University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XI
NEGRO POETRY, MUSIC, AND ART

THERE is an African folk-tale which tells of
a mighty hunter who one day went into the
forest in search of big game. He was unsuccessful
in his quest, and sat down to rest. Meanwhile
he heard some strange and pleasing noises,
coming from a dense thicket. As he sat spellbound,
a party of forest spirits came dancing into view, and
the hunter discovered it was they who were making
the sounds he had heard. The spirits disappeared,
and the hunter returned to his home, when, after
considerable effort, he found that he was able
to imitate the sounds which he had heard. In
this way, it is said, the black man gained the gift
of song.

The Bantus of South Africa say that African
music at the present time is not what it used to be
in the old days. There was a time, they say, before
the coming of the white man, when musicians had
power to charm the beasts from the forest and the
birds from the trees. Be this as it may, we find
at the present day that singing is a universal practice
among the Africans in every part of the Dark

Continent. The porters, carrying their loads along
the narrow forest paths, sing of the loved ones in
their far-away homes. In the evening the people
of the villages gather around the fire and sing for
hours. These songs refer to war, to hunting, and
to the spirits that dwell in the deep woods. In
them all the wild and primitive life of the people is
reflected and interpreted.

When the Negro slaves were carried from Africa
to America they brought with them this gift of song.
Nothing else which the native African possessed,
not even his sunny disposition, his ready sympathy
or his ability to adapt himself to new and strange
conditions, has been more useful to him in his life
in America than this. When all other avenues of
expression were closed to him, and when, sometimes,
his burden seemed too great for him to bear, the
African found a comfort and a solace in these simple
and beautiful songs, which are the spontaneous
utterance of his heart.

Nothing tells more truly what the Negro's life
in slavery was, than the songs in which he succeeded,
sometimes, in expressing his deepest thoughts and
feelings. What, for example, could express more
eloquently the feelings of despair which sometimes
overtook the slave than these simple and expressive
words:

The songs which the Negro sang in slavery, however,
were by no means always sad. There were
many joyous occasions upon which the natural
happy and cheerful nature of the Negro found
expression in songs of a light and cheerful character.
There is a difference, however, between the music
of Africa and that of her transplanted children.
There is a new note in the music which had its
origin on the Southern plantations, and in this new
note the sorrow and the suffering which came from
serving in a strange land finds expression.

The new songs are those in which the slave speaks
not merely the sorrow that he feels, but also the new
hope which the Christian religion has lighted in his
bosom. The African slave accepted the teachings
of the Christian religion more eagerly than he did
anything else his master had to teach him. He
seemed to feel instinctively that there was something
in the teachings of the Bible which he needed. He
accepted the story that the Bible told him literally,
and, in the songs he composed under its influence,
he has given some wonderfully graphic and vivid
pictures of the persons and places of which the
Bible speaks, as he understood them. Grotesque
as some of these pictures may seem, they are merely
the vivid and literal interpretation of what he heard,
and all of them are conceived in the spirit of the
deepest reverence.

Neither the words nor the melodies of these songs

originated after the manner in which music is ordinarily
composed nowadays. In fact, these songs are
not the music of any one individual. They were
composed under the excitement of a religious meeting.
Some black bard, under the inspiration of
the moment, flung out a musical theme which
was taken up by the whole company, and words and
music were thus spontaneously composed upon the
spot. These songs, still sung with the old-time
fervour in the little country churches throughout
the South, were created in the same way in which
the students of literature and language tell us that
the early Scotch and English ballads were composed,
by crowds of men and women singing together.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson was, I believe,
one of the first, if not the first man to make a study
of this music of the slaves. While he was in charge
of a black regiment at Port Royal, South Carolina,
he had abundant opportunity to hear these songs,
as they were sung by the Negroes, who had been
freshly recruited from the plantations in that region.
In his interesting book, "Army Life in a Black
Regiment," he has given a very vivid and a very
accurate description of this music. Among other
things he says:

One of the songs which Mr. Higginson quotes,
and which he regards as one of the most expressive
songs that he heard while he was in the South, is
the following:

"Never, it seems to me," says Mr. Higginson,
"since man first lived and suffered, was his infinite
longing for peace uttered more plaintively than in
that line, 'I'll lie in de grave and stretch out my
arms."'

Another and more familiar one of the plantation
hymns which Mr. Higginson quotes is the following:

There is something in this slave music that touches
the common heart of man. Everywhere that it has
been heard this music has awakened a responsive
chord in the minds and hearts of those who heard
it. Antonin Dvorak, the eminent Bohemian composer,
who lived for several years in this country,
in his admirable symphony, "Out of the New
World," used several themes taken from these
Negro folk songs. S. Coleridge Taylor, the well-known
coloured English composer, has used this
music for many of his best known piano compositions.
Edward Everett Hale once said it was the
only American music.

Not only is the music of these songs strangely
touching and beautiful, but the songs themselves
contain many striking and significant expressions,
as Mr. Higginson has pointed out, which indicate
a native talent in the masses of the people for poetic
expression. For example, one of these songs in
referring to the Judgment Day, describes it as the
time "when the stars begin to fall." Another of

these songs suggests the terrors of the last Judgment,
in the refrain, "O Rocks, fall on me."

There was a time, directly after the War when
the coloured people, particularly those who had
a little education, tried to get away from and forget
these old slave songs. If they sang them still
it was about the home and not in public. It was
not until after years, when other people began to
learn and take an interest in these songs, that these
people began to understand the inspiration and the
quality that was in them. It is an indication of
the change that has gone on among the Negro people
in recent years that more and more they are beginning
to take pride in these folk-songs of the race
and are seeking to preserve them and the memories
that they evoke.

As an illustration of what I have said, I cannot
do better than quote the lines of James W. Johnson,
a Negro poet and writer of popular songs, which
suggest, better than anything I have heard or read,
what seems to me the true significance of this music.
In the Century Magazine for November, 1908, the following
poem was published, addressed to the unknown
singers who first sang these heart songs of my race:

I have already referred to the fact that Thomas
Wentworth Higginson was the first, so far as I know,
to take note of this slave music and make a serious
study of it. The first man who seems to have realised
that this music would touch the popular heart,
if it could be made known, was George L. White,
the man who was responsible for the success of the
Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.
It was the Fisk Jubilee Singers who first
made the Negro folk-music popular in America
and in Europe. They not only made this music
popular, but upon their return from their second

concert tour, in 1874, they brought back ninety
thousand dollars as their contribution to Fisk
University.

Perhaps one thing that made the singing of these
songs more effective was that the singers themselves
had, in many cases, been slaves, or were
directly descended from slave parents, and they
felt the music they sang more deeply than others
who have tried to sing it since. One of the most
interesting of these singers was Ella Sheppard, who
was born in Nashville, in 1851. Ella Sheppard's
father ran a livery stable in Nashville before the War.
He had succeeded in purchasing his own freedom
for $1,800, and was hoping to be able to purchase
that of his wife and family, when suddenly he was
separated from them by the fact that his wife's
master removed from Nashville to Mississippi.
Mr. Sheppard heard very little from his wife and
child after this until one day a white man, who had
been in Mississippi on business, returned and told
him that his little girl was dying from neglect. He
added that, as the child was sickly, possibly her
father would be able to purchase her for a small
sum. Mr. Sheppard started to Mississippi, purchased
his child for $350, and brought her back to
Nashville. Shortly after this he attempted to purchase
his wife, but for some reason or other, after
the sale had nearly been completed, her master
refused to sell her and she did not succeed in

gaining her freedom until the Civil War finally
emancipated her.

Before freedom came, Mr. Sheppard failed in
business and was compelled to move secretly to
Cincinnati to prevent his creditors seizing his children
for debt. There Ella Sheppard gained a little
education in what was known as the Seventh Street
Coloured School. When she was thirteen years
old she commenced taking lessons in music from a
German music teacher. About this time her father
died and she was compelled, as she says, to go to
work, for herself "in right good earnest." Fortunately,
she made the acquaintance of Mr. J. P.
Ball, of Cincinnati, who adopted her and gave her
a thorough musical education, with the understanding
that she was to repay him at some future time.

"I took twelve lessons," she says," in vocal music
of Madame Rivi. I was the only coloured pupil,
and was not allowed to tell who my teacher was.
More than that, I went up the back way to reach
my teacher and received my lesson in the back room
upstairs from nine to a quarter often at night."

After teaching school for a time, Ella Sheppard
entered Fisk University, where, by teaching music
and sewing at odd moments, or when she was confined
to her bed, as she frequently was by illness,
she managed to make her way through the University
until she joined the first campaign of the Jubilee
Singers through the Northern states. Ella Sheppard

is still living in Nashville. She is now the
wife of Reverend George W. Moore, who is the field
superintendent of the church work of the American
Missionary Association, and one of the most distinguished
men of his race. Mr. Moore was, for
a number of years, pastor of the Lincoln Memorial
Church in Washington, District of Columbia. In
all the work which this church attempted to do for
the masses of the coloured people in Washington,
Mr. Moore was greatly assisted by the labours and
counsel of his wife.

Another distinguished member of the Jubilee
Singers' Band, as it was called, was Jennie Jackson,
who afterward became the wife of Professor
DeHart, until recently teacher in the public schools
of Cincinnati. Jennie Jackson was born free, but
her grandfather was a slave and body-servant of
General Andrew Jackson. During the War and
afterward her mother supported the family by
washing and ironing. It was by assisting her
mother in this work that Jennie Jackson earned
enough money to make her way through school,
until, her voice having attracted the attention of her
teachers, she became a member of the Jubilee Singers,
whose fortunes she shared until the end of their
campaign.

Maggie Porter was another of the singers who
distinguished herself. She was born in 1853, at
Lebanon, Tennessee. Her master was Henry

Frazier, and the owner of some two hundred slaves.
Her mother was a house servant, and Maggie was
brought up in the household of her master. In
January, 1866, when the Fisk School was first
opened, Maggie Porter was one of the three hundred
pupils who gathered, during the first week,
in the old hospital barracks. She was one of the
first of the pupils at the Fisk School to enlist as a
teacher in the country districts. She taught in different
parts of Tennessee until Mr. White, who
knew of her natural musical talent, sent for her to
take the part of Queen Esther in the cantata that
the students of Fisk University were preparing to
give. She was so successful in this part that she
became a member of the first band of Jubilee
Singers that went out from Fisk in the following fall
of 1871. After the disbandment of the Jubilee
Singers Maggie Porter travelled for a number of
years as a concert singer in various parts of
the United States. Her name at present is
Maggie Porter Cole. She is living with her husband
in Detroit, where she has a beautiful home,
and is making her life of great service to her
people.

Of the other singers of whom I have been able
to get some recent record, I recall the name of
Thomas Rutling, who is now a teacher of English
language and literature in a school at Geneva,
Switzerland. He was the son of a runaway slave,

and was born while his mother was hiding out in
the woods in Wilson County, Tennessee.

There was, as I have said, a peculiar pathos about
the old slave songs that invariably touched the
hearts of those who heard them. Through these
songs the slaves found a means of telling what
was in their hearts when almost every other
means of expressing their thoughts and feelings
was denied them. For this reason, if for no other,
they will always remain a sacred heritage of the
Negro race.

The creation of music so original, by a people so
wholly lacking in musical education, indicates a
natural taste and talent for music in the Negro
race which, perhaps, has not been equalled by
any other primitive people. This native talent
has manifested itself not only in the songs, spontaneously
produced by the slaves on the plantation,
but by the ease with which Negro musicians have
been able to execute and interpret the music of all
other peoples.

The most noted example of this native talent for
music in a member of the Negro race is Thomas
Greene Bethune, who was better known under the
name of "Blind Tom." Blind Tom was born near
Columbus, Georgia, May 25, 1849, and died July 3,
1908. He was blind from birth, and while deficient
in some other directions, he manifested from infancy
an extraordinary fondness for musical sounds. He is

said to have exhibited his musical talent before he
was two years old.

It is said that he showed, from the first, great
interest in every kind of musical sound, "from the
soft breathing of the flute to the harsh gratings
of the corn-sheller." He also showed a remarkable
power for judging the lapse of time. There was a
clock in his master's house that struck the hour.
Every hour in the day, just before this clock made
the sharp click preparatory to striking, Tom would
be there and remain until the hour was struck, and
it was evident that he took the greatest delight in
the musical tones which the clock gave forth. Frequently
in the evening the young ladies of his master's
family would sit on the steps and sing. At
such times Tom would invariably, if he were allowed
to do so, come to the house and sing with them. One
evening one of the young ladies said to her father:
"Pa, Tom sings beautifully, and he don't have to
learn any tune, for as soon as we sing he sings right
along with us." Then she added: "He sings
fine seconds to anything we sing."

When Tom was about four years of age his master
purchased a piano and brought it to the house. The
first note from this new instrument brought Tom
into the house. He was permitted to indulge his
curiosity by running his fingers over the keys. As
long as anyone would play on this piano Tom was
content to stay out in the yard, where he would

dance and caper to the music, but as soon as the
music ceased he would try to get to the instrument
in order to continue the sweet sounds in which he
took such delight.

One night when the parlour door had been left open,
Tom escaped from his mother and crept into the
parlour. Early in the morning the young ladies of
the household were awakened by hearing some one
playing upon the piano. The music continued to
reach their ears from time to time, until at the usual
hour they arose and went into the parlour where,
to their astonishment, they saw Tom playing the
piano in what seemed to them a remarkable way.
Notwithstanding this was his first attempt to play
this instrument, they noted that he played with
both hands, and used black as well as white keys.

After a time Tom was allowed free access to the
piano and commenced to play everything he heard.
After he had mastered all the music that he heard
any one play, he commenced composing for himself.
He would sit at the piano for hours playing over
pieces he had heard, then he would go out, run and
jump about the yard for a little while and, after
returning, play something of his own. If any one
asked him what he was playing, he replied that it
was something that the wind said to him, or "what
the birds said to me," "what the trees said to me,"
or what something else said to him. Speaking of
the natural sense for music which this strangely

gifted Negro boy displayed, the biographer of Blind
Tom says:

When Tom was eight years of age he was permitted
to appear in a regular concert in the city of
Columbus, at which a German, the leading musician
of the town, was present. The next day this man
was asked to undertake Tom's musical education.
He replied: "No, sir, I can't teach him anything;
he knows more of music than any of us know or
can learn. All that can be done for him is to let him
hear fine playing. He will work it all out by himself
after a while, but he will do it sooner by hearing
fine music"

This man was correct. Tom did work it all out
by himself after a while, and became one of the most
noted musicians in the world. He gave concerts in
every important city of the United States, and in all
the principal cities of Europe. It was said of him,

as showing the remarkable power which he possessed,
that he could stand with his back to a piano and
let any number of chords be struck simultaneously,
thereupon he would instantly be able to tell every
note sounded, showing that his memory retained
all the notes distinctly, and in such a manner that
he was able to discriminate between every sound
made.

In 1867 Blind Tom gave a concert in Glasgow,
Scotland. The following morning the Glasgow
Herald, in its account of his performance, made
the following interesting statement, which gives a
very accurate estimate of Tom's musical talent at
this time:

Some of the most interesting music, produced
by the Negro slaves, was handed down from the
days when the French and Spanish had possession
of Louisiana. All these songs, many of which
have been preserved through the writings of George
W. Cable, were composed in the Creole dialect of
Louisiana.

From the free Negroes of Louisiana there sprang
up, during slavery days, a number of musicians and
artists who distinguished themselves in foreign
countries to which they removed, because of the prejudice
which existed against coloured people. Among
them was Eugène Warburg, who went to Italy and
distinguished himself as a sculptor. Another was
Victor Sejour, who went to Paris and gained distinction
as a poet and composer of tragedy. Another
by the name of Dubuclet was a physician and musician
of Bordeaux, France. The Lambert family,
consisting of seven persons, were noted as musicians.
Richard Lambert, the father, was a teacher
of music, Lucien Lambert, a son, after much hard
study, became a composer of music. He left New
Orleans, however, and went to France, where he
continued his studies. Later he went to Brazil,
where he engaged in the manufacture of pianos.
Among his compositions are: "La Juive," "Le

Départ du Conscript," "Les Ombres Aimées,"
"Le Niagara."

Another brother, Sidney Lambert, stimulated by
the example and fame of his father and brother,
made himself a name as a pianist and a composer
of music. He wrote a method for the piano of such
merit that he received a decoration in recognition
of his work from the King of Portugal. At last
accounts he was a professor of music in Paris.
Edmund Dèdè, who was born in New Orleans, in
1829, learned while a youth to play a number of
instruments. He was a cigar maker by trade and,
being of good habits and thrifty, accumulated enough
money to pay his passage to France. Here he took
up a special study of music and finally became director
of the Orchestra of L'Alcazar, in Bordeaux,
France.

The late J. M. Trotter, of Boston, himself a
Negro of unusual intelligence, has written a history
of the Negroes who distinguished themselves in
music in the period from 1850 to 1880. In this
history he mentions more than fifty Negroes who
achieved distinction in some form of music, either
as singers, performers on musical instruments, or
composers. One of the most famous of these was
Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, who was known as
the "Black Swan." She was born in Natchez,
Mississippi, in 1809. When about a year old she
was brought to Philadelphia by an exemplary

Quaker lady, Mrs. Greenfield, by whom she was
carefully reared. One evening, while visiting at
the house of a neighbour, the daughter of the house,
who knew something of her ability, invited her to
sing. Every one present was astonished at the
power and richness of her voice, and it was thereupon
agreed that she should receive music lessons.

These lessons were carried on at first without
the knowledge of Mrs. Greenfield, because, according
to the discipline of the Friends, music, like every
other art, was a forbidden occupation. When the
good lady learned that Elizabeth was taking music
lessons, she summoned her to her presence. Elizabeth
came, trembling, and prepared for a severe
reprimand.

"Elizabeth," said she, "is it true thee is learning
music and can play upon the guitar?"

"It is true," Elizabeth reluctantly confessed.

"Go and get thy guitar and let me hear thee sing."

The girl obeyed, and when she had finished was
astonished to hear her kind friend say: "Elizabeth,
whatever thee wants thee shall have."

From that time on Mrs. Greenfield assisted her
in every way to make herself proficient in the profession
of music, which she had chosen to follow.

When her benefactress died, the young coloured
girl was thrown upon her own resources. Remembering
some friends in Western New York, who
had been very kind to her, she resolved to visit them.

Her chance singing upon a boat, which was crossing
Lake Seneca, gained her new friends and
opened a way for her to come prominently before
the public.

In 1851 she gained a reputation by her singing
before the Buffalo Musical Society. From that time
on she was known as the "Black Swan," and invitations
to sing in concerts came to her from cities
in all parts of the North. In 1853 she gave a concert
in Exeter Hall, London, England, where she
made a great success.

Among other distinguished singers of this period
were the Luca family, father and three sons, of
Cleveland, Ohio. The father was born in Milford,
Connecticut, in 1805. He was a shoemaker
by trade. He became a chorister in one of the Congregational
churches of New Haven, and his choir
was considered one of the best in the city. The
children inherited their father's talent, and in the
fifties travelled about the Northern states, giving
musical entertainments.

Among the more recent singers, perhaps the most
distinguished is Madame Sissieretta Tones. She
was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1870. Her
father was pastor of the local Methodist Church.
When still a young woman her parents moved to
Providence, Rhode Island, where her voice soon
attracted public attention. After making a number
of public appearances in Providence, she was

invited to go to New York and sing at Wallack's
Theatre. Her success was so great that she was
immediately engaged to tour South America and
the West Indies. In 1886 she sang with great success
in Madison Square Garden. She has sung with
success in all the principal cities of Europe, and
during recent years has had her own company,
known as the Black Patti Troubadours, at the head
of which she has appeared in every important city
in the United States.

Except as a singer in concerts or as a musician,
almost the only opportunity that the Negro has had
until recently to appear upon the stage has been as
a minstrel. The first Negro minstrels were white
men, and they sang songs and cracked jokes that
were invented by white men in imitation of the
songs and jokes of the Negroes, with which the
Southern people had become familiar during slavery
days. Immediately after the War, however, there
was a company of coloured minstrels organised,
known as the "Georgia Minstrels." These minstrels
became famous and were succeeded by others.
Out of these minstrels there grew later a kind of
Negro comedy, in which there was some attempt
to depict the characters and tell the story of Negro
life. The man who made this transition from the
old Negro minstrels to the more modern Negro
comedy was Ernest Hogan, who died in the spring
of 1909, in New York, and was buried from the

church of St. Benedict the Moor, an honoured and
respected member of his profession.

The success of Ernest Hogan has made it possible
for other Negro comedians to gain a foothold in
the better class of the theatres, and create a more
worthy kind of Negro comedy. Among the more
talented of these players are Bert Williams, George
Walker, and his wife, Aida Overton Walker,
Bob Cole, and J. Rosamond Johnson.

Year by year the character of the pieces
produced by these men has improved in quality,
both as to the music and as to the manner and style
of presentation. At the present time I have heard
it said that there are few musical comedies on the
American stage that equal those that are produced
by some of the players to whom I have referred.

Little by little these players, and the men who
have written their songs and music, have managed
to bring into connection with the rather rough
humour of these comedies, music and songs of a
much higher order than are usually heard in this
kind of entertainment. Among the men who write
the music and these songs are some men like James
W. Johnson, whose poetry I have already quoted,
and Harry T. Burleigh, a concert singer of more
than ordinary cultivation and refinement. The
songs which these young men have written are not
only among the most popular songs of the day, but
some of them must be counted among the very few

which have real and permanent value. There is
a note in the best of them which is entirely distinctive.

The most noted figure among Negroes who have
appeared upon the stage was Ira Aldridge. He
was born near Baltimore in 1804. In 1826 he met
Edmund Kean, with whom he travelled for several
years. He accompanied Keene to Europe, and
when, finally, he expressed to him a desire to become
an actor himself, the distinguished tragedian encouraged
him in that ambition. Ira Aldridge made his
first appearance as Othello at Covent Garden,
London, April 10, 1839. Keene took the part of
Iago, and from that time on the success of the
coloured actor was assured.

In 1852 Ira Aldridge appeared in Germany, where
his success was so great that the King of Prussia
conferred a decoration upon him and sent him an
autograph letter, expressing his appreciation of his
performance. The coloured actor afterward received
the Cross of Leopold from the Emperor
of Russia. He played in all parts of Europe, and
finally died at Lodz, Poland, just as he was preparing
to come to America to fulfil an engagement.

In recent years the number of coloured performers
upon the stage has multiplied rapidly. At the
present time one of the regular features of the
coloured newspaper is a theatrical column, which is
devoted entirely to chronicling the doings of the

coloured theatrical performers. So successful have
these performers been that, in a number of cities,
theatres owned and conducted by coloured people
have been started expressly for the use of coloured
companies. Theatres were owned and operated
by coloured people in 1909 in Chicago, Illinois; New
Orleans, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi; Memphis,
Tennessee; Atlanta, Georgia; Columbus, Ohio;
Jacksonville, Florida; Yazoo City, Mississippi; Baton
Rouge and Plaquemine, Louisiana.

The ability which the Negro has shown to express
his feelings in the form of music is also shown, in a
lesser degree, in expressing himself in poetry and
in other forms of art. The natural disposition
of the native African to express himself poetically
has been frequently noted by students of African
life. The traveller Schweinfurth noted among the
peoples of Central Africa a number of striking
expressions. For example, one tribe referred to
a leaf as "an ear of the tree," and in speaking of
a man's chest, called it "the capital of the veins."
In many parts of the black man's Africa there are
professional singers who practise the art of improvising
songs upon almost any topic that may be
assigned to them.

I have myself frequently noticed the striking
expressions that are sometimes used by the people
in the country districts, when they wish to make
any particular impressive statement. For instance,

in talking with an old farmer in the vicinity of my
home at Tuskegee, I happened to give expression
to some opinion or idea that struck him with peculiar
force when he exclaimed: "Mr. Washington,
you said a thousand words in one." At another
time there was a coloured preacher who had a church
which was near a plantation school and settlement
that had been started by some of the teachers at
Tuskegee. Some one asked this preacher if the
school had made any change in conditions in that
neighbourhood since it had been established. He
raised his hands and exclaimed: "I'll tell you in a
word. When this school started it was midnight;
now it is dawn." Upon another occasion, when one
of these men was describing his religious experience,
how he "came through," as the expression is, he
used these words: "All of a sudden a star busted in
my breast and I was mighty happy in the Lord."

This same natural gift of expression, which is
frequently possessed by some of the rude and unlettered
people of my race, has been frequently noted
by other persons. A typical example of this is
Harriet Tubman's description of the Battle of Gettysburg,
which Professor Albert Bushnell Hart has
noted in his "History of Slavery and Abolition." He
heard this description from Harriet Tubman's own
lips as she was describing some of her experiences
during the Civil War. One sentence from that
description was as follows: "And then we saw

the lightning, and that was the guns; and then we
heard the rainfall, and that was the drops of blood
falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it
was dead men that we reaped."

It is this same natural ability for picturesque
expression which makes the Negro a natural orator.
Even the disposition of the Negro to pick up and
repeat high-sounding words and expressions is but
another indication of his sense for impressive language.

I have noted, also, that where Negro college
students do not excel their fellows of the white race
in other branches of study, they frequently come
off first in oratorical contests. For example, in 1907,
a Zulu, who some years before came from Africa
to America to get an education, carried off the
oratorical honours at Columbia University. The
name of this orator was Pixley Isaka Seme. When
I last heard from Mr. Seme he was a student at
Jesus College, Oxford, where he, with a number
of other African students, was studying preparatory
to going back to South Africa to enter the
colonial civil service.

One of the most striking illustrations of the
natural poetic talent in a member of the Negro race
is in the verses of Phillis Wheatley. It requires a
considerable amount of natural talent for any person
to master a strange language and to learn to
express himself poetically in it. It would seem

that this must be particularly difficult for one coming
from a condition and a life as remote and as
different from that of a civilised European people
as that of the primitive African. Nevertheless,
the Negro has shown his ability to accomplish this
feat.

