Anthologies of African American Writing

Readings from Negro Authors, for Schools and Colleges, with a Bibliography of Negro Literature

"Readings from Negro Authors, for Schools and Colleges, with a Bibliography of Negro Literature" . Ed. Otelia Cromwell, Lorenzo Dow Turner, and Eva G. Dykes. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931. xii+388 pp.

Introduction – [Poetry]: An hymn to the morning / Phillis Wheatley -- To the right honorable William, earl of Dartmouth / Phillis Wheatley -- Day / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Two little boots / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Dreamin' town / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- A negro love song / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- The poet / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Life / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Ships that pass the night / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Leaves/ Countee Cullen -- If love be staunch / Countee Cullen -- In memory of Colonel Charles Young -- The poet / Countee Cullen -- Thoughts in a zoo / Countee Cullen -- From the dark tower / Countee Cullen -- Nocturne / Countee Cullen -- Poem / Langston Hughes -- Poem / Langston Hughes -- Sea charm / Langston Hughes -- Troubled woman / Langston Hughes -- Aunt Sue's stories / Langston Hughes -- Mother to son / Langston Hughes -- Dream variation / Langston Hughes -- Cabaret / Langston Hughes -- After the winner / Claude McKay -- To a poet / Claude McKay -- Homing swallows / Claude McKay -- When dawn comes to the city / Claude McKay -- America / Claude McKay -- Grass fingers / Angelina Weld Grimke -- Dawn / Angelina Grimke -- To the Dunbar high school-a sonnet / Angelina Grimke -- Your hands / Angelina Grimke -- Surrender / Angelina Grimke -- The heart of a woman / Georgia Douglass Johnson -- Values / Georgia Douglass Johnson -- Retrospection / Georgia Douglass Johnson -- Here is the sea / Arna Bontemps -- Nocturne at Bethesda / Arna Bontemps -- Gray dawn / Willian Stanley Braithwaite -- A white road / William Stanley Braithwaite -- Sic Vita / William Stanley Braithwaite -- Rhapsody / William Stanley Braithwaite -- Sonnet / Alice Dunbar-Nelson -- April is on the way / Alice Dunbar-Nelson -- L'envoi / Leslie Pinckney Hill -- Lines on leadership / Leslie Pinckney Hill -- O black and unknown bards / James Weldon Johnson -- Rondeau / Jessie Fauset -- Noblesse / Jessie Fauset -- I see and am satisfied / Kelly Miller. -- Thoughts of death The dawn's awake / Otto Leland Bohanan -- The washer-woman / Otto Leland Bohanan -- The mask / Clarissa Scott Delany -- Solace / Clarissa Scott Delany -- My hero (to Robert Gould Shaw) / Benjamin Brawley -- Day and night / Lewis Alexander -- A Hokku poem / Lewis Alexander -- Theft / Esther Popel -- Little grey leaves / Esther Popel -- Symphonies / Esther Popel -- The road / Helene Johnson -- Metamorphism / Helene Johnson -- No images / Waring Cuney -- Play a blues for Louise / Waring Cuney -- Sunset / Ethel Caution -- Spring dawn / George Marion McClellan -- Happy fairies / Gertrude Parthenia McBrown -- Jack Frost / Gertrude Parthenia McBrown -- The painter / Gertrude Parthenia McBrown -- They are calling me / Gertrude Parthenia McBrown –
[Stories]: Hot-foot Hannibal / Charles W, Chestnutt -- The wife of his youth / Charles W. Chestnut -- The Colonel's awakening / Paul Lauerence Dunbar -- Blades of steel / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Blades of steel / Rudolph Fisher -- Swamp moccasin / John F. Matheus -- Drenched in light / Zora Neale Hurston -- Attic romance / Florence Marion Harmon -- A fairy story / Caroline Bond Day –
[Plays]: The broken banjo / Willis Richardson -- Mortgaged / Willis Richardson -- Cruiter / John F. Matheus –
[Essays]: A day in the British museum / William Wells Brown -- Of Alexander Crummell / W.E. Burghart DuBois -- Business and philanthropy / W.E Burghart DuBois -- Negro patriotism and devotion / Kelly Miller -- Our little renaissance / Alain Locke -- Introduction to anthology of magazine verse for 1914 / William Stanley Braithwaite -- Henry Owassa Tanner / Jessie Fauset -- This way to the flea market / Jessie Fauset -- The writing of essays / Benjamin Griffith Brawley -- Alexander Hamilton / William Pickens -- Roland Hayes / Sterling A. Brown -- A golden afternoon in Germany -- Orators and oratory / William G. Allen –
[Public Addresses]: Speech on the death of William Lloyd Garrison / Frederick Douglass -- Right-mindedness / Alexander Crummel -- St. Francis of Assisi / W.E. Burghardt DuBois -- The shaw monument speech / Booker T. Washington -- Some of the qualities essential to the most successful schools of life / Booker T. Washington -- The educated negro and his mission / W.S Scarborough -- History and propaganda / Carter G. Woodson -- What does negro youth think of present-day negro leader? / Allison Davis. – "A bibliography of Negro literature" (pp. 371-83).

