Gwendolyn Bennett - page four.

enough unions in the various arts. Since most of the objectors were fortunate/ to succeed as artists under the aegis of private patronage, they have not been forced to take part in the group activities of the younger artists, such as trade unionism among the arts, which have reached their epitome in bringing forawrd art for all thepeople under the Federal Arts Projects.

The Sirovixh resolution, known as the "Federal Arts Act", and now before the Rules Committee of the House of representatives provides for: a Permanent Bureau of Fine Arts embracing the fields of the theater and its allied arts, music and its allied arts, literature and its allied arts, the graphic and plastic arts and their allied arts, and the dance and its allied arts; that such a bureau shall be administered by the Department of the Interior without discrimination in employment because of race, color, creed, or membership in any political, religious or labor organization; that the bureau shall be administered by directors and assistant directors appointed by the President of the United States; and that employees now working under the Works Progress Administration, having the proper qualifications, shall be transferred to the Bureau at the discretion of the President. It has been stated before that such a Bureau will offer a golden opportunity to the black cultural worker of America. Such a Bureau will afford for the first time an opportunity for our writers, actors, musicians, artists and dancers to pursue their chosen crafts on equality with white cultural workers with an assurance of security commensurate with their qualifications in their given fields. Harlem citizens and colored Americans throughout the country ought to be fully acquainted with the proposed legislation for a Permanent Bureau of Fine Arts for the reasons that it will offer permanent and dignified employment to their trained artists as well as provide for a growing American culture in which their children, so long the victims of underprivileged living conditions, will have their share.

The gifts of the colored American to the culture of this country in the fields of Music and the Dance are well-known and accepted by the

Bennett- Page five.

critics of these fields. A Permanent Bureau of Fine Arts will give him
the opportunity to develope in the other arts to that point where he
will become a truly integral part of an American culture for all the people
sharing in its benefits and plaudits and in return offering to America
the wealth of his own rich culture.

Gwendolyn B. Bennett,
64 Brooklyn Avenue,
Brooklyn, New York.

Brown Studies.

## Portraits in Color
The Viking Press.
------------------
Mary White Ovington.

For several years Mary White Ovington has been working for
and with Negroes. By virtue of these years she, although white her-
self, has come to see Negroes, their lives, and their problems in their
own light. For this very reason her story of important Negro men and
women bears much of partisanship. So in sympathy is she with her sub-
ject matter that oftimes the true worth of a man's contribution to
the social scheme is submerged in a roseate haze of goodwill toward
the race to which he belongs. This haze dulls the rapier thrust one
expects in clear-cut character analysis. After reading one or two of
these "Portraits in Color" one becomes convinced that here is eulogy
rather than true personality delineation. However, this fault is a
human one when one knows and understands how loyal Miss Ovington has
been in her work among colored people.

Negroes have been and in a measure still are a tragic people.
It is this very tragedy that makes their success seem phenomenal. To
those readers who know little about the lives of Negro scholars and
scientists "Portraits in Color" will be a new edition of "The Wonder
Book" for essentially these stories of important Negroes are success
stories. There will be few white readers to whom the fact is known that
Dr. Ernest Everett Just, the world-famed biologist, is a Negro. Fewer
still will have known that Dr. Louis Tempkins Wright, authority on
intracutaneous vaccination, is also a Negro. Indeed, the tale of a Negro
food specialist, a colored woman who is the president of a bank, a dus-
ky actor who is a Phi Beta Kappa man as well as a graduate in law,
and a successful black newspaper man reads much like "Alice in Wonder-

Gwendolyn L. Bennett,
64 Brooklyn Avenue,
Brooklyn, New York.
land".

In this Miss Ovington has rendered the reading public of America invaluable service. Here in popular edition one may get a treatisaton the race question without undue argument. She who would argue the Negro's case in the name of humanity does so more ably in these "portraits" than ever she could with propaganda or invective. The Negro's friend will point to her book with pride and so substantiate their position on the race issue; his enemies will become aware that here is a thing or two about the Negro that he did not know and so become interested in the phenomenon. Here, indeed, is a brief for the Negro succinctly put in story form.

