from: the bolivar letters
TRANSCRIPT
University of Northern Iowa
From: The Bolivar LettersAuthor(s): Charles WrightSource: The North American Review, Vol. 253, No. 3 (May - Jun., 1968), p. 32Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25116790 .
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Strong willing sinews in your wings? Or tightening chains about your feet?"
In this poem, Mr. Johnson voiced hope and dismay, even as he made the pregnant suggestion that it would be in the self-interest of America to upgrade the Negro.
Several writers gave close attention to the need for
group cohesiveness and the need for group pride. Al most all wrote as if they understood the need to de
velop pride of race. They agreed on this; but they disagreed on how to achieve it. With a measured, near
marvelous insight (for a man), James Weldon Johnson wrote of Negro women as a group. He extolled their
charm, and compared them with their white sisters:
". . . The Negro woman, with her rich coloring, her gayety, her
laughter and song, her alluring, undulating movements ? a
heritage from the African jungle ? was a more beautiful crea
ture than her sallow, songless, lipless, hipless, tired-lookin,
tired-moving white sister."
He understood what this kind of observation would do to make any women feel proud! Jean Toomer, novelist,
wrote with a warmth and depth of appreciation of
Negroes as
"an everlasting song, a singing tree,
Caroling softly souls of slavery, What they were and what they are to me,
Caroling softly souls of slavery." ?from "Song of the Son"
The method he used was summoning a common past, a common tradition to call forth a common response. Charles S. Johnson, editor and social-scientist, disap proved of invoking the past. He wrote that there must be "a new leadership, trained in the principles of col lective action." Claude McKay would go much farth
er; so would the great intellectual-vanguard writer, W. E. B. DuBois. Both thought a dictatorship of the pro letariat the only way to achieve a just reorganization of
society. James Weldon Johnson would unfold the New
Negro through the literary arts and this would impress "upon the national mind the conviction that he is an
active and important force in American life." Alain
Locke, essayist and editor of an anthology of the Ren aissance writers, also expected to achieve social recog
nition for Negroes by setting them apart in the national consciousness as an "artist class." By the reasoning of
these two men, the "New" Negro would exhibit no
longer the servile or incompetent postures that had been a refuge. Through a presentation of attainments
by the Renaissance writers, there would be a great racial coalescence, and a consequent uplifting.
Some writers spoke of the Negro Church as the most realistic channel for group development. Perhaps they did this because it had a poignant history to which
they hoped the migrants could relate. These writers
urged its re-formation and then upheld it as a center for group activity. But others, including W. E. B.
DuBois, thought Harlem "overchurched."
The educator Kelley Miller concentrated on urging the development of a national Negro University, "to
provide a national enterprise" for the whole group. He
thought this kind of activity would prove effective.
Towards the later part of his career, James Weldon Johnson urged Negroes to vote together. As Contrib
uting Editor for The New York Age, and later still as a NAACP official, he urged Negroes to select candid ates by their stands on race issues only. He had come to believe that political action within the system would be the most productive way to achieve group structure and influence. How interesting it is that no one sug
gested that individual Negroes should abandon their search for a sustaining group image, and just fit in!
FROM: THE BOLIVAR LETTERS
11.
Consider de Maupassant:
He attained fame, then cut his own throat At 40, in Cannes. Failing at this, He was hustled back to Paris, to A nursing home, where He crawled about on his hands and knees
Eating his own filth. The last line in their report read:
Monsieur de Maupassant va s'animaliser . . .
He died at 42, his mother surviving him.
12.
Or Swift:
The premonition of madness (I shall die like a tree?from the head
downward) confirmed, his
powers, according to Dr Johnson, declined until he lost distinction. Example: within his room he would stare at his plate for hours, the meat thereon
?precut into small bites? he would not eat while seated, but as he paced, like a wounded thing, the floor.
After years of lying inert and silent he died,
expiring without a struggle, what money he had being left to found a lunatic asylum.
Swift!
Charles Wright
CHARLES WRIGHT has just been appointed a Tulbright
Vrofessor in Italy, for the moment, he's in southern Cal
ifornia.
!-9
This is because they agreed that they must forge a
group image for leverage to improve conditions. But there was no agreement on the means.
The focus of a sharper disagreement was the selec tion of a representative type. Some of the writers felt the need to invest their people with a sense of dignity and intelligence, in their own eyes as in the eyes of
white Americans. Again, the writers disagreed on how
32 The North American Review
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