• The anthology contents are organized by genre, with an introductory essay for each section: poetry, short stories, one-act plays, essays, and public addresses.
• There are "Suggestions for Study" with each section (including additional related readings) and biographical sketches of the authors.

• See publisher's brochure (4 pp.) (ca. June 1931) (U of Masschusetts at Amherst, Library)

• "The purpose of this volume is not to present another anthology of Negro literature but to offer for classroom study or supplementary readings a selection of types of writings by Negro authors. Inasmuch as the standards of literary forms are based upon universal principles, Negro literature demands no unique method of approach, no special interpretation of the rules of craftsmanship."

• Brawley, Benjamin. Review of "The Negro Author: His Development in America" by Vernon Loggins and of "Readings from Negro Authors" edited by Otelia Cromwell, Lorenzo Dow Turner and Eva B. Dykes. "Opportunity" 9 (Dec. 1931): 383-84. [Google Books]
"To both of these books we can say at once that we give hearty approval. Each is offered with the conviction that what is attempted is eminently worth while. One work is the result of studies for the Ph.D. degree at a great university, and the other is a carefully edited collection of readings for use in schools and colleges" (383).
"From time to time there have been collections of Negro literature, and we are assured that the aim of the present volume is not to offer simply another anthology but to furnish 'for classroom study or supplementary reading a selection of types of writings by Negro authors.' The editors are three well known and capable teachers, Dr. Otella Cromwell, professor at the Miner Teachers College; Dr. Lorenzo D. Turner, professor at Fisk, and Dr. Eva B. Dykes, associate professor at Howard; and they remind us that 'Negro literature demands no unique method of approach, no special interpretation of the rules of craftsmanship, because the standards of literary form are based upon universal principles. A short story written by a Negro is good, bad, or indifferent in so far as it is a good, a bad, or an indifferent short story" (384).
Brawley notes that the anthology, perhaps due to permissions difficulties with copyright holders, "omits the better known selections from Dunbar and McKay, though one is glad to see James Weldon Johnson's 'O Black and Unknown Bards.' Among the short stories we rejoice to find Chestnutt's 'The Wife of His Youth,' now more and more inaccessible in the original edition, and among the essays or public addresses adequate selections from Alexander Crummell, W. S. Scarborough, and Dr. DuBois. The feature of the book, however, is the appendix giving Suggestions for Study. The questions and assignments are highly stimulating and ought to add to the usefulness of a carefully planned and well printed volume. There is in the field no other collection that we can recommend so readily as 'Readings from Negro Authors.'"