The gallery Miss Ovington has hung is a choice one. Her portraits range from the mauve-tinted likeness of James Weldon Johnson, "one reared in gentle ways, endowed with graciousness", through many startling canvasses splashed with glorious colors to the lurid depiction of Marcus Garvey whose veru failure makes him immortal. The author has said in her foreword that she has drawn her portraits from life, having written of no one she does not know. This fact is often obscured in the almost interview-like piling on of data. However, now and again the mere notation of fact takes a soar and something very live is breathed across the pages. Such is the case when Miss Ovington writes about James Weldon Johnson and Walter White. As she brushes in the detail of Mr. Johnson's portrait you feel that she has known him well and seen him honestly. She touches the core of the man when she says of him:-

"Expecting the best, he gets it. For he gives his best. And whether he walks down the street with the stride of the actor, his hat a little on one side, whether he stands before an audience reading from his last and best book of

Gwendolyn D. Bennett,
64 Brooklyn Avenue,
Brooklyn, New York.

"Portraits in Color" - Page Three.

verse, God's Trombones, or whether he greets an acquaintance with his disarming smile, he is always the gentleman." She has sought and found the true Walter White in these words:-

> "Adventure is in his blood, adventure and high courage."

"Portraits in Color" is filled with old favorites: W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes and Eugene Kinckle Jones. Here and there one finds a new name: Lucy Laney, principal of Haines Institute; Robert S. Abbott, owner and editor-in-chief of *The Chicago Defender*; Meta Warrick Fuller, student of Rodin. Negroes have known these names; white people they will be new. One cannot help regretting that limitations of space kept such Negroes as Charles S. Johnson, editor of *Opportunity Magazine*, Dr. Alaine Leckler, Professor at Howard University, and Georgia Douglas Johnson, poet, from Miss Ovington's collection of Negro portraits.

wendolyn B. Bennett,
1912 West Berks Street,
North Philadelphia, Pa.

Tokens.

High on the bluff of Saint Cloud stands the Merlin Hospital, immaculate sentinel of Seraigne.... Seraigne with its crazy houses and aimless streets, scrambling at the foot of Saint Cloud's immense immutability. Row on row the bricks of the hospital take dispassionate account of lives lost or found. It is always as though the gay, little town of Seraigne were thumbing its nose at Saint Cloud with its famous Merlin Hospital where life is held in a test-tube, a thing to be caught or lost by a drop or two of this or a pellet of that. And past the rustic stupidity of Seraigne's gaiety lies the wanton unconcern of the Seine. The Seine.... mute river of sorrows..... grim concealer of forgotten secrets..... endlessly flowing..... touching the edges of life..... moving purposefully along with a grey disdain for the empty, foolish gaiety of Seraigne or the benign dignity of Merlin Hospital, high on the warm cliffs of Saint Cloud.

A trim nurse had drawn Jenks Barnett's chair out onto one of the balconies that over-looked the Seine. Listlessly, aimlessly he turned his thoughts to first one aspect and then another of the Seine, Merlin Hospital, the cliffs of Saint Cloud, Seraigne.... over and again..... the Seine, Merlin Hospital, the cliffs...of... Saint... Cloud..... silly, little Seraigne. It was a better way - that Seine business. Just swallow up life and sorrow and sadness..... dont bother about the poor fools who are neither dead nor alive..... just hanging on to the merest threads of existence..... coughing out one's heart and yet somehow still keeping heart. Purposeless thoughts these as one just as purposelessly fingers the blanket that covers one's emaciated, almost lifeless legs. But the Seine goes on, and Seraigne continues to be happy, and the pain in one's chest grows no easier.

Gwendolyn B. Bennett,
1912 West Berks Street,
North Philadelphia, Pa.

Tokens-Page Two.

It so happened that at this particular time there were a number of colored patients at the Merlin Hospital. Most of them were musicians who had remained in Paris after the World War. Two of them had come to London and thence to Paris with Will Marion Cook in the Negro entertainer's heyday. Jenks was one of these. He had been a singer in those days. His voice was now spoken of in the hushed tones one uses when speaking of the dead. He had cherished great plans for himself in those days and no one dared hope otherwise, so rare was his voice in range and quality. That was all changed now....