One day in the year 1761, Mrs. John Wheatley,
of Boston, went into the city slave market to purchase
a Negro servant girl. She selected as suitable
for her purpose a child between seven and
eight years of age who had but recently come from
Africa, and was hardly able to speak a word of
English. The little girl was taken home and soon
showed such marked intelligence that her mistress's
daughter determined to teach her to read. Within
sixteen months she had so far mastered the English
language that she could read with ease and
apparent understanding the most difficult passages
of the Scriptures. She acquired the art of writing,
it is said, almost wholly by her own exertion and
industry. The great interest that she showed in
learning to read and write, and the eagerness with
which she read the books that were supplied to her,
were so unusual at that time that it attracted general
attention.

After a time she began to write verses. She
was about fourteen years old when she wrote the
first verses that attracted any particular attention.
From this time until she was nineteen years of age

she seems to have written all the poems which she
gave to the world. They were published in London,
in 1773, and dedicated to the Countess of
Huntingdon, who had been her friend and patron.
A letter of recommendation, signed by the Governor,
Lieutenant-governor and several other respectable
persons of Boston, was printed by the publishers as
a sort of introduction to this little volume. This
letter of recommendation was as follows:

Phillis Wheatley addressed a poem to General
Washington, which seemed to have pleased him very
much. In a letter to Joseph Reed, dated February
10, 1776, from Cambridge, General Washington
made the following reference to this poem:

This kindly reference of George Washington
to the Negro slave girl poet and the uniform kindness
and courtesy with which he is known to have
treated black men and women in every station
in life has gone far to endear the memory of the
Father of our Country to the coloured people of
the United States.

Phillis Wheatley died December 5, 1784, when she
was thirty-four years of age. She was one of the first
women, white or black, to attain literary distinction
in this country. I have frequently noticed, in
travelling in different sections of the country, that
many of the literary organisations and women's clubs
among the members of my race bear the name of
Phillis Wheatley, showing how well her name is still
remembered among the masses of the Negro people.

Another slave poet whose name is remembered,
but whose history is shrouded in mystery, is George
M. Horton, of Chatham County, North Carolina.
Horton could not write, but his poems were taken
down by some white man and were regarded as of
such importance that they were printed in a small
volume in 1829.

Frequently I have run across the names of Negroes

from the West Indies or elsewhere who have written
poetry in the Spanish or French languages. Now
and then I have received a volume of poems in some
language that I was not able to read, which were
written by some Negro poet in some part of the
world. The great national poet of Russia, Alexander
Sergeievich Pushkin, although of noble family,
inherited African blood from his mother.

The history of Alexander Dumas, who was born
of a Negro mother in one of the West Indian islands
belonging to France, is familiar.

One of the most charming writers of verse in
America at the present day, William Stanley Braithwaite,
of Boston, is a young coloured man who was
born in the West Indies. He is the author of several
books of verse, one of them entitled "Lyrics of Love
and Life," published in 1904. He is a frequent
contributor to the magazines.

I should mention here, also, the name of Charles
W. Chesnutt, the novelist, who makes his home in
Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Chesnutt, although he was
born in the North, is descended from free coloured
people of North Carolina, Shortly after the War
his parents returned to the South, where Mr. Chesnutt
was for some time a school-teacher. It was
while thus occupied that he obtained that acquaintance
with the South upon which his stories are
founded. Among them are: "The Conjure
Woman," "The House Behind the Cedars," "The

Wife of His Youth," and "The Marrow of Tradition."
This latter is said to be the best description
of the Wilmington riot and the events that led up to
and produced it that has yet been written. Mr.
Chesnutt's last story of Southern life is called "The
Colonel's Dream," and describes the efforts of a
Southerner who had gone North and become wealthy
to return to his native village and build up its
resources and make it prosperous.

But the poetry to which I have referred was
written for the most part at a time when the masses
of the Negro people could not read. It was the
work of men who were, to a large extent, out of
touch with the masses of the Negro people. The
poems they wrote were not in the language which
the masses of the people spoke, sometimes not even
in a language which they could understand, and did
not in any sense express or interpret the life of the
Negro people.

Almost the first representative poet of my race
was Paul Laurence Dunbar. Of Dunbar, William
Dean Howells, to whom he owed to some extent his
success, said that Dunbar was the only man of pure
African blood and of American civilisation "to feel
the Negro esthetically and express it lyrically." And
that the Negro race "had attained civilisation in him."
Mr. Howells believed that Dunbar more than any
other Negro had gained for the Negro a permanent
position in English literature.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in Dayton,
Ohio, in 1872. His parents had been slaves. He
received a high school education, but before his
education was completed, while he was still working
as an elevator boy, he began to write verses.
He succeeded after a hard struggle in gaining recognition
for his poetry, and became a frequent contributor
to the leading magazines of the country. He
was, likewise, a successful reader of his own verse.
He published a number of volumes of poetry and of
prose. To the time of his death, February 9, 1906,
he seemed to be gaining in intellectual power and
in popularity.

Shortly before he died, when it had become clear,
even to his naturally hopeful mind, that he had not
long to live, he wrote the following verses which are
so full of pathos and express so clearly at once the
strength and the weakness, as he felt them, not only
of himself, but perhaps also of his race, that I quote
them here:

It has always seemed strange to me that Dunbar,
who was born in a Northern state, and knew so little

from actual experience of the life of the Negro in
the South, could have been able to interpret that
life so sincerely, so sympathetically, and so beautifully.
No doubt the most that he knew about the
life of the Negro before and after the War he gathered
from the lips of his devoted mother, who had been
a slave and had known and felt it all. There were
no bitterness and no harsh notes in Dunbar's music.
Perhaps this also is due to the fact that he saw the
condition of his race sympathetically, through his
mother's eyes. His songs have been of great service
not only to his own race, but to the rest of the
world. He was in a sense a direct descendant of the
old slave singers. He expressed intelligently and
poetically the deeper feelings and thoughts of the
masses of the Negro people, so that the world could
understand them. He was, in fact, the poet laureate
of the Negro race.

From among the Negroes in the United States
there have come from time to time not merely singers,
but artists. One of the most noted of these, and
the earliest to gain reputation, was Edmonia Lewis,
who was born of Negro and Indian parentage in the
State of New York, in 1845. During a visit to
Boston she chanced to see a statue of Benjamin
Franklin. She stood transfixed before it. Perhaps
it was the latent genius within her which was stirred,
for after looking at it with deep emotion she said:
"I, too, can make a stone man."

It was William Lloyd Garrison to whom she turned
for advice, who gave her encouragement to study
sculpture. She first attracted attention by exhibiting
in Boston, in 1865, a bust of Colonel Robert
Gould Shaw. The same year she went to Rome
to study and has resided there permanently since
1867. She has created a number of works of merit,
the most noted of which are, "The Death of Cleopatra,"
which was exhibited at the Centennial
Exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876; "Asleep,"
"Marriage of Hiawatha," "Madonna with the
Infant Christ," and the "Freedwoman." She has
made a number of portrait busts in terra cotta,
among which are those of Longfellow, Charles
Sumner, John Brown, and Abraham Lincoln, The
bust of Abraham Lincoln is in the public library
at San José, California.

A younger sculptress, who has recently attracted
attention, is Meta Vaux Warrick. She was born in
Philadelphia, and gained her first lesson in modelling
clay flowers in the public kindergarten. Afterward
she secured a free scholarship in the Pennsylvania
School of Industrial Art. Her first piece of original
work in clay was the head of Medusa. In 1899 Miss
Warrick went to study in Paris. She finally succeeded
in attracting the attention of the famous
French sculptor, Rodin, who is said to have given
her his approval in these words: "My child, you are
a sculptress. You have the sense of form." One

of her best pieces of work was made for the Jamestown
Tercentennial, and represented the advancement
of the Negro since he landed at Jamestown,
in 1619.

The Negro artist who has gained greatest fame,
however, is Henry O. Tanner, son of Bishop Benjamin
T. Tanner, of the A. M. E. Church. After
studying for a time in the Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Arts, he opened a photograph gallery in
Atlanta, Georgia. This venture was unsuccessful,
however, and the next year he taught freehand
drawing in Clark University, in the same city. His
ambition, however, was to go to Paris and study
under one of the living masters of art. By the
assistance of friends he was finally able to gratify
this desire. His first picture to receive official recognition
was entitled, "Daniel in the Lions' Den,"
which received honourable mention in the Paris
Salon of 1896. The next year his "Lazarus
Rising from the Dead," received the third medal,
and was purchased by the French Government
for its collection of modern art in the Luxembourg
gallery.

From that time until this Mr. Tanner has produced
something every year, and every year the
painting which he exhibited has been better
than that of the previous year. In December,
1908, a comprehensive exhibition of his paintings
was made in New York City. At the time the

art critic of the New York Herald said of Mr.
Tanner and his art:

What impresses me most about Mr. Tanner's
paintings is the vividness, the sincerity and, I may
say, literalness with which he has depicted the
incidents of the Bible story. He paints all these
things, it seems to me, with something of the spirit
in which these same incidents are pictured in the
old plantation hymns, vividly, as I have said, literally,
and with a deep religious feeling for the significance
of the things that he paints.