The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States

Clemence had come through ages of African savagery, through fires that do not refine, but that blunt and blast and blacken and char; starvation, gluttony, drunkenness, thirst, drowning, nakedness, dirt, fetichism, debauchery, slaughter, pestilence, and the rest – she was their heiress; they left her the cinders of human feelings… She had had children of assorted colors – had one with her now, the black boy that brought the basil to Joseph; the others were here and there, some in the Grandissime households or field-gangs, some elsewhere within occasional sight, some dead, some not accounted for. Husbands – like the Samaritan woman's. We know she was a constant singer and laugher.

Very brilliant of course; and yet Clemence is a relic, not a prophecy.

Still more of a relic is Uncle Remus. For decades now, this charming old Negro has been held up to the children of the South as the perfect expression of the beauty of life in the glorious times "befo' de wah," when every Southern gentleman was suckled at the bosom of a "black mammy." Why should we not occasionally attempt to paint the Negro of the new day – intelligent, ambitious, thrifty, manly? Perhaps he is not so poetic; but certainly the human element is greater.

To the school of Cable and Harris belong also of course Miss Grace King and Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart, a thoroughly representative piece of work being Mrs. Stuart's "Uncle 'Riah's Christmas Eve." Other more popular writers of the day, Miss Mary Johnston and Miss Ellen Glasgow for instance, attempt no special analysis of the Negro. They simply take him for granted as an institution that always has existed and always will exist, as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, from the first flush of creation to the sounding of the trump of doom.

But more serious is the tone when we come to Thomas Nelson Page and Thomas Dixon. We might tarry for a few minutes with Mr. Page to listen to more such tales as those of Uncle Remus; but we must turn to living issues. Times have changed. The grandson of Uncle Remus does not feel that he must stand with his hat in his hand when he is in our presence, and he even presumes to help us in the running of our government. This will never do; so in "Red Rock" and "The Leopard's Spots" it must be shown that he should never have been allowed to vote anyway, and those honorable gentlemen in the Congress of the United States in the year 1865 did not know at all what they were about. Though we are given the characters and setting of a novel, the real business is to show that the Negro has been the "sentimental pet" of the nation all too long. By all means let us have an innocent white girl, a burly Negro, and a burning at the stake, or the story would be incomplete.

We have the same thing in "The Clansman," a "drama of fierce revenge." But here we are concerned very largely with the blackening of a man's character. Stoneman (Thaddeus Stevens very thinly disguised) is himself the whole Congress of the United States. He is a gambler, and "spends a part of almost every night at Hall & Pemberton's Faro Place on Pennsylvania Avenue." He is hysterical, "drunk with the joy of a triumphant vengeance." "The South is conquered soil," he says to the President (a mere figure-head, by the way), "I mean to blot it from the map." Further: "It is but the justice and wisdom of heaven that the Negro shall rule the land of his bondage. It is the only solution of the race problem. Wait until I put a ballot in the hand of every Negro, and a bayonet at the breast of every white man from the James to the Rio Grande." Stoneman, moreover, has a mistress, a mulatto woman, a "yellow vampire" who dominates him completely. "Senators, representatives, politicians of low and high degree, artists, correspondents, foreign ministers, and cabinet officers hurried to acknowledge their fealty to the uncrowned king, and hail the strange brown woman who held the keys of his house as the first lady of the land." This, let us remember, was for some months the best-selling book in the United States. A slightly altered version of it has very recently commanded such prices as were never before paid for seats at a moving-picture entertainment; and with "The Traitor" and "The Southerner" it represents our most popular treatment of the gravest social question in American life! "The Clansman" is to American literature exactly what a Louisiana mob is to American democracy. Only too frequently, of course, the mob represents us all too well.