Merlin Hospital had won nation-wide fame as a haven for patients suffering from tuberculosis. An able staff of doctors and nurses administered daily hope of recovery to broken bodies or perhaps kindly, although inadequate, solace to those whose cases were hopeless. Jenks Barnett had been there five weeks. His case was one of the hopeless ones. The tale of his being there did not take long in the telling. Shortly after the success of Cook's orchestra with its inimitable "singing trombonist" Tollie had come - Tollie Saunders with her golden voice and lush laughter. From the very first she and Jenks had hit it off well together. It was not long before he was inextricably enmeshed in the wonder of her voice and the warm sweetness of her body. Dinner at Les Acacias.....for Tollie.....a hat for her lovely head.....that dress in Chanal's window.....she wanted one of those opal rings....long nights of madness under the charm of her flute-sweet voice. His work began to suffer. Soon he was dismissed from the orchestra. Singing soirees didn't pay too well. And then one day before the pinch of poverty came Tollie had left him, taking with her all the pretty things he had given her.....leaving no farewell.....her chance had come to sing in an American production and she had gone. No word of their plan to startle the singing world with their combined talents; no hint of regret that she was leaving.....just gone. Three nights on a gorgeous drunk and he had

Tokens - Page Three.

awakened to find himself in a dingy, damp Parisian jail with a terrific
pain in his back.....eighteen days in which he moved from one prison-
house to another.....sunshine and air again when his friends had finally
found him and arranged for his release.....sunshine lasts but a short
time in Paris.....endless days of splashing through the Paris rain in
search of a job......always that pain between his shoulder-blades....then
night upon night of blowing a trombone in a stuffy, little Boîte de Nuit
during which time he forgot the pain in his back.....and drink....incess-
ant drink....one more drink with the fellows....and after the job cards
and more drink. One came to Merlin after one had been to the
American Hospital. One came to Merlin after one had been to every other
hospital round about Paris. It does not take long to become accustomed to
the turning knife in one's chest. It is good for a hopeless case to watch
the uncured forgetfulness of the Seine. Last days spent on the fair cliffs
of Saint Cloud in silent contemplation of the subtle unconcern of the Seine
and the vacuous gaiety of the little town snuggling close to its side were
filled with the bitter-sweet philosophy of life flowing endlessly toward
death.....past the laughter of cities and towns.

Spring had sent ahead its perfume this day. It was as though the ear-
ly March air were powdered with the pollen of many unborn flowers. A haze
settled itself in the air and on the breast of the river. Jenks forgot for
a moment the relentless ache in his bosom and breathed deeply in sheer sat-
isfaction. In the very midst of this gesture of aliveness the tool of death
lodged in his lung gave a wrench. A hacking cough rose in his throat and
then seemed to become stuck there. His great gaunt frame was shaken in a
paroxysm of pain. The fit ofsted coughing over,his head fell back
uponthe pillow. His eyes became glassy. His breath came in short pain-
ridden gasps. His lips fell apart. A nurse hurried to his side.
"Guess you'd better go in now. I told you not to move around."

Tokens - Page Five.

"For God sakes cut it out. I know I'm done for. You know it, too, damn it all"

"Come on now, fella, be your age. You can last long if you get yourself all worked up. Take it easy."

"Oh I get so damned sick of the whole business I wish I would hurry up and die. But whose business is that but mine......got somethin' to tell you."

"Shoot."

"See I'm dyin'.....get me. They keep stickin' that needle in me but I know damn well I'm dyin'. Now what I want you to do is this.... I wrote a letter to Tollie when I first came here....it's in her picture in my suit-case.... you know that silver frame. Well when I die I want you to give it to her, if it's a thousand years from now....just a token of the time when we were in love. Don't forget it. Then you remember that French kid that used to be on the ward downstairs....she always liked that radium clock of mine. She's been transferrred to the Gerboux Sanitarium.....almost well now. I think they said she would be out in a year. Good kid.....used to climb up here every afternoon....stairs sort of wore her out. Give her my clock and tell her I hope she lives to be well and strong 'cause I never'll make it. God, she was an angel if ever there was one....she used to sit there on that chair where you're sittin' now and just look at me and say how she wished she could die in my place cause I was such a big man....and could sing so.... I believe she'd like to have something to remember me by. And, Bill, you take .... that......mmmmghgummmmm....mmmm......"

That strangling cough rose in his throat. His eyes, always cruel seem-
d to look out softly at Bill. A nurse hurried swiftly into the room an
injected a hypodermic needle into his arm. A tremor went through his body.
His eye-lids half-closed......he slept.

one

The days dragged out in/week after another. Jenks linfered on like
the days. Outside the Seine flowed endlessly on unhindered and free. It
was all so futile and strange.....waiting this way.

