigation of typical Negro groups today esti-
mates much heavier admixture and discovers
barely a one-third remnant of pure-blood Negroes.
On either basis slavery is revealed as the institu-
tion directly responsible for undermining its own
chief contentions. Originally there were wide
physical and cultural differences between the two
races. While breaking down all these natural
barriers, slavery erected an artificial and tyran-
nical substitute in the tradition and doctrine of
color-caste.
Thus the very institution which thrust the Negro
so deeply and vitally into American civilization
was forced in self-justification to deny desperately
the trends and results of its own handiwork. Out
of these peculiar paradoxes, the characteristic
American variety of race prejudice was born, or,
rather, manufactured. In the official apologia of
slave-holding, a doctrine was needed to offset every
real and potential claim of the black minority with
a nullifying counter-claim. Over against the
country's debt to the Negro for faithful labor and
loyal service was set the presumably incalculable
indebtedness of the Negro for the benefits of white
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
23
civilization and Christianity. The latter was in-
deed a solace, but emphasis on the Negro as the
moral beneficiary of Christianity was used by the
slave-holding class to propagate submissiveness,
and eventually to justify slavery itself. Similarly,
to mask the facts of racial admixture and insulate
its social effects, the contrary-to-fact doctrine of
white ethnic integrity was set up and artificially
maintained by ignoring the strong, natural claims
of the mixed-blood class-claims which have gen-
erally been recognized in every other country
where considerable miscegenation has taken place.
The reader should note, in passing, this historical
reason for the absence of a buffer class in the
American racial situation, and the cause, as well,
of the unusual psychological solidarity of the
whole Negro minority.
Also, over against the Negro's really remark-
able assimilation of white civilization, barriers.
were set up as extreme as laws which forbade
teaching the Negro to read and write. The legend
of the Negro's "non-assimilability" was popular-
ized, and his thwarted efforts at assimilation writ-
ten down as "imitativeness" and "inherent mental
inferiority." This doctrine attributing the Negro's
enforced handicaps and acquired disabilities to
"inherent traits" and "inferior native ability" has
developed so strong a hold upon the American
24
READING WITH A PURPOSE
public mind that only in the last decade or so have
scientific study and fair judgment been able to
make any headway in explaining and correcting it.
Worst paradox of all was the spread of the fallacy
of the Negro's childlike dependence upon slavery
and paternalism, instead of a recognition of the
historical reason for such traits and of the his-
torical dependence of the feudal system of slavery
upon them and upon him. In short, race prejudice
is obviously designed to make the Negro bear the
blame as well as the brunt of the system of which
he was the social victim.
If these doctrines had died a natural death with
that of the system which produced them, there
would be only the need for passing mention and
not for this extensive analysis. But the psycho-
logical aftermath of slavery persists as the philos-
ophy of the "color line," and still offers more
resistance to the Negro's progress than all the
practical difficulties of social advance or the actual
tasks of social, political and economic adjustment.
"Keeping the Negro in his place" amounts to pro-
longing in clandestine form the régime of slavery
and leads essentially to the same negative re-
sults the denial and self-contradiction of democ-
racy in actual social practice, and the keeping of
one-tenth or more of the population in a condition
of artificially arrested progress.
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
25
The Civil War
Modern historians treat the Civil War as the
clash of two competing economies-the plantation
economy and the system of free labor-and point
out that it was fought primarily to preserve the
Federal Union rather than to free the slave. That
is true. But in addition to being the "bone of con-
tention," slavery was the foundation and mainstay
of the Southern plantation economy, and the vic-
tory of the industrial free-labor economy would
have necessitated its eradication. The develop-
ment of modern industrial America would have
been impossible in close and direct competition
with the slave-labor régime. Slavery's elimination
by Lincoln's emancipation decree based on mili-
tary necessity merely anticipated what economic
necessity would later have required. But the
heroic surgery involved made it inevitable that
Negro life and that of the South should sustain
terrific shocks.
So, although it settled one phase of a grave
moral and political issue, the Civil War was only
the beginning of the end of a régime. For the
slave, instead of a miraculous passage into a demo-
cratic paradise of liberty, equality and fraternity,
emancipation was merely a release from the black
cave of personal bondage, with physical freedom
to enter the painful valley of the Reconstruction.
26
READING WITH A PURPOSE
Even in becoming a citizen on paper, through civil
rights legislation and constitutional guarantees of
freedom, citizenship and suffrage, he remained the
disadvantaged serf, left to work out his destiny
in the land of his oppression. Moreover, only the
first crucial step had been taken in the emancipa-
tion of the American social mind; and even that
was to be subject in the North to the lapse of the
moral enthusiasm of the war, and in the South to
the sharp reactions of resentment and wounded
sectional pride. Such was the historical set-up of
the Reconstruction, the period that had to struggle
with the direct aftermath of slavery.