• Lovell, John, Jr. [Assistant Professor of English, Howard U] "What Price 'Negro Literature'?" [Rev. of "Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges", ed. Cromwell, Turner, and Dykes.] "Journal of Negro Education" 1.3-4 (1932): 427-30. "JSTOR".
The three editors are "unquestionably successful teachers of English in Negro schools and colleges" and they have written a Preface that is "eminently sensible and purposive" (427). "There follows a section of Negro poetry, or let me say poetry by Negro authors, beginning with Phillis Wheatley and continuing with some remarkably barren areas lying between well-peopled districts, to Lewis Alexander, Waring Cuney and Sterling Brown. A selection of stories follows containing representation from the most considerable and talented writers of short fiction among Negroes. In a special section are three one-act plays by Willis Richardson and John Matheus, not entirely representative of the 100 or more one-act plays by some 30 or 40 Negro writers. 'Essays' and 'Public Addresses' are each given special places, and at the end among the indexes, are 'Suggestions for Study,' 'Biographical Sketches' and a startlingly incomplete 'Bibliography of Negro Literature'—works which the editors conceived to be of a school nature. In the 'Suggestions for Study' are a manual of questions and a group of other (white) writers, arranged according to topic headings. Taken altogether, it is, as you can see, a neat book and a successful piece of scholarship. The omissions are not inexcusable in the light of present practices among school anthologists; many of the inclusions are perfect for their prospective use; a majority ought to prove satisfactory" (427).
But Lovell questions the assumptions that have shaped the selection and presentation of the materials included in this anthology. The editors approach the literary work of Negro authors as differing only in subject matter—rather than form, manner, purpose, or perhaps even audience—from work by white American authors. Lovell, by contrast, thinks the most vital work by Negro authors grows out of the segregated life and culture of their community and the work that participates in the aesthetics of white writing is inescapably imitative and insipid. Lovell distinguishes between "Negro poetry" (poetry that reflects a black aesthetic, not just Negro subject matter) and "poetry by Negro authors" (but that is otherwise indistinguishable from poetry by white authors).
Lovell asks: "Is this book helping to begin the "study" of Negro literature right? . . . Will the book actually force upon teachers of all races one of the three or four correct ways to understand Negro work and appropriate that understanding to favorable uses?" (428). He adds, "Nearly everybody knows why it is necessary to ask these questions, especially the last, about things Negro" (428).
"The editors state in the preface 'The particular slant of the realism of a few representative Negro writers [i.e., the content is too raw for students and children] and the marked predilection on the part of some others for a bafflingly incoherent style explain the absence from the volumes of productions by one or two well-known writers" (428). Lovell remarks: "And so it happens. The poetry is especially hard hit. The jungle music and splay of orgiastic festival, the Negro's original heritage, which he has so beautifully traced in song, the abandoned delight and wonder resultant from the clash of his civilization with another, are not here. It is admittedly and unquestionably the best of Negro verse, since the Negro poet has not reached—and, as a whole, has not tried for—the pinnacles of reflective and philosophical thought, save in rare patches. And is it fair to cover his greatest work qualitatively and quantitatively with the white titles of 'particular slant of realism' and 'bafflingly incoherent style?' His dark and mystifying life have perforce made his slant of realism 'particular' and his style 'bafflingly incoherent' only in accordance therewith. With an exception or two, all the poetry here might have been included in a general anthology of American verse. More than that, much of it has been and more will be. Then, why a Negro anthology for a study at all? Is its purpose to be different from 'A Southern Anthology' or 'A Chinese Anthology' in not suggesting peculiar 'character' in literature? Is it to be the function of the Negro research expert to separate the 'objectionable' from the 'acceptable' in Negro life and place the latter before the American public in defiance of the 'best'? And we have the word of a host of critics, white and black, headed by Alain Locke on numerous occasions, that the Negro creative writer has done and must continue to do his best work with his own materials. I ask again then, must the preparers of materials for study prefer the more finished and white-appealing art—the rondeaus of Jessie Fauset, the Browninganian lyrics of Alice Dunbar Nelson, the Keatsian lines of Cullen and the Japanese hokku of Lewis Alexander, all of which are represented here in abundance—to the outbursts in jagged but glorious rhythms of the poets who have chosen the solid materials of American Negro tradition? As personal critics, we may think as we please; but as students, we will be forced by a fair examination of Negro verse to the conclusion that the Negro's 'finished' pieces of the present are purely imitative and that he deserves and will have no genuinely fin//ished literature until he develops some from the rich materials of his own tradition. To begin "right" is to begin with this acknowledgement" (428-29).
There are many issues embedded in Lovell's long paragraph quoted above: the claims of what we might call the vernacular and the genteel traditions in verse by Negro authors (the latter tradition is characterized by Lovell as that of "finished" poetry that is imitative of and that appeals to white writers and readers, while the former is a poetry in which the Negro author works with "his own materials" and in his own style); the question of a distinctively "characteristic" Negro writing vs. a body of writing that is by Negro authors but is otherwise indistinguishable from American writing by white authors; Lovell's "Africanist" reference to "the Negro's original heritage" in "jungle music" and "orgiastic festival," which is presented not only as the Negro writer's "original heritage" but as his continuing racial endowment and as the authentic inflection of his voice. The arguments here between Lovell and the editors of the anthology will find echoes in many other contexts where identity, autonomy, and cultural-intellectual traditions are at stake: cf., for example, Audre Lorde's argument that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" ("This Bridge Called My Back", ed. Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, 1983; collected in "Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches" 1984); or Wole Soyinka's denunciation of the "neo-Tarzanists" for their "puritan vision of an Africa limited to raffia skirts" ("Art, Dialogue and Outrage", 1988), in response to the authors of "Toward the Decolonization of African Literature" (1980), who denounced "him" as a "Euro-assimilationist" or the efforts, also in the 1980s, of Houston Baker Jr. and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to articulate, in their different ways, a poetics keyed to the specific characteristics of African American writings. The battle over the character and canon of African American poetry that is evident in Lovell's remarks is still evident in Amiri Barka's "A Post-Racial Anthology?" (in "Poetry", May 2013), a review of "Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry", edited by Charles Henry Rowell.
Lovell also questions the pedagogical approach suggested in this anthology, of examining writing by Negro authors and then comparing it to other similar works by white authors: "In other words, the student turns to this book and is reminded [for example] of the general function and nature of the essay. He is given one from William Wells Brown as representative of the Negro excursion in the type. In the 'Suggestions for Study,' he is told to compare this essay with others by Benson, LeGallienne, Charles Morley, Rawlings, Henry Shelley and Rebecca West. But for what purpose? Ostensibly, to learn that the Negro essayist varies from that of another color purely on the score of subject matter, since the student has been told in the preface: 'Negro literature demands no unique method of approach' and 'the presentation of cross-sections of Negro life is, perhaps, the essential appeal of Negro literature'" (429). In opposition to this approach, Lovell asks, "How can any Negro teacher deny the all-important fact that the Negro essayist does create his technique, style, mood, bearing, and his psychology as he goes along to fit his case, just as outstanding English and American essayists have done, and the corollary to that fact, that the study of him will have to be arranged along the lines of his special type of group life, his ideals, his models, his position and particular segregation, in other words, along the lines of a 'unique method of approach' . . . Is it "right" to offer for study DuBois's impassioned appeals or Kelly Miller's sanguine judgments or Sterling Brown's and Allison Davis's enthusiasms without backgrounds, so long as their backgrounds are not generally known? And those backgrounds are peculiar! You cannot expect the general public to know as much about them as they know of the backgrounds of H. L. Mencken, Alice Freeman Palmer, and Max Eastman" (429).
Lovell suggests that if, as he believes, there are not "innumerable correct ways to understand Negro works and appropriate that understanding favorably," but "only three or four—though I do not have the opportunity to point them out here—it follows that they must be suggested and emphasized. They will be suggested if the really representative Negro works are put to the fore and if the special method or methods for studying Negro works is indicated. They ought to be emphasized by outlines and syllabi placed in just such a book as this. I do not refer to an extended harping // on the wornout theme of racial differences, but to the simple and inevitable truths about the tradition of the bulk of American Negroes and the outstanding results of their segregation, wherever these results apply to their creative nature and skill. The time has passed when any literature or literary figure may be studied exclusively or chiefly subjectively or 'as literature' the import of biographical and social conditions increases more and more in the interpretation of literature; and rightfully, for revelations thereby received shed needed light and add new beauty even to the masterpieces" (429-30).
Lovell ends his review by praising the anthology—and calling for another different and better one: "To Harcourt, Brace and Company and to the compilers, much praise is due for this book—a step in the direction of focusing attention upon the serious analysis of writings by Negroes, in the school manner. It is, in that respect, unique. It is, in many respects, the best book of its kind. It is a scholarly accomplishment, especially as a student aid. Schools and colleges everywhere ought to buy and teach it. It contains many pieces worth saving in a book—to name a few: Brawley's, 'The Writing of Essays,' Carter Woodson's 'History and Propaganda' and Sterling Brown's 'Roland Hayes.' But it is only a step in the right direction. The supply of studies in the field of the Negro writer, so far exceeds the demand that the price is higher than the Negro creative work itself, where the supply and demand are closer together. I, for one, eagerly await a new and slightly different anthology on the same subject" (430).

• Strong, Mary Louise. Review of "Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges." "Journal of Negro History" 17.3 (July 1932): 383-87.
"Few textbooks have been so greatly needed as this pioneer which is praiseworthy on many grounds" (383).
"The significance of this venture lies in the results. . . . Negro literature is acquiring a history. It is developing critical tendencies. It has participated in several movements. . . . It is increasingly urgent in its demand for the Negro to conceive of a perfection in life and literature for higher than current levels and to dedicate himself anew to the quest of this higher perfection" (384).
"The ultimate interpretation of American literature must be in terms of large issues of thought. Negro literature is the simple story of an oppressed and rising people. It is but one of the factors of the vast problem of American democracy and can be understood only in its organic relation to American literature and in the implications of American life. No one eager to understand American literature can afford to neglect this vital part. For that is not education which subordinates the quest for truth to the service of existing prejudice. It is high time that young America should begin this serious study. And here is an uncommonly opportune guide that shows how that task should be undertaken" (384). The editors express the hope "that the book will prove an open sesame to wider readings in Negro literature" (385).
The editorial materials--section introductions, "suggestions for study" (consisting of "(1) keen thought provoking questions, critical and creative assignments, (2) additional assignments on a higher plane, (3) collateral readings for extensive browsing"), biographical sketches of the authors, and "a bibliography, classified, well-selected, reasonably full and complete. An index of authors and titles completes the task" (385).
Strong asks various hypothetical questions about the materials collected here and their presentation: "Do the editors bring together what is really the best? Is not the volume local in its appeal rather than truly representative? Are not some exclusions arbitrarily made? How much of this writing is valid for a particular class and a particular era and how much of it rises above class setting into general validity and the illusion of a higher reality? . . . Are these authentic tidings of invisible things? How many of these authors have made a contribution which Judgment however far flung across the centuries will echo?" (386).
Strong responds: "The volume is a fusion of intellect and emotion, of critical judgment and devoted appreciation" (386).
"Negro authors have come through sinister fogs glooming life's magnificence. . . . And somehow the path from Phyllis Wheatley to Countee Cullen seems perfectly forthright. It represents a literature gradually more and more absorbed in challenging realities, approaching nearer and nearer to greatness of perception, divining more and more clearly its own increased worth. Piercing flashes glow here, now there with a sustaining radiance which is but an incarnate defiance of the lynchers of life, and the dramatic embodiment of victory over death. And so the performance of these editors does not betray them. The laurel boughs have not withered in their keeping. Their dreams come true" (386-87).