Gwendolyn B. Bennett,
1912 West Berks Street,
North Philadelphia.

Tokens - Page Six.

June had laid her warm mouth upon the face of the earth. With soft languor the sun slid tenderly over the cliffs of Saint Cloud...even tenderly over the grey bricks of Merlin Hospital. Jenks had baged so about not being allowed to lie on the balcony that at last the hospital authorities had relented...there was such a short time left for him anyway...he might as well have what he wanted...this was the first day that had been warm enough. As he sat there he looked out across the cliffs, past the little town of Seraigne, out past the Seine...on...on...immune to life...conversant with death...on to the great simplicities. He got to thinking of when he was a boy...the songs he used to sing...he almost thought he'd try to sing now...what did it matter if he got another coughing spell...but then the nurses would all be in a flurry. Nine to be out here once more looking at the Seine and the world where people lived and breathed.

Bill sighed as he placed the little clock on the mantle-piece. Funny world, this! The French girls had died in late May. He had better not tell Jenks...it might upset him. No-o-op better just keep the clock here. Funny how the first kind thing Jenks had done for anybody since Tollie left him should be done for a person who was dead.

High on the bluff of Saint Cloud stands the Merlin Hospital, immaculate sentinel of Seraigne... with its crazy houses and aimless streets, scrambling at the foot of Saint Cloud's immense immutability. Row on row the bricks of the hospital take dispassionate account of lives lost or found.

Day hung for a last fleet moment in the sky and then the lights of cities and towns began to shimmer across the breast of the Seine.

Jendolyn B. Bennett

Tokens.

High on the bluff of Saint Cloud stands the Merlin Hospital, immaculate sentinel of Seraigne.... Seraigne with its crazy houses and aimless streets scrambling at the foot of Saint Clouds immense immutablitiy. Row on row the bricks of the hospital take disqualification account of lives lost or found. It is always as though the gay little town of Seraigne were thumbing its nose at Saint Cloud with its famous Merlin Hospital where life was held in a caught test-tube, a thing to be lost or lost by a drop of this or a pellet of that. And past the rustic stupidity of Seraigne's gaiety lies the wanton unconcern of the Seine. The Seine....mute river of sorrows....grim bohemia of forgotten secrets....endless flowing....touching the edges of life.... moving purposefully along with a grey disdain for the empty, foolish gaiety of Seraigne or the benign dignity of Merlin Hospital high on the lovely, warm cliffs of Saint Cloud.

A trim nurse had drawn Jenks Barnet's chair out onto one of the balconi
that over-looked the Seine. Listlessly, aimlessly, he turned his thoughts to
first one aspect and then another of the Seine, Merlin Hospital, the cliffs of
Saint Cloud, Seraigne.... over and again..... the Seine, Merlin Hospital, the
cliffs of Saint Cloud..... silly little Seraigne. It was a better way - that
Seine business. Just swallow up life and sorrow and sadness..... dont bother
about the poor fools who were neither dead nor alive..... just hanging on to
the merest threads of existence.... coughing out one's heart and yet somehow
still keeping heart. Purposeless thoughts these as one's fingers just as
purposely finger the blanket that covers one's emaciated almost lifeless
legs. But the Seine goes on and Seraigne continues to be happy and the pain
in one's chest grows no easier.

Merlin Hospital had a nation-wide fame as a haven for patients suffer
ing from tuberculosis. An efficient staff of doctors and nurses administered

Tokens-Page Two.

daily hope of recovery to broken bodies or perhaps kindly, although inadequate solace to those whose cases were hopeless. Jenks Barnett had been ther case five weeks. His wife was one of the hopeless ones. The tale of his being ther was a simple one - three nights on a gorgeous drunk and he had awakened to find himself in a dingy, damp Parisian jail with a terrific pain in his back; eighteen days in which he was moved from one prison-house to another..... sunshine and air again when his friends had finally found him and arranged for his release..... sunshine lasts nut a short time in Paris....endless days of splashing through the Paris rain in search of a job.....always that pain between his shoulder-blades....then endless nights blowing a trombone in a stuffy night-club during which time he forgot the pain in his back.... and drink ....incensant drink....Bicardi, stiff one please.....fine a liter of water..... kinda thirsty.....one more drink with the fellows.....and after the job cards and more drink. One came to Merlin one had been to the American Hospital. One came to Merlin after one had tried every other hospital round about Paris. When one had grown accustomed to the turning knife in one's chest it was good to watch the wanton forgetfulness of the Seine. Last days spent on the fair cliffs of Saint Cloud in silent contemplation of the subtle unconcern of the Seine and the vacuous gaiety of the little town snuggling close to its side were filled with the bitter-sweet philosoph of life flowing endlessly toward death.....past the laughter of cities and towns.

Spring had sent ahead its訊 Perfume this day. It was as though the early March air were powdered with the pollen and scent of many unborn flowers. A haze settled itself in the air and on the breast of the river. Jenks forgot for a moment the relentless ache in his bosom and breathed a deep breath of satisfaction. In the very midst of this gesture of aliveness the tool of death lodged in his lungs gave a wrench. A hacking cough rose in his

Tokens - Page Three.

throat and then seemed to become stuck there so that his whole frame was shaken in a paroxysm of pain. When the fit of stifled coughing was over his head fell back upon the pillow. His became glassy. His breath came in short, pain-ridden gasps. His lips fell apart. A nurse hurried to his side.

"Guess you'd better go in now. I told you not to move around".

With quick, efficient hands she tucked the cover more closely about his legs, lowered the back of the invalid chair in which he sat, and pushed him carefully back into the hospital. As his chair was rolled through the ward it was as though he were running the gamut of scorn. Jenks was not a favorite at the hospital by any stretch of the imagination. Few of the patients there had escaped the uncalled for sting of his tongue... sour at life and the raw deal it had dealt him, he now turned his attention to venting his spume on those about him. Nurses, doctors, orderlies, fellow-patients, persistent friends... all shared alike the blasphemy of his kix words.

"Well nigh got him that time... Ole lady Gernard's dough cant buy off death."... John Douglass, Jim Europe's best drummer, chuckled to himself. John was one of the "hopefuls". He had known Jenks for years and now

"Between rows of bitter words the nurse wheeled his chair. He seemed not to mind the calumny they heaped upon him and yet as he finally lay in his own private room he muttered to himself, "Damn niggers... they aint got no sense. Mad 'cause I got more'n them... thus all."

It so happened that at this particular time there were a number of colored patients at the Merlin Hospital. Most of them were musicians who had been remained in Paris after the World's War. Two of them had come to London and thence to Paris with Will Marion Cook in the Negro entertainers hey-day. Jenks was one of these. He had been a singer in those days. His voice was now spoken of in the hushed voice one uses when speaking of the dead... since those eighteen days in jail his voice had never been the

Gwendolyn B. Bennett,

Page Four.

same. This fact more than any other had lodged the first seeds of bitterness in his heart. He had cherished great plans for himself and no one dared hope otherwise, so rare was his voice in range and quality. Repeatedly he had tried to make his voice do its old tricks and each attempt left him crushed and bitter... then Tollie had come with her golden voice and warm smiles - Tollie Saunders. Fame had caught her up and carried her high on its ever-changing wave; Jenks had lived vicarious success in the solace of her nearness and the still wonder in her rich voice. He had cared for her through the first hard years of making good... pretty dresses Tollie's rare body. ... a hat for her beautiful head... dinner at Les Acacias ... for Tollie. It's a cruel tale of how she left him, taking with her all the pretty things he had given her... leaving no word of farewell... her chance had come to become a star in an American production and she had gone. From that moment on it was as though life had cut him clean of any kindliness. No word of sympathy or good-will ever crossed his lips. To know him was to hate him for the heedless lashing of his tongue. Only the friends who knew the why of his acid distaste for all living creatures dared continue in his friendship. And so it was that he found himself in Merlin Hospital, hated by all who were around him.

That night, Gernard's relationship to Jenks Barnett was no one knew and yet it was common knowledge that she bore all the expenses of his being at Merlin. A handsome check/smoothed away all the difficulties caused by his ruthless ingratitude for all that was done for him. She never came to the hospital nor ever sent any word to Jenks himself. However, from her estate in Dijon she pulled the cords of his destiny with infinite pains. Nothing was spared him in these last hopeless hours.

