Such treatment I regret the Negro has not had. With our bigotry and conceit on this subject as no other we have been moved by the condescension of which I spoke in the beginning. Two great fallacies still most frequently recur as major premises. One is that the education of the Negro has been a failure, and the other is that the integrity of the womanhood of the race is always open to question. It makes no difference how much evidence there may be to the contraky, any writer of the day is still likely to start off with these two assumptions.
Literature is supposed to be the reflection of the national life.
Unfortunately much of our recent literature is not complimentary to the country's life. More recently we have arrived at Harold Bell Wright, but even he has been out-Heroded. In all this welter of commercialism and sensationalism the Negro's one request of literature so far as he is concerned, is that it be fearlessly and absolutely honest. As never before patriotism demands that we see life clearly and see it whole. In general I advanced the proposition that in our literature as in our social life we were largely dominated by the mob spirit.