The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States Part 4

It demands, therefore, special attention, and the study will take us back before the Civil War.

The first person to attract much attention after Phillis Wheatley was George Moses Horton, of North Carolina, who was born in 1797 and died about 1880 (or 1883). He was ambitious to learn, was the possessor of unusual literary talent, and in one way or another received instruction from various persons. He very soon began to write verse, all of which was infused with his desire for freedom, and much of which was suggested by the common evangelical hymns, as were the following lines:

Alas! and am I born for this, To wear this slavish chain?

Deprived of all created bliss, Through hardship, toil, and pain?

How long have I in bondage lain, And languished to be free!

Alas! and must I still complain, Deprived of liberty?

Come, Liberty! thou cheerful sound, Roll through my ravished ears; Come, let my grief in joys be drowned, And drive away my fears.

Some of Horton's friends became interested in him and desired to help him publish a volume of his poems, so that from the sale of these he might purchase his freedom and go to the new colony of Liberia. The young man became fired with ambition and inspiration. Thrilled by the new hope, he wrote:

'Twas like the salutation of the dove, Borne on the zephyr through some lonesome grove, When spring returns, and winter's chill is past, And vegetation smiles above the blast.

Horton's master, however, demanded for him an exorbitant price, and when "The Hope of Liberty" appeared in 1829 it had nothing of the sale that was hoped for. Disappointed in his great desire, the poet seems to have lost ambition. He became a janitor around the state university at Chapel Hill, executed small commissions for verse from the students, who treated him kindly, and in later years went to Philadelphia; but his old dreams had faded. Several reprintings of his poems were made, however, and one of these was bound with the 1838 edition of Phillis Wheatley's poems.

In 1854 appeared the first edition of "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects,"

by Frances Ellen Watkins, commonly known as Mrs. Frances E. W. Harper.

Mrs. Harper was a woman of exceptionally strong personality and could read her poems to advantage. Her verse was very popular, not less than ten thousand copies of her booklets being sold. It was decidedly lacking in technique, however, and much in the style of Mrs. Hemans. Mrs. Harper was best when most simple, as when in writing of children she said:

I almost think the angels Who tend life's garden fair, Drop down the sweet white blossoms That bloom around us here.

The secret of her popularity was to be seen in such lines as the following from "Bury Me in a Free Land":

Make me a grave where'er you will, In a lowly plain or a lofty hill; Make it among earth's humblest graves, But not in a land where men are slaves.

Of the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation she wrote:

It shall flash through coming ages, It shall light the distant years; And eyes now dim with sorrow Shall be brighter through their tears.

While Mrs. Harper was still prominently before the public appeared Albery A. Whitman, a Methodist minister, whose "Not a Man and Yet a Man"

appeared in 1877. The work of this writer is the most baffling with which this book has to deal. It is diffuse, exhibits many lapses in taste, is uneven metrically, as if done in haste, and shows imitation on every hand. It imitates Whittier, Longfellow, Tennyson, Scott, Byron and Moore. "The Old Sac Village" and "Nanawawa's Suitors" are very evidently "Hiawatha" over again; and "Custer's Last Ride" is simply another version of "The Charge of the Light Brigade." "The Rape of Florida"

exhibits the same general characteristics as the earlier poems. And yet, whenever one has about decided that Whitman is not worthy of consideration, he insists on a revision of judgment. The fact is that he shows a decided faculty for brisk narration. This may be seen in "The House of the Aylors." He has, moreover, a romantic lavishness of description that, in spite of all technical faults, still has some degree of merit. The following quotations, taken respectively from "The Mowers" and "The Flight of Leeona," will exemplify both his extravagance and his possibilities in description:

The tall forests swim in a crimson sea, Out of whose bright depths rising silently, Great golden spires shoot into the skies, Among the isles of cloudland high, that rise, Float, scatter, burst, drift off, and slowly fade, Deep in the twilight, shade succeeding shade.