An hour or two after Jenks had recovered from his coughing spell on the balcony his physician came to his bedside. He was an American, a visiting physician at Merlin.

"Tried to scare us all to death, didn't you? Guess I'll take your temperature... you look pretty well shaken up. Mustn't fuss around when they put

Gwendolyn B. Bennett.

you out on the balcony."

As he said these words he went busily about the business of palpating Jenk's chest.

"You all seem to be countin' the days....well, damn if I wont be glad to be passing out of this joint. Hell couldn't be much worse than this."

As he spoke the veins in his throat began to swell and his brown face took on the color of dried mud.

"Mlle Charder, apporter l'orguille toute suite. Depechez vous."
I wild grin spread itself across Barnett's face. His eyes seemed to shoot from their sockets. He stirred in an effort to wrench himself from the doctor's hold. A cough arose in his throat to choke him...... The nurse had swiftly administered a hypodermic....the grin on his lips softened....he slept.

For one year Mlle. Genvieve Roget had occupied a private room on the floor below Jenks Barnett. Constant care had brought her to the place where she might leave for the mountains with her family any day now. She

"Bill, I had a terrible attack yesterday....pretty nearly kicked off."

"The nurse told me. Why don't you take it easy? "

"Aw shut up ...you're like the folks out here....dont do this....mustn't do that.....I get sick of it - I'm goin'

Tokens.

High on the bluff of Saint Cloud stands the Merlin Hospital, immaculate sentinel of Seraigne.... Seraigne with its crazy houses and aimless streets scrambling at the foot of Saint Clouds immense immutability. Row on row the bricks of the hospital take dispassionate account of lives lost or found. It is always as though the gay little town of Seraigne were thumbing its nose at Saint Cloud with its famous Merlin Hospital where life was held in a caught test-tube, a thing to be lost or lost by a drop of this or a pellet of that. And past the rustic stupidity of Seraigne's gaiety lies the wanton unease of the Seine. The Seine....mute river of sorrows....grim homeealer of forgotten secrets....endless flowing....touching the edges of life.... moving purposefully along with a grey disdain for the empty, foolish gaiety of Seraigne or the benign dignity of Merlin Hospital high on the lovely, warm cliffs of Saint Cloud.

A trim nurse had drawn Jenks Barnet's chair out onto one of the balconies that over-looked the Seine. Listlessly, aimlessly, he turned his thoughts to first one aspect and then another of the Seine, Merlin Hospital, the cliffs of Saint Cloud, Seraigne.... over and again..... the Seine, Merlin Hospital, the cliffs of Saint Cloud..... silly little Seraigne. It was a better way - that Seine business. Just swallow up life and sorrow and sadness..... dont bother about the poor fools who were neither dead nor alive..... just hanging on to the merest threads of existence..... coughing out one's heart and yet somehow still keeping heart. Purposeless thoughts these as one's fingers just as purposely finger the blanket that covers one's emaciated almost lifeless legs. But the Seine goes on and Seraigne continues to be happy and the pain in one's chest grows no easier.

Merlin Hospital had a nation-wide fame as a haven for patients suffer-
ing from tuberculosis. An efficient staff of doctors and nurses administered

Tokens-Page Two.

daily hope of recovery to broken bodies or perhaps kindly, although inadequate solace to those whose cases were hopeless. Jenks Barnett had been ther case five weeks. His was one of the hopeless ones. The tale of his being ther was a simple one - three nights on a gorgeous drunk and he had awakened to find himself in a dingy, damp Parisian jail with a terrific pain in his back, eighteen days in which he was moved from one prison-house to another..... sunshine and air again when his friends had finally found him and arranged for his release..... sunshine lasts nut a short time in Paris....endless days of splashing through the Paris rain in search of a job.....always that pain between his shoulder-blades....then endless nights blowing a trombone in a stuffy night-club during which time he forgot the pain in his back.... and drink ....incessant drink....Bicardi, stiff one please..... fine a it's l'eau .... kinda thirsty....one more drink with the fellows......and after the job cards and more drink. One came to Merlin one had been to the American Hospital. One came to Merlin after one had tried every other hospital round about Paris. When one had grown accustomed to the turning knife in one's chest it was good to watch the wanton forgetfulness of the Seine. Last days spent on the fair cliffs of Saint Cloud in silent contemplation of the subtle unconcern of the Seine and the vacuous gaiety of the little town snuggling close to its side were filled with the bitter-sweet philosoph of life flowing endlessly toward death.....past the laughter of cities and towns.

Spring had sent aheadits perfume this day. It was as though the early March air were powdered with the pollen and scent of many unborn flowers. A haze settled itself in the air and on the breast of the river. Jenks forgot for a moment the relentless ache in his bosom and breathed a deep breath of satisfaction. In the very midst of this gesture of aliveness the tool of death lodged in his lungs gave a wrench. A hacking cough rose in his

Gwendolyn B. Bennett,

Page Four.

same. This fact more than any other had lodged the first seeds of bitterness in his heart. He had cherished great plans for himself and no one dared hope otherwise, so rare was his voice in range and quality. Repeatedly he had tried to make his voice do its old tricks and each attempt left him crushed and bitter... then Tollie had come with her golden voice and warm smiles - Tollie Saunders. Fame had caught her up and carried her high on its ever-changing wave; Jenks had lived vicarious success in the solace of her nearness and the still wonder in her rich voice. He had cared for her through the first hard years of making good... pretty dresses Tollie's rare body. ... a hat for her beautiful head... dinner at Les Acacias ... for Tollie. It's a cruel tale of how she left him, taking with her all the pretty things he had given her... leaving no word of farewell... her chance had come to become a star in an American production and she had gone. From that moment on it was as though life had cut him clean of any kindliness. No word of sympathy or good-will ever crossed his lips. Tom know him was to hate him for the heedless lashing of his tongue. Only the friends who knew the why of his acid distaste for all living creatures dared continue in his friendship. And so it was that he found himself in Merlin Hospital, hated by all who were around him.

What Mme. Gernard's relationship to Jenks Barnett was no one knew and yet it was common knowledge that she bore all the expenses of his being at Merlin. A handsome check/smoothed away all the difficulties caused by his ruthless ingratitude for all that was done for him. She never came to the hospital nor ever sent any word to Jenks himself. However, from her estate in Dijon she pulled the cords of his destiny with infinite pains. Nothing was spared him in these last hopeless hours.

"Mike Charder, apporter l'orguille toute suite. Depechez vous."
I wild grin spread itself across Barnett's face. His eyes seemed to shoot from their sockets. He stirred in an effort to wrench himself from the doctor's hold. A cough arose in his throat to choke him...... The nurse had swiftly administered a hypodermic....the grin on his lips softened....he slept.

Gwendolyn B. Bennett,
48 Randall Ave.,
Rockville Centre, L.I.

The James Weldon Johnson Literary Awards.

After much of the hullabaloo attendant upon the self-styled Negro Renaissance and its subsequent literary and artistic prizes has died down along comes another award that seems to mark a very significant trend. The James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild, a group of young ladies the majority of whose interests and affiliations are not literary, — with no great assumption and with a minimum of fanfare has recently made several awards for poetry by and for juveniles. This seems a happy omen to me because similar clubs usually turn their attention to things of a purely social nature while this club has interested itself in a specialized poetry award that touches and affects the group in whose minds poetic thoughts have their inception, namely, children.

This fact in itself is extremely important since heretofore the Negro child as an embryonic poet has not been considered. This wealth of rich talent has long lain fallow. What feeble attempts at encouragement have been made were conducted in puerile manner suitable only to the production of a nursery type of poetry. The results have been in sharp contrast to the intrinsic worth of the poetry of such child poets of the white race as Hilda Conkling and Natalie Crane. This particular contest was, however, conducted on a larger more mature scale. At the closing date for entries in the contest, December 31st, 1931, some six hundred poems had been received from every state in the United States, England, Africa and the West Indies.

I consider it an honor to have been a judge in this contest because the results alone tell no small part of the firm foundation our children seem to be building for the poetic future of the race. There was no dull leafing of pages for the judges when the hundred best poems came up for their final judgement. Almost no poem could be passed by without a

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James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild Award.

thrill at the poesy of its thought or the novelty of its expression.

Strangely enough the poems submitted by adults for children were so far inferior to those by the children, themselves, that the guild was forced to announce that no prize would be awarded to grown-ups. This fact in itself seems a token that the dearth of our present day poets must be enlivened by some new element. What happier way than the bringing to the public eye of these child poets whose encouragement may mean a future harvest of real authentic poetry by Negro poets who write and speak the English language.

I have talked much about the contest without mentioning its most important accomplishment, namely, its discoveries. That, as is generally known, is the reason for contests. If a million dollars were spent on a poetry contest and the results uncovered some unknown Shelly, the time an expense would be well spent. The "find" of this poetry contest seems undoubtedly to be one Harry Morris, an African by birth, sixteen years of age and at present a student in a New York high school. His poetry has the mellifluence of Shelly or Keats with broad, colorful imagery that must come from his African heritage with a poignant stab that comes with his living in this sophisticated century and being a part of the American scene. It has been a long time since I received so happy a shock as the reading of his *Yellow Clouds*, which was awarded first prize together with his quatrain, afforded me. The quatrain is short enough to be quoted here:-

> How easy to pierce the thin
gossamer to oblivion!

> How hard to break down the
concrete wall to immortality!

His contribution included seven poems three of which received acclaim in the final judgement of the contest. Any one of his seven poems *xxxxx* will undoubtedly receive place in future anthologies of Negro verse.

Sixty-second only to the delight of Harry Morris' poetry was that received from reading the prize winners in the other two groups of poems. Nine ye

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James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild Awards.

old Virginia Whites gives us:-

The Moon.
There's a moon like a cradle
And one like a rubber ball;
And then one like a closet
Curved into the wall.

Fourteen year old Williana Coleman writes:-

New Mexico Scenery.
Mountains... tall misty sentinels,
guarding the valley faithfully.

Burros toiling up steep mountain trails,
carrying their burdens patiently.

Cacti... standing ragged, lonely
on a stretch of desert land.

Sand dunes... breaking the monotony
of a stretch of clean, white sand.

Tranquility... broken only by the calling
of the mourning doves.

Little can be said about the awards of the James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild without some praise for Miss Roberta Bosley, the president of the organization, in whose mind the idea for this juvenile poetry contest was born through her work with school children in poetry groups. The guild members deserve hearty congratulations on the result of their venture and commendation for the effort and time they put forward to make this contest a success. The members of the James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild are as follows:-
- Roberta Bosley, Pres.
- Alberta Revallion, Soc'y.
- Maguerite Abrams, Wenonak
- Bonds, Thelma Clement, Dorothy Coleman, Mae Cowdery, Laura Delany, Catherine

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J.W.J. Literary Guild Awards.

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Handy, Elizabeth Handy, Erma Henry, Olivia Hunter, Zora Hurston, Helene Johnson, Mollie Lewis, Harriet Pickens, Muriel Roundtree, Berta Tobias, Mary Tobias, Dorothy West and Emma Dillon William.

Let me in closing say that it seems right to me that Negro children should think poetic thoughts; that they should sing them in the American idiom; that their poems should be acclaimed by Negro people. With the rightness of things it seems strangely and beautifully prophetic that one of the most talented of the prize-winners of this particular contest should be an African.

List of Awards of James Weldon Johnson Lit. Guild
Contest.

Group 1 : Ages 5-9

MOMAX-

1. Moon - Virginia White.

2. Rain Talk - Patricia Shaw

3. Graveyard - Ruby Wallace

Honorable Mention.

1. Nobody Knew - P. Shaw

2. Bright Eyes - Effie Potts

3. Little Noshi San - Gloria Major.

4. Sitting on the Beach - Nellie Becker.

Group 11 : Ages 10 - 14

1. New Mexico Scenery
House With a Friendly Air

Willianna Coleman

2. Wind - Angelina Wallace.

3. Fancy - Althea Cater

4. Night
Rhymes for Baby Brother

Elizabeth Coleman

Honorable Mention

1. Floating

2. Aunty's Cup

Lula Lowe Weeden

3. Coming of Spring - Beth Bishop

4. Soap Dog - Althea Cater.

Group 111 : Ages 15-18

1. Yellow Clouds
Quatrain

Harry Morris

2. The Poet Spoke - Welford Wilson

Honorable Mention

1. Delay of Winter - Harry Morris

2. That Which is Lovely - Undine Matthews

3. At Sunset - Almena Davis

4. When Night Comes - Margaret Walker

5. Comfort - Rances all