Ebony and Topaz: a Collectanea (1927) (Full-text)
Ebony and Topaz
Edited by Charles S. Johnson
PUBLISHED BY Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE
17 MADISON AVENUE
NEW YORK
1927
FOREWORD:
"If every life has pages vacant still whereon a man may write the thing he will ," it is also true that in many little-considered lives there are pages whereon matter of great interest has already been written, if the appraising eye can only reach it.
So with the recently developed discoveries of the wealth of material for artistic and intellectual development in the life, manners, and customs of the Negro and his unique and all-too-frequently unappreciated and unasked contribution to our American self- consciousness
This challenging collection focuses, as it were , the appraising eyes of white folks on the Negro's life and of Negroes on their own life and development in what seems to me a new and stimulating way.
Great emotional waves may not be stirred by taking cognizance of the performances of Negroes in art and literature, but faithfulness to an ideal of proportion or fair play makes us uneasy lest through ignorance we miss something by straying into the tangles of prejudice.
Most of us claim to recognize Miss Millay's thought that
"He whose soul is flat, the sky
Will fall in on him by and by.”
and will follow with zest the explorations of appraising eyes which have been made available to us in attractive form on these pages .
L. HOLLINGSWORTH WOOD .
CONTENTS
FOREWORD By L. Hollingsworth Wood
INTRODUCTION - By Charles S. Johnson
JUMBY- A Story by Arthur Huff Fauset
ON THE ROAD ONE DAY, LORD - By Paul Green.
DUSK-A Poem by Mae V. Cowdery
DIVINE AFFLATUS -A Poem by Jessie Fauset
GENERAL DRUMS -A Story by John Matheus
GULLAH - By Julia Peterki
REQUIEM - A Poem by Georgia Douglas Johnson.
FORECLOSURE-A Poem by Sterling A. Brown
DREAMER- A Poem by Langston Hughes
THE DUNES -A Poem by E. Merrill Root
EIGHTEENTH STREET-An Anthology in Color by Nathan Ben Young
JOHN HENRY-A Negro Legend by Guy B. Johnson
THINGS SAID WHEN HE WAS GONE-A Poem by Blanche Taylor Dickinson
APRIL IS ON THE WAY-A Poem by Alice Dunbar Nelson
THE FIRST ONE- A Play in One Act by Zora Neale Hurston
THIS PLACE-A Poem by Donald Jeffrey Hayes
THREE POEMS- By Countee Cullen ("A Song No Gentleman Would Sing"; "Self Criticism"; "Extenuation to Certain Critics")
NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD SONG- By Dorothy Scarborough
LA PERLA NEGRA- By Edna Worthley Underwood
THE NEGRO OF THE JAZZ BAND -Translated from the Spanish of
Jose M. Salaverria by Dorothy Peterson
IDOLATRY- A Poem by Arna Bontemps
TO CLARISSA SCOTT DELANY-A poem by Angelina W. Grimke
JUAN LATINO, MAGISTER LATINUS - By Arthur A. Schomburg
AND ONE SHALL LIVE IN TWO-A Poem by Jonathan H. Brooks
A POEM - By Phillis Wheatley
THE RUNAWAY SLAVE AT PILGRIM'S POINT By Elizabeth Barrett Browning..
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RACE PREJUDICE -By Ellsworth Faris
FACSIMILES of Original Manuscripts of Paul Laurence Dunbar
SYBIL WARNS HER SISTER-A Poem by Anne Spencer
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE AMERICAN RACE PROBLEM—
By Eugene Kinckle Jones
ARABESQUE-A Poem by Frank Horne
PHANTOM COLOR LINE- By T. Arnold Hill
THE CHANGING STATUS OF THE MULATTO — By E. B. Reuter
SUFFRAGE- By William Pickens
CONSECRATION - A Poem by Lois Augusta Cuglar
UNDERGRADUATE VERSE- Fisk University
OUR LITTLE RENAISSANCE- By Alain Locke
MY HEART HAS KNOWN ITS WINTER-A Poem by Arna Bontemps
RACIAL SELF- EXPRESSION- By E. Franklin Frazier
OUR GREATEST GIFT TO AMERICA- by George S. Schuyler
EFFIGY A Poem by Lewis Alexander
THE NEGRO ACTOR'S DEFICIT- By Theophilus Lewis
TWO POEMS - By Edward S. Silvera ("The Unknown Soldier"; "Old Maid")
DUNCANSON- By W. P. Dabney
YOUTH -A Poem by Frank Horne
THE PROSPECTS OF BLACK BOURGEOISIE— By Abram Harris
TO A YOUNG POET-A Poem by George Chester Morse
A PAGE OF UNDERGRADUATE VERSE- Shaw University, Lincoln University, Tougaloo College, Howard University
VERISIMILITUDE-A Story by John P. Davi
MRS . BAILEY PAYS THE RENT-By Ira DeA. Reid
A SONNET TO A NEGRO IN HARLEM —A Poem by Helene Johnson
TOKENS -A Story by Gwendolyn Bennett
A PAGE OF UNDERGRADUATE VERSE-Tougaloo College, Cleveland
College of Western Reserve University
THE RETURN-A Poem by Arna Bontemps
I -By Brenda Ray Moryck
A GLORIOUS COMPANY - By Allison Davis
A STUDENT I KNOW-A Poem by Jonathan H. Brooks
AND I PASSED BY- By Joseph Maree Andrew
WHO'S WHO
EBONY and TOPAZ
A COLLECTANEA
Edited by
CHARLES S. JOHNSON
PUBLISHED BY
OPPORTUNITY
JOURNAL OF NEGRO LIFE
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE
17 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK
Copyright, 1927
By OPPORTUNITY
Journal of Negro Life
INTRODUCTION
It is only fair to rid this volume, at the beginning, of some of the usual pretensions, which have the effect of distorting normal values, most often with results as unfortunate as they are unfair. This volume, strangely enough, does not set forth to prove a thesis, nor to plead a cause, nor, stranger still, to offer a progress report on the state of Negro letters. It is a venture in expression, shared, with the slightest editorial suggestion, by a number of persons who are here much less interested in their audience than in what they are trying to say, and the life they are trying to portray. ‘This measurable freedom from the usual burden of proof has been an aid to spontaneity, and to this quality the collection makes its most serious claim.
It is not improbable that some of our white readers will arch their brows or perhaps knit them soberly at some point before the end. But this is a response not infrequently met with outside the pages of books. There is always an escape of a sort, however, in ignoring that which contradicts one’s sense, even though it were the better wisdom to give heed.
Some of our Negro readers will doubtless quarrel with certain of the Negro characters who move in these pages. But it is also true that in life some Negroes are distasteful to other Negroes. Following the familiar patterns, we are accustomed to think of Negroes as one ethnic unit, and of whites as many,—the N ordics, Mediterraneans; or Germans, Irish, Swedes; or brachycephalics and dolichocephalics, depending upon our school of politics or anthropology. The significance of the difference is not so much that Negroes in America actually represent different races among themselves, as that there is the same ground, in dissimilar customs and culture patterns, which are the really valid distinctions between races, for viewing Negroes differently among themselves. The point, if it were important enough, could be proved about as satisfactorily as proofs in this field go, and with the same type of data. Beneath the difference, however, as must be evident, is the cultural factor which distinguishes one group of Negroes from another: the small, articulate group from the more numerous, and, one might even add, more interesting folk group; the unconscious Negro folk contributions to music, folk lore, and the dance, from the conscious contributions of Negroes to art and letters.
The sociological confusion here has brought about endless literary debates.
Accepting the materials of Negro life for their own worth, it is impossible to escape certain implications: It is significant that white and Negro writers and artists are finding together the highest expression of their art in this corner of life. And, as Mr, Albert Jay Nock reminds us, an interesting person in literature is just what he is in life. It is evident in many quarters that Negroes are being discovered as “fellow mortals,” with complexes of their own to be analyzed. With Julia Peterkin, Paul Green, Dubose Heyward, Guy Johnson, there has been ushered in a refreshing new picture of Negro life in the south. Swinging free from the old and exhausted stereotypes and reading from life, they have created human characters who are capable of living by their own charm and power. There is something here infinitely more real and honest in the at-
mosphere thus created, than in the stagnant sentimental aura which has hung about their heads for so many years.
The Negro writers, removed by two generations from slavery, are now much less self-conscious, less interested in proving that they are just like white people, and, in their excursions into the fields of letters and art, seem to care less about what white people think, or are likely to think about the race. Relief from the stifling consciousness of being a problem has brought a certain superiority to it. There is more candor, even in discussions of themselves, about weaknesses, and on the very sound reasoning that unless they are truthful about their faults, they will not be believed when they chose to speak about their virtues. A sense of humor is present.” The taboos and racial ritual are less strict; there is more overt self-criticism, less of bitterness and appeals to sympathy. The sensitiveness, which a brief decade ago, denied the existence of any but educated Negroes, bitterly opposing Negro dialect, and folk songs, and anything that revived the memory of slavery, is shading off into a sensitiveness to the hidden beauties of this life and a frank joy and pride in it. The return of the Negro writers to folk materials has proved a new emancipation.
It might not seem to go too far afield to refer to the statements offered not infrequently in criticism, that the cultured Negroes are not romanticized in fiction as generously as the folk types. This has a distinctly sociological implication back of which is the feeling that a
loftier opinion of all Negroes would follow an emphasis in fiction upon more educated individuals. The attitude is not uncommon in the history of other races and classes. For many years, Americans were affected by the same sensitiveness in relation to Europe, and even in the Southern United States, until very recently, the literature has been defensive and for the most part ineffectual. Aside from the greater color and force of life in those human strata which seem to have struck lightning to the imaginations of our present writers, it might be suggested that the educated Negroes, even if they are not yet being romanticized in fiction, are finding a most effective representation through their own comment upon the extraordinarily interesting patterns of Negro folk life to which they have intimate access. Or, perhaps, they have succeeded only too well in becoming like other people whom writers generally are finding it difficult enough to make interesting.
The most that will be claimed for this collection is that it is a fairly faithful reflection of current interests and observations in Negro life. The arrangement of the materials of this volume follows roughly the implications of significance in the new interests mentioned. The first part is concerned with Negro folk life itself. The vast resources of this field for American literature cannot be escaped even though they are no more than hinted at in this volume. There is here a life full of strong colors, of passions, deep and fierce, of struggle, disillusion—the whole gamut of life free from the wrappings of intricate sophistication.
The second part sweeps in from a wider radius of time and space some of the rare and curiously interesting fragments of careers and art which constitute that absorbing field of the past now being re vealed through the zeal and industry of Negro scholars. The garnering of these long lone figures who flashed like bright comets across a black sky is an amenity which has found root quietly and naturally in Negro life.
A third division is concerned with racial problems and attitudes, and these are rather coldly in the hands of students. In these, there is the implication of a vast drama which the stories and the poetry merely illuminate.
The fourth section might well be set down as the most significant of current tendencies—the direction of Negro attention inward in frank self-appraisal and criticism. The essays touch boldly and with a striking candor some of the ancient racial foibles. At frequent points they violate the orthodoxy, but in a spirit which is neither bitterly hopeless nor resentful. This is perhaps one of the most hopeful signs of life and the will to live. And finally, there is a division which gives a brief glimpse into the intimate self-feeling of articulate Negroes. ‘These lack conspicuously the familiar tears of self-pity and apology.
The classification is not a strict one, but it has a possible usefulness as a guide through the varieties of expression to be found herein. There will be in one an abandonment to the fascination of a new life, in another a critical self searching, in one humor for its own sake, in another humor with a thrust; there will be stoical rebellion, self reliance, beauty. Those seeking set patterns of Negro literature will in all likelihood be disappointed for there is no set pattern of Negro life. If there is anything implicit in the attitude toward life revealing itself, it is acceptance of the fact of race and difference on the same casual gesture that denies that the difference means anything.
This is probably enough about the contributions to this collection to let them take their own course. From the list of contributors are absent many names with as great reason for inclusion as any present. There were, however, physical limits to such a volume, with all that this implies, and, if there is, for those who must pass judgment, less merit in what appears than should be, some measure of this deficiency may be laid to the omissions.
A spirit has been quietly manifest of late which it would be a gentle treason to ignore. Its expression has been a disposition on the part of established writers, scholars, artists and other interested individuals, to offer to Negro writers the practical encouragement of those facilities which they command. ‘To this may be accredited among other things a share in the making of that mood of receptivity among the general public for the literature of Negro life.
CHARLES S. JOHNSON.
If you want to tell anything to Heaven, tell it to the wind.
An African Proverb