THE PROBLEM OF RECONSTRUCTION
KEY READING: The Negro in our history, by
Carter G. Woodson. Chaps.
23, 24, and 25, p. 382-445.
"The Freedmen's Bureau," by
W. E. B. DuBois, in Calver-
ton's Anthology of American
Negro literature. p. 277-98.
As the reader has seen, circumstances forced the
Negro to make his experiment as a freeman in the
very land of his former captivity. His progress,
educational, economic, political and social, in-
volved therefore not only his own painful recon-
J
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
27
struction, but the slow reconstruction of the South
itself and of the white Southern mind. It was a
social battle on three fronts: Negro advance had
to overcome the dead weight of its own backward
condition and to face as well two distinct bodies of
prejudice and opposition-first, the traditional at-
titudes and policies of the aristocratic Southern
slave-holding class, and then the still more danger-
ous new prejudice and antagonism of the "poor
whites," who, themselves indirect victims of the
slave régime, resented being brought into political
and economic competition with the liberated slaves.
Against this array of negative conditions, the
Negro would surely have foundered where he was,
except for the paternalistic guidance of the Freed-
men's Bureau, the temporary protection of federal
troops, a legal barricade of civil rights' legisla-
tion, and the temporary power of the ballot under
the early Reconstruction state governments. His
greatest and most permanent ally, however, was
the educational and spiritual guidance of North-
ern missionaries, who founded schools in almost
every important center and, besides training the
pioneer Negro leadership, brought the general
illiteracy of the freedmen down in two decades
from 97 to 57 per cent.¹
Somehow the whole first phase of Reconstruc-
1
¹ The present illiteracy percentage is less than 11.
28
READING WITH A PURPOSE
tion in the South swung forward on the pivot of
the education of the Negro, and backward on the
pivot of politics. The reader can follow this in
detail in the Woodson chapters recommended.
On any score of measurement, it is true that "never
before in a similar period of history has so large
a group of people made the social, intellectual and
economic advance that the American Negroes
made." The basic foundation of this advance was
laid in about one generation during the period
under discussion, that is, between 1870 and 1900.
In this progress, the Negro had three great aids,
coming on the scene like a relay of reenforce-
ments. First was Northern missionary educa-
tional guidance and philanthropic help to schools,
churches and social uplift projects. This was
crucial assistance, especially since between 1865
and 1895 it was the sole constructive influence from
without a South that was itself poor, disorganized
and reactionary. Then, in 1895, the good will of
certain better elements in the South was captured
by the tactful leadership of Booker Washington;
and with local favor and considerable Northern
assistance a fresh advance was made in education,
farm ownership, the improvement of rural and city
public schools for Negroes, and some advances in
community protection and housing. Finally, from
1912 on, these forces were supplemented by the
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
29
organized movement of interracial cooperation,
under agencies like the Southern Sociological Con-
gress, the University Commission on Race Rela-
tions, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation,
effecting a decided improvement in the attitude and
activity of the white South in improving race rela-
tions and promoting Negro progress.
Black Reconstruction
Booker Washington became the symbol and
spokesman of Black Reconstruction because he
advised the Negro to work out his salvation in
the South, and advocated practical, patient self-
help pivoted on the gradual improvement of the
condition of the black masses and the gradual
wearing down of white indifference and prejudice.
In its setting—the South of Reconstruction—this
program was undoubtedly constructive, sound and
effective. But it did make concessions with dan-
gerous possibilities. The Washington program
thus became the great divide between the conserva-
tive and the liberal schools of thought on the race
question. From the first historical difference of
opinion between these two schools on the relative.
importance of mass and industrial education and
higher and professional education, a general con-
troversy sprang up involving the relative merits
of the half-loaf and the whole-loaf policy on prac-
W
30
READING WITH A PURPOSE
t
tically all the controverted issues of race pro-
grams for more than two decades.
Washington's program was at first simply the
philosophy of practical common sense applied to
the actual conditions of the Reconstruction South,
in which he knew the work of race improvement
must go forward step by step, beginning where it
actually was. But never, up to the time of his
death in 1915, was he able completely to disavow
the interpretation put upon his program as an ac-
ceptance of the principles of opportunism and of
the policy of bi-racial segregation. The equal
rights reformist wing of Negro thought under the
leadership of Dr. DuBois so interpreted it; and
later, reactionary and conservatively half-way
white opinion seized upon the same interpretation,
with approval, for condoning separatism, the
double standard or unequal treatment, claiming
the endorsement of an outstanding Negro leader.
It is doubtful whether Booker Washington ever
intended such interpretations. On the side of
separatism he was motivated primarily by the
thought of developing race solidarity and racial
initiative and turning the group energy back in on
itself for heightened morale and more effective
group action. But such is the danger of making
even strategic concessions where fundamental prin-
ciples are involved. In later developments, as we
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
31
¦
shall see, the issue has been closed, at least as far
as Negro leadership is concerned, by an almost
unanimous acceptance of the equal rights position,
and the wholesale repudiation of programs based
on the limited participation or segregation policy.
This issue, however, has more than specific ap-
plication to the problems of Negro leadership in
the late Reconstruction. Just before and immedi-
ately after the World War, large-scale migrations
of Negroes to Northern and Mid-Western cities
seriously extended the areas of racial friction and
maladjustment. With this has gone a very general
spread of the policies of educational, residential
and industrial segregation, to such an extent that
the problem of segregation may now be regarded
as the crux of the present-day contemporary phase
of the race problem. Conservative, reactionary,
and anti-Negro opinion, North and South, is be-
hind the policy of "segregating the Negro" and
introducing bi-racial organization as far as prac-
ticable and possible. It is partly due to this situa-
tion that Negro leadership has become practically
unanimous in presenting a solid front against
segregation.
Dr. Moton, Washington's successor, has this to
say about segregation: "No phase of discrimina-
tion against the Negro touches the race more
widely or more intimately than segregation. In
32
READING WITH A PURPOSE
its application no measure operates so effectively
to retard the general progress of the race, not even
disfranchisement. . . . In theory segregation is
advocated as a measure applicable with equal
force to both races, but in practice this obtains so
rarely that it is not an exaggeration to say that
for all practical purposes it never does. . . . In
practically every case, segregation means unequal
facilities, conditions and opportunities." And
again, in the same book, he says: "Segregation
operates practically to make an ever-widening gulf
between the two races which leaves each race more
and more ignorant of the other. Without contact
there cannot be knowledge; segregation reduces
the contacts, and so knowledge and understanding
decrease. With decreasing knowledge come in-
creasing distrust and suspicion, and these in turn
engender prejudice and even hatred. So a vicious
circle is established whose ultimate effect, unless
counteracted, must be the separation of the races
into more or less opposing camps, with results as
disastrous to the spirit of American institutions as
to the genuine progress of both races."1
It should be evident from this shift and con-
trast between what was a progressive policy at the
turn of the century, but now, thirty years later, is
stamped as hopelessly reactionary, that some
1 What the Negro thinks. p. 69 and p. 5.
-
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
33
*
fundamental change has occurred either in the
Negro or in his status. In fact, Negro life and
thought have passed through their most rapid
and transforming developments relatively re-
cently. Neither the expediencies nor the concepts
of the Reconstruction period are applicable if one
would think accurately and realistically of the
Negro of the present generation. We pass, then,
to the consideration of this revolutionary change.
THE PRESENT-DAY PROBLEM
KEY READING: What the Negro thinks, by R. R.
Moton. Chaps. 3 and 4.
p. 29-68.
The new Negro, by Alain Locke.
P. 3-16.
The transformation of the Negro during the
last two decades is founded on two motives, one
physical, the other, spiritual. Migration has been
the physical mainspring of the change, and a new
spirit of race consciousness and solidarity has been
the regenerating spiritual force. Out of the com-
bination has come both a "New Negro," and a
new frontage of the Negro on American life.
All through his history since emancipation, the
Negro has been responding to unfavorable condi-
tions by migration, but this last series of mass
34
READING WITH A PURPOSE
movements has been upon an unprecedented scale.
It had begun before the outbreak of the World
War, but was heavily increased by the demands.
of industry during the war for the replacement of
the European immigrant labor supply. This has
› been estimated as a movement northward of over
a million and a half of the Negro population. But
to this must be added that phase of the Negro
migration which is not inter-sectional between
North and South, but from the rural to the urban
centers within comparatively short range. Two
results are outstanding, the rapid urbanization
of the Negro, a serious shift in the areas feeling
the stresses of race contacts and their difficulties, a
decided extension of new phases of the race situa-
tion to cities of the North and Mid-West, and a
closer alignment of the race issue with the prob-
lems of labor competition and economic adjust-
ment.
It has already been pointed out that a decided
increase in race tension and a rapid spread of
policies of segregation have accompanied this mass
movement. But the movement has had its positive
gains; large masses of the Negro population have
been subjected to the galvanizing shocks of change
and have thus been stimulated to rapid progress.