• 1934: Use of this anthology in Negro colleges and universities and in Negro schools is mentioned in Thomas L. Dabney's "The Study of the Negro" ("Journal of Negro History" 19.3 [1934], 285, 278-79).
• 1947: This volume was "the first anthology of the literature of the Negro compiled primarily for use in the classrooms of American schools. The contrast between this anthology and preceding works of the same sort was dramatized by the publication of a revised version of Johnson's "Book of American Negro Poetry" in the same year. Most notable of the differences in approach, aside from the obvious pedagogical slant of the "Readings", is the repudiation by Cromwell, Turner and Dykes of 'special interpretation of the rules of craftsmanship' in contrast to Johnson's appeal for judgment in terms of what certain of the authors attempted rather than of what they accomplished. The editors of the "Readings" were on surer critical grounds than Johnson in this respect, for as early as the turn of century William Dean Howells, in his introduction to the poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, had warned the Negro writer that the day of gratuitous praise because of his race was rapidly coming to a close. Moreover, Johnson persisted in his belief that the racial them is the province of the Negro author, though he appears to have amended somewhat his distinction between 'Afra-American poetry' and 'American poetry'" (John S. Lash. "The Anthologist and the Negro Author." "Phylon" 8.1 [1947]: 68-76, at 74).
• A volume edited by black academicians, "designed primarily for use in black institutions" (Kinnamon 1997: 461); "there is strong emphasis on literary technique, believed by the editors to be based on 'universal principles'" (Kinnamon 1997: 462).
• "By the time of the Depression there were four African Americans holding Ph.D.s in English. Three of them taught at the Howard University English department: Charles Eaton Burch, Otelia Cromwell, and Eva B. Dykes. Burch was a specialist on Defoe, and Dykes would go on to write a book recovering attitudes toward blacks and abolitionist sentiment in the works of the Augustan and Romantic poets. As critics, they had not got to the point of taking James Weldon Johnson or Alain Locke very far, by either endorsing black speech, rhythm, and 'transfusiveness,' or celebrating the power of New Negroes. But they had begun collecting some black writers for an anthology, an endeavor that inevitably recogized the existence of a tradition. In 1932, Cromwell and Dykes and the linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner, who specialized in African survivals in African American speech, published a nearly 400-page anthology of black writing, "Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges". The response of their younger colleagues showed the flowering of the [African American] critical tradition. John Lovell (1908-74), a twenty-something at work on a Cal Berkeley Ph.D. who would go on to occupy one of the coveted positions in the Howard English department, reviewed the prestigious book as a flawed document . . . [see rest of text]" (Lawrence P. Jackson. "African American Literature: Foundational Scholarship, Criticism, and Theory." "The Cambridge History of African American Literature". Ed. Maryemma Graham and Jerry W. Ward, Jr. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. 706 [and continuing onto 707]).

• Charles Eaton Burch (1891-1948): he wrote his MA thesis at Columbia (1918) on "A Survey of the Life and Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar," before his dissertation at Ohio State Univ. (1933) on "The English Reputation of Daniel Defoe" his collection of English 18th-century materials is part of the Founders Library at Howard; his papers are in the Library of Congress.

• Otelia Cromwell (1874-1972): author of "Lucretia Mott". Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1958. 241 pp.; her MA thesis at Columbia (1911) was on "Addison and Johnson as Writers of the Short Essay" her Yale (1926) dissertation was on "Thomas Heywood: A Study in the Elizabethan Drama of Everyday Life" (Yale Studies in English, 78. New Haven: Yale UP, 1926. viii+234 pp.; repr. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1969); she also published an essay on "Democracy and the Negro" ("American Scholar" 13.2 [Spring 1944]). The papers of the Cromwell family of Washington, DC, are at the Library of Congress (John Wesley Cromwell, Sr. [1846-1927], Otelia Cromwell [1874-1972], Mary E. Cromwell [1876-1966], and John Wesley Cromwell, Jr. [1883-1971], including "scrapbooks (42 v.) containing newspaper clippings from 1859 to 1915 relating to African Americans, many documenting events during and after the Civil War" (WorldCat).
• "Otelia Cromwell Biography and Bibliography." "Yale Women Faculty Forum." Web.

• Eva B. Dykes (1893-1986): author of "The Negro in English Romantic Thought". Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1942. v+197 pp.; Dykes' grew up in Washington, DC, attended Howard University (1911-15), and then Radcliffe College (AB, 1916); her dissertation from Radcliffe College (1920) was on "Pope and His Influence in America from 1715-1850" she taught at Walden University (1917), Howard (1929-44), and Oakwood College (1944-68); her papers are at the Library of Congress [and some at Howard University]; there is an oral history of her from 1977 by Merze Tate at Columbia University.
• Bacher, Marina. "Pioneer African American Educators in Washington, D.C.: Anna J. Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, and Eva B. Dykes." Zurich: LIT Verlag, 2008. [Diss. U of Slazburg, 2008.}
• Eva B. Dykes Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. Contains "journal articles, poetry, promotional announcements for her book Readings from Negro Authors fro Schools and Colleges."

• Lash 1946: 724.
• Kinnamon 1997: 461-62.

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