Turning from the longer works of fiction to the short story, I have been interested to see how the matter has been dealt with here. For purposes of comparison I have selected from ten representative periodicals as many distinct stories, no one of which was published more than ten years ago; and as these are in almost every case those stories that first strike the eye in a periodical index, we may assume that they are thoroughly typical. The ten are: "Shadow," by Harry Stillwell Edwards, in the Century (December, 1906); "Callum's Co'tin': A Plantation Idyl," by Frank H. Sweet, in the Craftsman (March, 1907); "His Excellency the Governor," by L. M. Cooke, in Putnam's (February, 1908); "The Black Drop," by Margaret Deland in Collier's Weekly (May 2 and 9, 1908); "Jungle Blood," by Elmore Elliott Peake, in McClure's (September, 1908); "The Race-Rioter," by Harris Merton Lyon, in the American (February, 1910); "Shadow," by Grace MacGowan Cooke and Alice MacGowan, in Everybody's (March, 1910); "Abram's Freedom," by Edna Turpin, in the Atlantic (September, 1912); "A Hypothetical Case," by Norman Duncan, in Harper's (June, 1915); and "The Chalk Game," by L. B. Yates, in the Saturday Evening Post (June 5, 1915). For high standards of fiction I think we may safely say that, all in all, the periodicals here mentioned are representative of the best that America has to offer. In some cases the story cited is the only one on the Negro question that a magazine has published within the decade.

"Shadow" (in the Century) is the story of a Negro convict who for a robbery committed at the age of fourteen was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor in the mines of Alabama. An accident disabled him, however, and prevented his doing the regular work for the full period of his imprisonment. At twenty he was a hostler, looking forward in despair to the fourteen years of confinement still waiting for him. But the three little girls of the prison commissioner visit the prison. Shadow performs many little acts of kindness for them, and their hearts go out to him. They storm the governor and the judge for his pardon, and present the Negro with his freedom as a Christmas gift. The story is not long, but it strikes a note of genuine pathos.

"Callum's Co'tin'" is concerned with a hard-working Negro, a blacksmith, nearly forty, who goes courting the girl who called at his shop to get a trinket mended for her mistress. At first he makes himself ridiculous by his finery; later he makes the mistake of coming to a crowd of merrymakers in his working clothes. More and more, however, he storms the heart of the girl, who eventually capitulates. From the standpoint simply of craftsmanship, the story is an excellent piece of work.

"His Excellency the Governor" deals with the custom on Southern plantations of having, in imitation of the white people, a Negro "governor" whose duty it was to settle minor disputes. At the death of old Uncle Caleb, who for years had held this position of responsibility, his son Jubal should have been the next in order. He was likely to be superseded, however, by loud-mouthed Sambo, though urged to assert himself by Maria, his wife, an old house-servant who had no desire whatever to be defeated for the place of honor among the women by Sue, a former field-hand. At the meeting where all was to be decided, however, Jubal with the aid of his fiddle completely confounded his rival and won. There are some excellent touches in the story; but, on the whole, the composition is hardly more than fair in literary quality.

"The Black Drop," throughout which we see the hand of an experienced writer, analyzes the heart of a white boy who is in love with a girl who is almost white, and who when the test confronts him suffers the tradition that binds him to get the better of his heart. "But you will still believe that I love you?" he asks, ill at ease as they separate. "No, of course I can not believe that," replies the girl.

"Jungle Blood" is the story of a simple-minded, simple-hearted Negro of gigantic size who in a moment of fury kills his pretty wife and the white man who has seduced her. The tone of the whole may be gleaned from the description of Moss Harper's father: "An old darky sat drowsing on the stoop. There was something ape-like about his long arms, his flat, wide-nostriled nose, and the mat of gray wool which crept down his forehead to within two inches of his eyebrows."

"The Race-Rioter" sets forth the stand of a brave young sheriff to protect his prisoner, a Negro boy, accused of the assault and murder of a little white girl. Hank Egge tries by every possible subterfuge to defeat the plans of a lynching party, and finally dies riddled with bullets as he is defending his prisoner. The story is especially remarkable for the strong and sympathetic characterization of such contrasting figures as young Egge and old Dikeson, the father of the dead girl.

"Shadow" (in Everybody's) is a story that depends for its force very largely upon incident. It studies the friendship of a white boy, Ranny, and a black boy, Shadow, a relationship that is opposed by both the Northern white mother and the ambitious and independent Negro mother. In a fight, Shad breaks a collar-bone for Ranny; later he saves him from drowning. In the face of Ranny's white friends, all the harsher side of the problem is seen; and yet the human element is strong beneath it all. The story, not without considerable merit as it is, would have been infinitely stronger if the friendship of the two boys had been pitched on a higher plane. As it is, Shad is very much like a dog following his master.

"Abram's Freedom" is at the same time one of the most clever and one of the most provoking stories with which we have to deal. It is a perfect example of how one may walk directly up to the light and then deliberately turn his back upon it. The story is set just before the Civil War. It deals with the love of the slave Abram for a free young woman, Emmeline. "All his life he had heard and used the phrase 'free nigger' as a term of contempt. What, then, was this vague feeling, not definite enough yet to be a wish or even a longing?" So far, so good. Emmeline inspires within her lover the highest ideals of manhood, and he becomes a hostler in a livery-stable, paying to his master so much a year for his freedom. Then comes the astounding and forced conclusion. At the very moment when, after years of effort, Emmeline has helped her husband to gain his freedom (and when all the slaves are free as a matter of fact by virtue of the Emancipation Proclamation), Emmeline, whose husband has special reason to be grateful to his former master, says to the lady of the house: "Me an' Abram ain't got nothin' to do in dis worl' but to wait on you an' master."

In "A Hypothetical Case" we again see the hand of a master-craftsman. Is a white boy justified in shooting a Negro who has offended him? The white father is not quite at ease, quibbles a good deal, but finally says Yes. The story, however, makes it clear that the Negro did not strike the boy. He was a hermit living on the Florida coast and perfectly abased when he met Mercer and his two companions. When the three boys pursued him and finally overtook him, the Negro simply held the hands of Mercer until the boy had recovered his temper. Mercer in his rage really struck himself.

"The Chalk Game" is the story of a little Negro jockey who wins a race in Louisville only to be drugged and robbed by some "flashlight" Negroes who send him to Chicago. There he recovers his fortunes by giving to a group of gamblers the correct "tip" on another race, and he makes his way back to Louisville much richer by his visit. Throughout the story emphasis is placed upon the superstitious element in the Negro race, an element readily considered by men who believe in luck.

Of these ten stories, only five strike out with even the slightest degree of independence. "Shadow" (in the Century) is not a powerful piece of work, but it is written in tender and beautiful spirit. "The Black Drop" is a bold handling of a strong situation. "The Race-Rioter" also rings true, and in spite of the tragedy there is optimism in this story of a man who is not afraid to do his duty. "Shadow" (in Everybody's) awakens all sorts of discussion, but at least attempts to deal honestly with a situation that might arise in any neighborhood at any time. "A Hypothetical Case" is the most tense and independent story in the list.

On the other hand, "Callum's Co'tin'" and "His Excellency the Governor," bright comedy though they are, belong, after all, to the school of Uncle Remus. "Jungle Blood" and "The Chalk Game" belong to the class that always regards the Negro as an animal, a minor, a plaything – but never as a man. "Abram's Freedom," exceedingly well written for two-thirds of the way, falls down hopelessly at the end. Many old Negroes after the Civil War preferred to remain with their former masters; but certainly no young woman of the type of Emmeline would sell her birthright for a mess of pottage.

Just there is the point. That the Negro is ever to be taken seriously is incomprehensible to some people. It is the story of "The Man that Laughs" over again. The more Gwynplaine protests, the more outlandish he becomes to the House of Lords.

We are simply asking that those writers of fiction who deal with the Negro shall be thoroughly honest with themselves, and not remain forever content to embalm old types and work over outworn ideas. Rather should they sift the present and forecast the future. But of course the editors must be considered. The editors must give their readers what the readers want; and when we consider the populace, of course we have to reckon with the mob. And the mob does not find anything very attractive about a Negro who is intelligent, cultured, manly, and who does not smile. It will be observed that in no one of the ten stories above mentioned, not even in one of the five remarked most favorably, is there a Negro of this type. Yet he is obliged to come. America has yet to reckon with him. The day of Uncle Remus as well as of Uncle Tom is over.

Even now, however, there are signs of better things. Such an artist as Mr. Howells, for instance, has once or twice dealt with the problem in excellent spirit. Then there is the work of the Negro writers themselves. The numerous attempts in fiction made by them have most frequently been open to the charge of crassness already considered; but Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chesnutt, and W. E. Burghardt DuBois have risen above the crowd. Mr. Dunbar, of course, was better in poetry than in prose. Such a short story as "Jimsella," however, exhibited considerable technique. "The Uncalled" used a living topic treated with only partial success. But for the most part, Mr. Dunbar's work looked toward the past. Somewhat stronger in prose is Mr. Chesnutt. "The Marrow of Tradition" is not much more than a political tract, and "The Colonel's Dream" contains a good deal of preaching; but "The House Behind the Cedars" is a real novel. Among his short stories, "The Bouquet" may be remarked for technical excellence, and "The Wife of His Youth" for a situation of unusual power. Dr. DuBois's "The Quest of the Silver Fleece" contains at least one strong dramatic situation, that in which Bles probes the heart of Zora; but the author is a sociologist and essayist rather than a novelist. The grand epic of the race is yet to be produced.

Some day we shall work out the problems of our great country. Some day we shall not have a state government set at defiance, and the massacre of Ludlow. Some day our little children will not slave in mines and mills, but will have some chance at the glory of God's creation; and some day the Negro will cease to be a problem and become a human being. Then, in truth, we shall have the Promised Land. But until that day comes let those who mold our ideals and set the standards of our art in fiction at least be honest with themselves and independent. Ignorance we may for a time forgive; but a man has only himself to blame if he insists on not seeing the sunrise in the new day.

2. STUDY OF BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE following bibliography, while aiming at a fair degree of completeness for books and articles coming within the scope of this volume, can not be finally complete, because so to make it would be to cover very largely the great subject of the Negro Problem, only one phase of which is here considered. The aim is constantly to restrict the discussion to that of the literary and artistic life of the Negro; and books primarily on economic, social, or theological themes, however interesting within themselves, are generally not included. Booker T. Washington may seem to be an exception to this; but the general importance of the books of this author would seem to demand their inclusion, especially as some of them touch directly on the subject of present interest.

IBOOKS BY SIX MOST PROMINENT AUTHORS

Wheatley, Phillis (Mrs. Peters).

Poem on the Death of the Reverend George Whitefield. Boston, 1770.

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. London and Boston, 1773.

Elegy Sacred to the Memory of Dr. Samuel Cooper. Boston, 1784.

Liberty and Peace. Boston, 1784.

Letters, edited by Charles Deane. Boston, 1864.

Note. – The bibliography of the work of Phillis Wheatley is now a study within itself. Titles just enumerated are only for what may be regarded as the most important original sources. The important volume, that of 1773, is now very rare and valuable. Numerous reprints have been made, among them the following: Philadelphia, 1774; Philadelphia, 1786; Albany, 1793; Philadelphia, 1801; Walpole, N. H., 1802; Hartford, 1804; Halifax, 1813; "New England," 1816; Denver, 1887; Philadelphia, 1909 (the last being the accessible reprint by R. R. and C. C. Wright, A. M. E. Book Concern). Note also Memoir of Phillis Wheatley, by B. B. Thatcher, Boston, 1834; and Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley (memoir by Margaretta Matilda Odell), Boston, 1834, 1835, and 1838, the three editions in rapid succession being due to the anti-slavery agitation. Not the least valuable part of Deane's 1864 edition of the Letters is the sketch of Phillis Wheatley, by Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, which it contains. This was first printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, Dec. 21, 1863. It is brief, but contains several facts not to be found elsewhere. Duyckinck's Cyclopædia of American Literature (1855 and 1866) gave a good review and reprinted from the Pennsylvania Magazine the correspondence with Washington, and the poem to Washington, also "Liberty and Peace." Also important for reference is Oscar Wegelin's Compilation of the Titles of Volumes of Verse – Early American Poetry, New York, 1903. Note also The Life and Works of Phillis Wheatley, by G. Herbert Renfro, edited by Leila Amos Pendleton, Washington, 1916. The whole matter of bibliography has recently been exhaustively studied in Heartman's Historical Series, in beautiful books of limited editions, as follows: (1) Phillis Wheatley: A Critical Attempt and a Bibliography of Her Writings, by Charles Fred Heartman, New York, 1915; (2) Phillis Wheatley: Poems and Letters. First Collected Edition. Edited by Charles Fred Heartman, with an Appreciation by Arthur A. Schomburg, New York, 1915; (3) Six Broadsides relating to Phillis Wheatley, New York, 1915. These books are of the first order of importance, and yet they awaken one or two questions. One wonders why "To Mæcenas," "On Virtue," and "On Being Brought from Africa to America," all very early work, were placed near the end of the poems in "Poems and Letters"; nor is the relation between "To a Clergyman on the Death of His Lady," and "To the Rev. Mr. Pitkin on the Death of His Lady," made clear, the two poems, evidently different versions of the same subject, being placed pages apart. The great merit of the book, however, is that it adds to "Poems on Various Subjects" the four other poems not generally accessible: (1) To His Excellency, George Washington; (2) On Major-General Lee; (3) Liberty and Peace; (4) An Elegy Sacred to the Memory of Dr. Samuel Cooper. The first of Heartman's three volumes gives a list of books containing matter on Phillis Wheatley. To this may now be added the following magazine articles, none of which contain matter primarily original: (1) Christian Examiner, Vol. XVI, p. 169 (Review by W. J. Snelling of the 1834 edition of the poems); (2) Knickerbocker, Vol. IV, p. 85; (3) North American Review, Vol. 68, p. 418 (by Mrs. E. F. Ellet); (4) London Athenæum for 1835, p. 819 (by Rev. T. Flint); (5) Historical Magazine for 1858, p. 178; (6) Catholic World, Vol. 39, p. 484, July, 1884; (7) Chautauquan, Vol. 18, p. 599, February, 1894 (by Pamela McArthur Cole).

