THE NEGRO IN LITERATURE AND ART

 MARY DALE CLARK & CHARLES JAMES FOX
CHARLES S. GILPIN AS "THE EMPEROR JONES"


The Negro

in Literature and Art 

in the United States


BY BENJAMIN BRAWLEY 
​Author of "A Short History of the American Negro"

REVISED EDITION


NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1921

​Copyright, 1918, 1921, by
DUFFIELD & COMPANY

TO MY FATHER
EDWARD MacKNIGHT BRAWLEY

WITH THANKS FOR SEVERE TEACHING
AND STIMULATING CRITICISM

CONTENTS

Preface    
I.    The Negro Genius   
II.    Phillis Wheatley   
III.    Paul Laurence Dunbar    
IV.    Charles W. Chesnutt   
V.    W. E. Burghardt Du Bois    
VI.    William Stanley Braithwaite    
VII.    Other Writers    
VIII.    Orators.—Douglass and Washington   
IX.    The Stage    
X.    Painters.—Henry O. Tanner   
XI.    Sculptors.—Meta Warrick Fuller    
XII.    Music    
XIII.    General Progress, 1918-1921    
XIV.    Charles S. Gilpin   

Appendix:
1. The Negro in American Fiction    
2. Study of Bibliography    

                                                                                       
​                                                                                        Preface

The present volume undertakes to treat somewhat more thoroughly than has ever before been attempted the achievement of the Negro in the United States along literary and artistic lines, judging this by absolute rather than by partial or limited standards. The work is the result of studies in which I first became interested nearly ten years ago. In 1910 a booklet, "The Negro in Literature and Art," appeared in Atlanta, privately printed. The little work contained only sixty pages. The reception accorded it, however, was even more cordial than I had hoped it might be, and the limited edition was soon exhausted. Its substance, in condensed form, was used in 1913 as the last chapter of "A Short History of the American Negro," brought out by the Macmillan Co. In the mean time, however, new books and magazine articles were constantly appearing, and my own judgment on more than one point had changed; so that the time has seemed ripe for a more intensive review of the whole field. To teachers who may be using the history as a text I hardly need to say that I should be pleased to have the present work supersede anything said in the last chapter of that volume.
The first chapter, and those on Mr. Braithwaite and Mrs. Fuller, originally appeared in the Southern Workman. That on the Stage was a contribution to the Springfield Republican; and the supplementary chapter is from the Dial. All are here reprinted with the kind consent of the owners of those periodicals. Much of the quoted matter is covered by copyright. Thanks are especially due to Mr. Braithwaite and Mr. J. W. Johnson for permission to use some of their poems, and to Dodd, Mead & Co., the publishers of the works of Dunbar. The bibliography is quite new. It is hoped that it may prove of service.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Benjamin Brawley.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                         North Cambridge, August, 1917.