26 February 1966

Mr. C. Eric Lincoln
Portland State College
Department of Sociology
P. O. Box 751
Portland, Oregon 97207

Dear Mr. Lincoln:

SOUL, to my understanding, would be a sort of synthesis
of the essence of the Negro folk arts, particularly the old
music and its flavor, expressed in contemporary ways so clearly
and emotionally colored with the old, that it gives a dis-
tinctly "Negro" flavor to today's material in music, paint-
ing, writing, or merely in personal attitudes and conver-
sation.

EXAMPLES:

Ray Charles, Mingus, Margaret Bond's music;
James Brown, James Meredith's autobiographies;
my SIMPLE stories; Jacob Lawrence paintings;
Alvin Ailey's Negro ballets; Nina Simone's
singing; Moms Mabley's monologues; Cassius
Clay's pronouncements; the emotional over-
tones of the Harlem and Watts riots---that
whites feel but fail to understand; some-
thing to which only "soul-brothers" born to
the tradition can fully react in whatever
form it occurs.