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259

Tell me honey baby,
Where did you sleep last night?
Yo' head ain't combed an'
Yo' clothes ain't hangin' right.

But such verses are few and there is a dirty bitterness about their laughter. The real blues are most always:

Trouble, trouble
All around ma head.
Trouble, trouble,
All around ma head.
So deep in trouble
Till I wish that I was dead.

BLUES is a much needed, beautiful book for which Abbe Niles has written an authoritative and entertaining introduction filled with invaluable information for the student of Negro folk music and folk poetry. The book contains some fifty examples of Blues selections, (words and music) running from the old folk tunes, through Handy, to Gershwin, and the Krazy Kat Ballet. The Covarrubias illustrations alone would be worth the price of the book. In his drawing facing page 18 of the face of his sad eyed mama is the very soul of Blues. All the desolate railroad track streets in America, and all the dissolute houses facing those streets, and sometimes consolate souls who sing:

Feelin' tomorrow
Like I feels today,
Pack ma trunk an'
Make ma get-away.

Everything that could be written about or sung into Blues, or the lives of the people who sing Blues, Covarrubias has caught in a single marvelous drawing. A bouquet of blues flowers to Handy, Niles, Covarrubias and the Boni's for their goodness in giving us the book of Blues.

LANGSTON HUGHES.

Digging for Lost African Gods, by Byron Khun de Prorok, F. R. G. S. Officier d'Académie. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 369 pages. $6.00.

From every point of the compass—from Mongolia, South Africa, Egypt, Asia Minor, Yucatan and Arizona—archaeologists and explorers are digging up a bewildering mass of “new” materials, the conscious and unconscious records of the ways and works of other people who have preceded us upon this planet. The net result of all this spade-work has made it necessary to revise our notions of the origins of mankind, civilization and society which we had comfortably carried from 1860 to 1910. New vistas have been opened up, and many old familiar landmarks—like the Aryan migration, the priority and self-origination of classic Greek culture,—have faded away. Churchward and others are pushing back the period of man's origin nearer to a million years, while even the mighty Frederick Soddy asks if it hasn't all happened before? And the Doheny

Expedition reveals human art in America as contemporaneous with the dinosaur. It is all very bewildering to those who take easy refuge in fixed notions, and dogmatism is out of date.

In this transformation of the features of ancient problems the French savants have played a worthy part, and in North and West Africa the names of Maurice Delafosse, Stephane Gsell and Reygasse loom large in the fields of archaeology and cultural anthropology. To these must now be added the name of the Count de Prorok, with whose well-advertised work newspaper readers are, no doubt, familiar. The present book is intended as a "popular" presentation of that work rather than a formal and scholarly discussion. This sort of archaeology is not dry, but vivid and interesting. The glow of romance is all over these pages, yet for the serious student there will be found solid material enough. The greater portion of de Prorok's excavating was done amid the ruins of Carthage, that ancient metropolis founded by Tyrian merchant-mariners more than twenty-eight centuries ago; and the modern reader will be surprised to learn what a large proportion of our present cultural arrangements were available in ancient Carthage. Seven-story houses, central heating systems, elevators, theatre programs, sports, cheerleaders, marbles, checkers, eye-glasses, bills of exchange, bankers and a banking system, and cross-word puzzles, were all familiar to the African people of Carthage. Even the great game of advertising seems to have been well developed there, and the makers of lamps have left theirs on their products for the eyes of other times to read: "Please buy our lamps, the cheapest in Carthage —only one cent!"

But, just as Schliemann at Mykenae found more than one civilization imbedded in the earth, so in North Africa, the Count tells us that "the sifted earth of Carthage contains the relics of a dozen different civilizations, each definitely marked, and capable of identification." And, indeed all North Africa, as he tells us later, is an archaeological park which is now being attacked with autos, aeroplanes, and diving-suits, and recorded in films for the curious. In this great work of historical recovery America plays a large part and "the wealthy people of the United States do take very much to heart the advancement of science in all its departments," as the Count de Prorok says. They have furnished not only most of the funds for the work but also a goodly number of the working staff of the expeditions—to say nothing of invaluable publicity which has kept three continents awake to the vast significance of the work and familiar with some of its outstanding results.

The last two chapters on "The Civilizations of the Sahara", and "The Ancient Tombs of the Sahara" and chapter 13, on "Prehistoric Man in Africa" should prove especially stimulating to young Negro-America.

The book is well illustrated with photographs and a map, and will serve a useful purpose as an introduction to the methods and results of African exploration and archaeology in their scientific phase.

HUBERT H. HARRISON.

## Futility

By HELENE JOHNSON

IT is silly—
This waiting for love
In a parlor.
When love is singing up and down the alley
Without a collar.

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AUGUST, 1926

# The Ebony Flute

By GWENDOLYN BENNETT

IN searching about for a heading that would make a fit label for literary chit-chat and artistic what-not I stumbled upon "The Ebony Flute." So lovely a name it is that I should like to have made it myself, but I didn't. I say "stumbled" advisedly. Reading again William Rose Benet's poem, Harlem, in the *October Theatre Arts Magazine* I was struck by the exceeding great beauty of his use of the "ebony flute" as an instrument upon which one could "sing Harlem." An ebony flute ought to be very effective for most any sort of singing for that matter. Ebony, black and of exquisite smoothness. . . . And a flute has that double quality of tone, low and sweet or high and shrill, that would make of Harlem or any other place a very human song. No better instrument then for the slim melody of what book one has read or who is writing what new play than an ebony flute . . . speaking of Benet's *Harlem*, what a lovely thing it is! It opens with:

I want to sing Harlem on an ebony flute
While trap-drums ruffle to a crash and blare,
With a clear note
From a sylvan throat
Of a clarinet—of a clarinet!
God and brute, black god and brute
Grinning, brooding in the murk air,
Moons of flame and suns of jet,
Hurricane joy and dumb despair.

Vermillion, black and peacock blue,
Pink, plum-purple, zig-zag green—
I want to sing Harlem with a paint-box too,
Shaking out color like a tambourine,
Want a red
Like a furious fire;
Want a black
Like midnight mire;
Want a gold
Like golden wire;
Want a silver
Like Heaven entire
And God a-playing at his own front door
On a slide trombone with a conical bore!

And on through line on line of beauty that coins a
Harlem as a poet would see it, lush and colorful
. . . fertile like rich earth. On and on to its
close which ends with the crooning of his "Mammy
Earth. . . "

O child of the wild, of the womb of the night,
Rest, and dream, my dark delight!

*Tropic Death*, a book of short stories by Eric
Walrond will come out in October. Boni and

Liveright are the publishers. I can scarcely wait for
this book to be on the market. . . . Few of the
Negro writers that are being heralded on all sides
today can begin to create the color that fairly rolls
itself from Mr. Walrond's facile pen. *Tropic Death*
ought to have that ripe color that is usually the es-
sence of Mr. Walrond's writing . . . and also a
simple forcefulness that the author often achieves.
. . . A new magazine is added to the Chicago list
of Negro publications: *American Life Magazine*,
Moses Jordan editing . . . the same Mr. Jordan
whose book, *The Meat Man*, was published a few
years back. The June issue, Volume One— Number
One, carried "From Venice to Vienna" by Jessie
Redmon Fauset and "Pale Lady" by Langston Hughes.
I have not seen the July issue of this magazine but
look forward to seeing the future copies that will
come out. . . . Maude Cuney Hare has an arti-
cle on *Creole Folksongs* in the July number of the
*Musical Observer*. Needless to say, Mrs. Hare's
article is adequate . . . certainly there are few
people more authoritative in their speaking of Creole
folksongs than she.

Aaron Douglas is doing the illustrations for Carl
Van Vechten's *Nigger Heaven* which will appear
August the twentieth. *The Publisher's Weekly* says
that Mr. Douglas' advertisement for this book in
the current magazines is the best for the month of
June . . . but by far the most important thing
about Mr. Douglas these days is his new wife. He
married Miss Alta Sawyer of Kansas City, Missouri,
on Friday June eighteenth. . . . The English
edition of Langston Hughes' *Weary Blues* came out
on July ninth . . . the second edition of *The
New Negro* will be out in the fall. . . . The
Negro writers must not let the first of September
slip up on them without having their manuscripts
ready for the Albert and Charles Boni contest. The
address for sending the novels to the judges is 66
Fifth Avenue. . . . Thinking of novels makes me
recall what Simeon Strunsky of the *New York Times
Book Review* said not so long ago about beautifully
written books. . . . "The beautifully written
book as a rule is the over-written book. One sinks
into beauty ankle-deep." He goes to quite some trou-
ble to poke fun at the elegant conservatism of what
is called beautiful prose today. But even in the face
of Mr. Strunsky's caustic remarks on the question
of beautiful writing, properly so-called, I should be
ever so happy to find some of that ankle-deep beauty in
the things that come out of the Boni contest . . .
what of it, if some Negro should write a *Marie
Chapdelaine* with its wistful but perfect simplicity
or perhaps an "Ethan Frome. . . ." Mr. Strun-
sky rambles on to the amazing consolation that "We

AUGUST, 1926

OPPORTUNITY

still have our newspapers. In them are the reservoirs of simple health upon which we can draw when the English language threatens to cave in under heavy doses of beauty between bound covers" . . . and we can do little else but wonder how any one can live in New York and see the rife yellow journalism of the daily news sheets and speak of them as the salvation of the English language . . . nor even the aridity of the *New York Times* could be set on the pinnacle that had been built for "beautiful writing."

"George Sand Reigns Again For A Day" in the *Times* for June twenty-seventh made me think of a young newspaper writer I knew in Paris who was always breaking into any conversation that chanced to be going on at the time with the information that he lived in the back part of a house the front part of which had belonged to George Sand . . . and I always think within myself that I could see in that about as much claim to fame as any. . . . F. Fraser Bond in reviewing *The Best Love Stories of 1925*: "Something has come over the American love story. . . . It seems to have grown up. No longer does it find its chief concern in the billings and cooings of tepid adolescents" . . . he goes on further to observe that "Peter Pan has put on long trousers." Can't you see some E. E. Cumings-John V. Weaver person coming forward with a "Come out of it Lovers" to scare away that something that has "come over" the love story of today. . . .

Hall Johnson's Negro operetta, *Goophered*; with the libretto by Garret is to have in it three lyrics by Langston Hughes: *Mother to Son; The Midnight Blues*; and *Song for a Banjo*. This operetta is for early fall or late summer production. Mr. Johnson is the winner of the third prize of the music section of the *OPPORTUNITY* Contest . . . and by the way, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes are collaborating on an operetta the libretto of which is to be by Miss Hurston and the lyrics by Mr. Hughes . . . they are also writing a musical comedy together. . . . Mentioning musical comedies of a dusky character reminds me of the ill-fated *My Mag-nolia* which ran for a single week at the Mansfield Theater.

Jean Toomer, author of *Cane*, is spending the summer at the Gurdjieff Institute in Fountainbleau, France. . . . Countee Cullen and his father, Reverend Cullen, are traveling through Europe for the summer months . . . they will make many interesting stops chief among them a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. . . . Arthur Huff Fauset whose "Symphonesque" won first prize in the short story section of the *OPPORTUNITY* contest is to be a member of their party. . . . Dr. Rudolph Fisher has very endearingly nick-named his new baby "the new Negro."

Friday, July sixteenth, the annual reception for summer school students was given at the 135th Street Library. Mr. Johnson of OPPORTUNITY spoke on the OPPORTUNITY contests and what they had meant to the younger school of writers. When Mr. Johnson had finished his speech he called on several of the prize winners of the first and second OPPORTUNITY contests who chanced to be in the audience and asked them to read. . . . "Golgatha Is A Mountain" was never so lovely for me until I heard Mr. Arna Bontemp read it himself. He reads with a voice as rich in its resonance as his prize-winning poem is in its imagery and beauty. It was good to see so many

of the people who are writing and doing things together . . . Zora Neale Hurston, Bruce Nugent, John Davis . . . Langston Hughes who talked a bit about blues and spirituals and then read some of the new ones he had been doing . . . and just before he sat down he read a poem called "Brass Spittoons" . . . as lovely as are many things with much more delectable names.

Horace Liveright is busy casting his play *Black Boy* for its fall production. Paul Robeson is to play the lead which I understand is to be a prize-fighter. I heard Mr. Liveright say the other night that he was having difficulty in finding an actress for the role of Irene who plays in the lead opposite Mr. Robeson. This part is difficult to fill since the heroine is supposed all during the play to be white and is discovered at the end to be a colored girl who "passes." Remembering the harmful publicity that attended the opening of *All God's Chillun* because of a white woman's playing opposite a Negro, Mr. Liveright has been leaving no stone unturned to find a Negro girl who can take the part. There are hundreds who are fitted for the physical requirements of the piece but few whose histrionic powers would measure up to the standard of Broadway production.

Clarissa Scott of Washington dropped into the office the other day on her first trip in the interest of the new social investigation work she is to be doing in New York this summer . . . the same Clarissa Scott whose *Solace* won a prize in the *OPPORTUNITY* contest for last year. . . . and it was good to see her again and to know that she would be in New York all the summer . . . sandwiched between talk of what was happening in Washington and at Howard the question arose as to what was the most beautiful line of poetry written by a Negro . . . her first thought was:

> Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
> Lord Death has found her sweet.

from Countee Cullen's *A Brown Girl Dead* . . . strange how discussions of this sort get started, isn't it? I had never thought in terms of the best or most beautiful or the greatest line of Negro poetry before . . . there are several that come in line for the distinction now that I come to think of it . . . without thinking too long my first choice is from Langston Hughes' new blues poem called *The Railroad Blues*. . . .

*A railroad bridge is a sad song in de air*

or

*Where twilight is a soft bandanna handkerchief*
. . . or perhaps Lewis Alexander's

*A body smiling with black beauty . . .*
or Jean Toomers

*Above the sacred whisper of the pines,
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky, cane-lipped throngs.*

We wonder what William Stanley Braithwaite would say . . . or Claude McKay . . . or Jessie Fauset. . . . But all that resolves itself into the hopelessness of deciding what the greatest of anything is . . . nothing is really greatest but greatness itself. . . .

["292", "OPPORTUNITY", "SEPTEMBER, 1926", "# The Ebony Flute", "By GWENDOLYN BENNETT", "WITH timely alacrity Langston Hughes has thrown his hat into the intellectual ring with the pretty compliment of one poet to another. . . . I think Countee's lines,", "> The dead are wisest for they know\n> How deep the roots of roses grow.", "is very beautiful.\" . . . There has been a goodly response to the question as to what is the greatest or most beautiful line of poetry written by a Negro. . . . It is of incident interest that Robert Frost says the finest lines submitted to the 1926 OPPORTUNITY contest are from Helene Johnson's *The Road*, namely:", "> Ah, little road, brown as my race is brown,\n> Your trodden beauty like our trodden pride,\n> Dust of the dust, they must not bruise you down.", "Kinckle Jones suggests that his favorite is:", "> Yet would we die as some have done:\n> Beating a way for the rising sun.", "from Arna Bontemps' *The Daybreakers*. . . . And Aaron Douglas chooses from Jean Toomer's *Georgia Dusk* these lines:", "> A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,\n> An orgy for some genius of the South\n> With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,\n> Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.", "speaking of poetry calls to mind the announcement of William Stanley Braithwaite's *Anthology for 1926*. It is to have a larger scope this year. It is to be divided into four parts, i.e., The Poetry of the United States, Anthology of Poems 1926, Yearbook of American Poetry, and A Biographical Dictionary of Poets in the United States. The first section includes articles by Jessie B. Rittenhouse, Glenn Hughes, James Southall Wilson, Dawson Powell, Willard Johnson, George Sterling, Thomas Walsh, Henry Harrison, Alain Locke, Josel Washington Hall, Marianne Moore, Joseph Auslander, and E. Merrill Root. . . . There will be many of the younger Negro writers represented in his coming volume. *Golgotha is a Mountain*, by Arna Bontemps; *No Images*, by Waring Cuney; *Northbourn*, by Lucy Ariel Williams; *Tragedy of Pete*, by Joseph Cotter; *Lines to Elders, Scornful Lady and Confession*, by Countee Cullen; *Magula, Fulfillment and Calla Bella*, by Helene Johnson. . . . these are to be among those printed this year . . . they are either prize or mention winners in the 1926 OPPORTUNITY Con-", "test. . . . the book will be ready October twenty-first and its price is to be four dollars. . . . William Rose Benet writes me ever so pleasant a letter in which he says: \"I am flattered that you like \"Harlem,\" and glad that you should use the term \"The Ebony Flute\" for a heading to your column, which column seems to me an excellent idea.\" . . .", "Bruce Nugent, whose *Sahdji* appeared in the *New Negro*, has finished his first novel. As yet he has not named it . . . . by the way, *Nigger Heaven*, by Carl Van Vechten, is to be on the stands the twentieth of August. However, the review copies are out and I was fortunate enough to see and read one of them. For me it is a splendid book. Mr. Van Vechten has done what I choose to call a perfect piece of research work . . . . of it Isabel M. Paterson says in \"Turns With a Bookworm\": \"It is going to occupy much the same position this coming autumn as *The Green Hat* did last year.\" . . . We also had the rare privilege of glancing hurriedly over the proof for *Tropic Death*, Eric Walrond's book . . . . it certainly has \"flights of bright delight.\" He weaves the warm magic of the tropics with simple words and bright colors. *Drought*, which appeared in the London *New Age*, is heavy with its weight of heat and aridity. The author's careful description leaves the reader's lips parched and dry. This excerpt fairly bakes with white heat:", "> \"The sun had milked the land of its moisture—\n> pressed it dry. Star apples, sugar apples, husks, trans-\n> parent on the dry sleepy trees. Savagely prowling\n> through the orchards blackbirds stopped at nothing\n> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

SEPTEMBER, 1926

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291

In their effort to check on the economic and social value of the educational effort of this institution as reflected in the conduct of their graduates, a study has been in progress among graduates of the school. This questionnaire which concerns itself with the further studies of these graduates, their frank, constructive criticism of the educational procedure of the High School, professions or vocations entered, life and work since graduation, income, home life, property ownership, civic activity, children, church activity, reading habits, will reveal much of the personal and family status of the graduates and of the value of

the present school work. It will also provide a basis in information for shaping the future curriculum.

The school is not only well conducted from the administrative view point but the physical side of the plant is kept in good repair and free from the usual ear-marks of age. Both the principal and his energetic faculty actively identify themselves with every phase of social, economic, educational and religious life of the people in that industrious city. There is no movement launched in Dallas, looking toward the social progress of the colored people in Dallas that does not have some member of the Booker T. Washington High School faculty identified with it.

## The Negro Health Problem

*(Some Reactions to Dr. Hoffman's Discussion)*

THE article entitled "The Negro Health Problem" by Frederick L. Hoffman, appearing in the April issue of Opportunity, is an interesting example of the difference in treatment which a question affecting the Negro receives—even from a man who is trained to the objective scientific viewpoint.

An argumentative presentment detracts from the article. In the statement "The mortality from pulmonary tuberculosis especially has been very considerably reduced, although* the prevailing rate among the Negro population is still 203.2 per 100,000 in contrast to the rate of only 67.8 per 100,000 for the whites," the 'although' and 'only' might well have given place to a statement of the source of the figures. The author states his arbitrary conclusions as to the reasons for these reductions and continues: "All of these factors operate in a like manner to better results, leaving the disparity in the rates due to racial conditions still unchanged."

That the factors named do operate cannot be questioned, the evidence is too overwhelming. There is, however, no adequate evidence which would even bear upon, and much less support the basic conclusion that these factors operate in "like manner."

There is no support for the theory that the improvements in wages, working conditions and in light and ventilation have proceeded equally for whites and blacks. In fact, the pitifully few studies on the subject would seem to suggest an entirely opposite conclusion. Since the curtailment of European immigration, Negroes in large numbers have, as is pointed out in the reference to the study by Mr. Pollock, exchanged the relatively healthful life of a rural environment and the easy, open life of the farm for the death dealing conditions of the factory and mill. That there has been, under these conditions *any* lowering of the mortality from the diseases incident to a lack of sunshine and fresh air is remarkable. It would be interesting to contrast the present death rate from tuberculosis among the Negro unskilled workers in the steel mills, factories, mines, subways and similar fields with the death rate from tuberculosis among the immigrant whites who formally did this work. In this connection, one should still remember that there were large numbers of foreigners who, broken on the wheel, returned to Europe to die, and thus are without the figures; while the similar cases of Negroes who returned South are included in the statistics. One wonders if the conclusion of the study of 100,000 cases of illness in the U. S. Army that,

"the Negro is a superior physiological machine" would be supported or questioned.

The statement is made "Illegitimate births coincide in a large measure with widespread venereal infections, which among the Negro population are unquestionably decidedly more common than among the whites. Unfortunately, information on the subject is not easily obtainable, but all the special investigations which have been made have conclusively shown a very much greater degree of frequency of venereal infections among the Negroes than among the whites." Again, there is necessity for a statement of information sources, both as to the conclusion that illegitimate births and venereal infections are corollaries and as to the studies which have "conclusively shown a very much greater degree of frequency of venereal infections." A statement by one of the assistant Health Commissioners of the City of Chicago that there were, in the experience of the Health Department, more cases of syphilis among whites than among Negroes, comes to mind.

In any study of Negro death rates, one must always bear in mind that, even were it true that the treatment accorded Negroes and whites at Johns Hopkins is identical, the care afforded by the *average* hospital for Negroes and to the average Negro in other hospitals, in which he usually occupies the basement and is the last to be served, is decidedly inferior. The average white physician who treats large numbers of Negroes is inferior, in equipment, experience and ability, and unfortunately, there is no measure of the number of deaths attributable to his lack of ability and personal interest. The Negro physician deserves all honor for his efforts to keep abreast in a profession which Hippocrates described as requiring love of study, leisure, and a favorable opportunity. If he sometimes confounds, through lack of sufficient case study, the wastings of tuberculosis and cancer, it is not at all strange. One wonders to what extent this easily made mistake is responsible for the quoted high Negro rates from tuberculosis and for the low rates from cancer.

That there is need for study in every field of Negro relationships cannot be gainsaid. That the Negro fills the least desirable positions and trades is equally apparent, but until the wide gap between his actual situation in American life and the situation of his white neighbor is even approached with a bridge, a conclusion that the mortality disparity is a matter of race and not of environment" is not capable of that scientific proof which should underlie all positive statements, especially when the field is one in which the emotional appeal is apt to override the rational consideration.
H. LLEWELLYN HARRIS, JR., M. D.

* Underlined by Me.—H. L. H.

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293

first prize of the OPPORTUNITY poetry contest for his poem No Images. Both Mr. Hughes and Mr. Cuney are students at Lincoln University. This year the prize winner was to have received a year's tuition to a Mexican University, with carfare from the United States border into Mexico. . . . Mr. Hughes is rejecting this part of the winnings and allowing it to pass on to the first honorable mention which goes to Josephine Jackson of Mt. Holyoke College. He puts it very nicely—"You see this way it makes it possible for two people to win prizes."

Contests grow thickly about us as the summer wears on. . . . The Survey Associates Incorporated offers a prize of $250 for the best account of the "most interesting thing you know about plays for grown-ups." . . . The manuscripts must not be less than 1,000 nor more than 2,500 words in length, typewritten, double spaced, and on one side of the paper . . . the last date is September thirteenth and the address is—Jury, Harmon-Survey Award 3, care of The Survey, 112 East 19th Street, New York City. . . . College Humor offers $10,000 in prizes for the best novel or story adaptable to magazine and motion picture production. . . . Midnight, February first, 1927, is the last date and the address is: Contest Editor, College Humor, 1050 La Salle Street, Chicago, Illinois.

Which reminds me that Donald J. Hayes is said to be at work on a new literary monthly of the Negro race, called Vision . . . to be published from Atlantic City . . . the editors characterize their hopes for the magazine in these words: "In contrast to other Negro magazines, it will have no chip on its shoulder, but will attempt to win friends by giving the Negro writer opportunity for development and by presenting work of distinction. The magazine will be published with white cooperation." . . . It pleases me to see that American Life, which had its premiere in June, is still in the running.

John Matheus' Fog is being translated into German by Dr. Herman Muller for a syndicate which supplies matter for literary publications in Germany. . . . O'Brien has written asking Arthur Huff Fauset for a hundred and fifty word biography of himself for this year's "Best Short Stories" . . . that means that Symphonesque goes in this year's honor roll. . . . Countee Cullen writes from Paris that it is the "only city" and that he'd like to stay ever so much. . . .

The Krigwa Little Theater has decided upon the plays that it will produce in the fall. . . . Blue Blood, by Georgia Douglas Johnson, which was awarded honorable mention in the play section of the OPPORTUNITY Contest; Her, by Eulalia Spence; No 'Count Boy, by Paul Green, which was produced in New York by the Dallas Little Theater in 1925 and was awarded the Belasco Cup in the National Little Theater Tournament . . . this movement plans working up a repertoire of both Negro and general plays which will be given alternately during the season. Aaron Douglas is decorating the walls of the Krigwa Little Theater which holds its meetings in the basement of the 135th Street Public Library.

Rudolph Fisher has had two stories accepted by the

Cosmopolitan Magazine. . . Fire By Night and The Back-slider are their names. Edwin Morgan's Prayer is to appear in The Bookman . . . he is spending his summer in Europe. Frank Horne, winner of the second prize of the Crisis Literary Contest for 1925, is assistant director of the Boys' Camp Welcome Hall which is situated at Saltaire, Fire Island . . . his To Chick from Letters Found by a Suicide is to appear in Braithwaite's Anthology.

I am particularly interested in reading Beyond the Rockies, by William Augustus Banks, published by Dorrance and Company in Philadelphia . . . it is a book of poetry written by a young man who has had an unbelievably hard time of it . . . in fact his struggle for a livelihood has been almost of a storytale quality . . . the verse is carefully done and I find much of it worthy of special note . . . this particular verse has a wistful quality that pleases me: . . .

When January locks me in
Cool mists come dimming down.
The winter is suggesting then
The cool of Twilight Town.

two other books of poetry have come to n
notice recently: . . . Gems of Inspiration, by A.
R. Schooler; Poems by Sarah C. Fernandis.

Richard Reid is doing a portrait of Reverend John Haynes Holmes, pastor of the Community Church. . . . Mr. Reid is the artist whose work was in last year's Exhibit of Independent Artists. . . .

Yone Noguchi is criticizing the Japanese themes as presented by Lewis Alexander . . . he lives in Japan and had a book of Hokku published in 1920 by the Four Seas Company. . . . This poem, To Countee Cullen, appeared in the Chicago Tribune in the column entitled Line o'Type or Two by The Faun:

It matters not if your skin is dark
As the midnight jungle track,
I thrill to the beat of the song you sing
Feeling the torture and rack
That sundered the souls of your broken slaves
For hundreds of dead years back.

Under the march of your musical lines,
Under the tread of their feet,
I hear the wind in the jungle pines
And the drone of the tom-tom's beat,
With ebon savage under the sun
In the shimmering tropic heat.

Chance gave you the soul of a minstrel fair
Housed in a blackamoor's frame,
With your heart tuned high to the upper air
Though a scion of scorn and shame,
Refusing a outcast's usual lot
And turning it into fame!

So the talk of this and that comes to a close. . . .
I wonder how the manuscripts for the Boni Contest
are coming along . . . and hope that there will be
a novel come out of it worthy of the name of the
Negro novel. . . .

November, 1926

OPPORTUNITY

357

Philadelphia Ethel Barrymore slipped in to snatch what moments she could of it. "Stay till the last act if you can," Arthur Hopkins whispered to her, "and watch Rose McClendon come down those stairs. She can teach some of our most hoity-toity actresses distinction."

It was Miss Barrymore who hunted him up after the performance to say, "She can teach them all distinction."

Mrs. McClendon will be remembered for her appearance with Charles Gilpin in *Roseanne* several years ago. Gladys White, wife of Walter F. White, author of *Fire in the Flint* and *Flight*, plays the minor part of Julie in *Deep River*.

As for *Black Boy* . . . Jim Tully and Frank Dazey seem to have misused material that was destined for a fine plot. New York critics are of an opinion that the authors have concocted a rather cheap, tawdry sort of play. However, its star, Paul Robeson, is with one acclaim said to play his part with distinction and beauty. One knew, of course, even before the play went into rehearsal that, if *Black Boy* was to be played by Paul Robeson, this good-natured, fame-drunk pugilist would sing with those mellow organ tones that few songsters achieve . . . and right here we think again of that faulty, over-advertised piece, *All God's Chillun* . . . in it Robeson sang *Sometimes Ah Feel Lak a Motherless Chile* off-stage with melting beauty and simplicity. Alexander Woolcott says: *There are times when the play is just pushed aside while Robeson sings, and it is the kind of a play wherein such interludes are not unwelcome. That Black Boy* should have a golden voice was as inevitable as the curious talent for giving imitations which developed in the heroine of Mr. Zangwill's "*Serio Comic Governess*" when Cissie Loftus undertook that comedy long ago.

And so we have the native American opera which has as its subject the Negro or rather the Creole who is in part Negro . . . in the same instant we have the furor that is being created by the "mustard colored" *Lulu Belle* . . . close on the heels of both of these comes *Black Boy* with a colored star and just in the offing we have J. P. McEvoy's *Hallelujah, Get Hot*, for which Zora Neale Hurston is writing some of the scenes. Which reminds us that the Actors' Theatre announces that it will produce a dramatization of *Porgy* by Dubose Heyward. I understand that Mrs. Heyward assisted her husband in preparing it for the stage. The piece is to be called *Catfish Row* for the stage on the ground that the dramatic production deals more with the group of people who live in this turbulent neighborhood than with Porgy as a single, outstanding personality. So far little is known of the cast save the fact that the players will all be Negroes. It has been characterized by the producers as a study of the old-fashioned Negro as opposed to the numerous scenes of more sophisticated life in the cabarets of Harlem.

The Negro as a factor in dramatic art is not confined to New York alone. . . . *Popoplikahu*, an African play by Georgia Douglas Johnson and Bruce Nugent, is being rehearsed by Barrington Guy for the President Theatre in Washington, D. C. Barrington Guy is the son of the famous Nathaniel Guy. Mrs. Johnson is also the author of *Blue Blood*, one of the *OPPORTUNITY Contest* prize-winning plays, which is to be included in Frank Shay's *Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays* which is to be brought out by Appleton and Company. Mr. Shay also plans getting together a collection that will be labeled *Fifty Contemporary*

*Plays by Negroes* . . . speaking of Mrs. Johnson reminds me of the perfectly delightful chat I had with her after she had come back from Chicago where she was graciously received by Harriet Monro of the *Poetry* staff . . . and of how Carl Sandburg did speak with her of this and that thing about Negroes and their work . . . while in the "Windy City" she saw Fenton Johnson who it seems constantly bemoans the fact that he is not in New York City.

Hand in hand with the Negro's position as a figure in American Drama goes our continued importance in literature. *Tropic Death* has been on the market several weeks now . . . reviewers are of the opinion that Mr. Waldron knows his subject well and presents his material with ability and assurance. *Nigger Heaven* has been and still is a best seller. Langston Hughes' new book of poems, *Fine Clothes to the Jew*, will be published by Alfred Knopf in the Spring. . . . Aaron Douglas has been commissioned to design the wrapper for this as well as three other Knopf books. The information has leaked through that Joseph Hergesheimer is at work on a new novel which deals with the Negro. The scene is to be laid in Charleston and its name ot this writing is to be *Sulphur Rose*.

If Mr. Van Vechten has done nothing else in writing *Nigger Heaven*, he has at least made one more contribution to the vernacular. . . . Sightseers, visitors and other strangers that might find themselves within the limits of Harlem for a space are said to be "vanvechtening" around . . . however, there is one other effect that *Nigger Heaven* has had that is of distinct value to our race history—the Librarian of the Queen's University in Canada has written to James F. Drake, the New York rare book dealer, that he has become so interested in Charles W. Chesnutt, through reading *Nigger Heaven*, that he wants a complete list of his books for the Queen's Library. *The Literary Lovers* of Washington, D. C., of whom E. C. Williams is chairman, met on Sunday, October third, to discuss Mr. Van Vechten's last book . . . a composite opinion was reached that it was a rather fine thing, although not exactly after the style of their own community.

Comes now three new volumes of the *Encyclopedia Britannica* which will add a modern slant to the already meaty collection of information that this set holds. And with it this fact goes upon the shelves of posterity:

*The only dance that has survived the American invasion is the valse*. . . . *The valse continued to dominate the English Ballroom until the arrival of the American dances in 1912. The new dances, which were of Negro origin, were of a two-four rhythm and this change of time from the valse and the attractive lilt of the American dance bands immediately captivated the upper class ballrooms. Their popularity increased year by year until every class in England had its own rendezvous for dancing.*

In 1925 there arose an entirely new type of ballroom dancing known as the Charleston. Negroid in origin, its peculiar and strenuous steps aroused some misgivings on the part of the medical profession as to the danger to the body caused by excessive strain on the muscles subjected to constant distortion. Public endurance contests were often the scene of complete breakdown on the part of the participants, sometimes with permanent injury. The Charleston was taken up to some extent in England, but the dance was too ungracefully violent to remain popular either there or in the United States for very long and in 1926 was already dying out.

December, 1926

OPPORTUNITY

391

THE EBONY FLUTE

By GWENDOLYN BENNETT

NEW YORKERS have a way of thinking that after Gotham nothing is. I suppose because the city itself is the very door of the Nation, even the name of the place becomes the synonym for the center of the world . . . evident then that we should come to think of New York as the great book-publishing, book-consuming ogre. Needless to say, gossip of this and that thing concerning books and their makers would tend by centripetal force alone to precipitate into what groups in the great Metropolis are doing and thinking . . . it is ever so refreshing to be brought sharply up against the fact that here and there in other less motley cities are little knots of people writing, and reading . . . perhaps hoping and certainly thinking. So when came a letter from Emma Lue Sayers of Los Angeles, California—

"This is just a line from the Far West to tell you how much we enjoy the *Ebony Flute*. And when I say 'we' I mean a Saturday noon writers' organization, which Charles S. Johnson was good enough to help us form, when he was in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. We call ourselves the *Ink Slingers*." . . . And from Boston comes the word that Thomas L. G. Oxley's *Souls of Colored Poets* soon to be on the market including three hundred poems selected from eighty-five poets. . . . Mr. Oxley is the Director of the Colored Poetic League of the World . . . also one of the *Quill Club* devotees . . . which reminds me that Dorothy West and Helene Johnson are spending the winter in New York. . . . I believe they are studying Journalism at Columbia University.

This month's geographical check-up presents an in-
teresting aspect. . . . Jean Toomer off for Chicago
for Gurdjieff work; Abram Harris in New York
. . . he is now assisting Dr. Melville Herskovits;
Frank Horne gone down Georgia-way to dip his intel-
lectual finger into the publicity of the Hunt Industrial
School. . . . Langston Hughes divides his time
very nicely between Lincoln University and New York
City; Countee Cullen permanently located in the "City
of Skyscrapers" is now the Assistant Editor of OP-
PORTUNITY . . . which, by the way, gives me a
splendid opportunity to extend to him the right hand
of fellowship and welcome upon the advent of his
column, *Thoughts from a Dark Tower*. Both of
these two last named young men deserted their
several ways around the twenty-first of November to
go to Columbus, Ohio, where they read at a
meeting similar to the one held in New York called
*The New Negro Speaks*.

Just to show you how marvelous is this nothing-new-
under-the-sun idea . . . I was browsing around
among the *Literary Digest* clippings when I came
across this poem:

THE BLACK FLUTE

The music of the black flute dances
With jigging Negro feet. It chances
The labyrinth of violin
And thrusts its polished figure in.

Meanwhile the drum oracular
Keeps philosophic thud and jar,
An elephantine tread that nears
The piccolo's hysteric jeers.

The saxophone with sullen moans
Will wring its hands and shake its bones
Observing that sadistic brute,
The bass horn, chase the little flute.

But round and round and in and out
The dodging flute will shrilly shout,
Until tired out, it seeks a nap
In the astonished cello's lap.

which pleased me very much being a whimsical
thing to add to my ever-growing attributes for a flute.

With the passing of Deep River and Black Boy we have the arrival of the Negro concert season. . . . Roland Hayes again holds American audiences motionless and breathless with music silver sweet; again Paul Robeson's immense voice shall boom forth to the delight of his listeners. . . . Rosamond Johnson and Taylor Gordon are again at team-work on the spirituals; from the warm suns of Southern France comes Lillian Evanti who after a tour of the United States will return to Europe, there to begin a continental tour in December. So music will go close on the slinking heels of mimicry and drama. Louis Gruenberg, a young white American composer living in Paris, has made a setting of James Weldon Johnson's poem The Creation. This was performed for the first time at a concert of the League of Composers given at the Town Hall on November twenty-seventh. The Conductor was Koussevitzky, who conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

With surprising surety American Negroes who go
to the European capitals as entertainers in the fash-
ionable night clubs and cafes become endearèd to the
French pleasure-seeker. The Chocolate Kiddies, La
Revue Negre, Josephine Baker, and Florence Mills
. . . each caught and held the admiration of first
Paris and later other cities on the continent. At the
opening of Les Nuits du Pardo, the most chic cabaret
Paris has yet seen, Nora Holt Ray entertained in im-
itable way . . . she accompanies herself at the
piano and her voice has a touching appeal in it
. . . she was immediately engaged to sing in Monte
Carlo . . . and now has come the offer to be
starred by the Champs Elysee management . . .
this theater is accepted as one of the best Music Halls
in Europe . . . the French are in happy constern-
ation over the miracle of La Blonde Negresse . . .
strange, we live here side by side by many members of
the black race whose skins are fairer than some of
their white neighbors.

Braithwaite's *Anthology* is out. It is a full volume
and an interesting one with many selections therein
by Negroes. . . . It would be a peculiar fate should
one of the contributions by a Negro win the special
awards that are to follow the publishing of the book
itself. Speaking of anthologies, I bethink me of how
Arthur Fauset's story, *Symphonesque*, will be re-
printed in the O'Brien Selection of the *Best Short
Stories for 1926* . . . and also in the *O. Henry
Memorial Awards Collection*.

By a sweet token the library shelves are full of
books about and by Negroes. The *Second Book of
Spirituals* is well on the road to success; Color should
by this time be nearing its sixth edition; and *The
Weary Blues* is in the third edition. And with a
rush has come *Tropic Death* by Eric Walrond, *The
Negro in American Life* by Jerome Dowd, *Denatured
Africa* by Daniel W. Streeter, and *Tom-Tom* by John
W. Vandercook . . . which book I take to be
one of the most vivid things I have ever read.

212

OPPORTUNITY

JULY, 1927

THE EBONY FLUTE

A
T this writing there are many things, there are ever
and ever so many things more rare than this particu-
lar "day in June" . . . a gentle rain patters its way
down upon the city roofs . . . for some unknown reason I
am reminded of a spiritual that I heard a young Negro
student sing a few nights ago . . . Keep Your Hand
Upon the Plow . . . for me it was a new spiritual
and oh such a beautiful one. In a recent issue of The
Town Crier there appeared an editorial entitled Old Spir-
ituals . . . lavish applause was showered upon the
Negro as a songster. The following paragraph carries the
gist of the entire article:

The Negro is becoming articulate. There was
a time when he was known only as the singer of
other men's ballads. That was the day of Jubi-
lee Singers, long before an Old Spiritual had even
a name. Every one went to hear them, much in
the same spirit that every one went to see the
freaks in the sideshows. Even then the Negro
carried himself with a dignity which disarmed
the most prejudiced . . . It would seem that
they might have a message for the world. It has
been sung on the road up from slavery and with
a poignancy that has lain beneath an exterior of
carefree indolence, now dimly understood as
being something in the nature of camouflage.
There must have always existed a toughness of
fibre which would not permit the surrender of
individuality to those who dominated them. In
a way, they were captains of their souls if not
masters of their fate.

Edward J. O'Brien, compiler and editor of the best short story series, a volume which is issued annually, has written to Eugene Gordon, the Boston newspaper man, a request for a biographical sketch to be inserted in the Best Short Stories of 1927. This means that Rootbound, winner of the fourth prize in the short story division of last year's Opportunity Contest, has been designated by Mr. O'Brien as one of the stories printed in 1926 which in his opinion may fairly claim a position in American literature, and which is to be listed in the Roll of Honor in his volume. It is also to be indicated in that part of the volume known as the yearbook by three asterisks affixed to its title. Blanche Colton Williams in her O. Henry Memorial Award Volume of Short Stories for 1926 also picked Rootbound as an outstanding story, along with Dorothy West's The Typewriter, which with a story by Zora Neale Hurston, Muttsy, won second prize in Opportunity's contest last year.

The Saturday Nighters of Washington, D. C., met on June fourth at the home of Mrs. Georgia Douglas Johnson. Mr. Charles S. Johnson was the guest of honor. It was particularly pleasing to see and talk with Miss Angelina Grimke. She is a beautiful lady with ways as softly fine as her poems. The company as a whole was a charming medley. . . . E. C. Williams with his genial good-humor; Lewis Alexander with jovial tales of this thing and that as well as a new poem or two which he read; Marieta Bonner with her quiet dignity; Willis Richardson with talk of "plays and things" . . . and here and there a new poet or playwright . . . and the whole group held together by the dynamic personality of Mrs. Johnson . . . some poems by Langston Hughes were read.

he, by the way, is in the Southland. Dr. Locke
tells us that his trip is to cover much of the "Land of Cot-
ton" . . . and while we are tracing our travelogue
let us say that Frank Horne is spending the summer in
Chicago after a winter in Fort Valley, Georgia. . . .
Dr. Locke is again returning to Europe. . . . Jean
Toomer will again be in Fountainbleau, France, at the
Gurjieff Institute. . . . Eric Walrond, who has been
in Panama, has now returned to New York. And so
Negroes go hither and thither and yon, writing about this
and that. . . .

We have at hand the May number of the Carolina Magazine, which is devoted to articles and poems by Negro authors. The magazine is well set up with a noble list of truly artistic contributors . . . Arna Bontemps, Aaron Douglas, Charles S. Johnson, Arthur Huff Fauset, Helene Johnson and Eulalie Spence. If all white colleges were so liberally inclined, the combined artistic expression of the darker and fairer groups might arrive at a truly great Art. This issue of the Carolina Magazine was one more brave step toward this Utopian communion of spirit. In accord with this general urge to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" The Midland, A Magazine of the Middle West carries as the first article in its May issue a piece entitled The Harlem Poets.

Recently Mr. Benjamin Brawley, Professor of English Literature at Shaw University, wrote a paper entitled *The Negro Literary Renaissance* which appeared in *The Southern Workman*. Mr. Brawley had little or no high praise to spare for the "younger Negro" . . . there was an almost venomous sting in the severity of his criticism of those young black throats that have dared to sing a new song. I have come by a copy of a letter which Mr. Carl Van Vechten wrote in answer to Mr. Brawley's paper and incidentally in defense of the younger Negro. This question is of too great moment for the letter to be hidden from the public eye and so I shall take the liberty to print it here:

My dear Mr. Brawley:

I have read with interest your paper entitled
the *Negro Literary Renaissance*, in the Southern
*Workman*. Your opinions are your own, and al-
though I do not share them you are entitled to
them. I think, however, that in such a paper,
written by a college professor, one might expect
a meticulous niceness in regard to matters of fact.
You write: "When Mr. Hughes came under the
influence of Mr. Carl Van Vechten and The
Weary Blues was given to the world," etc. The
Weary Blues had won a prize before I had read a
poem by Mr. Hughes or knew him personally.
The volume, of which this was the title poem,
was brought to me complete before Mr. Hughes
and I had ever exchanged two sentences. I am
unaware even to this day, although we are the
warmest friends and see each other frequently,
that I have had the slightest influence on Mr.
Hughes in any direction. The influence, if one
exists, flows from the other side, as any one might
see who read my first paper on the Blues, pub-
lished in *Vanity Fair* for August, 1925, a full
year before *Nigger Heaven* appeared, before, in-
deed, a line of it had been written. In this paper
I quoted freely Mr. Hughes' opinions on the sub-

JULY, 1927

OPPORTUNITY

213

ject of Negro folk song, opinions which to my
knowledge have not changed in the slightest.

I might say a word or two apropos of the
quotableness of the verse of Countee Cullen.
Suffice to say that the fact is that he is quoted
more frequently, with two or three exceptions,
than any other American poet. I myself quoted
four lines as a superscription to Nigger Heaven,
and two other lines later in the book, I think the
concluding lines of his beautiful sonnet, Yet Do I
Marvel, I have seen printed more often (in peri-

odicals in other languages than English, more-
over) than any other two lines by any contempo-
rary poet.

I beg to remain yours very sincerely,

(Signed) CARL VAN VECHTEN.

... And at this juncture I am moved to quote H.
G. Wells: Art that does not argue nor demonstrate nor
discuss is merely the craftsman's impudence.

Gwendolyn B. Bennett.

The Contest Spotlight

(Continued From Page 205)

FLORENCE PRICE (awarded second prize in music for her composition *Memories of Dixieland*) is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, as Miss Florence Beatrice Smith. She is the daughter of the late Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Smith, the wife of Thomas J. Price of Little Rock, and the mother of two little musical daughters, Florence L. Price, age 10 years, and Edith C. Price, age 6 years.

ERNEST EVERETT PEACE (awarded second prize for his arrangement of the Negro Spiritual *Nobody Knows De Trouble I've Seen*) was born in Henderson, North Carolina, December 16, 1890. He moved to Washington, D. C., in 1898, where he made his home. In 1908 he was graduated from the M Street High School, entering Howard University the following year. In 1912 he was graduated from the Teachers' College of Howard University, taking two degrees, Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Pedagogy. He is now an employee in the Office of the Chief of Staff, War Department, at Washington.

JAMES H. YOUNG (awarded second prize for his essay *On Race Equality*) sends the following biography: Educated in Philadelphia, Public Schools, Germantown High School, 1923; Philadelphia Normal School, 1925; since February, 1925, a teacher in Philadelphia Public Schools; studying at University of Pennsylvania.

He writes: "I feel certain that the time is not far distant when all civilization will be rocked by an explosion that will awaken the Negro race from its lethargy into a group determined to create powerful and beautiful things."

SHAD JONES (awarded one-half of first and second prizes for his personal experience sketch *Sasswood*) writes from Columbus, Ohio: "Born in Lynchburg, Virginia; came to Boston with my parents at age of five, was educated in public schools of Boston and Sangus, Massachusetts. Graduated from Sangus High School in 1900 and entered Harvard College that year at age of 16. Spent one year at Harvard and later entered Sheffield Scientific School (Yale University) in class of 1911, (Mining Engineering). Taught Physics and Chemistry at Tuskegee in 1911 and 1912. Was appointed head of Engineering and Science Department at Western University, Kansas, 1912-1916. Appointed Engineer to Liberian Government in 1916. Remained in Liberia, 1916-1920; appointed Director of Engineering at Wilberforce University, 1921. Served there until 1924. Accepted position with Industrial Branch, Y. M. C. A., Columbus, Ohio, in 1924, and am still in that position."

BLANCHE TAYLOR DICKINSON (awarded a special Buckner prize for her poem *A Sonnet and a Rondeau*) sends the following information from her home in Sewickley, Penna.: "As far back as I can remember I have had the urge to write poetry and stories. My mother says that her youthful dreams were based on the same idea and perhaps she gave it to me as a pre-natal gift. I do write a salable story once in a while and an acceptable poem a little oftener. The American Anthology, Unicorn Press, just released, contains three of my poems. I am intensely interested in all the Younger Negro writers and try to keep in touch with them through the Negro press."

EMILY MAY HARPER (awarded a special Buckner prize for her short story *Ma Kilpatrick, Boss*) writes from Nashville, Tennessee: "I am a Bachelor of Science graduate of Howard University and have always intended to study medicine. I am here teaching Mathematics at Walden College. I admit that does not sound like the background of a short story writer, but I have done some 'scribbling' ever since I was admitted to the Stylus at Howard. In the course of being a Y. W. C. A. secretary, an insurance agent, and a teacher of almost every subject in the high school curriculum, I have written and produced one play and three pageants, many little verses, one novel and several short stories.

"Some day I hope to find the leisure to write more systematically. If I have any contribution to make to the field of Negro literature I feel that it is not in newness of style but of material. I have lived among and seen many a romance among what we call 'the natives' in Oklahoma."

FRANK HORNE (awarded one-half the third prize plus a special Buckner award for his essay *Concerning White People*, also one half the third prize for his personal experience sketch, *I Am Initiated Into the Negro Race*) writes from Fort Valley, Georgia: "Here you have me down in the Georgia 'sticks,' where I have spent the winter at the Fort Valley High and Industrial School. I've been doing publicity work, teaching a little and mainly recovering my health. It seems I had to come way down here to have any luck in your contest. I have been trying to write as long as I can well remember. I am addicted, however, to the extremely lazy practice of composing in my head. I usually think that I have the composition complete in my mind, both in idea and form, before I put the pen on the paper, and then, strange to relate, when it gets down, it's apparently very different—sometimes very discouraging. It is my earnest desire to write good prose but my only recognition has resulted from my attempts at poetry, a form of expression in whose adequacy I haven't much faith."

JULY, 1927

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211

might as well recognize it. What can be and will be is a white and a thousand unconscious forces are at work for will. And it is most significant, I think, that black and many gifts of their race—their music and their song, and larger humanizing of the whole, an Americanizing, if you this larger humanity. * * * I am thankful for all the for their multitudinous services, whether noble or ignoble. They are a magnificent people and nothing can keep them little forebearance and imagination can aid so vastly in the and bend ears to the wind of too cheap expediency when a growing salvation of us all? And here I am not pleading for the Negro but for ourselves, the white man. For there is much worth the knowing and we're missing it, caught as we are in the lock-step of senseless conformity."

THE May issue of *The Carolina Magazine* is a number of historical importance in race relations in this country. For the first time, as it were, in the time of man, a Southern university magazine has given over one of its numbers to the work of Negro writers. No attempt has been made to inveigle the contributing writers into conformance to any preconceived notions of what should constitute work by Negroes. There is less of irony than of eventual justice in this phenomenon of a magazine the cover of which is decorated with the names of Poe, Cabell, Lanier, Harris, Page, O. Henry and Wilson, bearing on that cover an inset informative of the fact that within there is a brilliant article on *The Negro Enters Literature* by Charles S. Johnson, a reprint of Symphoneseque by Arthur Huff Fauset and reproductions of the work of Aaron Douglas. Other contributors to the number are Arna Bontemps, Helene Johnson, Waring Cuney, Eulalie Spence (represented by *The Hunch*, one of the prize plays in this year's *Opportunity* contest), Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Edward Silvera, Donald Jeffrey Hayes, Angelina Grimke, Effie Lee Newsome, Nelson H. Nichols, Jr., Carrie W. Clifford, and Lewis Alexander, who served as honorary editor of the issue.

THE New York Morning Telegraph wishing to discover the best American actor and actress of the

1926-1927 season recently enlisted the aid of the drama reviewers of New York. The resulting poll taken by eighteen reviewers acclaimed Pauline Lord and Alfred Lunt as the stellar thespians of the year. Mr. Percy Hammond, dramatic critic for the New York Herald-Tribune, gave his vote to Rose McClendon and Frank Wilson, who share the star roles in the year's Pulitzer Play, *In Abraham's Bosom*. Although Mr. Hammond's was the only vote cast for these actors, they tied with such distinguished colleagues as Helen Mencken, Lynne Fontanne, Jane Cowl, Ethel Barrymore, Blanche Yurka, Walter Huston and Morgan Farley, each of whom received one vote.

LEST the readers of this column should imagine that we believe the most interesting literature being written is that dealing with the Negro, we should like to recommend as constituting the most enjoyable reading we've done in many a day, the following books: *The King's Henchman* by Edna St. Vincent Millay, *Tristam* by Edwin Arlington Robinson, and *Go She Must* by David Garnett.

THE list of the twelve most popular reserve books at Harlem Branch Library for the past month is as follows:

Fiction:

<table><tr><td>Lewis—Elmer Gantry</td><td>30 reserves</td></tr><tr><td>Peterkin—Black April</td><td>14 reserves</td></tr><tr><td>Erskine—Helen of Troy</td><td>9 reserves</td></tr><tr><td>Van Vechten—Nigger Heaven</td><td>8 reserves</td></tr><tr><td>Young—Love Is Enough</td><td>5 reserves</td></tr><tr><td>Erskine—Galahad</td><td>5 reserves</td></tr><tr><td>Norris—The Sea Gull</td><td>4 reserves</td></tr><tr><td>Dreiser—An American Tragedy</td><td>4 reserves</td></tr><tr><td>Deeping—Sorrell and Son</td><td>3 reserves</td></tr></table>

Non-Fiction:

<table><tr><td>Durant—Story of Philosophy</td><td>9 reserves</td></tr><tr><td>Bekker—Story of Music</td><td>6 reserves</td></tr><tr><td>Vandercook—Tom-Tom</td><td>3 reserves</td></tr></table>

Countee Cullen.

The New Negro

By J. E. McCALL.

He scans the world with calm and fearless eyes, Conscious within of powers long since forgot; At every step, now man-made barriers rise To bar his progress—but he heeds them not. He stands erect, though tempests round him crash, Though thunder bursts and billows surge and roll; He laughs and forges on, while lightnings flash Along the rocky pathway to his goal.

Impassive as a Sphinx, he stares ahead— Foresees new empires rise and old ones fall; While caste-mad nations lust for blood to shed, He sees God's finger writing on the wall. With soul awakened, wise and strong he stands, Holding his destiny within his hands.

JUNE, 1927

OPPORTUNITY

183

in Europe where he is to complete his new book entitled
Mamba's Daughter ... Frank Horne is still in Georgia
... and Langston Hughes is going South this summer ...
I believe he has some sort of romantic idea about sailing
down the Mississippi River—that ought to bring forth some
new poems full of the chugging rhythm of the old steam-
boat.

Helene Johnson's poem, Bottled, appeared in the May issue of Vanity Fair ... The Carolina Magazine, the official organ of North Carolina University, is to appear as a Negro number in its next issue ... one cannot help marveling at the fine liberality of thought this school exhibits.

Charles Cecil Cohen gave a piano recital in Washington on March thirty-first ... his program was well-balanced and splendidly rendered to a very appreciative audience.

Arthur Ficke writes to Carl Van Vechten about Fine Clothes To the Jew, Langston Hughes's new book of poems and says:—

Langston Hughes, whose earlier poems had such great promise, here fulfills every vestige of that

promise. He is a great artist; he never yields to the
obvious temptation to comment on his themes, but
produces the theme, stark and stripped, for the reader
to feel and vibrate to. With a devastatingly ironic
sense of the possible comic quality of some of his
material, he accepts that limitation and writes poetry
that is usually as beautiful as it is tragic ... Hughes
stands at the other pole from the clever verse-writer.
His technical cleverness is enormous; yet he does not
exploit it. He knows—only too well—that poetry is
the result of some catastrophic agony of the spirit—
and he seems rarely to write from any more trivial
level of experience.

... the mention of Carl Van Vechten reminds us that Paul Morand is to write the preface to the French edition of Nigger Heaven ... Morand is the author of Open All Night and several other modern novels in French.

And so another moon has passed and the world do
move ...

Gwendolyn B. Bennett.

## Second Growth

By EDWIN L. PETERSON

Her face is like cut-over land
Hard cut by sorrow and the hand
Of circumstance that felled her dreams.
(Cut-over land had glinting streams
Long ago, before it died
With a spear sunk deep in its naked side.)
For eyes, two swamps so dull and deep
Nothing could ever make them weep.
Never does her stunted brain
Recognize but hurt or pain.
Her face is like the land that's left,
Of all but violence bereft.

## Dreamers

By J. ALPHEUS BUTLER.

Darktown folk
Do dream.
They sit in the front parlor
And talk.
Sometimes
About cotton
Or the new Ford
Or the new kid
Come to town;
Or Jim Jones' boy
At college.
But at other times
They just sit
And say nothing at all.

## Who's Who

E. Franklin Frazier, formerly the director of the Atlanta School of Social Work, writes on the "Pathology of Race Prejudice" in the June issue of the Forum.

J. R. E. Lee is the president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College, Tallahassee, Florida.

Claude McKay, hitherto known primarily as a poet, is soon
to have a novel out by Harper & Brothers.

Jesse O. Thomas is the southern field secretary of the National Urban League.

George Leonard Allen, Lewis Alexander, and Edward Sil-
vera are promising young Negro poets.

Langston Hughes' latest book of poems is Fine Clothes to the Jew.

Abel Meeropol is a frequent contributor to OPPORTUNITY.

Edwin L. Peterson is a student at the University of Pittsburgh.

J. Alpheus Butler is at present recovering from an illness
and writing in Tampa, Florida.

Leonard Darvin is a poet of Baltimore, Md.

Lucia Trent, author of Dawn Stars is a well known poet
and one of the editors of Contemporary Verse.

182

OPPORTUNITY

JUNE, 1927

THE EBONY FLUTE

GO Down Death—a poem-sermon by James Weldon Johnson, is given two pages in the April issue of *The American Mercury*. . . this poem is one of a collection that appears in a volume entitled God's Trombones that is now off the press. Although these poem-sermons are written in the manner of the natural ebullitions that arose from the souls of Negro preachers during slavery times, Mr. Johnson does not use dialect in them. He very ably defends this in the preface to the volume as follows:

> "At first thought, Negro dialect would appear to be the precise medium for these old-time sermons; however, as the reader will see, the poems are not written in dialect. My reason for not using the dialect is double. First, although the dialect is the exact instrument for voicing certain traditional phases of Negro life, it is, and perhaps by that very exactness, a quite limited instrument. Indeed, it is an instrument with but two full stops, pathos and humor. This limitation is not due to any defect of the dialect as dialect, but to the mold of convention in which Negro dialect in the United States has been set, to the fixing effects of its long association with the Negro only as a happy-go-lucky or a forlorn figure. . . . The second part of my reason for not writing these poems in dialect is the weightier. The old-time Negro preachers, though they actually used dialect in their ordinary intercourse, stepped out from its narrow confines when they preached. They were all saturated with the sublime phraseology of the Hebrew prophets and steeped in the idioms of King James English, so when they preached and warmed to their work they spoke another language, a language far removed from traditional Negro dialect. It was really a fusion of Negro idioms with Bible English; and in this there may have been, after all, some kinship with the innate grandiloquence of their old African tongues. To place in the mouths of the talented old-time preachers a language that is a literary imitation of Mississippi cotton-field dialect is sheer burlesque."

This preface is not only important because of its direct bearing on the poetry that Mr. Johnson, himself, has written, but it is a very timely commentary on all attempts at doing justice to Negro dialects . . . most white writers coin a set, invariable speech that in no way resembles the soft, fluid, ever-changing talk of the Negroes themselves. . . . The poem that appears in *The American Mercury* is strangely beautiful . . . may we be allowed the indulgence of quoting one stanza that we think is particularly lovely?

And Death heard the summons,
And he leaped on his fastest horse,
Pale as a sheet in the moonlight.
Up the golden street Death galloped,
And the hoofs of his horse struck fire from the gold,
But they didn't make no sound.
Up Death rode to the great, white throne,
And waited for God's command.

... the Viking Press is going to bring out a new edition of Fifty Years and Other Poems by James Weldon Johnson . . . . This, together with the Fall appearance of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man in The

Blue Jade Library, will bring about the very happy condition of having all Mr. Johnson's works again in print.

Nella Imes has written a novel called *Quick Sands* which is to be published by Knopf under her own name, Nella Larsen . . . . in the words of one of the contemporary white novelists, "It's pretty darned marvelous!" . . . . Dr. Rudolph Fisher has half finished his novel and has a contract with Knopf for it when it is finished. Knopf has been very sympathetically inclined towards Negro authors; anent—*The Weary Blues, Fine Clothes To the Jew, Fire in the Flint, Flight and now Nella Imes, Rudolph Fisher and James Weldon Johnson*. I understand that *Harper and Bros.* has accepted a novel by Claude McKay.

From San Francisco, California comes a charming note-written us by Julian E. Bagley in which he encloses a clipping from the *San Francisco Daily News* . . . . in unqualified praise Arthur S. Garbett says:—of the first J. Rosamond Johnson-Taylor Gordon recital of Negro spirituals:—

> The sheer beauty of the music carries him (Johnson) along, and the magical blend of humor and pathos in these works has in him an ideal interpreter, and in Taylor Gordon he himself has an ideal disciple. A sort of ecstacy drives these artists, and it rings true. The homely words often achieve a divine yet sophisticated symbolism to which the simple melodies add a mystic touch. The hushed voices in "Same Train" crooned pianissimo make the song expressive of a universal futility that transcends racial limits. And in "Roll the Old Chariot Along" again, we were made to feel the deep inner meaning latent in the words. And so it was in all they did.

... in Child Life for February Henry Purmort Eames, L.L.B., writes an article on Music of the Black Folk in which he says:—

> The Negro sang in a peculiarly fascinating harmony—not the harmony taught in books but harmony taught by their own hearts. Not a note or a word was written down, and many a song was composed on the spur of the moment when great joy or deep sorrow inspired the singer.

I find this a simple and beautiful legend to be instilled in the young mind . . . . Henry Eames is a Doctor of Music, a composer, a piano-lecturer, recitalist, teacher of piano and lecturer at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, and President of the Society of American Musicians. Speaking of educating the youth Roy L. French has written a text-book entitled *Recent Poetry for High Schools* in which he quotes poems by Negroes without stating the fact that they are Negroes . . . . it seems that he is concerned solely with the idea of their being poets regardless of race or color . . . . he says that James Weldon Johnson's Creation is the finest religious poem that has been written in America.

Porter Grainger has set one of Langston Hughes' blues to music and it is to be recorded on the New Brunswick records . . . .

Which reminds us that we have not kept our travelogue up to date . . . . Zora Neal Hurston is now in Florida doing some research work for Dr. Boaz of Columbia University . . . . Du Bose Heyward, author of Porgy is now

1927

OPPORTUNITY

123

By the by, the application of the Krigwa Players to present a one-act play in the coming Belasco Tournament has been cordially accepted. This tournament is a competitive presentation of one play each by twenty of the leading little theater groups throughout the country. The showing is scheduled for the week of May third at a Broadway theater whose name has not yet been announced.

Dr. Alain Leroy Locke has been host at the Primitive African Art Exhibit. . . . Theatre Arts Monthly presents this collection — the Blondiau collection. This group of fine pieces was assembled by a Belgian collector over a period of twenty-five years. It is said to be one of the best private collections of Congo Art there are. From the brochure which announces this exhibition comes this forceful truism about African art: Africa's art creed was Beauty in use. No tool of daily living was too small or too unimportant to be made with grace and with imagination . . . and a far cry there is from this world-old art to the very interesting work by two Negro students from Boston (whose names for the moment slip me) which is now on exhibition at the Whitney Studio Club.

Dr. Locke is preparing a pamphlet on four Negro poets: Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. . . . This is for Simon and Schuster, publishers of a series of Pamphlet Poets—I think Carl Sandburg, Natalie Crane and Edwin Markham are among some of the poets who have already been brought out. These publishers were fortunate enough to see the glitter of gold in the Cross-word Puzzle Fad and then by a more serious lodestone they were drawn into the publishing of Will Durant's Story of Philosophy, which has gone irretrievably into its hundred and forty-seventh thousand . . . but before it gets away from us—Theatre Arts Magazine is getting out a volume on world drama made up largely of essays having appeared in its issues. Dr. Locke's two articles on the Negro in the field of drama are being welded into one for this volume.

And about Claude McKay:—This quotation from a rather wistful letter written in the sun-drenched South of France:

> "I suffered a big loss when my suitcase of manuscripts (containing all of the poems I have written during the last four years, dictionaries, reference books, etc.) was stolen at Marseilles last summer. Luckily I had in a satchel the novel I was writing and some short stories.

> "At present I am devoting all my spare time to prose. I find poetry such an inadequate means of saying the things I have to say."

We are ever so thankful for the God-given satchel that saved the novel and short stories, however we cannot but tremble at the thought of the beauty that may have been

lost in the ill-fated suitcase. We are a little awed before the immensity of Claude McKay's outlook when he can say poetry is too small a medium for the expression of his thoughts . . . he who has so beautifully wooed and won the Muse of Poetry.

Speaking of novels, I wonder whether it makes very much difference that Albert and Charles Boni, publishers, did not award to anyone their thousand-dollar prize for the best Negro novel . . . we could be very wounded about it and make a perfect fool of ourselves, but as it is we are prone to be quite sensible and say that there was without doubt no one worthy of the prize. I should have liked to have seen some Negro write a novel worthy of this prize, but if there were no novels of merit, I am more than glad that the judges and publishers did not award the prize to a mediocre novel. That would have been an irreparable mistake . . . as it is, the great Negro writer may yet be given his just dues without first having to clean a historical blot from his escutcheon. . . . I hear that Rudolph Fisher is at work on a novel—Hear! Hear!

Langston Hughes' new book of poems has been receiving very good reviews . . . as an appropriate send-off for the book there comes the announcement of his having been awarded the John Keats Prize of twenty-five dollars by Palms Magazine for his group of poems, A House in Taos. Mark Van Doren was the judge. It will be remembered that this poem was the one that was awarded the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Prize for 1926. And this is about as good a time as any to remind young Negro poets who are still in college that there will be another award of the same prize for 1927 . . . for the past two years Negroes have won it. Poems must be mailed before May 15, 1927, to Witter Bynner, Box 1061, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

A new jazz symphony is to be performed at the Composers Concert at Carnegie Hall on April tenth. The symphony is by George Antheil, who for years has lived abroad. Mr. Antheil believes that Negro musicians are best adapted for the interpretation of his work and the W. C. Handy Orchestra will play it with the composer at the piano. On the same evening, Mr. Antheil will conduct his Ballet Mecanique . . . some critics have called his music noise . . . we don't know . . . perhaps it was the primitive in our soul that rose within us when we heard the crashing thunder of what Mr. Antheil had to say . . . anyhow . . . we liked it.

And so Spring comes creeping over the hill and the Urban League Conference meets in St. Louis . . . and we hope that a copy of the magazine will stray into the midst of the midlanders . . . perhaps if we call this month's pipings the middle-western tune . . . oh, just perhaps we may make one or two literary finds . . . at any rate, Greetings!

GWENDOLYN BENNETT.

## Who's Who

Rayford W. Logan is a professor at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia.

Elizabeth Whittemore is a New York poet and writer.

Lee Wallace of Topeka, Kansas, won third prize in OPPORTUNITY'S Second Annual Contest with the story in this issue.

William V. Kelly is the Industrial Secretary of the St. Louis Urban League.

Effie Lee Newsome of Birmingham, Alabama, is well known for her delightful child stories and verse.

Anita Scott Coleman of Los Angeles, California, is a frequent contributor to our pages.

Eugene Kinckle Jones is Executive Secretary of the National Urban League.

Gladys Carrion Gray, Leona M. Evans, and Inabel Burns Lindsay live in St. Louis, and write from the van-tage point of those in the know of things.

122

OPPORTUNITY

APRIL, 19

THE EBONY FLUTE

AS we passed a window on our way to this very type writer to write this very "Black Piccolo," as one of our friends so delightfully called our stint, we saw no less than a host of buds pushing their way through the indignant bark of winter . . . so if we seem a bit frolicsome and inclined to gambol a bit wantonly over literary meads, do be patient with us for there is so much of Spring in this early March day. . . .

It is with seasonal timeliness that Julia Peterkin's new novel, *Black April* makes its advent into the book stalls . . . a tale of Negro life, as Isabel Paterson puts it, "at the opposite extreme from Van Vechten's *Nigger Heaven*—" there are only Negroes in this new book by the author of *Green Thursday* and they are a folk nurtured and versed in the life of a remote Carolina plantation. Mrs. Peterkin ought to write well just such a novel, being born and bred on a Carolina plantation like to the one around which her story is woven. To us it smacks of *Little Colonel* days that this woman, who is one of the present-day writers who "count," owns and manages a real honest-to-goodness plantation. . . . Speaking of *Nigger Heaven* reminds us that Carl Van Vechten, its author, has returned from a trip to Hollywood, where he no doubt took a note or two on what cinema actors and actresses do in their spare time. Harry Salpeter writes a very enthusiastic account of an interview with Mr. Van Vechten for the *New York World* of March sixth. To me a more significant fact than Carl Van Vechten's having been to Hollywood is that in his cross-country jaunt he looked in on Indian life in New Mexico. . . . Taos, with its aura of Indian legend and history coupled with its present-day movement towards Art and Beauty, ought to furnish fine stuff for a novel of atmosphere as well as psychological research. He makes this cogent observation on the problem of at least two darker races and their adaptability to New World civilization:

> The Negro is progressive and adaptable. The Indian's civilization is based on repetition. As soon as the Indians leave school they run back to the pueblo and are Indians again. It may be hard for a white man to understand the Indian, but it is impossible for an Indian to understand white civilization.

Mr. Salpeter makes the comment that Mr. Van Vechten, contrary to custom, continues to be interested in *Nigger Heaven* even after its important birth. We can readily understand this. . . . There are many who would accuse Van Vechten of mere exploitation in his relations with Negroes prior to the appearance of his book about them. This is not true, for Mr. Van Vechten can cite example after example of Negroes for whom he has a lasting friendliness . . . . there are, too, a goodly number of Negroes to whom he has rendered invaluable service towards the achievement of those things their hearts have held dear. His has been a rather intimate knowledge of this little understood people—small wonder his interest in their chronicle, fashioned by his own hand, should linger a while. *Nigger Heaven* is now in its tenth American edition, while it is being published serially in the *Frankfurter Zeitung* in Germany. It is also to appear in France and in Sweden. . . . Mr. Van Vechten brings back the news from Hollywood that Cecil de Mille plans including Paul Robeson—if he is willing—in his cast of

Porgy. Speaking of Paul Robeson, he is now on concert tour in the South. He will be heard in the nation's capital on March thirtieth at the Auditorium. Surely there ought be place even in the breast of southern white people for the warm kindness of Paul Robeson's beautiful voice.

Paul Robeson's name doesn't necessarily call to mind *Black Boy*, the play in which he appeared not so long ago. . . . however, Jim Tully, its author, recently spoke to the *Inkslingers*, a literary group of Negroes in Los Angeles . . . we understand that he spoke to them about the play—we have no idea what he could have said about it except perhaps that it had been.

And about Negroes and plays and things . . . In Abraham's *Bosom*, which moved from the Village to the Garrick Theatre, had a brief triumphant run . . . . Stark Young, however, in the *New Republic*, for March second, reviews the play with acrimony. He has little of praise to offer for either actors or the show as an entirety . . . however, in the very middle of his acidity this confession is more or less squeezed from him:

> As I ponder this play it seems moving and profound. Certainly the course of its struggle is full of tragic despair, this poor, confused, high-souled creature beating out his life in vain against circumstance. There is, too, a certain wise balance of parts in the dramatic elements; the white people mean to be kind, but they are as lost in the midst of a race situation as the Negro is; they are moved now by human or affectionate impulses and now by blind racial instinct and an arbitrary, desperate sense of self-preservation.

> The climaxes in the play are strong and bold. I seem, as I think of it to have been present at a full, passionate story, told by a poet. Certainly this material that Mr. Green attempts is ambitious of power and devastation and beauty; we are in deep waters with such subject matter as he employs.

—so much for the words of a critic who comes to the final conclusion that he does not like this play, which most of his fellow-critics have given the high-sign of praise. . . . I feel particularly lucky to have been allowed to peep into a letter written Mr. Charles S. Johnson by Mr. Paul Green, the author of In Abraham's *Bosom* . . . and more than lucky to be allowed to quote therefrom:

> "Many thanks for your interest in the Provincetown production of Abraham. I'm glad that you find the play written with sympathy and understanding of one of our snarls of being alive. There are many, of course, but this particular one must affect you with pessimism more often than it does me, since you are keeping so much more closely in touch than I with the general changeful activity of the Negro in America. Still it doth afflict me most grievously, too. I hope that the fact that the South is beginning to be dimly aware of the truth that, as Abraham haltingly says, 'It's the man that count'—I hope that this fact is of some significance to us all. May I express thanks for the excellent magazine you are editing. Personally, I think it is one of the most interesting now appearing in the country. The way each month's library copy is worn here would surprise you."

—so much for a gentleman who is from the South and has a talent and a soul.

MARCH, 1927

OPPORTUNITY

89

Homes of the Freed by Rossa B. Cooley. New Republic, Inc., 1926. 199 pp. $1.00.

IN HER book *Homes of the Freed*, Miss Rossa B. Cooley has etched the growing self-respect and economic independence of the islanders of St. Helena against a background of ignorance, superstition, and poverty. Nor is it a study of the developing civic consciousness of these people alone, but it is a revelation of the missionary zeal of white women who would transplant at Penn School "those ideals of industrial training and community upbuilding associated with the names of Armstrong, Frisell, Buttrick, of Washington and Moton."

The death of one of the workers within one month of their arrival failed to dim the vision for the other; instead it made rather more imperative the study of the health problems of St. Helena, an island with 6,000 Negroes and, in 1904, not one physician nor nurse nearer than Beaufort, S. C.

In the first of the four parts of her story, Miss Cooley recounts not only her personal "administerings" to the sick of the community, but in vivid style she describes the gradual change from the use of "rubbin" and "drinkin'" patent nostrums to the willing visit to the school clinic. The investigation and combatting of disease by a nurse and resident physician of Penn School, assisted by the State Department of Health, and a mobilized community mark the climax in this campaign for better sanitary conditions.

Through her accounts of the extension work with a Community Class for Midwives the reader is impressed with the dignity, the loyalty, and the serious responsiveness of these women. His sympathy is enlisted for Violet, attractive but mindless, and stone blind besides; for Pinkie, "tall, very dark with skin like satin . . . her shapely head tied up in a white cotton cloth," mindless too; Bella Legare, entirely blind and crippled, but "no note of whine in her voice"; and for Mackie, able to walk only a few steps before falling, but so eager to learn that he would half crawl to school, depending upon the chance of a friendly lift or a short cut to lessen the ordeal of getting there. And like a hidden spring flows always the selfless energy of Penn teachers.

In the second part, entitled "The Bandage of Love," a more intimate account of the influence of Penn School upon the life of the older women of the community is given. The inspiration afforded the islanders by the school as an architectural accomplishment is stressed. Having explained the lack of opportunity for Negro women of the island to become homemakers, the author through personal anecdotes shows how interdependent the school and community are. Biographical touches of the women who have made the bridge between slavery and the years of freedom lend warmth and humor and prove that Rivena Wroten, the farmer, Aunt Satira, "always like a sunbeam," Mrs. Juno, whose management of the Sales House tests her ability as a "born manager," and her successor, Mrs. Virginia Brown, are all bound to Penn House with the "bandage of love" mentioned in the prayer, "Darlin Jesus, please to bind us all together with a bandage of love."

"From Slave Hut to Home," the title of Part III., is a long step. How long a stride is best measured by the description given of the "Street" by old Uncle Carolina, who recalled frequently the two rows of houses, the one chimney house, the one room. He remembered the moss bed in the loft with the one blanket used by the two children for "kiver," the board nailed up "side of the house" for the parents.

Compare this with the following picture suggested by one of the files from the office of Penn School:

"Size of house: Five rooms. Neatness: Good.

Neatness of yard: Good. Outbuildings: Two.

Neatness: Fair.

"Size of Farm: 22 acres. Crops: Corn, peas, sweet potatoes, cotton, sugar cane.

"Garden: About 20x30 feet. Woodland: About half an acre."

Now add to the picture St. Helena homes that won first the third and then the second prize in the National Better Homes Campaign in 1922 and 1923, respectively, in which St. Helena competed with 961 American communities.

Miss Cooley gives a brief account of the land ownership by the people of the island from 1865 until the present day. To her the home there today gives evidence not only of the economic development of the Negro, but also of his natural appreciation of color and beauty. But she feels that there are still problems of agricultural economy and education as serious as those of 1865.

The fourth and last chapter, under the caption "The Younger Generation," gives a more detailed review of the industries taught the girls of Penn School. A careful analysis of the problems of both teacher and taught is made. There is the definite attempt to develop the young woman in respect to her surroundings and to map out a course that will be of unquestionable value in helping her solve her problems, not so much as a domestic wage earner as a home-maker and mother, "the cultural leaders and farm women for their own rural communities."

Particularly significant are the closing paragraphs of *Homes of the Freed*, in which Miss Cooley, as in the beginning, refers to the prejudice against young Negroes. She feels that a better understanding can come only through knowledge and expresses the hope that the great experiment in democracy will win out when the younger white people realize" the conditions, the struggles, the successes of the oncoming generation of the black race, a struggle shared to its depths by the women of the race."

Here is sociological data handled lightly, yes, but with sincerity and clarity. Much of truth applicable to communities larger and more complex than St. Helena may be gleaned. Miss Cooley questions whether in St. Helena necessary lessons in economics will go hand in hand with lessons from books. She wonders whether the ownership of land will be retained and frankly asks whether the younger generation will continue the struggle that means real freedom. Serious questions, significant everywhere.

Bertha McNeil.

A Primer of Housing by Arthur C. Holden. Workers' Educational Bureau Press. 35c.

OF the many problems facing social workers, none is more vital and turbulent than housing. With overcrowding and congestion in urban centers, increased emphasis is placed on homeowners; and it is safe to say that no group suffers more from the lack of sufficient homes or information as to how they should purchase, than the Negro.

Many people want to be their own landlord but are at a loss to know how and why. After reading the *Primer of Housing* by Arthur C. Holden, Chairman New York Urban League and Consulting Architect of the New York State Housing Board, there would seem to be no excuse for him who knoweth not. It begins at the beginning; it defines in simple phrases technical real estate terms, commonly supposed to be understood only by realtors and lawyers, and describes how to buy and finance a home. It draws on cities like Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Boston and New York, for their experiences in meeting the needs of prospective homeowners, giving the reader the benefit of a wide range. The book is filled with gripping illustrations and anyone who is contemplating the purchase of a home will be much the wiser because of having read it. In view of the limited material on housing, it should be especially recommended to secretaries of organizations and persons of like character engaged in similar work.

James H. Hubert.

90

OPPORTUNITY

MARCH, 1927

THE EBONY FLUTE

By the same token that American Negroes are writing new books and publishing new magazines, Negroes in other parts of the world are throwing their literary caps into the reading public's ring . . . a new magazine has been published in Paris, France, by Negroes from the French Colonies. Its name is *Le Voix des Negres* . . . it was formed by a number of political and literary leaders in Paris. The committee announces its aims as follows:

"The preservation of the colored race; to com-
bat calumny and prejudices, and to tighten the at-
tachment of the Negro colonies to France."

... the editors of the magazine are proclaiming that Negroes are proud to be Negroes. This is in direct line with the new race consciousness among colored people of intelligence in America.

At one and the same time Paris continues to laud the
terspichorean arts of Josephine Baker, colored star of the
*Folies Bergere*. The Magazine Section of the *New York*
*World*, for January 9th, carries a full-page article on Miss
Baker, entitled *How an Up-to-date Josephine Won Paris*,
by Carl de Vidal Hunt. There is much tom-foolery in the
article about her undying belief in the power of a rabbit's
foot and a good deal of misstatement about the company
with which she first appeared in Paris, but even this rather
uninformed writer arrives at this beautiful conclusion about
a Negro girl, whose rise to envied stardom in the music
halls of Europe, has been so phenomenal:

> Her lithe, young body, looking like a Venetian bronze come to life, seemed to incarnate the spirit of unrestrained joy. It is a wild thing, yet graceful and harmonious—a demon unchained, yet delicate in its sleek, symmetrical beauty.

Miss Baker is barely over twenty years old and full of
all the youthful enthusiasms that such an age usually car-
ries with it. She loves clothes . . . it seems a divine
twitch of Fate that at present she wears only clothes de-
signed by Paul Poiret, one of the world's greatest designers
for women. . . . There is also another very famous Negro
woman who is dancing for Europeans. Djemil Anik, one
of France's colonists, is at present one of that country's
most famous interpretive dancers. . . . She has made an
extensive study of Indo-Chinese and Javanese dances and
costumes and it is said that she has one of the finest collec-
tions of dancing costumes in Europe. Mlle. Anik is a very
beautiful gold-colored woman with a stature that is at once
strong and of a graceful litheness. She speaks not one
word of English. . . . At present her tour takes her to
the largest theater in Munich . . . which reminds me
that *Black People*, an all-colored review, recently opened in
Berlin, Germany, at the *Metropole Theatre*. It is being
sponsored by Lonidoff and Sirota, Russian producers, who
took the *Chocolate Kiddies* abroad. Maud De Forest, who
went to Europe in the same company with which Josephine
Baker left America, is the star. Here's hoping that this
new company will not suffer the misfortunes of the ill-fated
*Chocolate Kiddies* who were stranded in a small Russian
village.

Fine Clothes to the Jew, Langston Hughes' new book of
poems, is off the press. The greater portions of the book are
given over to his studies in blues rhythms. He has been un-

afraid in his coining new things from old rhythms and age-
less things from new rythms. However, there are those
who will not like his blues poems . . . for them there are
poignant slices from life with which he has concerned him-
self. To those who do not see poetry in blues and spiritu-
als, I recommend *The Sport*, which I would say was one of
the finest poems I had ever read anywhere. If this book by
Mr. Hughes is as warmly received by the reading public as
was his first, *The Weary Blues*, which is now in its fourth
edition, his name as one of the accepted modernists in the
field of poetry will be unquestioned. The book is dedi-
cated to Carl Van Vechten, the author of *Nigger Heaven*.
. . . Distinct praise has gone to Symphoneseque, the short
story by Arthur Huff Fauset, which won the OPPORTUNITY
Short Story Contest last year. Frederic Taber Cooper, in a
review of *The Best Short Stories* of 1926, by Edward J.
O'Brien, pays this compliment in Brentano's Book Review:

> "By far the most signal achievement in this col-
lection is Symphoneseque, by Arthur Huff Fauset.
It is a Negro story by a Negro author, a study of
primitive reactions to the stirrings of religion and
of love. Cudjo is a natural-born pagan, and his
desires are simple and primary. His greatest de-
sire is for Amber Lee. . . . And the story—no,
technically, it isn't a story, it is rather a verbal
symphony—tells of his desire, his temptation, and
his final conquest of self. And it tells it in a pas-
sionate, cadenced prose that beats and throbs like
the primitive beat of heathen drums in an African
jungle, sweeping the reader along in a breathless,
aching sympathy, a tense sharing in exotic, pri-
meval emotions such as hark back to just one
other book in my own range of memories: Hal-
dane McFall's *House of the Sorcerer*. Arthur
Huff Fauset is a name to be carefully registered
on the tablets of memory, for he is bound to do
some surprising work in the near future."

... This endorsement reads exceedingly well when cou-
led with the splendid send-off Mr. O'Brien, himself, gave
to Symphoneseque in the preface to *The Best Short Stories*
of 1926 . . . right here it might be well to drop a gentle
hint that some of our writers finish up that novel they have
started and send it in to *The Woman's Home Companion*
—*John Day Company Novel Contest* . . . the outside
date is July first . . . the address—25 West 45th Street,
New York City . . . there are no internal phrases to the
subject matter nor the contestants. Of particular note is
the item that the *Boni Novel Contest* closing date, which
was originally fixed for last August thirtieth, has been re-
opened until July first. . . . By the way, we under-
stand that *The Fire in the Flint* will shortly be published in
French . . . and that Nella Imes is now lengthening a
rather good novel for Knopf. But to go back to literary
contests and their awards. . . . *Harper Brothers* is offer-
ing its annual *Intercollegiate Literary Contest*. The closing
date is March fifth and prizes of $500, $300 and $200 are
to be given to the best piece of English prose written by an
under-graduate in any American college or university . . .
and since the inhabitants of Great Britain maintain that we,
as a people (i. e., the great American *people*) do not speak
English, this contest is the equivalent of a thesis in Russian
or French . . . the judges of this contest are Henry
Seidel Canby, Elinor Wiley and William McFee. . . .
One easily remembers here Countee Cullen's and Langston

92

OPPORTUNITY

MARCH, 1927

SURVEY OF THE MONTH

In these days when so much is being said about race relations, it is interesting to note what some groups are doing about it.

The New York Urban League has, for the past year, held inter-racial meets in its Assembly Room where frank discussions on what the attitude of groups should be toward each other are carried on. The Fellowship of Reconciliation under the leadership of Clarence V. Howell has perhaps given more cooperation in this work of practical race relations than any other organization. Weekly it conducts tours through Harlem, visiting welfare agencies and centers of Negro culture. These trips and conferences serve to acquaint members of the races with each other and make for inter-racial good will.

Florence Mills' "Black Bird" company now playing in London, seems destined to a long run and sure success, by royal sanction, as the Prince of Wales is reported to have attended nine performances of the revue.

Under the auspices of the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, the Hampton Institute choir of eighteen voices recently gave a concert in the chamber music auditorium of the Library of Congress. The program was well received by an audience that included many Washington dignitaries.

It is reported that in the past three months more than a hundred colored persons have left New York for permanent establishment in Liberia.

Roy Cole, colored elevator operator of Kansas City, Mo., has attracted much attention by a water color drawing made by him of the Birth of Christ. He paints during his leisure hours in the basement of the building in which he works. In 1907 he painted his first picture, one of the late Bishop John J. Hovan. Since then, he has made portraits of many notables, including General John J. Pershing, and Manuel Mura, the famous Spanish singer.

Mr. R. L. Andrews, a retired grocery man of Houston, Tex., has bought in Los Angeles, Cal., what is considered the finest residence owned by a colored person West of Chicago. He paid $30,000 for his purchase in one of the most fashionable of Los Angeles districts, and has for his neighbors William Gibbs McAdoo and Hal Roach.

Twenty-five white journalists, business men, labor leaders, ministers and other creators of public opinion were taken on a tour of understanding through "Negro Philadelphia" by the Armstrong Association and the American Friends' Service, in an effort to show them those aspects of Negro life with which the average white person is least acquainted.

Leonard Kip Rhinelander, scion of a wealthy New York family, has for a second time lost his suit for annulment of his marriage to his Negro wife, Alice B. Jones Rhinelander.

W. M. Glenn, colored, retiring Captain of Detectives in Los Angeles, Cal., was recently presented a diamond studded badge as a mark of esteem and appreciation by the members of his force.

The Ebenezer Baptist Church of Lowell, Mich., has requested the Chief of Police of that city to return a $39.30 gift made to the church by the local Ku Klux Klan. Thirty white-robed men attended the church services one Sunday evening, and left the money in an envelope marked: "K. K. K. Greetings."

Charles Smith, white doorman at a theater in St. Paul, Minn., was found guilty of race discrimination in refusing to admit three Negro women to the main floor of the theater, directing them to the balcony although their tickets called for seats in the orchestra, where there were vacancies at the time.

Among the fifteen members of the 1926 football team of Colgate College, Hamilton, N. Y., awarded the varsity letter, was Raymond Vaughn, colored stellar halfback from Oil City, Pa.

At the recent annual Elementary Schools indoor track and field championship meet held in New York, one of the four record performances was made by a colored lad. Douglas Washington, Negro sprinter of P. S. 184, Manhattan, ran forty yards in five and three-fifths seconds, thus clipping a fifth of a second from the record set in 1920.

France has awarded the Croix de Guerre with Palm to a colored woman who, under heavy fire, carried ammunition to a group of Sudanese at Meknes, Morocco.

Harry Francis Liscomb, twenty-one year old author of *The Prince of Washington Square*, will have a new book out in the summer—*Missing Daughters* is the title and Stokes the publishers.

Dr. C. R. Lewis, prominent physician and surgeon of Akron, Ohio, recently solved a medical problem declared unsolvable by twentyone white physicians who had diagnosed the case. Dr. Lewis, whose diagnosis was later substantiated by a bacteriological examination, revealed the case as one of leprosy, an affliction hitherto unevienced in Akron with its 234,000 population. Later Dr. Lewis was asked to discuss leprosy before 600 other physicians.

A Fellowship of Reconciliation Group Visiting the New York Urban League.

UNITY

339

THE EBONY FLUTE

EVERYTHING seems all agog among dusky cliff-
dwellers these days . . . first and foremost, I believe,
is the opening of *Porgy* as a *Theatre Guild* produc-
tion . . . the dramatization of the novel of the same name
by its author, DuBose Heyward and his wife Dorothy
Heyward . . . a tale of Negro-life in "Catfish
Row" of Charleston, S. C. The novel, which came out
two seasons ago, was as beautiful a piece of writing as I
have ever seen . . . and this superfluous good-will about it
is not only shared by myself; most literary critics have
not yet done with grumbling because it did not win the
*Pulitzer Prize*. The cast of the play bears in its list the
names of Frank Wilson and Rose McClendon. Both have
flashed across the proscenium with meteor-like surety and
glory. . . . The press has done some pretty capers now
that the first night, October tenth, has come and passed . . .
Allan Dale of the *New York American* enthusiastically
proclaims:—

"Certainly a more unusual and characteristic scene has rarely been staged. It was something new to most of us—may I say, to all of us. And it lived so completely that one forgot that it was a mere Broadway theatre. It was Charleston. It was Catfish Row. It was the colored quarter, seen intimately, graphically, photographically. . . .

"But it was all so beautifully done. It is artistically a gem. It had such thorough understanding, such flashes of remarkable color, such energy and such repression at the same time. The staging by Rouben Mamoulian could not have been finer and the sets by Throckmorton deserve a paragraph all by themselves.

"Among the actors I may mention Westley Hill, who was Jake to the life, Percy Verwayne, Frank Wilson—the Porgy—Evelyn Ellis and Rose McClendon. And I insist on my enthusiastic approval to Leigh Whipper, who played the ‘crab man’ too gorgeously for words. The entire cast was so excellent that it is difficult to make selections for commendation".

Percy Hammond of the *New York Herald-Tribune*, who by the by but a few months ago voted that Rose McClendon and Frank Wilson should be named the finest actors that last season’s Broadway presented writes:—

"No harm has come to Mr. Heyward's novel *Porgy* in its adventure among the perils of the drama. In fact, the story's rich substance and manner have been intensified by their contact with the *Theater Guild*, and even the most devout admirers of the book find their favorite undefiled. Dramatized by the author himself, touched up in the Guild's efficient laboratory and acted faithfully by Negro players, *Porgy* is a fusion of two arts that are usually discordant." He even goes so far as to say as his last rapier thrust:—

"No doubt it is traitorous to say so, but the fact remains
that the only bad actors in 'Porgy' are white" . . . even the
usually sardonic pen of Alexander Woolcott, dramatic
critic for *The Morning World*, gives *Porgy* this send-off:—

"Except for the isolated masterpiece *The Emperor Jones*
this *Porgy* is the first good job the American Theater has
done with the Negro, and certainly it is the first fine per-
formance of a play that I have ever seen given by a Negro
troupe. For, with a few exceptions, all the characters of
*Porgy* are colored folk and the Guild production uses no
bungt cork. . . . The first scene, with a whole chattering,
derisive neighborhood peering down on the craps game,
deliberately goes out after Mr. Belasco's scalp—and, I
might add, comes home with it. For this scene and all

340

OPPORTUNITY

of *Porgy* suggests what, in the same hands, *Lulu Belle* might have been.

"There is not enough room here to make mention of all the individuals in the troupe who are good enough. Yet room somehow must be made to say something of the beautiful work of Frank Wilson as Porgy himself, and of Georgette Harvey as Maria. . . There is only just room to tell you that Porgy is pronounced a hard "g" and to say again that the Guild has begun its tenth season magnificently."

And so . . . I chanced to be in the *Club Ebony* on the opening night of *Porgy* when Rose McClendon and a party of her friends came in. I went over to speak to her and ask her "how the opening night went." . . . I found her very gracious and lovely—a person who seems to radiate sincerity and charm. . . . She said Mr. Heyward and his wife were extremely well-pleased with the opening. She turned with infinite beauty of possession to a handsome gentleman, saying "Do meet my husband" . . . and as I spoke to him I thought to myself how wonderful it must be to be married to so talented and yet simple a woman . . . they each beamed upon the other in a most engaging manner.

And about this *Club Ebony* . . . Mr. Pinckett, one of the co-owners (and by the way, Mr. Lloyd Thomas, the husband of Edna Thomas of the original *Lulu Belle* cast, is the other one) said to me, "I was trying to decide what to name the club when I picked up the *Opportunity Magazine* and saw your column and like a flash I decided to name the club 'ebony' . . . and so *Club Ebony* it stands. . . . I went up to see the new night club with Aaron Douglas, for he has done the mural decorations . . . and right marvelous they are, indeed. . . . In warm blues, oranges and yellows he has depicted the Negro from jungles on up to the modern jazz era. The figures are done in the characteristic Douglas manner and are extremely well-suited to the club. I must say that few cabaretos or night clubs are more spacious and well ventilated nor have I often heard a better dance orchestra. I have heard many glamorous tales of the opening night and have by this time begun to bite my nails in anguish at not having been there. There were many notables on the first night . . . Carl Van Vechten, Madame A'Lelia Walker, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, Eric Walrond, Jessie Fauset and goodness knows who else . . . it is a beautiful place and one where it ought to be quite easy to have a good-time . . . at any rate, I hope it will be a success. I understand that on Friday, October fourteenth, "the press" is to be entertained by the management . . . and on Wednesday, October nineteenth, there is to be a party there given by the N. A. A. C. P.

Speaking of opening nights, I am reminded that October fifteenth is opening night of the *Dark Tower Tea Room*. . . . Madame A'Lelia Walker is fostering the idea of having an eating place where people who write may gather to discuss their work and topics pertaining thereto . . . and where people who don't write may have a bite to eat among things and folks literary. It seems like a mighty good idea to me. . . .

And now for the greatest bit of information of all—Dr. Du Bois has written another novel which is to be published by Harcourt, Brace and Company. I understand that it is to be a tale of Negro life in Harlem . . . surely, this is something to look forward to. . . . As yet the publication date is not given to the public. Speaking of Dr. Du Bois' novel I am reminded of Eric Walrond's new book which is listed among Boni and Liveright's fall publications. . . . It is to be named *Big Ditch* and is a story of Panama . . . conjecturing from the title I arrive at the idea that it might have something to do with the Panama Canal which the Negroes call "a big ditch." . . .

Miguel Covarrubias' *Negro Drawings* is being brought out by Knopf. They ought to be exceedingly clever, if

24

OPPORTUNITY

JANUARY, 1928

THE EBONY FLUTE

THE fluter has been far afield this month. . . . We had the rare pleasure of attending the *Stock-Taking and Fact-Finding Conference on the American Negro* which was held in Durham, North Carolina, December seventh to ninth. . . . There was an eye-opener, indeed! First of all they actually did find facts at this conference . . . and facts on every phase of Negro life in America—religion, work, wages, business, commerce manufacturing, politics, education, health, the press and the outlook of Negro youth. This latter part of the program showed an interesting departure from accepted conventions and conferences . . . here the race leaders dared to inject new blood into their discussions by inviting some of the fledglings to participate in their stock-taking and fact-finding. Those who know or have heard of Eugene Corbie of New York will know that he did not bite his tongue on the question of religion, politics or education; those who know the calm surety of Allison Davis now at Hampton Institute know that he certainly punctured a few myths in his level, exquisite voice; and those who know John P. Davis, publicity manager of Fisk University, know that with cryptic tongue and his inimitable sang froid he well told the leaders of American Negro life today exactly what he thought of them. The air as well as the discussion was charged with electricity but who can deny the facts found—pleasant or otherwise? But on the other hand the recognized race leaders had their say: Dr. Mordecai Johnson, President of Howard University, caught and held the audience with his eloquent appeal for the faith of our fathers. Eugene Kinckle Jones, Secretary of the National Urban League, stirred the company with the earnestness of his words; W. E. B. Du Bois shattered a few fables with his piercing analysis of existing political systems; W. A. Robinson, State Supervisor of Teacher Training and High Schools in Raleigh, told the bitter truth about Negro education in the South . . . oh, it was a long and noble list of names of people who shared the treasure of their knowledge with those who had come to hear them speak . . . over and above it all was the moving spirit of the men who caused this conference to be . . . W. G. Pearson, C. C. Spaulding, and James E. Shepard . . . and just the mere contemplation of those three names calls forth a flood of memory of the marvelous things they have done for and with the community at Durham . . . for thirty-odd years a group of some twenty-two men in Durham have worked diligently toward the high ideal of establishing a truly beautiful community and these three men have acted somewhat as leaders in the struggle. And right well have they succeeded—here we have Negroes owning $175,473.00 worth of land; $758,218.00 worth of buildings, and $602,009.00 worth of stock and equipment . . . to say nothing of the fact that they are the sole owners of ninety-five businesses maintaining 2,105 employees. I came away from the Southland with my heart filled with courage and a great, beautiful belief in the Negro race . . . I treasure one rare moment of beauty from the rank and file of my busy days in North Carolina—seldom have I seen anything so beautiful as the hills there as they raised their sleepy heads out of the early mists of the morning . . . It was as though the earth had wrapped so much guay tulle of a soft purple hue around her shoulders!

All too soon our trip was over and we came rushing back this way. . . . Philadelphia was all in an uproar Sunday, December eleventh, over the fact of Dr. Barnes'

having the *Bordentown Singers* at the Foundation. . . . A chorus of thirty-odd voices gave a rare treat to a carefully chosen audience. They were trained and conducted by F. J. Work, formerly of Fisk University. Never have I heard the spirituals so beautifully sung. Mr. Work has done much to preserve the true character of these songs of worship as they were sung in the Negro churches of other years and right well has he succeeded. Mr. Work as done a great deal of research work on the subject of Negro spirituals . . . some of the spirituals that these children sang were new to almost every one present—*Keep Inchin' Along; Good Lord I Done Done What You Told Me to Do; and Rise Up Shep. . . .* Mr. Work made a delightful remark about this latter one. He said that his chorus would sing a Christmas Carol that he considered quite as beautiful as any of the famous carols that had been given the world by the English and the German . . . he was indeed right. Dr. Barnes gave a splendid speech introductory to the children's singing, tracing the origin of the spirituals from the beautiful African chants on through their contact with Christianity during slavery days to their present popularity as a true work of art . . . he made the statement that he considered the spirituals the only true art that had been given the world by America . . . the greater portion of his audience was white, too. No one can doubt Barnes' genuine sympathy and belief in the Negro once they have heard him talk about their spirituals. Then too, Professor John Dewey, dean of American authorities on Education and Psychology, was present and gave a short talk expressing his appreciation for the opportunity of hearing such beautiful music and corroborated Dr. Barnes' statements of the distinction of the Negro's gift to the world.

All this talk about spirituals reminds me that Paul Robeson is making a tremendous success of his European tour . . . it is reported that people are being turned away from his Parisian concerts.

*Show-Boat*, Florenz Ziegfeld's new musical vehicle featuring Jules Bledsoe, has truly surpassed its fondest hopes of success in the provinces. So well taken was it in Philadelphia that it is to remain over another week. . . . After a glorious run *In Abraham's Bosom* has left Broadway. . . . *Porgy* still draws record-breaking crowds, although moved to *The Republic Theater* . . . which reminds us that the *New York Times* for Sunday, December fourth, carried an able article by Dorothy Heyward, co-author of the dramatic version of *Porgy* . . . it was entitled "Porgy's Native Tongue" and discusses the beautiful but intricate Negro dialect of South Carolina called Gullah . . . folklore redounds with tales about the interesting Negroes who inhabit the islands off the coast of South Carolina and speak this interesting language.

Leslie Pickney Hill has written a dramatic history of *Toussaint L'Ouverture* which is published by The Christopher Publishing House in Boston . . . of it Agness Replier says:—

"No American Negro had hitherto attempted a work of any such range, elevation and artistic merit as this. Mr. Hill has told the story of one of the most stirring and surprising epochs in the history of the western world in his own way . . . a rather new and daring way."

I understand that Rudolph Fisher has completed the manuscript of his novel . . . it is to be called *The Walls of Jericho*.

*God's Trombones* is listed among the fifty best illustrated books published during the last year. . . . Aaron Douglas did the illustrations.

As we go to press Christmas is in the air and we wish you all a very merry Christmas and a glad New Year.

Gwendolyn B. Bennett.

FEBRUARY, 1928

OPPORTUNITY

55

Investigators, four of whom are white, should be so unan-
mous in their findings and conclusions. There is no
minority report.

A concise statement in the preface reveals clearly the
situation. "They found the problem in Haiti to consist not
in individual instances of misused power, but in the fun-
damental fact of the armed occupation of the country.
Any good done by high-minded officials does not touch
this bottom fact. . . ." Remember that. If this premise
is correct, the conclusion is inevitable: The Occupation
should cease.

In proving that no justification for intervention existed,
Dr. Paul Douglas of the University of Chicago agrees sub-
stantially with M. Dantes Bellegarde in his article in the
December *OPPORTUNITY*. Indeed, M. Bellegarde declared
at the same time that the views expressed in *Occupied
Haiti* coincided with those that he holds.

From this point of view, then, the present report adds
little that is not already known to readers of *OPPORTUNITY*.
The great purpose served by the book is the collection in
convenient form of facts, statistics, and opinions to sup-
port one's conclusions. Until its appearance one had to
wade through copies of *The Nation, The New Republic*,
one or two other liberal journals, and the colored maga-
zines in order to assemble proof against the Occupation.
The rest of the press had been engaged in a "conspiracy
of silence" not to condemn the Occupation.

The most important contributions are probably the "Con-
clusions and Recommendations" and the "Law in the
Case". After we have theoretically kicked out the Occu-
pation, we must have a plan of government to put into im-
mediate operation. The *modus vivendi* submitted by the
entire group of investigators will probably meet the ap-
proval of a majority of Haitians and should commend
itself to all except the most rabid of American im-
perialists.

Particularly pertinent, in view of the Havana
Conference, is the "Law in the Case". These con-
clusions of twenty-four representative lawyers, issued by
the Foreign Policy Association in 1922, should be respect-
fully submitted to the American delegation headed by
Mr. Charles E. Hughes. For, among the "proposals which
the International Commission of Jurists neatly and dex-
terously side-stepped in order to allow them to come be-
fore the Havana conference were the following:

From Haiti—"Any action carried out by a state, whether
by means of diplomatic pressure or by armed force, in
order to force its will upon that of the other state, con-
stitutes intervention".* It will be interesting to note
whether the jurists will "neatly and dexterously side-step"
this question again or whether they will find a "Higher
Law".

Back in 1899 when the United States was hesitating as
to its annexation of the Philippines, Rudyard Kipling
helped to decide the issue with his instantly popular poem,
"The White Man's Burden". Some of his lines are
peculiarly fitting at the present time in Haiti.

"Take up the White Man's Burden,
Ye dare not stoop to less—
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness,
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you."

After reading *Occupied Haiti* we fear that a negative
weight will have to be discovered to permit the Haitians
to weigh the American God and the American people.

Rayford W. Logan.

* The Washington Star, December 11, 1927.

THE EBONY FLUTE

WELL, we have come deliciously close to the workings
of the present day drama in the last day or two....
one of those "big moments" that come only in the
life of an actor stalked through our office with almost phan-
tom tread.... Miss Dorothy Embry of the OPPORTUNITY office
corps who had for nights upon night, played the part of one
of the merry throng in the caste of Porgy came into sudden
fame when for six glorious performances she played the
part of Crown's Bess.... Miss Evelyn Ellis, the regular
actress in the part, was indisposed for a day or two....
endless days of rehearsing understudy lines seldom receive
their just praise... being an understudy is such a thank-
less job! Upon Miss Ellis' return to the caste The Thea-
tre Guild presented Miss Embry with a handsome check
as a token of their appreciation for her having played the
part in the star's absence. And so we go doggedly about
our work for another span after a few tremors of excite-
ment.... Gee it must be great to be an actress!!!

Which reminds us that Wallace Thurman of the caste of
Porgy has written a play of Harlem life. . . . I have heard
that it is very good and that negotiations are on foot for
its purchase. . . . I understand that it is to be a Broadway
production. At this writing a tentative title for the play is
Black Mecca. Should this play receive a Broadway pro-
duction a great precedent will be established, namely,
that a Negro has a right at least to attempt to portray his
own drama of existence.

We were very interested in attending the *Exhibition of Fine Arts by Negro Artists* that was held under the auspices of the Harmon Foundation and the Commission on the Church and Race Relations Federal Council of Churches. One saw there many names one had known before: Laura Wheeler Waring, Aaron Douglas, Alan Freeelon, William Edouard Scott and Augusta Savage. For the most part the work exhibited was surprisingly academic with but few new departures from the beaten track of Art as it is taught in the general run of American art schools. Mrs. Laura Wheeler Waring's work stood out for its sheer technical proficiency. . . . Her canvas entitled *Head of a Young Girl* was done in lush, warm color and I wondered that it had not been awarded the prize rather than *Anna Washington Derry* which did receive the award. Mrs. Waring deserved this prize as a fit benison for the years she has toiled relentlessly. Each of Mrs. Waring's seven canvasses were ably painted with a sure hand. By far the most unusual and original work of the entire exhibit was that of Sargent Johnson. . . . The porcelain head entitled *Sammy* was awarded a special prize of two hundred and fifty dollars . . . this charming bit of statuary was sold within a surprisingly short time to Mrs. Alexander. . . . There were one or two very fine etchings by Albert Smith who has been working in Paris for several years . . . and by the way he is in America at this writing . . . his etchings have received high acclaim among art critics in Paris. He has exhibited in several of the noted Paris Salons. *The Schooners* by Palmer C. Hayden was again on exhibit . . . this is the painting which received First Award in Fine Arts of the Harmon Awards for Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes for 1926. . . . Hale W. Woodruff, winner of the second Harmon award in Fine Arts for 1926. writes from Paris that Mr. Hayden has recently had an exhibit there which received very favorable comment.

And books . . . Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois' novel to be pub-
lished about March fifteenth by *Harcourt, Brace and Com-
pany* is to be called *Dark Princess* and is the tale of a
young Negro doctor, driven from the country by prejudice,

56

OPPORTUNITY

FEBRUARY, 1928

who goes to Germany and there meets a dark Indian princess with whom he falls in love. . . . March fifteen is the date set for several of the books written recently by Negro authors. . . . Big Ditch by Eric Walrond will be published on that date. . . . Mr. Walrond's book is not a novel but is a non-fictional study of the history of the Panama Canal. Home To Haxlem, a full-length novel by Claude McKay, has had its publication date changed from the fall to the early spring, too. Which reminds us that we received but a few days ago a very charming letter from Mr. McKay in which he enclosed a clipping from Petit Provencal. "Severine" writes a column entitled Mon frere Cham in which she mentions the fact that Rene Maran, author of Batoula, wrote a very bitter article for the Journal du Peuple in which he retraces the sad but meritorious career of Colonel Martenol who suffered so many injustices because of his color. Severine goes on to trace the race situation in many different countries telling in the course of her article of the lynching of Leonard Wood in Kentucky . . . finally she asks in satirical despair, Des barbares, ces Americains-la? Ah! certes oui! However, she concludes that the Europeans may not speak with too much scorn of America's barbarity for have they not the memory of the Congo atrocities and the gruesome tale of the four peasants who were buried alive in Pologne. Severine is one of the best known Parisian journalists.

And to return to books . . . Nella Larsen's *Quicksand* has for its publication date March thirtieth. *In the Valley and Other Carolina Plays* by Paul Green, author of *In Abraham's Bosom* has recently been published by the *Samuel French Publishing Company*. . . , among other plays of colored folk this book contains *The No-count Boy*, the play which won first place in the *Belasco Little Theatre Tournament* a year or two ago. *Black and White: An Anthology of Washington Verse*, edited by J. C. Bryars is on the book-stands now . . . this book contains both white and colored poets . . . although it is edited by a white man there are more Negroes in the volume than whites.

There is a goodly assortment of contest announcements this month. . . . *Contemporary Verse*, a monthly, offers. Gladys Shaw Erskine Quatrain Prize of ten dollars and a year's subscription to *Contemporary Verse* for the best quatrain on any subject submitted to the magazine before midnight, February first . . . also the Benjamin Musser Prize of twenty dollars for the best poem not over thirty-four lines in any poetic form including free verse on any theme submitted before midnight, April first . . . the address of *Contemporary Verse* is 107 South Mansfield Avenue, Margate, Atlantic City, New Jersey . . . and so, young poets, get busy!

The second issue of *Black Opals*, the voice of the New Negro group in Philadelphia, was out for Christmas. . . . Folks interested in the literary output of the young Negro writers will be glad that this word-child continues to thrive. I had the rare pleasure of being asked to be their guest editor for this issue and so I watched it grow from the first stages of manuscript infancy to its present happy debut before its readers. . . . I understand that the *Black Opals* have been asked to visit the *Quill Club* in Boston in the spring of the year. Such interchange is good . . . and mayhap some year both of these groups with one or two of New York's younger, newer Negroes will get together and go to visit the *Ink Slingers* in California. Which gives us an opportunity to make a pretty bow of thanks for the lovely card with "Greetings from California" which Julian Bagley sent to *The Ebony Flute* for its Christmas.

GWENDOLYN B. BENNETT.

CORRESPONDENCE

Benjamin Brawley

Mr. Benjamin Brawley, prominent author and educator, whose recent declination of the second Harmon Award for Education evoked many interesting queries sends a letter more fully explaining his reasons for declining the honor.

First of all, let us be clear about a matter of simple fact. The letter informing me that the second award in Education had been given to me by the Harmon Foundation came to me Saturday, January 7. In the course of the afternoon I wired that I declined the award. At the time I knew no other recipient; the full list was not published until Monday morning. So nothing personal entered into my decision. Later on I realized that even the Harmon awards were not altogether free from personal influence or a biased estimate; and then I was doubly glad that I decided as I did.

In the discussion that followed my refusal of the award, it was said in some quarters that I was prompted by a spirit of egotism. I am sorry that such was the impression; but of course whenever a man makes his own decisions and acts upon them, there are some people who will misunderstand him. As a matter of fact, there were some very clear points of principle involved; and I did not feel that I could accept the award without stultifying my work for twenty years as a teacher.

First there was the matter of liberty of action, or I might say, of freedom of conscience. We glorify this in the schools; why should we not carry our teaching into life? There was no reason why I should feel forced to accept a Harmon award. If I did not deem it best, if I did not feel that it was right that I should accept, I certainly had the right to refuse. Jesus Christ, I have learned, taught us independence in thinking and acting.

Another matter has to do with one's ideal of excellence. "Follow the Gleam" is one of the mottoes in our schools; and very recently I have been reading with a class what Arnold had to say about culture as the study of perfection. This point, however, has been handled by a former student of mine in words upon which I can not improve. Said he in writing to a paper that had criticized my position: "For a man striving to attain the ideal of perfection in his field to be branded, or to allow himself to be branded with any other aim than perfection, causes him to lose hisken, his horizon, and all those things he preaches and teaches. Life is not a matter of dollars and cents, nor the acceptance or acquisition of one hundred dollar prizes because we can press them into use; it should rather be a struggle to attain and maintain the highest degree of perfection in whatever line of endeavor one pursues."

Those are the main things. I will not deny, however, that there were one or two other things that were not exactly germane to the subject, but that nevertheless were in the background of my thinking and to some extent influenced my decision. One is the whole basis on which prizes and awards have been given in recent years. In literature especially there has been undue emphasis on the hectic and sensational; and the same may be said of music. I have said also that at the time of my refusal I did not know who it was who received the first award.

122

OPPORTUNITY

APRIL, 1928

THE EBONY FLUTE

WE hasten to welcome another group of creative workers to the fold. . . . *Book and Bench*, comprising four writers of verse, five prose writers, two composers of music and one painter, has been organized in Topeka, Kansas, since last fall. They plan publishing a year-book, entitled *Urge*, early in May. . . . The number grows. . . . The Quill Club in Boston, The Ink-Slingers in California and Black Opals in Philadelphia . . . to say nothing of the many groups in New York.

*Uncle Tom's Cabin*, the American cinema featuring James B. Lowe, a Negro, in the part of Uncle Tom, has been enthusiastically received in England. In December it began its run at the London Pavilion, Piccadilly Circus. Mr. Lowe appears in person in a prologue to the picture in which there are real Negroes singing spirituals. *The Glasgow Bulletin, The Illustrated Graphic, Cinema, The Daily Chronicle*, and *Reynold's* give unmeasured acclaim to Mr. Lowe's acting. A special benefit performance of this moving picture was held on Sunday, January the twenty-ninth. The proceeds of the performance were given in aid of the Mayor of Westminster's Flood Relief Fund. The program included such internationally known Negro entertainers as The Three Eddies, Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, The Four Harmony Kings and none other than Josephine Baker who "flew" over from Paris for the occasion.

Lawrence Brown, partner of Paul Robeson and former accompanist of Roland Hayes has left Paris for London where he will give several concerts. Thence he will go to Cannes and Vienna where he will fill several drawing-room engagements.

Forbes Randolph's *Kentucky Jubilee Choir* are to be heard with "Roxy" over Radio Station W.J.Z. on Sunday evenings. The jubilee choir is made up of eight male voices that were picked from an audition of five hundred voices from all over the country. It has been said that the audition for the chorus cost about ten thousand dollars. These singers have seventy-five songs in their repertoire. . . . *The Dixie Jubilee Singers* under the direction of Miss Eva A. Jessye, author of *My Spirituals*, gave concerts on Saturday, Monday and Wednesday during the week of February eleventh to eighteenth at the Wannamaker Store in New York City. Miss Jessye's book will be remembered with delight by those who have seen it. By the way, *Forty Negro Spirituals* by Clarence Cameron White has been published by the Theodore Presser Company in Philadelphia. This book is well edited and many of the arrangements are more charming than those to which we have become accustomed. Clarence Cameron White has just been awarded First Prize for Distinguished Achievement as a Violinist and Composer by the Harmon Foundation. At the same time Dr. Nathaniel Dett was awarded First Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Music . . . the two awards were made because there was no musical award made last year. No longer ago than Sunday afternoon, February nineteenth, we had a small group of people, both colored and white, to the Foundation where he spoke on "African Art". . . . With

the beautiful pieces from the Barnes collection as examples of what is best in African art it is quite evident that Dr. Barnes succeeded in convincing his audience that the Africans truly had an art form which bore easy comparison with the best in Greek and Egyptian art. But to go back to our meeting Dr. Dett. . . . We had always just missed him on every occasion so that we were delighted to run upon him in this unexpected fashion. He was with Alan Freelon . . . who, by the way, has just completed the illustrations for a score by Dr. Dett . . . and it is to Mr. Freelon that I owe this glad surprise. Dr. Dett has the simplicity that goes with true greatness. Youth pervades his talking and thinking. He was as avid a searcher into the truths and beauties of plastic art as he must be into the hidden mysteries of music. He paid us the pretty compliment of saying, "The Ebony Flute continues in its even dulcet tones" and of course we were friends right off after that. In the course of our tour around the galleries we mentioned the fact that Edmund T. Jenkins had spoken with such respect and admiration for Dr. Dett's work. . . . Dr. Dett then spoke of what a tremendous loss the race had suffered in losing Jenkins, stating that he was perhaps the only Negro that had done any reputable work with symphony composition. I was pleased to know that Dr. Dett had seen and spent a great deal of time with Mr. Jenkins on that last discouraging trip which Jenkins made to America. In so many words Nathaniel Dett, fellow genius and musician, said that Edmund Jenkins bore the stamp of a divine fire and that his great dream was misunderstood and scorned by those who should have been his friends.

*Meek Mose*, a drama by Frank Wilson who plays the leading part in the cast of *Porgy*, the Theatre Guild production, opened in New York City at the *Princess Theatre* on Monday, February sixth. There had been a single week's tryout in Philadelphia . . . although most of the Quaker City and Gotham dramatic reviewers gave the play a fair break yet it was quite evident that only an unimportant few of them spoke of it as great drama. The plot was hackneyed . . . here and there the acting was superb . . . the music, arranged and directed by Alston Burleigh was beautiful. But to us the play in itself and its success or failure was unimportant. We were more concerned with the fact that here had arrived the day when the theatre goers of Broadway were willing to attend seriously to the things that Negroes had to say about their own lives . . . then too, here were such players as Charles Moore who had played for nine years with *Williams and Walker* in their hey-day, Laura Bowman who has played for years in Negro stock companies, and J. L. Criner long known as one of the Lafayette Players who were in essence the spirit of the old school in Negro acting and yet they were taking a leading part in the new movement towards true Negro expression upon the American stage. So . . . de sun do move. . . . *Meek Mose* was produced by Lester Walton of the staff of the *New York World*.

Carl Van Vechten, author of *Nigger Heaven*, is nominated for the Hall of Fame in *Vanity Fair* for February. We are very glad for this for whether you are a person who likes *Nigger Heaven* or not you must admit that this book paved the way for a good bit of the writing that Negroes themselves are doing today . . . and goodness knows that is surely something. But then you see we've always liked *Nigger Heaven* regardless of what many of our friends have said or thought about it. Gwendolyn B. Bennett

APRIL, 1928

OPPORTUNITY

121

OUR BOOK SHELF

Pushkin by Prince D. S. Mirsky. E. P. Dutton & Co.,
New York. $2.50.

It is possible to strip the halo from a man's head and remove the last vestige of pleasing illusion regarding him and still keep him a popular hero before the eyes of the world, Prince D. S. Mirsky has most admirably succeeded in accomplishing that difficult feat in his recent brilliant and scholarly treatise on the life and times of the poet, Pushkin.

The book is more than a mere biography, however, so much more so that its very abundance of explanatory detail concerning the various schools of Russian poetry; its vivid and entertaining pictures of elegant court life and the licentiousness of the young intellectuals; its exhaustive study of political tragedy and intrigue; its magnificent glimpses of the Imperial Theatre which played so important a part in the history of Russia all during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the brilliant portraits of the outstanding men and women of the times, Alexander I, the mystic, Delvig, the ascetic, Karamzin, the poet and critic, Turgenev, the friend and advisor, Chaadaev, the genius, the exquisite Countess Worontzov, Semenova, the actress; and all the charming lesser lights and women whose influence contributed to or took away from the fulmination of Pushkin's genius tend rather to submerge the essential theme, that of presenting the life of an extraordinarily gifted poet, dramatist, novelist, and short-story writer, and to cloud any single impression. The balance between biographical detail and the psychological and social aspect has not been fairly maintained. Nevertheless, as a fascinating historical account of Russian life of the period—1800-1837—notable years all over the continent of Europe,—interpreted through its intellectual life, its literature and literary movements, and in the light of the bitter, terrific struggle between Liberalism and Imperialism, it has its own appeal. Moreover, a careful bibliography and a helpful appendix give it worth. The scholar and the diletante alike will enjoy it, once their eyes become accustomed to the supernumerary difficult Russian names.

In point of style, the work is excellently written, de-
riving much of its charm for the reader from that lucidity
and flexibility in handling things rigidly Russian which
the author notes as the pre-eminent characteristic of Push-
kin's own writings. Its greatest interest, however, lies
perhaps in the fact that satisfaction for the long-curious
and balm for the prejudiced in spirit is found in the
lengthy account of the great poet's ancestry and the con-
sequences of a heritage of mixed blood. All the world
knows that Pushkin had Negro blood in his veins, but all
the world did not know how near or how remote was the
forbear who introduced that black blood.

Prince Mirsky has told them. Painfully, he has
traced the genealogy of his subject through six hundred
years of Russian nobility of the first rank and often great
distinction, down to the Pushkin of his biography, giving
great care to the treatment of Gannibal, that African pet
of Peter the Great, who, through marriage with a Livonian
gentlewoman, became the poet's great-grandfather. Al-
though he frequently quotes Pushkin as calling himself "a
hideous descendant of Negroes," bearing "a poisonous
strain of Negro blood" and explaining his sensuality by
his African heritage; states that he was remantically proud
of his black ancestor, "in spite of the fact," evidenced by
his story "The Nigger of Peter the Great;" comments on a
certain thickness of lip and curliness of hair; and then
paradoxically observes "that Gannibal was not a Negro in
the technical, anthropological sense of the word,—he was
an Abyssinian," there is an utter absence of Nordic con-
tempt or patronage (often according to the historian's
digestion at the time of writing) in Prince Mirsky's de-
lineation of his character and portrayal of his associations
at the aristocratic Lyceum, in St. Petersburg or at Mos-
cow, in which brilliant society Pushkin was always a

sparkling, though often dissipated, ornament. The only
opprobrium which seems to have attached itself to the
young poet because of his remote black progenitor was in
his own mind whenever, half in pride and half in scorn,
he derided himself because of it. Like Alexander Ham-
ton, whom John Adams, in bitterest political contempt,
contended himself with calling "the Nevis adventurer,"
Pushkin's great genius and exquisite achievements trans-
cended all questions of rank and race, so that his most
jealous rivals dared not recall what he himself regarded
in the light of semi-disgrace.

It is a curious thing,—this harping on the unfortunate
circumstances of one's birth when subsequent events prove
that it has been no barrier to success and unparalleled
distinction, yet it is a fact in which all Negroes should
glory since through this latest monograph on their most
illustrious connection, more glory accrues to the race, and
one more fact opposing the inferiority theory will have
been gleaned to dispel the myth of the Nordic.

Brenda Ray Moryck.

In Spite of Handicaps. By Ralph W. Bullock. Association Press. $2.00.

WE regretted upon reading *Portraits in Color* by Mary White Ovington that such prominent persons as John Hope, Countee Cullen, and Mary McLeod Bethune were not included. Now comes *In Spite of Handicaps*, which does include these individuals. But in compensation, the author has omitted such interesting characters as Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Walter White, who are included in Miss Ovington's book—thus demonstrating how impossible it is to treat faithfully and completely the entire body of the foremost living leaders of the Race in a single ordinarily extended volume.

Like *Portraits in Color, In Spite of Handicaps* em-
phasizes a new force in our American life—a force des-
tined to be felt increasingly as the years pass. The book
contains biographical sketches of eighteen contemporary
American Negroes who have succeeded in business, pro-
fessional and artistic pursuits.

These eighteen persons represent the acme of achieve-
ment in their respective fields. They have not merely suc-
ceeded in spite of handicaps, but have attained their suc-
cess by fair means. They have cheated no one nor kept
anyone down that they might rise. Modesty, unselfishness,
patriotism, veracity, faith in both God and man, altruism,
and perseverance are among the fine traits of character
epitomized in the biographies of these men and Mrs. Be-
thune, the one woman included. Indeed, their record should
be an inspiration as well as a challenge to youth every-
where.

Mr. Bullock knows how to choose significant material. His book contains no sentimental, petty stories concerning its characters. The author does not indulge in irrelevant matter. The character-worth of the individuals selected always transcends what material fortunes they might have amassed; their humanity is elevated above racial affiliation; their achievements are emphasized over their struggles.

Photographs of the persons treated intensify the reality
of the book. This feature combined with the interestingly
stimulating questions outlined at the end of each biogra-
phy distinguish it from *Portraits in Color* and make it an
individual piece of work. The style is simple. Evidently
the author's chiefest aim is to inform and inspire. Judging
frankly, the book is especially intended for early adoles-
cent use, although there is much material in it vitally in-
teresting to the adult mind. It should be a heavenly ex-
perience to hear "retreat" groups in the future "Y" convo-
cations discuss such thought-provoking questions as—"To
what extent is the pathway Johnson (Mordecai) has fol-
lowed open to other Negro and white boys?" or, "How can
America discover and save for herself and the world capa-
cities such as Carver had?"

The shortcomings of the American Negro are often em-
phasized out of proportion to his excellence. Surely the
time is ripe for the world to know the noble side of his
character. As a mean towards a better interracial under-
standing and good will *In Spite of Handicaps* should play
an important role.

Jonathan H. Brooks.