Because of the new concentrations in city areas,
there has been a marked heightening of the sense
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
35
of group solidarity and common interests. This
will prove to be the most potential and powerful
factor in the whole situation, if ever the exigencies
of Negro life should demand large-scale mass ac-
tion. And if the present heavy social and economic
pressure on the Negro should increase or even be
maintained, such demands will undoubtedly arise.
There have also been great drawbacks in this
urban movement, chiefly the unfavorable condi-
tions in the almost ghetto-like city centers where so
many of the migrant masses have been forced to
congregate, and the precarious marginal position
of the Negro on the fringe of the labor market,
faced at present, as he is, by comparative indiffer-
ence or hostility from the ranks of organized white
labor.
Though fraught with danger, this is an entirely
new alignment, likely within half a generation to
change the whole basic aspect of the race question.
There is a school of younger Negro thought
which, viewing the increasing emphasis of the situ-
ation upon the economic condition of the Negro
masses, regards the race question as likely to re-
solve itself into the issues of the economic class.
struggle and proletarian radicalism. There is a
main obstacle, however, for the present, in the con-
servative temper of social thinking now prevalent
among Negroes, although in very recent years
36
READING WITH A PURPOSE
there are increasing signs of a slow drift toward
the spirit and doctrines of social radicalism. Cer-
tainly the only likely factors in a possible shift of
any large section of the Negro masses in the direc-
tion of radical social action would be those of
extreme pressure from intolerable mass conditions
in the city areas or desperate reaction in the face.
of continued exclusion from the ranks and oppor-
tunities of progressive and organized white labor.
A feature of great importance, however, is the
swing of the race situation in the South toward
this same condition of increasing economic dis-
crimination and labor antagonism. This is a direct
result of the recent industrialization of the South
and the simultaneous shift of the Negro popula-
tion to city and town centers. At first the north-
ward migration of the Negro had a favorable in-
fluence on the Southern situation. There was a
greater appreciation of the Negro as an economic
asset and as a potential labor supply. Consider-
able improvement followed in the policy of South-
ern communities, resulting in the improvement of
school and civic facilities for Negroes in the South.
But in spite of heavy increases in state expendi-
ture for public school facilities for Negroes in the
South, still more equitable division of the public
school funds is obviously necessary, since with all
this rapid improvement only 69 per cent of the
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
37
Negro children of school age are enrolled and the
general per capita expenditure averages for
the whole South only one-third of the average ex-
penditure for white children, with of course many
communities falling considerably below this gen-
eral average.

When all favorable progress has been taken
into account, therefore, there is still much injustice
to be remedied: the persistence of lynching and
mob-terrorism, the increasing tension and compe-
tition of white and Negro unskilled and semi-
skilled labor, the crowding of the Negro out of the
higher ranks of labor, some of which he occupied
earlier in the century, the continuation of the tra-
ditional policies of segregation in public, civic and
educational activities, the inequitable distribution
of the Negro share in public tax funds for schools.
and civic improvements, and continued lack of re-
spect for the advancing class of Negroes, except
from the few enlightened liberal elements in the
Southern communities.
Summarizing the whole situation, we may see-
that although the Negro has made amazingly
rapid gains in the last few years, the race situation
in both the North and the South is intensified, in-
deed partly because of these gains. For mass
opinion among whites still interprets this rapid
advance as social and economic encroachment, and
38
READING WITH A PURPOSE
seldom looks at it in its deeper constructive aspect
of common advance and the lifting of the level of
civilization. So, unless liberal white opinion in
both sections, in cooperation with intelligent Negro
leadership, can rapidly widen opportunities and
lessen artificial handicaps, the mass momentum of
Negro advance must produce serious race conflict.
Short of the bitter extremities of ruthless economic
conflict or resolution of the mass feud between
black and white through the discovery of common
proletarian interests, there lies one intermediate
way of realistic hope, since, after all, America has
kept herself an institutional democracy in spite of
her treatment of the Negro. The Negro, though
still heavily disfranchised, is potentially a citizen
with the corrective power of the ballot. Two
things encourage this hope: the revival of the
Negro's interest in reclaiming the ballot along with
political independence in its use, and the fact that
by his recent migrations to border states, he has ac-
quired unexpectedly considerable re-enfranchise-
ment and latent political power. This, intelligently
used, might remove enough of the restrictions to
his progress to forestall serious race conflict, and
might lead to the steady progressive adjustment
so desirable and so desired by all the ex-
treme social reactionaries and the extreme social
radicals.
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
39
The Negro's Americanism
A solution of the race problem within the in-
stitutional framework and the traditional ideals of
American democracy would be most congenial and
welcome to the Negro, for on the whole his Ameri-
canism is unquestioned and unquestioning. Both
by temperament and group policy, the Negro has
been conformist throughout his history in this
country. His values, his ideals, his objectives,
have been peculiarly and unreservedly American.