And now she turns upon a mossy seat, Where sings a fern-bound stream beneath her feet, And breathes the orange in the swooning air; Where in her queenly pride the rose blooms fair, And sweet geranium waves her scented hair; There, gazing in the bright face of the stream, Her thoughts swim onward in a gentle dream.

In "A Dream of Glory" occur the lines:

The fairest blooms are born of humble weeds, That faint and perish in the pathless wood; And out of bitter life grow n.o.ble deeds To pa.s.s unnoticed in the mult.i.tude.

Whitman's shortcomings become readily apparent when he attempts sustained work. "The Rape of Florida" is the longest poem yet written by a Negro in America, and also the only attempt by a member of the race to use the elaborate Spenserian stanza throughout a long piece of work. The story is concerned with the capture of the Seminoles in Florida through perfidy and the taking of them away to their new home in the West. It centers around three characters, Palmecho, an old chief, Ewald, his daughter, and Atla.s.sa, a young Seminole who is Ewald's lover. The poem is decidedly diffuse; there is too much subjective description, too little strong characterization. Palmecho, instead of being a stout warrior, is a "chief of peace and kindly deeds." Stanzas of merit, however, occasionally strike the eye. The boat-song forces recognition as genuine poetry:

"Come now, my love, the moon is on the lake; Upon the waters is my light canoe; Come with me, love, and gladsome oars shall make A music on the parting wave for you,--

Come o'er the waters deep and dark and blue; Come where the lilies in the marge have sprung, Come with me, love, for Oh, my love is true!"

This is the song that on the lake was sung, The boatman sang it over when his heart was young.

In 1890 Whitman brought out an edition of "Not a Man and Yet a Man" and "The Rape of Florida," adding to these a collection of miscellaneous poems, "Drifted Leaves," and in 1901 he published "An Idyl of the South," an epic poem in two parts. It is to be regretted that he did not have the training that comes from the best university education. He had the taste and the talent to benefit from such culture in the greatest degree.

All who went before him were, of course, superseded in 1896 by Paul Laurence Dunbar; and Dunbar started a tradition. Throughout the country there sprang up imitators, and some of the imitations were more than fair. All of this, however, was a pa.s.sing phenomenon. Those who are writing at the present day almost invariably eschew dialect and insist upon cla.s.sics forms and measures. Prominent among these is James Weldon Johnson. Mr. Johnson has seen a varied career as teacher, writer, consul for the United States in foreign countries, especially Nicaragua, and national organizer for the National a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People. He has written numerous songs, which have been set to music by his brother, Rosamond Johnson, or Harry T. Burleigh; he made for the Metropolitan Opera the English translation of the Spanish opera, "Goyescas," by Granados and Periquet; and in 1916, while a.s.sociated with the _Age_, of New York, in a contest opened by the _Public Ledger_, of Philadelphia, to editorial writers all over the country, he won a third prize of two hundred dollars for a campaign editorial. The remarkable book, "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," half fact, half fiction, was published anonymously, but is generally credited to Mr. Johnson. Very recently (December, 1917) has appeared this writer's collection, "Fifty Years and Other Poems." In pure lyric flow he is best represented by two poems in the _Century_. One was a sonnet ent.i.tled, "Mother Night"

(February, 1910):

Eternities before the first-born day, Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame, Calm Night, the everlasting and the same, A brooding mother over chaos lay.

And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay, Shall run their fiery courses and then claim The haven of the darkness whence they came; Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way.

So when my feeble sun of life burns out, And sounded is the hour for my long sleep, I shall, full weary of the feverish light, Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt, And, heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep Into the quiet bosom of the Night.

When we think of the large number of those who have longed for success in artistic expression, and especially of the first singer of the old melodies, we could close this review with nothing better than Mr.

Johnson's tribute, "O Black and Unknown Bards" (_Century_, November, 1908):

O black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?

How, in your darkness, did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?

Who first from 'midst his bonds lifted his eyes?

Who first from out the still watch, lone and long, Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

There is a wide, wide wonder in it all, That from degraded rest and servile toil, The fiery spirit of the seer should call These simple children of the sun and soil.

O black singers, gone, forgot, unfamed, You--you alone, of all the long, long line Of those who've sung untaught, unknown, unnamed, Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine.

You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings: No chant of b.l.o.o.d.y war, nor exulting paean Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings You touched in chords with music empyrean.

You sang far better than you knew, the songs That for your listeners' hungry hearts sufficed Still live--but more than this to you belongs: You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.

VIII

ORATORS.--DOUGLa.s.s AND WASHINGTON

The Negro is peculiarly gifted as an orator. To magnificent gifts of voice he adds a fervor of sentiment and an appreciation of the possibilities of a great occasion that are indispensable in the work of one who excels in this field. Greater than any of these things, however, is the romantic quality that finds an outlet in vast reaches of imagery and a singularly figurative power of expression. Only this innate gift of rhetorical expression has accounted for the tremendous effects sometimes realized even by untutored members of the race. Its possibilities under the influences of culture and education are illimitable.

On one occasion Harriet Tubman, famous for her work in the Underground Railroad, was addressing an audience and describing a great battle in the Civil War. "And then," said she, "we saw the lightning, and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder, and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling, and that was drops of blood falling; and when we came to git in the c.r.a.ps, it was dead men that we reaped."[2] All through the familiar melodies one finds the pathos and the poetry of this imagery. Two unusual individuals, untutored but highly gifted in their own spheres, in the course of the last century proved eminently successful by joining this rhetorical faculty to their native earnestness. One of these was the anti-slavery speaker, Sojourner Truth. Tall, majestic, and yet quite uneducated, this interesting woman sometimes dazzled her audiences by her sudden turns of expression.

Anecdotes of her quick and startling replies are numberless. The other character was John Jasper, of Richmond, Va., famous three decades ago for his "Sun do move" sermon. Jasper preached not only on this theme, but also on "Dry bones in the valley," the glories of the New Jerusalem, and many similar subjects that have been used by other preachers, sometimes with hardly less effect, throughout the South. When one made all discount for the tinsel and the dialect, he still would have found in the work of John Jasper much of the power of the true orator.

[Footnote 2: Reported by A. B. Hart, in "Slavery and Abolition," 209.]

Other men have joined to this love for figurative expression the advantages of culture; and a common characteristic, thoroughly typical of the romantic quality constantly present, is a fondness for biblical phrase. As representative might be remarked Robert B. Elliott, famous for his speech in Congress on the const.i.tutionality of the Civil Rights Bill; John Mercer Langston, also distinguished for many political addresses; M. C. B. Mason, for years a prominent representative of the Methodist Episcopal Church; and Charles T. Walker, still the most popular preacher of the Negro Baptists. A new and telling form of public speaking, destined to have more and more importance, is that just now best cultivated by Dr. DuBois, who, with little play of voice or gesture, but with the earnestness of conviction, drives home his message with instant effect.

In any consideration of oratory one must constantly bear in mind, of course, the importance of the spoken word and the personal equation. At the same time it must be remembered that many of the most worthy addresses made by Negroes have not been preserved in accessible form.

Again and again, in some remote community, with true eloquence has an untutored preacher brought comfort and inspiration to a struggling people. J. C. Price, for years president of Livingstone College in North Carolina, was one of the truest orators the Negro race ever had, and many who heard him will insist that he was foremost. His name has become in some quarters a synonym for eloquence, and he certainly appeared on many noteworthy occasions with marked effect. His reputation will finally suffer, however, for the reason given, that his speeches are not now generally accessible. Not one is in Mrs. Dunbar's "Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence."

One of the most effective occasional speakers within recent years has been Reverdy C. Ransom, of the A. M. E. Church. In his great moments Mr.

Ransom has given the impression of the true orator. He has little humor, is stately and dignified, but bitter in satire and invective. There is, in fact, much in his speaking to remind one of Frederick Dougla.s.s. One of his greatest efforts was that on the occasion of the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Garrison, in Faneuil Hall, Boston, December 11, 1905. Said he, in part: