University of Virginia Library

Preface

There is, perhaps, a better excuse for giving an Anthology
of American Negro Poetry to the public than can be
offered for many of the anthologies that have recently
been issued. The public, generally speaking, does not
know that there are American Negro poets—to supply
this lack of information is, alone, a work worthy of somebody's
effort.

Moreover, the matter of Negro poets and the production
of literature by the colored people in this country
involves more than supplying information that is lacking.
It is a matter which has a direct bearing on the most
vital of American problems.

A people may become great through many means, but
there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized
and acknowledged. The final measure of the greatness
of all peoples is the amount and standard of the
literature and art they have produced. The world does
not know that a people is great until that people produces
great literature and art. No people that has produced
great literature and art has ever been looked upon
by the world as distinctly inferior.

The status of the Negro in the United States is more
a question of national mental attitude toward the race
than of actual conditions. And nothing will do more
to change that mental attitude and raise his status than
a demonstration of intellectual parity by the Negro
through the production of literature and art.

Is there likelihood that the American Negro will be
able to do this? There is, for the good reason that he
possesses the innate powers. He has the emotional endowment,
the originality and artistic conception, and,
what is more important, the power of creating that which
has universal appeal and influence.

I make here what may appear to be a more startling
statement by saying that the Negro has already proved
the possession of these powers by being the creator of the
only things artistic that have yet sprung from American
soil and been universally acknowledged as distinctive
American products.

These creations by the American Negro may be
summed up under four heads. The first two are the
Uncle Remus stories, which were collected by Joel Chandler
Harris, and the "spirituals" or slave songs, to which
the Fisk Jubilee Singers made the public and the musicians
of both the United States and Europe listen. The
Uncle Remus stories constitute the greatest body of folklore
that America has produced, and the "spirituals" the
greatest body of folk-song. I shall speak of the "spirituals"
later because they are more than folk-songs, for in
them the Negro sounded the depths, if he did not scale
the heights, of music.

The other two creations are the cakewalk and ragtime.
We do not need to go very far back to remember when
cakewalking was the rage in the United States, Europe
and South America. Society in this country and royalty
abroad spent time in practicing the intricate steps. Paris
pronounced it the "poetry of motion." The popularity of
the cakewalk passed away but its influence remained.

The influence can be seen to-day on any American stage
where there is dancing.

The influence which the Negro has exercised on the
art of dancing in this country has been almost absolute.
For generations the "buck and wing" and the "stop-time"
dances, which are strictly Negro, have been familiar to
American theatre audiences. A few years ago the public
discovered the "turkey trot," the "eagle rock," "ballin' the
and several other varieties that started the modern
dance craze. These dances were quickly followed by the
"tango," a dance originated by the Negroes of Cuba and
later transplanted to South America. (This fact is
attested by no less authority than Vincente Blasco Ibañez
in his "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.") Half the
floor space in the country was then turned over to dancing,
and highly paid exponents sprang up everywhere. The
most noted, Mr. Vernon Castle, and, by the way, an
Englishman, never danced except to the music of a colored
band, and he never failed to state to his audiences that
most of his dances had long been done by "your colored
people," as he put it.

Any one who witnesses a musical production in which
there is dancing cannot fail to notice the Negro stamp on
all the movements; a stamp which even the great vogue
of Russian dances that swept the country about the time
of the popular dance craze could not affect. That peculiar
swaying of the shoulders which you see done everywhere
by the blond girls of the chorus is nothing more
than a movement from the Negro dance referred to above,
the "eagle rock." Occasionally the movement takes on
a suggestion of the, now outlawed, "shimmy."

As for Ragtime, I go straight to the statement that
it is the one artistic production by which America is
known the world over. It has been all-conquering.
Everywhere it is hailed as "American music."

For a dozen years or so there has been a steady tendency
to divorce Ragtime from the Negro; in fact, to
take from him the credit of having originated it. Probably
the younger people of the present generation do
not know that Ragtime is of Negro origin. The change
wrought in Ragtime and the way in which it is accepted
by the country have been brought about chiefly through
the change which has gradually been made in the words
and stories accompanying the music. Once the text of
all Ragtime songs was written in Negro dialect, and was
about Negroes in the cabin or in the cotton field or on
the levee or at a jubilee or on Sixth Avenue or at a ball,
and about their love affairs. To-day, only a small proportion
of Ragtime songs relate at all to the Negro. The
truth is, Ragtime is now national rather than racial. But
that does not abolish in any way the claim of the American
Negro as its originator.

Ragtime music was originated by colored piano players
in the questionable resorts of St. Louis, Memphis, and
other Mississippi River towns. These men did not know
any more about the theory of music than they did about
the theory of the universe. They were guided by their
natural musical instinct and talent, but above all by the
Negro's extraordinary sense of rhythm. Any one who is
familiar with Ragtime may note that its chief charm is
not in melody, but in rhythms. These players often

improvised crude and, at times, vulgar words to fit the
music. This was the beginning of the Ragtime song.

Ragtime music got its first popular hearing at Chicago
during the world's fair in that city. From Chicago it
made its way to New York, and then started on its universal
triumph.

The earliest Ragtime songs, like Topsy, "jes' grew."
Some of these earliest songs were taken down by white
men, the words slightly altered or changed, and published
under the names of the arrangers. They sprang into immediate
popularity and earned small fortunes. The first
to become widely known was "The Bully," a levee song
which had been long used by roustabouts along the Mississippi.
It was introduced in New York by Miss May
Irwin, and gained instant popularity. Another one of
these "jes' grew" songs was one which for a while disputed
for place with Yankee Doodle; perhaps, disputes
it even to-day. That song was "A Hot Time in the Old
Town To-night"; introduced and made popular by the
colored regimental bands during the Spanish-American
War.

Later there came along a number of colored men who
were able to transcribe the old songs and write original
ones. I was, about that time, writing words to music
for the music show stage in New York. I was collaborating
with my brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and the
late Bob Cole. I remember that we appropriated about
the last one of the old "jes' grew" songs. It was a song
which had been sung for years all through the South.
The words were unprintable, but the tune was irresistible,
and belonged to nobody. We took it, re-wrote the verses,

telling an entirely different story from the original, left
the chorus as it was, and published the song, first under
the name of "Will Handy." It became very popular with
college boys, especially at football games, and perhaps
still is. The song was, "Oh, Didn't He Ramble!"

In the beginning, and for quite a while, almost all of
the Ragtime songs that were deliberately composed were
the work of colored writers. Now, the colored composers,
even in this particular field, are greatly outnumbered by
the white.

The reader might be curious to know if the "jes' grew"
songs have ceased to grow. No, they have not; they are
growing all the time. The country has lately been flooded
with several varieties of "The Blues." These "Blues,"
too, had their origin in Memphis, and the towns along
the Mississippi. They are a sort of lament of a lover
who is feeling "blue" over the loss of his sweetheart. The
"Blues" of Memphis have been adulterated so much on
Broadway that they have lost their pristine hue. But
whenever you hear a piece of music which has a strain
like this in it:

you will know you are listening to something which belonged
originally to Beale Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee.
The original "Memphis Blues," so far as it can be credited
to a composer, must be credited to Mr. W. C. Handy,
a colored musician of Memphis.

As illustrations of the genuine Ragtime song in the
making, I quote the words of two that were popular with
the Southern colored soldiers in France. Here is the
first:

These lines are crude, but they contain something of
real poetry, of that elusive thing which nobody can define
and that you can only tell that it is there when you feel
it. You cannot read these lines without becoming reflective
and feeling sorry for "Po' Boy."

Now, take in this word picture of utter dejection:

These lines are, no doubt, one of the many versions
of the famous "Blues." They are also crude, but they
go straight to the mark. The last two lines move with
the swiftness of all great tragedy.

In spite of the bans which musicians and music teachers
have placed on it, the people still demand and enjoy
Ragtime. In fact, there is not a corner of the civilized
world in which it is not known and liked. And this
proves its originality, for if it were an imitation, the
people of Europe, at least, would not have found it a
novelty. And it is proof of a more important thing, it
is proof that Ragtime possesses the vital spark, the power
to appeal universally, without which any artistic production,
no matter how approved its form may be, is dead.

Of course, there are those who will deny that Ragtime
is an artistic production. American musicians, especially,
instead of investigating Ragtime, dismiss it with a contemptuous
word. But this has been the course of scholasticism
in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the
people like is pooh-poohed; whatever is popular is regarded
as not worth while. The fact is, nothing great
or enduring in music has ever sprung full-fledged from
the brain of any master; the best he gives the world he
gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through
the alembic of his genius.

Ragtime deserves serious attention. There is a lot of
colorless and vicious imitation, but there is enough that
is genuine. In one composition alone, "The Memphis
Blues," the musician will find not only great melodic
beauty, but a polyphonic structure that is amazing.

It is obvious that Ragtime has influenced, and in a
large measure, become our popular music; but not many
would know that it has influenced even our religious
music. Those who are familiar with gospel hymns can
at once see this influence if they will compare the songs

of thirty years ago, such as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye,"
"The Ninety and Nine," etc., with the up-to-date, syncopated
tunes that are sung in Sunday Schools, Christian
Endeavor Societies, Y.M.C.A.'s and like gatherings
to-day.

Ragtime has not only influenced American music, it
has influenced American life; indeed, it has saturated
American life. It has become the popular medium for
our national expression musically. And who can say that
it does not express the blare and jangle and the surge, too,
of our national spirit?

Any one who doubts that there is a peculiar heel-tickling,
smile-provoking, joy-awakening, response-compelling
charm in Ragtime needs only to hear a skillful
performer play the genuine article, needs only to listen
to its bizarre harmonies, its audacious resolutions often
consisting of an abrupt jump from one key to another,
its intricate rhythms in which the accents fall in the
most unexpected places but in which the fundamental
beat is never lost in order to be convinced. I believe
it has its place as well as the music which draws from
us sighs and tears.

Now, these dances which I have referred to and Ragtime
music may be lower forms of art, but they are evidence
of a power that will some day be applied to the
higher forms. And even now we need not stop at the
Negro's accomplishment through these lower forms. In
the "spirituals," or slave songs, the Negro has given
America not only its only folksongs, but a mass of noble
music. I never think of this music but that I am struck

by the wonder, the miracle of its production. How did
the men who originated these songs manage to do it?
The sentiments are easily accounted for; they are, for the
most part, taken from the Bible. But the melodies, where
did they come from? Some of them so weirdly sweet,
and others so wonderfully strong. Take, for instance,
"Go Down, Moses"; I doubt that there is a stronger
theme in the whole musical literature of the world.

[ILLUSTRATION]

Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go. Go down, Mo-ses,
way down in E-gypt land, Tell ole Pha-raoh, Let my people go.

It is to be noted that whereas the chief characteristic
of Ragtime is rhythm, the chief characteristic of the
"spirituals" is melody. The melodies of "Steal Away to
Jesus," "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," "Nobody Knows
de Trouble I See," "I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray,"
"Deep River," "O, Freedom Over Me," and many others
of these songs possess a beauty that is—what shall I say?
poignant. In the riotous rhythms of Ragtime the

Negro expressed his irrepressible buoyancy, his keen
response to the sheer joy of living; in the "spirituals" he
voiced his sense of beauty and his deep religious feeling.

Naturally, not as much can be said for the words of
these songs as for the music. Most of the songs are religious.
Some of them are songs expressing faith and endurance
and a longing for freedom. In the religious
songs, the sentiments and often the entire lines are taken
bodily from the Bible. However, there is no doubt that
some of these religious songs have a meaning apart from
the Biblical text. It is evident that the opening lines of
"Go Down, Moses,"

have a significance beyond the bondage of Israel in Egypt.

The bulk of the lines to these songs, as is the case in
all communal music, is made up of choral iteration and
incremental repetition of the leader's lines. If the words
are read, this constant iteration and repetition are found
to be tiresome; and it must be admitted that the lines
themselves are often very trite. And, yet, there is frequently
revealed a flash of real, primitive poetry. I give
the following examples:

Regarding the line, "I lay in de grave an' stretch out
my arms," Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson of Boston,
one of the first to give these slave songs serious study,
said: "Never it seems to me, since man first lived and
suffered, was his infinite longing for peace uttered more
plaintively than in that line."

These Negro folksongs constitute a vast mine of material
that has been neglected almost absolutely. The only
white writers who have in recent years given adequate
attention and study to this music, that I know of, are
Mr. H. E. Krehbiel and Mrs. Natalie Curtis Burlin.
We have our native composers denying the worth and importance
of this music, and trying to manufacture grand
opera out of so-called Indian themes.

But there is a great hope for the development of this
music, and that hope is the Negro himself. A worthy
beginning has already been made by Burleigh, Cook, Johnson,
and Dett. And there will yet come great Negro

composers who will take this music and voice through
it not only the soul of their race, but the soul of America.

And does it not seem odd that this greatest gift of
the Negro has been the most neglected of all he possesses?
Money and effort have been expended upon his
development in every direction except this. This gift has
been regarded as a kind of side show, something for
occasional exhibition; wherein it is the touchstone, it is
the magic thing, it is that by which the Negro can bridge
all chasms. No persons, however hostile, can listen to
Negroes singing this wonderful music without having
their hostility melted down.

This power of the Negro to suck up the national spirit
from the soil and create something artistic and original,
which, at the same time, possesses the note of universal
appeal, is due to a remarkable racial gift of adaptability;
it is more than adaptability, it is a transfusive quality.
And the Negro has exercised this transfusive quality not
only here in America, where the race lives in large numbers,
but in European countries, where the number has
been almost infinitesimal.

Is it not curious to know that the greatest poet of
Russia is Alexander Pushkin, a man of African descent;
that the greatest romancer of France is Alexander Dumas,
a man of African descent; and that one of the greatest
musicians of England is Coleridge-Taylor, a man of
African descent?

The fact is fairly well known that the father of
Dumas was a Negro of the French West Indies, and that
the father of Coleridge-Taylor was a native-born African;

but the facts concerning Pushkin's African ancestry are
not so familiar.

When Peter the Great was Czar of Russia, some potentate
presented him with a full-blooded Negro of gigantic
size. Peter, the most eccentric ruler of modern times,
dressed this Negro up in soldier clothes, christened him
Hannibal, and made him a special body-guard.

But Hannibal had more than size, he had brain and
ability. He not only looked picturesque and imposing in
soldier clothes, he showed that he had in him the making
of a real soldier. Peter recognized this, and eventually
made him a general. He afterwards ennobled him, and
Hannibal, later, married one of the ladies of the Russian
court. This same Hannibal was great-grandfather of
Pushkin, the national poet of Russia, the man who bears
the same relation to Russian literature that Shakespeare
bears to English literature.

I know the question naturally arises: If out of the few
Negroes who have lived in France there came a Dumas;
and out of the few Negroes who have lived in England
there came a Coleridge-Taylor; and if from the man who
was at the time, probably, the only Negro in Russia there
sprang that country's national poet, why have not the millions
of Negroes in the United States with all the emotional
and artistic endowment claimed for them produced
a Dumas, or a Coleridge-Taylor, or a Pushkin?

The question seems difficult, but there is an answer.
The Negro in the United States is consuming all of his
intellectual energy in this gruelling race-struggle. And
the same statement may be made in a general way about
the white South. Why does not the white South produce

literature and art? The white South, too, is consuming
all of its intellectual energy in this lamentable conflict.
Nearly all of the mental efforts of the white South run
through one narrow channel. The life of every Southern
white man and all of his activities are impassably limited
by the ever present Negro problem. And that is why, as
Mr. H. L. Mencken puts it, in all that vast region, with
its thirty or forty million people and its territory as
large as a half a dozen Frances or Germanys, there is not
a single poet, not a serious historian, not a creditable composer,
not a critic good or bad, not a dramatist dead or
alive.

But, even so, the American Negro has accomplished
something in pure literature. The list of those who have
done so would be surprising both by its length and the
excellence of the achievements. One of the great books
written in this country since the Civil War is the work
of a colored man, "The Souls of Black Folk," by W. E. B.
Du Bois.

Such a list begins with Phillis Wheatley. In 1761
a slave ship landed a cargo of slaves in Boston. Among
them was a little girl seven or eight years of age. She
attracted the attention of John Wheatley, a wealthy gentleman
of Boston, who purchased her as a servant for his
wife. Mrs. Wheatley was a benevolent woman. She
noticed the girl's quick mind and determined to give her
opportunity for its development. Twelve years later
Phillis published a volume of poems. The book was
brought out in London, where Phillis was for several
months an object of great curiosity and attention.

Phillis Wheatley has never been given her rightful
place in American literature. By some sort of conspiracy
she is kept out of most of the books, especially
the text-books on literature used in the schools. Of
course, she is not a great American poet—and in her day
there were no great American poets—but she is an
important American poet. Her importance, if for no
other reason, rests on the fact that, save one, she is the
first in order of time of all the women poets of America.
And she is among the first of all American poets to issue
a volume.

It seems strange that the books generally give space
to a mention of Urian Oakes, President of Harvard
College, and to quotations from the crude and lengthy
elegy which he published in 1667; and print examples
from the execrable versified version of the Psalms made
by the New England divines, and yet deny a place to
Phillis Wheatley.

Here are the opening lines from the elegy by Oakes,
which is quoted from in most of the books on American
literature:

There was no need for Urian to admit what his handiwork
declared. But this from the versified Psalms is
still worse, yet it is found in the books:

Anne Bradstreet preceded Phillis Wheatley by a little
over twenty years. She published her volume of poems,
"The Tenth Muse," in 1750. Let us strike a comparison
between the two. Anne Bradstreet was a wealthy,
cultivated Puritan girl, the daughter of Thomas Dudley,
Governor of Bay Colony. Phillis, as we know, was a
Negro slave girl born in Africa. Let us take them both
at their best and in the same vein. The following stanza
is from Anne's poem entitled "Contemplation":

And the following is from Phillis' poem entitled
"Imagination":

We do not think the black woman suffers much by comparison
with the white. Thomas Jefferson said of Phillis:
"Religion has produced a Phillis Wheatley, but it could
not produce a poet; her poems are beneath contempt."
It is quite likely that Jefferson's criticism was directed
more against religion than against Phillis' poetry. On

the other hand, General George Washington wrote her
with his own hand a letter in which he thanked her
for a poem which she had dedicated to him. He, later,
received her with marked courtesy at his camp at Cambridge.

It appears certain that Phillis was the first person to
apply to George Washington the phrase, "First in peace."
The phrase occurs in her poem addressed to "His Excellency,
General George Washington," written in 1775.
The encomium, "First in war, first in peace, first in the
hearts of his countrymen" was originally used in the resolutions
presented to Congress on the death of Washington,
December, 1799.

Phillis Wheatley's poetry is the poetry of the Eighteenth
Century. She wrote when Pope and Gray were
supreme; it is easy to see that Pope was her model. Had
she come under the influence of Wordsworth, Byron or
Keats or Shelley, she would have done greater work. As
it is, her work must not be judged by the work and standards
of a later day, but by the work and standards of
her own day and her own contemporaries. By this method
of criticism she stands out as one of the important characters
in the making of American literature, without any
allowances for her sex or her antecedents.

According to "A Bibliographical Checklist of American
Negro Poetry," compiled by Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg,
more than one hundred Negroes in the United
States have published volumes of poetry ranging in size
from pamphlets to books of from one hundred to three
hundred pages. About thirty of these writers fill in the

gap between Phillis Wheatley and Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Just here it is of interest to note that a Negro wrote
and published a poem before Phillis Wheatley arrived in
this country from Africa. He was Jupiter Hammon, a
slave belonging to a Mr. Lloyd of Queens-Village, Long
Island. In 1760 Hammon published a poem, eighty-eight
lines in length, entitled "An Evening Thought, Salvation
by Christ, with Penettential Cries." In 1788 he
published "An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley, Ethiopian
Poetess in Boston, who came from Africa at eight
years of age, and soon became acquainted with the Gospel
of Jesus Christ." These two poems do not include all
that Hammon wrote.

The poets between Phillis Wheatley and Dunbar must
be considered more in the light of what they attempted
than of what they accomplished. Many of them showed
marked talent, but barely a half dozen of them demonstrated
even mediocre mastery of technique in the use
of poetic material and forms. And yet there are several
names that deserve mention. George M. Horton, Frances
E. Harper, James M. Bell and Alberry A. Whitman, all
merit consideration when due allowances are made for
their limitations in education, training and general culture.
The limitations of Horton were greater than those
of either of the others; he was born a slave in North
Carolina in 1797, and as a young man began to compose
poetry without being able to write it down. Later he
received some instruction from professors of the University
of North Carolina, at which institution he was
employed as a janitor. He published a volume of poems,
"The Hope of Liberty," in 1829.

Mrs. Harper, Bell and Whitman would stand out if
only for the reason that each of them attempted sustained
work. Mrs. Harper published her first volume of poems
in 1854, but later she published "Moses, a Story of the
Nile," a poem which ran to 52 closely printed pages.
Bell in 1864 published a poem of 28 pages in celebration
of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. In
1870 he published a poem of 32 pages in celebration of
the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Whitman published his first volume of poems,
a book of 253 pages, in 1877; but in 1884 he published
"The Rape of Florida," an epic poem written in four
cantos and done in the Spenserian stanza, and which ran
to 97 closely printed pages. The poetry of both Mrs.
Harper and of Whitman had a large degree of popularity;
one of Mrs. Harper's books went through more than
twenty editions.

Of these four poets, it is Whitman who reveals not
only the greatest imagination but also the more skillful
workmanship. His lyric power at its best may be judged
from the following stanza from the "Rape of Florida":

Some idea of Whitman's capacity for dramatic narration
may be gained from the following lines taken from

"Not a Man, and Yet a Man," a poem of even greater
length than "The Rape of Florida":

It is curious and interesting to trace the growth of
individuality and race consciousness in this group of poets.
Jupiter Hammon's verses were almost entirely religious
exhortations. Only very seldom does Phillis Wheatley
sound a native note. Four times in single lines she refers
to herself as "Afric's muse." In a poem of admonition
addressed to the students at the "University of Cambridge
in New England" she refers to herself as follows:

But one looks in vain for some outburst or even complaint
against the bondage of her people, for some agonizing
cry about her native land. In two poems she refers
definitely to Africa as her home, but in each instance
there seems to be under the sentiment of the lines a
feeling of almost smug contentment at her own escape
therefrom. In the poem, "On Being Brought from Africa
to America," she says:
In the poem addressed to the Earl of Dartmouth, she
speaks of freedom and makes a reference to the parents
from whom she was taken as a child, a reference which
cannot but strike the reader as rather unimpassioned:

The bulk of Phillis Wheatley's work consists of poems
addressed to people of prominence. Her book was dedicated
to the Countess of Huntington, at whose house
she spent the greater part of her time while in England.
On his repeal of the Stamp Act, she wrote a poem to
King George III, whom she saw later; another poem she
wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth, whom she knew. A
number of her verses were addressed to other persons of

distinction. Indeed, it is apparent that Phillis was far
from being a democrat. She was far from being a democrat
not only in her social ideas but also in her political
ideas; unless a religious meaning is given to the closing
lines of her ode to General Washington, she was a decided
royalist:
Nevertheless, she was an ardent patriot. Her ode to General
Washington (1775), her spirited poem, "On Major
General Lee" (1776) and her poem, "Liberty and Peace,"
written in celebration of the close of the war, reveal not
only strong patriotic feeling but an understanding of the
issues at stake. In her poem, "On Major General Lee,"
she makes her hero reply thus to the taunts of the British
commander into whose hands he has been delivered
through treachery:

What Phillis Wheatley failed to achieve is due in no
small degree to her education and environment. Her
mind was steeped in the classics; her verses are filled
with classical and mythological allusions. She knew Ovid
thoroughly and was familiar with other Latin authors.
She must have known Alexander Pope by heart. And,
too, she was reared and sheltered in a wealthy and cultured
family,—a wealthy and cultured Boston family;
she never had the opportunity to learn life; she never
found out her own true relation to life and to her surroundings.
And it should not be forgotten that she was
only about thirty years old when she died. The impulsion
or the compulsion that might have driven her genius off
the worn paths, out on a journey of exploration, Phillis
Wheatley never received. But, whatever her limitations,
she merits more than America has accorded her.

Horton, who was born three years after Phillis Wheatley's
death, expressed in all of his poetry strong complaint
at his condition of slavery and a deep longing for freedom.
The following verses are typical of his style and his
ability:

In Mrs. Harper we find something more than the
complaint and the longing of Horton. We find an expression
of a sense of wrong and injustice. The following
stanzas are from a poem addressed to the white women
of America:

Whitman, in the midst of "The Rape of Florida," a
poem in which he related the taking of the State of Florida
from the Seminoles, stops and discusses the race question.
He discusses it in many other poems; and he discusses
it from many different angles. In Whitman
we find not only an expression of a sense of wrong and
injustice, but we hear a note of faith and a note also
of defiance. For example, in the opening to Canto II of
"The Rape of Florida":

It may be said that none of these poets strike a deep
native strain or sound a distinctively original note, either
in matter or form. That is true; but the same thing may
be said of all the American poets down to the writers
of the present generation, with the exception of Poe and
Walt Whitman. The thing in which these black poets
are mostly excelled by their contemporaries is mere technique.

Paul Laurence Dunbar stands out as the first poet from
the Negro race in the United States to show a combined
mastery over poetic material and poetic technique, to
reveal innate literary distinction in what he wrote, and
to maintain a high level of performance. He was the
first to rise to a height from which he could take a perspective
view of his own race. He was the first to see
objectively its humor, its superstitions, its shortcomings;
the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its
yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely
literary form.

Dunbar's fame rests chiefly on his poems in Negro
dialect. This appraisal of him is, no doubt, fair; for
in these dialect poems he not only carried his art to the
highest point of perfection, but he made a contribution
to American literature unlike what any one else had
made, a contribution which, perhaps, no one else could
have made. Of course, Negro dialect poetry was written
before Dunbar wrote, most of it by white writers; but
the fact stands out that Dunbar was the first to use it
as a medium for the true interpretation of Negro character
and psychology. And, yet, dialect poetry does not

constitute the whole or even the bulk of Dunbar's work.
In addition to a large number of poems of a very high
order done in literary English, he was the author of
four novels and several volumes of short stories.

Indeed, Dunbar did not begin his career as a writer of
dialect. I may be pardoned for introducing here a bit
of reminiscence. My personal friendship with Paul Dunbar
began before he had achieved recognition, and continued
to be close until his death. When I first met him
he had published a thin volume, "Oak and Ivy," which
was being sold chiefly through his own efforts. "Oak
and Ivy" showed no distinctive Negro influence, but
rather the influence of James Whitcomb Riley. At this
time Paul and I were together every day for several
months. He talked to me a great deal about his hopes
and ambitions. In these talks he revealed that he had
reached a realization of the possibilities of poetry in the
dialect, together with a recognition of the fact that it
offered the surest way by which he could get a hearing.
Often he said to me: "I've got to write dialect poetry; it's
the only way I can get them to listen to me." I was with
Dunbar at the beginning of what proved to be his last
illness. He said to me then: "I have not grown. I am
writing the same things I wrote ten years ago, and am
writing them no better." His self-accusation was not
fully true; he had grown, and he had gained a surer
control of his art, but he had not accomplished the greater
things of which he was constantly dreaming; the public
had held him to the things for which it had accorded
him recognition. If Dunbar had lived he would have
achieved some of those dreams, but even while he talked

so dejectedly to me he seemed to feel that he was not to
live. He died when he was only thirty-three.

It has a bearing on this entire subject to note that
Dunbar was of unmixed Negro blood; so, as the greatest
figure in literature which the colored race in the United
States has produced, he stands as an example at once
refuting and confounding those who wish to believe that
whatever extraordinary ability an Aframerican shows is
due to an admixture of white blood.

As a man, Dunbar was kind and tender. In conversation
he was brilliant and polished. His voice was his
chief charm, and was a great element in his success as
a reader of his own works. In his actions he was impulsive
as a child, sometimes even erratic; indeed, his intimate
friends almost looked upon him as a spoiled boy.
He was always delicate in health. Temperamentally, he
belonged to that class of poets who Taine says are vessels
too weak to contain the spirit of poetry, the poets
whom poetry kills, the Byrons, the Burns's, the De
Mussets, the Poes.

To whom may he be compared, this boy who scribbled
his early verses while he ran an elevator, whose youth
was a battle against poverty, and who, in spite of almost
insurmountable obstacles, rose to success? A comparison
between him and Burns is not unfitting. The similarity
between many phases of their lives is remarkable, and
their works are not incommensurable. Burns took the
strong dialect of his people and made it classic; Dunbar
took the humble speech of his people and in it wrought
music.

Mention of Dunbar brings up for consideration the
fact that, although he is the most outstanding figure in
literature among the Aframericans of the United States,
he does not stand alone among the Aframericans of the
whole Western world. There are Plácido and Manzano
in Cuba; Vieux and Durand in Haiti, Machado de Assis
in Brazil; Leon Laviaux in Martinique, and others still
that might be mentioned, who stand on a plane with or
even above Dunbar. Plácido and Machado de Assis rank
as great in the literatures of their respective countries
without any qualifications whatever. They are world
figures in the literature of the Latin languages. Machado
de Assis is somewhat handicapped in this respect by having
as his tongue and medium the lesser known Portuguese,
but Plácido, writing in the language of Spain,
Mexico, Cuba and of almost the whole of South America,
is universally known. His works have been republished
in the original in Spain, Mexico and in most of the
Latin-American countries; several editions have been published
in the United States; translations of his works
have been made into French and German.

Plácido is in some respects the greatest of all the Cuban
poets. In sheer genius and the fire of inspiration he surpasses
even the more finished Heredia. Then, too, his
birth, his life and his death ideally contained the tragic
elements that go into the making of a halo about a poet's
head. Plácido was born in Habana in 1809. The first
months of his life were passed in a foundling asylum; indeed,
his real name, Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdés,
was in honor of its founder. His father took him out
of the asylum, but shortly afterwards went to Mexico and

died there. His early life was a struggle against poverty;
his youth and manhood was a struggle for Cuban
independence. His death placed him in the list of Cuban
martyrs. On the 27th of June, 1844, he was lined up
against a wall with ten others and shot by order of the
Spanish authorities on a charge of conspiracy. In his
short but eventful life he turned out work which bulks
more than six hundred pages. During the few hours preceding
his execution he wrote three of his best known
poems, among them his famous sonnet, "Mother, Farewell!"

Plácido's sonnet to his mother has been translated into
every important language; William Cullen Bryant did
it in English; but in spite of its wide popularity, it is,
perhaps, outside of Cuba the least understood of all
Plácido's poems. It is curious to note how Bryant's translation
totally misses the intimate sense of the delicate subtility
of the poem. The American poet makes it a tender
and loving farewell of a son who is about to die to a
heart-broken mother; but that is not the kind of a farewell
that Plácido intended to write or did write.

The key to the poem is in the first word, and the first
word is the Spanish conjunction Si (if). The central
idea, then, of the sonnet is, "If the sad fate which now
overwhelms me should bring a pang to your heart, do
not weep, for I die a glorious death and sound the last
note of my lyre to you." Bryant either failed to understand
or ignored the opening word, "If," because he was
not familiar with the poet's history.

While Plácido's father was a Negro, his mother was
a Spanish white woman, a dancer in one of the Habana

theatres. At his birth she abandoned him to a foundling
asylum, and perhaps never saw him again, although it is
known that she outlived her son. When the poet came
down to his last hours he remembered that somewhere
there lived a woman who was his mother; that although
she had heartlessly abandoned him; that although he
owed her no filial duty, still she might, perhaps, on hearing
of his sad end feel some pang of grief or sadness; so
he tells her in his last words that he dies happy and
bids her not to weep. This he does with nobility and
dignity, but absolutely without affection. Taking into
account these facts, and especially their humiliating and
embittering effect upon a soul so sensitive as Plácido's,
this sonnet, in spite of the obvious weakness of the sestet
as compared with the octave, is a remarkable piece of
work.[1]

In considering the Aframerican poets of the Latin languages
I am impelled to think that, as up to this time
the colored poets of greater universality have come out
of the Latin-American countries rather than out of the
United States, they will continue to do so for a good
many years. The reason for this I hinted at in the first
part of this preface. The colored poet in the United
States labors within limitations which he cannot easily
pass over. He is always on the defensive or the offensive.
The pressure upon him to be propagandic is well nigh
irresistible. These conditions are suffocating to breadth
and to real art in poetry. In addition he labors under
the handicap of finding culture not entirely colorless in

the United States. On the other hand, the colored poet of
Latin-America can voice the national spirit without any
reservations. And he will be rewarded without any reservations,
whether it be to place him among the great or
declare him the greatest.

So I think it probable that the first world-acknowledged
Aframerican poet will come out of Latin-America. Over
against this probability, of course, is the great advantage
possessed by the colored poet in the United States of
writing in the world-conquering English language.

This preface has gone far beyond what I had in mind
when I started. It was my intention to gather together
the best verses I could find by Negro poets and present
them with a bare word of introduction. It was not my
plan to make this collection inclusive nor to make the
book in any sense a book of criticism. I planned to present
only verses by contemporary writers; but, perhaps,
because this is the first collection of its kind, I realized
the absence of a starting-point and was led to provide one
and to fill in with historical data what I felt to be a
gap.

It may be surprising to many to see how little of the
poetry being written by Negro poets to-day is being written
in Negro dialect. The newer Negro poets show a
tendency to discard dialect; much of the subject-matter
which went into the making of traditional dialect poetry,
'possums, watermelons, etc., they have discarded altogether,
at least, as poetic material. This tendency will, no
doubt, be regretted by the majority of white readers;
and, indeed, it would be a distinct loss if the American

Negro poets threw away this quaint and musical folk-speech
as a medium of expression. And yet, after all,
these poets are working through a problem not realized
by the reader, and, perhaps, by many of these poets themselves
not realized consciously. They are trying to break
away from, not Negro dialect itself, but the limitations
on Negro dialect imposed by the fixing effects of long
convention.

The Negro in the United States has achieved or been
placed in a certain artistic niche. When he is thought
of artistically, it is as a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling,
banjo-picking being or as a more or less pathetic figure.
The picture of him is in a log cabin amid fields of cotton
or along the levees. Negro dialect is naturally and by
long association the exact instrument for voicing this
phase of Negro life; and by that very exactness it is an
instrument with but two full stops, humor and pathos.
So even when he confines himself to purely racial themes,
the Aframerican poet realizes that there are phases of
Negro life in the United States which cannot be treated
in the dialect either adequately or artistically. Take,
for example, the phases rising out of life in Harlem, that
most wonderful Negro city in the world. I do not deny
that a Negro in a log cabin is more picturesque than a
Negro in a Harlem flat, but the Negro in the Harlem
flat is here, and he is but part of a group growing everywhere
in the country, a group whose ideals are becoming
increasingly more vital than those of the traditionally
artistic group, even if its members are less picturesque.

What the colored poet in the United States needs to
do is something like what Synge did for the Irish; he needs

to find a form that will express the racial spirit by
symbols from within rather than by symbols from without,
such as the mere mutilation of English spelling
and pronunciation. He needs a form that is freer and
larger than dialect, but which will still hold the racial
flavor; a form expressing the imagery, the idioms, the
peculiar turns of thought, and the distinctive humor and
pathos, too, of the Negro, but which will also be capable
of voicing the deepest and highest emotions and aspirations,
and allow of the widest range of subjects and the
widest scope of treatment.

Negro dialect is at present a medium that is not capable
of giving expression to the varied conditions of
Negro life in America, and much less is it capable of
giving the fullest interpretation of Negro character and
psychology. This is no indictment against the dialect
as dialect, but against the mould of convention in which
Negro dialect in the United States has been set. In
time these conventions may become lost, and the colored
poet in the United States may sit down to write in dialect
without feeling that his first line will put the general
reader in a frame of mind which demands that the poem
be humorous or pathetic. In the meantime, there is no
reason why these poets should not continue to do the
beautiful things that can be done, and done best, in the
dialect.

In stating the need for Aframerican poets in the United
States to work out a new and distinctive form of expression
I do not wish to be understood to hold any
theory that they should limit themselves to Negro poetry,
to racial themes; the sooner they are able to write American

poetry spontaneously, the better. Nevertheless, I
believe that the richest contribution the Negro poet can
make to the American literature of the future will be the
fusion into it of his own individual artistic gifts.

Not many of the writers here included, except Dunbar,
are known at all to the general reading public; and
there is only one of these who has a widely recognized
position in the American literary world, he is William
Stanley Braithwaite. Mr. Braithwaite is not only unique
in this respect, but he stands unique among all the
Aframerican writers the United States has yet produced.
He has gained his place, taking as the standard and measure
for his work the identical standard and measure
applied to American writers and American literature.
He has asked for no allowances or rewards, either directly
or indirectly, on account of his race.

Mr. Braithwaite is the author of two volumes of
verses, lyrics of delicate and tenuous beauty. In his more
recent and uncollected poems he shows himself more and
more decidedly the mystic. But his place in American
literature is due more to his work as a critic and
anthologist than to his work as a poet. There is
still another rôle he has played, that of friend of poetry
and poets. It is a recognized fact that in the work
which preceded the present revival of poetry in the United
States, no one rendered more unremitting and valuable
service than Mr. Braithwaite. And it can be said that
no future study of American poetry of this age can be
made without reference to Braithwaite.

Two authors included in the book are better known

for their work in prose than in poetry: W. E. B. Du Bois
whose well-known prose at its best is, however, impassioned
and rhythmical; and Benjamin Brawley who is
the author, among other works, of one of the best handbooks
on the English drama that has yet appeared in
America.

But the group of the new Negro poets, whose work
makes up the bulk of this anthology, contains names
destined to be known. Claude McKay, although still
quite a young man, has already demonstrated his power,
breadth and skill as a poet. Mr. McKay's breadth
is as essential a part of his equipment as his power and
skill. He demonstrates mastery of the three when as a
Negro poet he pours out the bitterness and rebellion in
his heart in those two sonnet-tragedies, "If We Must
Die" and "To the White Fiends," in a manner that
strikes terror; and when as a cosmic poet he creates the
atmosphere and mood of poetic beauty in the absolute,
as he does in "Spring in New Hampshire" and "The
Harlem Dancer." Mr. McKay gives evidence that he
has passed beyond the danger which threatens many of
the new Negro poets—the danger of allowing the purely
polemical phases of the race problem to choke their sense
of artistry.

Mr. McKay's earliest work is unknown in this country.
It consists of poems written and published in his
native Jamaica. I was fortunate enough to run across
this first volume, and I could not refrain from reproducing
here one of the poems written in the West
Indian Negro dialect. I have done this not only to
illustrate the widest range of the poet's talent and to

offer a comparison between the American and the West
Indian dialects, but on account of the intrinsic worth
of the poem itself. I was much tempted to introduce
several more, in spite of the fact that they might require
a glossary, because however greater work Mr. McKay
may do he can never do anything more touching and
charming than these poems in the Jamaica dialect.

Fenton Johnson is a young poet of the ultra-modern
school who gives promise of greater work than he has
yet done. Jessie Fauset shows that she possesses the
lyric gift, and she works with care and finish. Miss
Fauset is especially adept in her translations from the
French. Georgia Douglas Johnson is a poet neither
afraid nor ashamed of her emotions. She limits herself
to the purely conventional forms, rhythms and rhymes, but
through them she achieves striking effects. The principal
theme of Mrs. Johnson's poems is the secret dread down
in every woman's heart, the dread of the passing of youth
and beauty, and with them love. An old theme, one
which poets themselves have often wearied of, but which,
like death, remains one of the imperishable themes on
which is made the poetry that has moved men's hearts
through all ages. In her ingenuously wrought verses,
through sheer simplicity and spontaneousness, Mrs. Johnson
often sounds a note of pathos or passion that will not
fail to waken a response, except in those too sophisticated
or cynical to respond to natural impulses. Of the half
dozen or so of colored women writing creditable verse,
Anne Spencer is the most modern and least obvious in
her methods. Her lines are at times involved and turgid
and almost cryptic, but she shows an originality which

does not depend upon eccentricities. In her "Before the
Feast of Shushan" she displays an opulence, the love of
which has long been charged against the Negro as one
of his naïve and childish traits, but which in art may
infuse a much needed color, warmth and spirit of abandon
into American poetry.

John W. Holloway, more than any Negro poet writing
in the dialect to-day, summons to his work the lilt,
the spontaneity and charm of which Dunbar was the
supreme master whenever he employed that medium. It
is well to say a word here about the dialect poems of
James Edwin Campbell. In dialect, Campbell was a
precursor of Dunbar. A comparison of his idioms and
phonetics with those of Dunbar reveals great differences.
Dunbar is a shade or two more sophisticated and his
phonetics approach nearer to a mean standard of the
dialects spoken in the different sections. Campbell is
more primitive and his phonetics are those of the dialect
as spoken by the Negroes of the sea islands off the coasts
of South Carolina and Georgia, which to this day remains
comparatively close to its African roots, and is strikingly
similar to the speech of the uneducated Negroes of the
West Indies. An error that confuses many persons in
reading or understanding Negro dialect is the idea that
it is uniform. An ignorant Negro of the uplands of
Georgia would have almost as much difficulty in understanding
an ignorant sea island Negro as an Englishman
would have. Not even in the dialect of any particular
section is a given word always pronounced in precisely
the same way. Its pronunciation depends upon the preceding
and following sounds. Sometimes the combination

permits of a liaison so close that to the uninitiated
the sound of the word is almost completely lost.

The constant effort in Negro dialect is to elide all
troublesome consonants and sounds. This negative effort
may be after all only positive laziness of the vocal organs,
but the result is a softening and smoothing which makes
Negro dialect so delightfully easy for singers.

Daniel Webster Davis wrote dialect poetry at the
time when Dunbar was writing. He gained great popularity,
but it did not spread beyond his own race. Davis
had unctuous humor, but he was crude. For illustration,
note the vast stretch between his "Hog Meat" and
Dunbar's "When de Co'n Pone's Hot," both of them
poems on the traditional ecstasy of the Negro in contemplation
of "good things" to eat.

It is regrettable that two of the most gifted writers
included were cut off so early in life. R. C. Jamison
and Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., died several years ago, both of
them in their youth. Jamison was barely thirty at the
time of his death, but among his poems there is one, at
least, which stamps him as a poet of superior talent and
lofty inspiration. "The Negro Soldiers" is a poem with
the race problem as its theme, yet it transcends the limits
of race and rises to a spiritual height that makes it one
of the noblest poems of the Great War. Cotter died a
mere boy of twenty, and the latter part of that brief
period he passed in an invalid state. Some months before
his death he published a thin volume of verses which
were for the most part written on a sick bed. In this
little volume Cotter showed fine poetic sense and a free
and bold mastery over his material. A reading of Cotter's

poems is certain to induce that mood in which one
will regretfully speculate on what the young poet might
have accomplished had he not been cut off so soon.

As intimated above, my original idea for this book
underwent a change in the writing of the introduction.
I first planned to select twenty-five to thirty poems which
I judged to be up to a certain standard, and offer them
with a few words of introduction and without comment.
In the collection, as it grew to be, that "certain standard"
has been broadened if not lowered; but I believe that
this is offset by the advantage of the wider range given
the reader and the student of the subject.

I offer this collection without making apology or asking
allowance. I feel confident that the reader will find not
only an earnest for the future, but actual achievement.
The reader cannot but be impressed by the distance already
covered. It is a long way from the plaints of
George Horton to the invectives of Claude McKay, from
the obviousness of Frances Harper to the complexness of
Anne Spencer. Much ground has been covered, but more
will yet be covered. It is this side of prophecy to declare
that the undeniable creative genius of the Negro is destined
to make a distinctive and valuable contribution to
American poetry.

I wish to extend my thanks to Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg,
who placed his valuable collection of books by
Negro authors at my disposal. I wish also to acknowledge
with thanks the kindness of Dodd, Mead & Co. for permitting
the reprint of poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar:

of the Cornhill Publishing Company for permission to
reprint poems of Georgia Douglas Johnson, Joseph S.
Cotter, Jr., Bertram Johnson and Waverley Carmichael;
and of Neale & Co. for permission to reprint poems of
John W. Holloway. I wish to thank Mr. Braithwaite
for permission to use the included poems from his forthcoming
volume, "Sandy Star and Willie Gee." And to
acknowledge the courtesy of the following magazines:
The Crisis, The Century Magazine, The Liberator, The
Freeman, The Independent, Others, and Poetry: A
Magazine of Verse.