Racialism has rarely, if ever, been a direct mood
for the Negro, but only an enforced counter-
attitude in the face of proscription and discrimina-
tion. And, even then, this racialism has never
set up separate or different values or loyalties, but
has only been a practical social device to secure
on a separate basis and by another route the com-
mon values and ends which prejudice more di-
rectly denied or curtailed. Except for superficial
physical dissimilarities, by and large, the Negro
would be indistinguishably American, and it is un-
likely that a foreign observer would believe himself
in the presence of a different race. What over-
tones of emotional difference there are, in fair
comparison with the mass similarities, would seem
negligible, making the prevalent social sense of
difference all the more contrary to reason and ironi-
cal. On historical, psychological and cultural
40
READING WITH A PURPOSE
grounds, the Negro minority is entitled to the
fullest share in American civilization, and has less
real impediments and separatist tendencies than
any other of the many component minority ele-
ments in America.
1
THE NEGRO AS MAN AND ARTIST
KEY READING: "Soil and Soul," in Brown
America, by Edwin R. Em-
bree. p. 233-52.
Black Manhattan, by James Wel-
don 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 lit-
erature too often obscures from sight. Here the
reader will not only be closest to those basic hu-
man values that know no color-line, but will be
nearest to the most practical source of social op-
timism in the dramatic demonstration of the pos-
sibilities of Negro achievement in spite of the
handicapped start, the closed door, or the un-
equal chance and limited opportunity, as the case
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
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 Doug-
lass, 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 achieve-
ment, 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
42
READING WITH A PURPOSE
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 be-
long 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 to-
day 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 be-
loved 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 typ-
ical few-that present a Negro character shat-
tering the hollow sentimentalities of the whole
school of plantation romanticists. And now we can
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
43
see that, sincere though they were, these writers
of the old school saw even the Old Negro super-
ficially, 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 cul-
tural 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 ele-
ments in the building of a native American cul-
ture. 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 folk-
44
READING WITH A PURPOSE
lorists 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 recog-
nized. 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.¹
But the full cultural recognition of which we
1 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.
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
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 ex-
pression 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 Ne-
gro." The reader will find both the platform and
the first fruits of this cultural movement in the
collaborated anthology—The new Negro, pub-
lished in 1925. It presents the philosophy that
Negro life should find a new spiritual dynamic
in artistic self-expression; it was addressed pri-
marily to the internal racial audience to save itself
from propaganda and exhibitionism, and it pro-
posed 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,
46
READING WITH A PURPOSE
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 at-
tribute 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 Mc-
Kay, 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
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
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, Rosa-
mond 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 ex-
pression 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 pos-
48
READING WITH A PURPOSE
sible 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 apolo-
getically suppressing their racial characteristics,
physical as well as emotional; today, on the whole,
they are following the leadership of these en-
lightened 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 na-
tive American art, but whether America is to ac-
cept 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 distinc-
tiveness and identity. But with the Negro it has
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
49
been a different story. Persecution, suffering, with
their greater discipline and pressure, have intensi-
fied the Negro heritage, and caste prejudice has
isolated it from the powerful standardizing proc-
esses 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 Eu-
rope, and began to think of building a distinctive
and native American art, it became evident that
with the almost complete obliteration of the Amer-
ican 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 reser-
voir of materials for a native American art. Musi-
cians, 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 Pe-
terkin, took up the study and use of Negro ma-
terials as experimental and promising steps in the
development of a native American art idiom. In
American art of the present day, Negro forms and
•
50
READING WITH A PURPOSE
tradition are enjoying a belated but well-deserved
victory. For by a curious irony these rejected ele-
ments 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 na-
tionally 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 tradi-
tions, dormant in the mass-conformity of our na-
tional culture, a new principle of cultural diversity
and reciprocity. And certainly, apart from the en-
richment of American life, this would be one of
the great solvents of racial antagonism and mis-
understanding. 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 hu-
man 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 dis-
tinctive national culture. At all events, the future
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
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.
COMMENT ON THE BOOKS RECOMMENDED
This book has been selected to open up to the
reader the position typical of enlightened liberal-
ism on the race question.
Though written by the
director of one of the
most influential and pioneering of the philanthropic
foundations¹ interested in helping Negro educa-
tional and social advance, it reflects none of the
old paternalism. It also rises on both sides above
the traditional sectionalism of the "Southern" and
"Northern" points of view, and presents the Ne-
gro problem for what it really is, a national issue,
only capable of solution through wide social tol-
erance and practical cooperation by all the ele-
ments concerned. Though optimistic, Mr. Embree
has no easy-going optimism and no ready-made
formula for the "solution of the race question."
He everywhere stresses, with apparent hopeful-
ness, the growing policy of self-help, local effort,
and interracial counsel and action. Moreover, the
book is a presentation in popular form of the lat-

1
The Julius Rosenwald Fund.
BROWN AMERICA
By Edwin R. Embree
52
READING WITH A PURPOSE
est positions of scientific study and the new objec-
tive history. It frankly disavows many of the
traditional but false commonplaces still current
about the Negro, about the facts of slavery, and
about the superficially generalized attitudes at-
tributed to the North and the South. Mr. Em-
bree casts his conclusions decisively against the
"melting pot" idea of our democracy. He says:
"As to the future of the Brown Americans, I am
a confirmed optimist. . . . Another hundred years
will bring a transformation to the new race at
least as spectacular as that of the past century.
My fear is not that the Negro will not be absorbed
into American life, but that he may be so com-
pletely 'Americanized' that, ceasing to have any
characteristic individuality, he will simply swell
the ranks of standardized mediocrity."
In striking contrast of viewpoint, but substan-
tial agreement of principle and conclusions, Dr.
Robert Russa Moton,
Booker T. Washington's
successor as principal of
Tuskegee Institute, pre-
sents the Negro side of the case in What the Negro
thinks. As the reader might expect, this book is
a tempered and persuasive application of the phi-
losophy of common sense to even the most contro-
versial issues of the race problem. But although

WHAT THE NEGRO
THINKS
By Robert R. Moton
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
53
the author still puts great hope in and emphasis
upon the traditional Washingtonian creed of good-
will, interracial counsel and Southern reconstruc-
tion, no concessions are made on equality of rights
and opportunity for the Negro. There are ex-
tensive, careful discussions of the public effects
of discrimination and separatist policies, and a
grave though dispassionate warning about the
ultimate costs and dangers of segregation, from
which we have already quoted. It is further in-
sisted that there can be no permanent or satisfac-
tory solution of the race question without the
full restoration of civic rights and the franchise,
and the impartial maintenance of legal and social
justice. This book may, therefore, be regarded as
a statement of the unanimous agreement and mini-
mum expectation and demands of intelligent Negro
leadership of today. The reader should not miss
the shrewd, characteristic humor of the chapter
entitled "Solving the Negro Question with the
Negro Left Out"; or overlook the breadth of Dr.
Moton's concluding words: "Meanwhile nothing
can contribute more toward the permanent estab-
lishment of our national welfare than the con-
tinued effort to realize for the humblest in our
national life, black or white, that full measure of
justice and equality of opportunity for which
America stands as a symbol before all the world."
54
READING WITH A PURPOSE
For the reader's main historical guide, The
Negro in our history (6th edition) by Carter G.
Woodson has been se-
lected. Dr. Woodson is
the founder and director
of the Association for
the Study of Negro Life and History, and most
of his writings are direct products of the move-
ment to acquaint the Negro with his own history
and stimulate race pride and heighten group
morale. The point of view of this book, however,
is not propagandist, though its chief value comes
from its correction of the startling omissions and
mis-emphases of many standard American his-
tories dealing with the slavery question and the
Negro problem. The book is on the whole a well-
documented objective history, and is especially
competent in its interpretation of the Reconstruc-
tion. Its introductory chapters are also the best
general statement available of the Negro's Afri-
can background.
The classics of Negro biography are undoubt-
edly the two great autobiographies, My life and
times by Frederick Doug-
lass and Up from slavery
by Booker T. Washing-
ton. The reader who has time should read at least
the selections from these reprinted in the Calver-

THE NEGRO IN
OUR HISTORY
By Carter G. Woodson

BLACK MANHATTAN
By James Weldon Johnson
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
55
ton Anthology. Their bearing, however, on the
contemporary life of the Negro or its present-day
trends of advance is remote; so the truer picture,
individually and socially, is to be gained from the
reading of Black Manhattan. There is the addi-
tional advantage of an opportunity to observe the
close correlation between achievement and the
more favorable social conditions of diminished
discrimination, widened opportunity, readier rec-
ognition such as have prevailed in metropolitan
New York and have resulted in that area's be-
coming the "refuge and Mecca of Negro talent"
and the capital of Negro cultural achievement and
advance.
P
This volume, published in 1925, presented the
first composite picture of the movement known.
as the "Negro Renais-
sance." The book was

THE NEW NEGRO
Edited by Alain Locke
based on a project car-
ried out a few months prior to its publication in
the "Harlem Number" of the Survey Graphic, to
present the younger generation mind and spirit in
collaborated self-expression. The new social front-
age of Negro life was included, but the main em-
phasis was upon the Negro's maturing racial spirit
and its cultural expression in the arts. What was
predicted as the probable acceptance and incorpo-
ration of the Negro artist and the Negro theme
56
READING WITH A PURPOSE
in the general body of contemporary art and cul-
ture has actually come about in the relatively short
interim since its publication.
This anthology collection supplements The
new Negro in several important ways, but prin-
cipally in giving a cross.
section of the historical
development of the Ne-
gro's art and culture.
Especially noteworthy

ANTHOLOGY OF
AMERICAN NEGRO
LITERATURE
Edited by V. F. Calverton
is the group of essays treating the younger gener-
ation's view of the race problem, a subject outside
the scope of the other anthology. The articles by
Abram Harris and Thomas Dabney, reflecting the
radical economic or Marxian interpretation of the
Negro's history and the present issues of his prob-
lem as it cuts across the issues of the "class strug-
gle" are cases in point. In these last two volumes of
the reading course, the reader comes into first-
hand touch with Negro artistic expression and so-
cial thought from many angles and varied schools
of opinion. Nothing could serve better to correct
the misleading general impression of narrowness
and almost morbid concentration on the purely
racial issues which can easily be gained from read-
ing exclusively the "problem literature" of the
subject.
For the more serious reader, and for study
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
groups, citations have been added to two reference
books: The Negro year book 1931-32, and The
Negro in American civilization, by Charles S.
Johnson.
///
57


BOOKS RECOMMENDED
IN THIS COURSE
.Edwin R. Embree L
Viking, 1931. 311p. $2.50
WHAT THE NEGRO THINKS.. Robert R. Moton
Doubleday, 1929. 267p. $2.00
THE NEGRO IN OUR
HISTORY...
BROWN AMERICA..
Associated Publishers, Washington, D.C.,
1931. 6th ed. 673p. $4.00
BLACK MANHATTAN...James Weldon Johnson
Knopf, 1930. 284P. $3.00
Carter G. Woodson
THE NEW NEGRO.
A. & C. Boni, 1925. 446p. $5.00
ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAn Negro
LITERATURE.
•
Alain Locke, ed.
59
V. F. Calverton, ed.
Modern Library, 1929. 535P. 95c
THE NEGRO YEAR BOOK..Monroe N. Work, ed.
Tuskegee Institute Press, 1931. 1931-32 ed. 544p. $2.00
THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN
CIVILIZATION.
Charles S. Johnson
Holt, 1930. 538p. $4.00
NOTE: In this, as in other courses of the series, a book by the author of
the course has been included at the special request of the American
Library Association.
STUDY OUTLINE
This outline has been prepared for the benefit of clubs
or other groups wishing to pursue systematic reading and
discussion on the American Negro. Discussion will be
stimulated if assignments are made in advance to indi-
vidual members and if readings from the assignments are
given before the whole group, especially those passages
likely to provoke differences of opinion.
In addition to the six books included in the reading
course, Dr. Locke has provided references in the outline
to Johnson, C. S., The Negro in American civilization,
and Work, M. N., Negro year book 1931-32.
DISCUSSION I
THE AFRICAN BACKGROUND
African civilization and history: Woodson, Negro in our history,
Chaps. I, II, III, p. 1-52. African legacy and African art:
Locke, ed., The new Negro, p. 254-67.
DISCUSSION 2
THE NEGRO IN SLAVERY AND
RECONSTRUCTION
Slavery: Embree, Brown America, p. 3-36; Woodson, Chaps.
VI and VII, p. 82-116.
Anti-slavery: Woodson, Chaps. XV, XVIII, XXI, p. 259-78;
306-18; 345-60.
Reconstruction: Embree, "Learning the New Civilization," p.
69-111; Woodson, Chaps. XXIII and XXIV, p. 382-424.
DISCUSSION 3
RACE AND RACE MIXTURE
역사
​Race characteristics: Physical: Embree, "The New Race," p.
3-24. Health: C. S. Johnson, The Negro in American civiliza-
tion, p. 132-84.
61
62
READING WITH A PURPOSE
Mental characteristics: C. S. Johnson, Chap. XIX, p. 273-87.
Miscegenation: Embree, "The New Race," p. 8-10. Racial in-
tegrity: Work, ed., Negro year book, p. 73-81.
DISCUSSION 4
THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO
Historical beginnings: Embree, "Sporadic Education During
Slavery," p. 60-68; C. S. Johnson, Chap. XVI, p. 224-35.
Missionary schools: Embree, "Mission Schools," p. 89-111.
Public schools in the South: C. S. Johnson, Chap. XVII, p. 236-
65; Embree, "Public Schools," p. 112-33.
Public schools in the North: C. S. Johnson, Chap. XVIII, p.
266-72.
Segregation in schools: Moton, What the Negro thinks, Chap.
VI, p. 100-26.
Negro colleges and universities: Embree, "Strategic College
Centres," p. 134-37; C. S. Johnson, Chap. XX, p. 288-98.
Educational philanthropy: Woodson, Chap. XXXII, p. 562-78.
Educational statistics: Negro year book, p. 195-253.
DISCUSSION 5
THE ECONOMICS OF THE RACE QUESTION
The economic interpretation of the race question: Harris (Cal-
verton's Anthology), p. 324-38; Dabney (Calverton), p.
436-46.
Negro migration: Embree, "Peregrinations," p. 25-47; C. S.
Johnson, Chap. II, p. 16-28; New Negro, p. 278-99.
The Negro worker: C. S. Johnson, Chaps. IV, V, VI, VII, p.
38-104. The Negro and organized labor: Woodson, Chap.
XXX, p. 536-39; C. S. Johnson, Chap. VIII, p. 105-16; Wes-
ley (Calverton), p. 339-62.
Negro business development: Woodson, Chap. XXXIV, p. 594-
606.
Family life: C. S. Johnson, Chap. XV, p. 199-223.
DISCUSSION 6
THE NEGRO AND POLITICS
Historical: Embree, "Brown Ballots," p. 176-96.
Citizenship and political discrimination: Moton, What the Negro
thinks, Chaps. VII and VIII, p. 127-83.
Civil rights: C. S. Johnson, Chap. XXIV, p. 337-54.
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
63
Negro citizenship and democracy: DuBois (C. S. Johnson),
Chap. XXIX, p. 461-70.
DISCUSSION 7
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
Legal discrimination: Woodson, Chap. XXVII, p. 474-93.
Segregation: Moton, Chaps. V, VI, VII, p. 69-126; Embree,
"Odds against the Nigger," p. 197-232.
Lynchings: Walter White (Calverton), p. 389-404; Negro year
book, p. 293-99.
Race prejudice: Walter White (New Negro), p. 361-68.
DISCUSSION 8
THE URBAN AND RURAL NEGRO
The urban Negro: Embree, "Peregrinations," p. 38-45; J. W.
Johnson (New Negro), p. 301-11.
The rural Negro: C. S. Johnson, Chap. IX, p. 117-31; Embree,
"Making a Living,” p. 140-46; Moton (New Negro), p. 323-32.
DISCUSSION 9
INTER-RACIALISM AND RACE RELATIONS
Philanthropic paternalism: Moton, Chap. IV, p. 47-68.
The Negro and public sentiment: Moton, Chap. IX, p. 184-215.
Inter-racialism and the new South: Moton, Chap. XI, p. 240-67.
Race relations and class relations: Miller (C. S. Johnson), Chap.
XXX, p. 475-81.
Racial attitudes: C. S. Johnson, Chap. XXV, p. 355-76.
DISCUSSION IO
THE NEGRO IN ART AND LITERATURE
The Negro in American culture: Embree, "Soil and Soul," p.
233-252.
Negro poetry: New Negro, p. 129-52; Calverton, p. 175-216;
J. W. Johnson, Black Manhattan, Chap. XIX, p. 260-80.
Negro fiction: New Negro, p. 57-128; Calverton, p. 21-146.
Negro drama: New Negro, p. 153-66; Calverton, 147-74.
The Negro on the stage: J. W. Johnson, Chaps. VIII, IX, X, p.
74-110; Chaps. XV, XVI, XVII, p. 170-230.
Negro folklore: New Negro, p. 238-49. Folk poetry: Calverton,
P. 217-36.
64
READING WITH A PURPOSE
Negro music: J. W. Johnson, Chap. XI, p. 111-125. Spirituals:
New Negro, p. 199-213. Jazz: New Negro, p. 216-24.
Formal music: Cameron White (Calverton), p. 267-76.
Painting and sculpture: New Negro, p. 254-67.
DISCUSSION II
NEGRO TRAITS AND IDEALS
The Negro's Americanism: Herskovits (New Negro), p. 353-60;
Moton, Chap. X, 216-39.
The Negro advance guard: Moton, Chap. III, p. 29-46; New
Negro, p. 3-18.
Negro biography: Calverton, p. 447-96.
DISCUSSION 12
THE WORLD PROBLEM OF COLOR
Historical: Woodson, Chaps. IV and V, p. 53-81.
The Negro and the World War: Woodson, Chap. XXIX, p.
507-29.
Imperialism and the Negro: DuBois (New Negro), 385-414.

KARANG
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 02017 9233
DO NOT REMOVE
OR
MUTILATE CARD
Bro