Dunbar, Paul Laurence.

Life and Works, edited by Lida Keck Wiggins. J. L. Nichols & Co., Naperville, Ill., 1907.

The following, with the exception of the sketch at the end, were all published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.

Poems:

Lyrics of Lowly Life, 1896.

Lyrics of the Hearthside, 1899.

Lyrics of Love and Laughter, 1903.

Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow, 1905.

Complete Poems, 1913.

Specially Illustrated Volumes of Poems:

Poems of Cabin and Field, 1899.

Candle-Lightin' Time, 1901.

When Malindy Sings, 1903.

Li'l' Gal, 1904.

Howdy, Honey, Howdy, 1905.

Joggin' Erlong, 1906.

Speakin' o' Christmas, 1914.

Novels:

The Uncalled, 1896.

The Love of Landry, 1900.

The Fanatics, 1901.

The Sport of the Gods, 1902.

Stories and Sketches:

Folks from Dixie, 1898.

The Strength of Gideon, and Other Stories, 1900.

In Old Plantation Days, 1903.

The Heart of Happy Hollow, 1904.

Uncle Eph's Christmas, a one-act musical sketch, Washington, 1900.

Chesnutt, Charles Waddell.

Frederick Douglass: A Biography. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston, 1899.

The Conjure Woman (stories). Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1899.

The Wife of His Youth, and Other Stories of the Color-line. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1899.

The House Behind the Cedars (novel). Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1900.

The Marrow of Tradition (novel). Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1901.

The Colonel's Dream (novel). Doubleday, Page & Co., New York, 1905.

DuBois, William Edward Burghardt.

Suppression of the African Slave-Trade. Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1896 (now handled through Harvard University Press, Cambridge).

The Philadelphia Negro. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1899.

The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1903.

The Negro in the South (with Booker T. Washington). Geo. W. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia, 1907.

John Brown (in American Crisis Biographies). Geo. W. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia, 1909.

The Quest of the Silver Fleece (novel). A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1911.

The Negro (in Home University Library Series). Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1915.

Braithwaite, William Stanley.

Lyrics of Life and Love. H. B. Turner & Co., Boston, 1904.

The House of Falling Leaves (poems). J. W. Luce & Co., Boston, 1908.

The Book of Elizabethan Verse (anthology). H. B. Turner & Co., Boston, 1906.

The Book of Georgian Verse (anthology). Brentano's, New York, 1908.

The Book of Restoration Verse (anthology). Brentano's, New York, 1909.

Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913 (including the Magazines and the Poets, a review). Cambridge, Mass., 1913.

Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1914. Cambridge, Mass., 1914.

Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915. Gomme & Marshall, New York, 1915.

Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1916. Laurence J. Gomme, New York, 1916.

The Poetic Year (for 1916): A Critical Anthology. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston, 1917.

Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1917. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston.