University of Virginia Library

RACE LITERATURE.

The author of these poems, if such they may be called, is fully conscious that there is no special merit in them. They do not represent any very continued effort and study, a thing necessary for meritorious composition, even where there is genius, and much more so, where there is only a passing ability. I have never had a chance to do what I might be able to do by hard work, if leisure and freedom from the constant struggle for daily bread were given. The poems in this collection have been written at odd times. Some of them at the noon-hour in the swamps of Mississippi, when a student teacher in vacation, during college days; some of them later in wayside depots in Connecticut and Massachusetts, while I waited for trains, during my travels as financial agent for Fisk University; others while about Nashville, and my native hills of the Highland Rim of Middle Tennessee.

This accounts for the local color so widespread, where such local color appears. I have been too full of things and obligations in other lines than that of poetry-writing to do much in that direction. The only apology, then, I have to offer for seeking to call attention to what I have written, is the criticism that the Negro has contributed essentially nothing to literature. The criticism itself is true enough and must remain so for a long time to come, but the spirit of it has often been unkind. Indeed in some cases where it has been urged as a proof of the Negro's incapability of ultimate high development, the criticism has become a demand as glaringly absurd as it is lacking in a generous and comprehensive judgment.

Thirty years ago from this day of writing, 1894, the Negroes of the United States were slaves in the grossest ignorance and degradation. Is thirty years enough time for children to be born of such parents, to get an education and produce a race literature? It only takes a moment's reflection to see the absurdity of such an arraignment of the race on this score, as that which appeared in the April number of the North

American Review, 1892, by a Southern gentleman of some merit in letters.

It is time that there should begin to appear some literary attempts of passing merit from representatives of the Negro race. But superior excellence in literary instinct and capacity is a plant of slow growth, the cultivated gift of many generations. There are no environments that can keep true genius in the background, let it be under a black or white skin. But Negro writers of that great common class who, with ordinary ability, must achieve success by hard labor, will be at a great disadvantage necessarily in having to compete with the great writers of the white race who are already centuries ahead. They must suffer in such a comparison. Our situation as a race is without parallel in history. A race's literature is the expression of its national and social life. Its subjects are drawn from its heroes and their historic achievements. As a race we have never had a national life. We have no heroes to form worthy subjects of epics and dramas. We have no great and inspiring history.

The Israelitish race offers the nearest parallel to that of ours. But that race

has no inspiring history at the time of the Exodus, except that event itself and the covenant with Abraham. All that is especially noteworthy in the history of that race followed the crossing of the Jordan in the outcome of its national life.

Aside from the story of our emancipation and the hardships of our enslavement, of what subjects have we to sing to make a literature peculiarly native to us? To produce a Negro literature, we must have time to produce song-material, as well as singers. In this little attempt of mine I have not tried to sing Negro songs purely, but songs of beautiful landscapes, wherever I have seen them, and felt song-inspired by them, or of touches of human loves and feelings, as I have felt them. For what these songs are worth I can but hope they will be kindly received. In a few more years I hope to give expression of better and worthier things.