The African American Literary Experience

ADAPTED FROM ESSAYS BY EMILY BERNARD, SMITH COLLEGE

In 1746, a sixteen-year-old girl wrote "Bars Fight," a poem about a recent Massachusetts Indian raid. Little did she know that her poem would start a tradition that would continue to the present day.

What is most unusual about this anecdote is not the gender or age of the protagonist, but her race. Lucy Terry (1733-1821) was an African American and a servant, who lived during a period in which it was against the law in many places for blacks to read and write. Although the poem itself is unfamiliar to us today, the incident speaks to the larger meaning of African American literary history.Lucy Terry was the first in a long tradition of African Americans who would create a voice where there was none, taking what was denied them by law and making it their own.

AFRICAN AMERICANS WRITING IN THE 1700s

The eighteenth century was the time for most of the "firsts" in African American literary history. Jupiter Hammon's (ca. 1711-1800) poem "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries" was published in 1760. Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) published almost fifty poems before she died at the age of thirty in 1784. In 1773, she published the first volume of poetry by an African American, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. SEE PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENTS A Poem for a General, by Phillis Wheatley, and His Response and "An Address to the Negroes of the State of New York" by Jupiter Hammon

The tradition of African American autobiographical narrative began in the eighteenth century with the works of writers like Venture Smith, John Marrant, Olaudah Equiano and Briton Hammon (no relation to Jupiter Hammon), whose 1760 Narrative is considered the first slave narrative. Its full title indicates an attitude toward slavery common among eighteenth-century black writers: A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man … How He Was Cast Away in the Capes of Florida; the Horrid Cruelty and Inhuman Barbarity of the Indians in Murdering the Whole Ship's Crew; and the Manner of His Being Confined Four Years and Seven Months in a Close Dungeon; and the Remarkable Manner in Which He Met with His Good Old Master in London, and Returned to New-England, a Passenger in the Same Ship.

Critics have complained that Wheatley's poetry does not denounce the institution of slavery or even her own situation as a servant. They claim that she had no unique creative voice and was capable only of imitating the popular white poets of the period. While these criticisms have merit, it is important that we not judge these early black writers by the standards of the early twenty-first century. If you look at them through the lens of their own time, what you see is the remarkable fact that they learned to read and write at all in a society that used every means to keep them ignorant.

A CENTURY OF STRUGGLE REFLECTED IN LITERATURE

In the nineteenth century, black writers began to use their creative powers to respond to the brewing political and racial tensions around them in poetry, novels, and autobiographies. Ideas about the innate inferiority of the darker races began to creep into everyday thought and forced black writers to take a stand. African American writers now had a dual purpose: to tell their stories and to convince a hostile white audience that they deserved human rights.

Producing a written literature was difficult, mainly because of the laws that made literacy among African Americans illegal. Despite this impediment, African American literature developed during this period at an incredible rate, much of it by fugitive slaves who learned to read and write only after their escape from slavery. William Wells Brown was one such writer. In 1853, he published the first African American novel, Clotel, or The President's Daughter, a frankly abolitionist reworking of the legend of Thomas Jefferson's slave children.

The most important literary genre produced in the nineteenth century was the slave narrative. Autobiographical portraits of slave life, these works were produced for two reasons. First, they meant to educate primarily white audiences about the horrors of slavery. Second, by their very existence, they challenged the stereotype that African Americans were inhuman, and thereby worthy of enslavement. The challenges these narratives took on were not abstract: at the time of publication of these documents, African Americans were seen as only three-fifths human in the eyes of the law.

The two best known and perhaps most important nineteenth-century slave narratives are Frederick Douglass's (1817-1895) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and Harriet Jacobs's (1813-1897) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861). The similarities between these works are clear to anyone who reads them.

Both narratives are powerful, written by remarkably gifted storytellers. Both detail the horrors experienced by the writers during their lives in slavery. In each narrative, the writer is focused on a single goal, the achievement of freedom, and both Douglass and Jacobs manage complicated but ultimately successful escapes. Their stories are full of the atrocities of slavery—physical, mental, and emotional abuse—and both comment on the hypocrisy of the slave system in the Christian South, and the destruction of the African American family. Both narratives are careful to point out that slavery degrades not only the enslaved, but the enslaver as well. They instruct their readers that, as long as the system remains intact, no one will escape injustice.

Perhaps most importantly, Douglass and Jacobs labored under an identical pressure that would affect African American writers throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: to tell at the same time both the story of one and the story of the group. While the struggles of African Americans have changed since the days of slavery, what remains is the black writer's struggle with the question of how to represent the race to what is still a majority white reading audience.

Despite their similarities, there are significant differences between Douglass's and Jacobs's narratives having to do with the different genders of the writers, which affected the way they experienced slavery and the way they later wrote about it. For instance, Douglass sees slavery as both physical and mental bondage. He writes with the same vibrancy about his physical escape from slavery and his efforts to learn to read. To Frederick Douglass, physical freedom means nothing without an accompanying liberation from the bonds of ignorance and illiteracy.

Harriet Jacobs also learned to read and write, but in contrast to Douglass, this experience is not the focus of her narrative. Her primary quest has to do with motherhood and her determination to provide for her children. In fact, at the end of her narrative, Jacobs reminds her reader that she does not consider herself totally free because she does not yet have a home for her children. Men and women had significantly different responses, therefore, even to the homogenizing experience of slavery.

CREATING A MODERN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

As the twentieth century approached, African American literature took another turn. Between 1890 and 1920, more African American writers than ever before were born free. This period, which followed on the heels of Reconstruction, was also a time when blacks suffered an alarming amount of racial violence and many legal setbacks.

Still, black writing somehow flourished and produced three important writers: Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), Charles Chesnutt (1858-1932), and Frances E. W. Harper (1825-1911). All three were exceptionally gifted, yet they could not have used more different techniques.

Dunbar and Chesnutt used the vernacular styles that were popular during that time. The works for which they are best known are written in black "dialect. "Both writers were interested in exploring other forms, but found that their white audience demanded stories and poems from them that were comforting and not threatening. Critics have found fault with these two writers for choosing to placate their white audiences. The fact remains that their choices were severely limited, if, indeed, a choice existed for them at all as African Americans writing at a time when African American literature was still more of a dream than a reality.SEE PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Any discussion about nineteenth century-black writing would be incomplete without mention of the life and work of Frances E. W. Harper (1825-1911). Unlike most African Americans during this time, Harper was born free and even had the benefit of an education. Aside from this, Harper's life is a prime example of the black writer during the nineteenth century. She saw her work as essentially political. She wrote to move people and published her poetry for a mass audience. Harper traveled widely and gave speeches on topics like temperance and women's rights.

Until recently, it was believed that Harper was the first black American woman to write a novel: Iola Leroy,or Shadows Uplifted, which was written in 1892. In 1983, however, Our Nig, or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, a novel written by Harriet E. Wilson (c. 1808-1870) in 1859, was discovered.

TWENTIETH CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN LETTERS

The birth of twentieth-century African American literature came with the publication of the fictional Autobiography of An Ex-Coloured Man (1912), an anonymously published story presented as a true autobiography. By the time the identity of its author, James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), was made known by the reissuing of the book in 1927, Johnson was already well known for his political and cultural work. In fact, Johnson was serving as U.S. consul to Nicaragua during the time when he wrote the Autobiography. Aside from the Autobiography, Johnson is best known for his poetry, particularly the poem "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which is known as the black national anthem.

No figure had more impact on twentieth-century African American literature than W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963). He was himself no great creative writer; the novels that he wrote were mediocre at best. Du Bois's great passion was nonfiction. His autobiographical writings, editorials, and books bear the mark of his strong political vision. His book The Souls of Black Folk puts forth his famous argument that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line."

Du Bois may not have produced much creative work in his lifetime, but his opinions on it were definite. He believed that art should serve a political and social purpose for black people. Because of the economic, political, and social disadvantages that African Americans faced, he did not feel that the time was appropriate for blacks to produce art for art's sake. According to him, art should contribute to "racial uplift."

Writers of the 1920s debated, praised, and lambasted Du Bois's ideas about the purpose of black art. Everyone who had an opinion shared it in print and public forums. Some, like Langston Hughes (1902-1967), resisted Du Bois's ideas and believed that art was to be appreciated on aesthetic and not political grounds. Others fell in step with Du Bois and admonished black writers to present the black community in a positive light. Single-handedly, Du Bois started an argument that continues to rage in black literary circles in the early twenty-first century.

Some historians write that the Great Depression devastated Harlem and the entire outpouring of creative expression, but the truth is that there has never been a period when black artists did not make their mark. Still, the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression did have a negative effect on black art. Neither black nor white patrons had the money to buy art, hear musicians, or see plays as they had during the affluent Roaring Twenties. As a group, black people were hit hard by the Great Depression.

The hope that inspired the Great Migration was shaken by the economic hard times of the 1930s, and much of the literature that African Americans produced during this period reflected that shift. Many of the successful Harlem Renaissance writers nonetheless continued to produce work during the 1930s. James Weldon Johnson and Countee Cullen (1903-1946), for example, both published books of poetry. It was also the decade in which Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) would produce most of her work. She published the remarkable Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937.

The transitional period of the 1930s gave way to the birth of social realism in African American fiction in the 1940s, also known as protest literature. While the fiction of earlier decades was often backward-looking, either romanticizing or denouncing a southern rural past, the fiction of the 1940s faced the problems of the present.

At this moment in history, large numbers of black people had migrated to urban areas, where they struggled with the harshness of the new American cities and the ghettos. Richard Wright (1908-1960) signed his name on the literary movement of social realism with the publication in 1940 ofNative Son, which describes the degradation experienced by one person in this new urban environment. Implicitly, Wright took his stand in the war of ideas first waged during the Harlem Renaissance by creating a protagonist who has no interest in "racial uplift."

Wright and Ann Petry (1911-1997), author of the 1946 novel The Street, used fiction to explore the effects of the urban environment on the individual, showing how the depravity of the slums works to destroy a person's moral fiber. An important African American writer of the period who does not fit this profile is Dorothy West (1909-1998), whose novel The Living is Easy, published in 1948, describes the lives of black Boston aristocrats. Her work resembles that of writers of earlier times, like Charles Chesnutt (1858-1932), as well as the Harlem Renaissance novelists Nella Larsen (1891-1964) and Jessie Fauset (1882-1961).

Protest literature novelists realistically portrayed the migration north to cities, horrific lynchings, and the economic hardship that many African Americans endured during the period. But while Petry, Wright, and Chester Himes (1909-1984) were documenting harsh urban realities in stark, often ungraceful prose, some of their peers chose a completely different venue: the medium of poetry.

Writers like Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), Robert Hayden (1913-1980), and Margaret Walker (1915-1998) virtually created African American poetry during this period; their work was both racially conscious and structurally complex. Gwendolyn Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for her collection of poetry Annie Allen, becoming the first African American to do so.

The 1950s witnessed the emergence of even more memorable writers and, through them, new genres. This period is famous for producing the one novel of the late Ralph Ellison (1914-1994). Invisible Man, published in 1952, is a richly woven and deeply allegorical tale about one man's disillusionment with American culture. To many, Invisible Man is the story of the American experience, with its descriptions of alienation and yearnings for selfhood that characterize not only African American literature, but American literature as a whole. Invisible Man won the National Book Award in 1952.SEE PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT Excerpt from Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

This period also witnessed some of the most important essays and drama produced by African Americans in the work of James Baldwin (1924-1987) and Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965). James Baldwin was a gifted novelist, but he is best known for bringing the genre of the essay to American society in the 1950s. Essayists had made their mark in American society before Baldwin, but not since the days of Du Bois had anyone written so eloquently, and with so much passion, power, and knowledge, about the state of American race relations. At a volatile time in American history, Baldwin spoke for African Americans, explaining to the surrounding world their anger, aspirations, and disappointments with American society. Baldwin's novels and plays were equally powerful, and opened the eyes of all who came into contact with them.

In 1959, American theatergoers wept while viewing Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun, whose title derived from a poem by Langston Hughes (1902-1967). Hansberry's drama told the remarkable story of an ordinary African American family whose different generations try to make sense of each other in politically turbulent and emotionally wrenching times. The play won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. More importantly, it expressed the experience of an African American woman where it had rarely been seen before: on the American stage.

The increased racial strife of the late 1950s and 1960s brought a response from the black literary world. Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and Gwendolyn Brooks, among others, felt the need to take a strong political stand in American society. Hansberry and Baldwin served as spokespersons for the cause of civil rights; Brooks chose to support the more radical Black Power Movement.

SEE PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT "Bitter Fruit of the Tree" by Sterling Brown

The Black Arts Movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement, dominated this period in African American literary history. In many ways, this movement closely resembled the Harlem Renaissance forty years earlier. In both, a new breed of writers sought to establish their identities in contrast to an earlier generation that had produced what they called "false" art, enslaved to the opinions of a mostly white reading public.

The Black Arts Movement went farther than the Harlem Renaissance in attempting to distance itself from American society. These writers broke literary conventions in both prose and poetry and sometimes even used their own versions of the English language. To ensure that their work would not be manipulated by whites, Black Arts leaders established their own publishing houses, bookstores, and magazines to showcase their art.

Writers in this period believed that black art suffered when it was influenced by white society.

Influential writers of this period include Ishmael Reed (b. 1938), author of several novels and collections of poetry; Amiri Baraka (b. 1934), also known as LeRoi Jones, a playwright, poet, and essayist; Ntozake Shange(b. 1948), a playwright, poet, and novelist; and Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943), a poet and essayist.

Baraka organized the Black Arts Theatre in Harlem in 1964, which was devoted to presenting the best of the creative work being produced by movement writers. He won an Obie award for the best off-Broadway play of 1964 for The Dutchman. Baraka, like James Baldwin and W. E. B. Du Bois, had strong convictions about what black writers should be doing for black people, and he shared those ideas through his essays and his creative work. Like many of his peers, Baraka believed that art was intimately linked to politics. Indeed, he believed that art could lead or at least aid in the liberation of black people from both external and internalized subjugation.

African American women writers of this period were just as concerned with politics as their male counterparts. They knew, however, that the oppression they experienced had as much to do with gender as it did with race.Representative women writers of this period were Nikki Giovanni, Alice Walker (b. 1944), and Ntozake Shange. Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf was at once praised for its emotional power and literary merit and condemned for its depiction of black men. If the late 1970s and early 1980s were the era when black women told the stories of their oppression, then it also marked the first great rift between black male and female writers. The powerful work of these women came under fire from their black male peers, who felt that their representations of black men were unfair and cruel. Alice Walker's The Color Purple, for instance, was lambasted and mocked by writers like Ishmael Reed, who believed that black women writers were gaining unfair attention because their portraits of black men fit society's stereotypes.

If African American literature of the late-twentieth century is sardonic about the present, perhaps this is because it is haunted by the past. It is still trying to explain the brutal and unforgivable history of black people in this country, a history that is warped by continuous oppression.

Important themes do not die, and neither do certain genres. For instance, the autobiography, once a means for African Americans to testify to their status as human beings, is still a vehicle through which many African American writers choose to express themselves. Perhaps the most significant contemporary autobiographer, Maya Angelou (b. 1928), has gone back into her past to produce a four-volume biography, which begins with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). In the tradition of all great African American autobiographers beginning with the authors of slave narratives, Angelou tells the story of the group through the individual, creating a sense of community and kinship in her narratives.

Into the twenty-first century, African American writers have claimed most of the prizes awarded for literature in this country. However, that hardly means that African American literature has done all it can do. African American literature grows and changes, just like the experiences of the people who make it. One thing that remains constant, however, is that the primary aim of this literature is to make sense of a shared history among African Americans in this country.

African American literature has come a long way since it took its first steps in 1746 through the medium of Lucy Terry's poetry. But no matter how it changes, it will always be asked to be true to the experiences, in all of their complexity, of black Americans, as they continue to create and understand themselves through their literature.

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AMERICAN LETTERS

The last quarter of the twentieth century produced a range and breadth of talented black writers unlike any time before. In addition to the African American literary traditions of the personal narrative and the protest novel, African American authors mined black humor, satire, historical memoir, and a very particular and powerful brand of North American "magical-realism," a response to the dark realities of African American disenfranchisement that drew upon South and Central American literary counterparts such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (b. 1928) and Julio Cortazar (1914-1984).

One particularly encouraging element defined black writing at the close of the twentieth century. As opposed to being in any way limited to a single narrative thread or tradition, African American writers began to draw on anything and everything that might give voice to the nuances of their personal experience and artistic vision. For example, the novelist John Edgar Wideman (b. 1941) has worked in a range of modes, melding the protest tradition with family history and social commentaries; his novels include Brothers and Keepers, Philadelphia Fire, and Fever, and he has won many of the most prominent national and international awards for writing. The work of Charles Johnson (b. 1948) seeks to rewrite history, examining slave life, an imaginary journey in the Middle Passage, and the life of Martin Luther King Jr. However, Johnson tells his stories in a fantastic light, far from the traditional realism of the protest novel and social critique. They feature phantasmal and literally "inhuman" slave catchers and an omnipotent, multifaced African God boxed up in the hold of a ship on the dreaded Middle Passage. This magical realism vein also appears in the works of Toni Morrison, though it is in a stylized language belonging entirely to the author and giving a particular identity to the African American psycho-historical experience very different from the "magical-realism" works of South and Central American writers. In novels like Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, and Paradise, Morrison turns the slights of history, the troubled ghosts of the American slave past, and the efforts of her lead characters to invent themselves in a world that has made no room for their identities into the very real flesh and blood protagonists of the worlds they inhabit, side by side with a living past. It is perhaps this vision of American life, of a nation forever working to forget its most shameful acts and forever being forced to confront them within the uneasy specters of personal loss, family life, murder, death, and remembrance, that earned Toni Morrison the Nobel Prize for literature at the close of the twentieth century. The poet Derek Walcott also earned the Nobel Prize for literature in the last decade of the twentieth century. His poetry contains a sweeping, balladic expression of the New World, at once intimate with the material, daily existences and private languages of people living in New World landscapes and aware of the implications and histories that they carry quietly with them.

Perhaps one of the most important turns in the history of African American letters came about in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Whereas black writers had before been limited to the traditions of protest and social satire, for the first time the publishing industry came to recognize the market for a more popular novelistic tradition, giving voice to a handful of authors whose sales are on a par with their more mainstream counterparts. That said, this contemporary African American literature still bears the mark of the satirical work of the 1960s and 1970s. Writers like Reginald McKnight (I Get On the Bus, 1990), Trey Ellis (Platitudes, 1988), and Darius James (Negrophobia, 1992), choose to tell the story of African American history with sharp and pointed wit. Their works use humor to point out the absurdities and hypocrisies in American culture, to make readers aware of the inanities that cause discrimination and racism. On the other side of the gender line, the 1980s and 1990s saw a slew of satirical, "selfempowerment" novels from authors like Terry McMillan (b. 1951), who turned their sights on the troubled lives of black women who spend the twentieth century raising children, holding down jobs, and loving men who appeared to be caught in a form of ongoing adolescence. Selling millions of copies, these novels went on to be made into feature films. All of this points in the direction of a changing literary tradition, as well as to elements of black culture—warts and all—that are continually entering the mainstream of American life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrews, William L., ed. Six Women's Slave Narratives. New York:Oxford University Press, 1988.

——, ed. Classic Fiction of the Harlem Renaissance. New York:Oxford University Press, 1994.

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House,1969.

Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain. New York: Dell, 1981.

——. The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-Fiction, 1948-1985. New York: St. Martin's/Marek, 1985.

Baraka, Imamu Amiri (LeRoi Jones). Dutchman and the Slave: Two Plays. New York: William Morrow, 1964.

Baraka, Imamu Amiri (LeRoi Jones), and Larry Neal. Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing. New York: William Morrow, 1968.

Bontemps, Arna, ed. Great Slave Narratives. Boston: BeaconPress, 1969.

Chesnutt, Charles W. The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. New York: New American Library, 1968.

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: New American Library, 1969.

——. The Seventh Son: The Thought and Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois. New York: Random House, 1971.

Dunbar, Paul Laurence. The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993.

Ellis, Trey. Platitudes. New York: Vintage, 1988.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Random House, 1952.

——. Shadow and Act. New York: Random House, 1964.

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Signet, 1988.

Harper, Frances E. W. Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted. New York:Oxford University Press, 1988.

Harper, Michael, and Anthony Walton. Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans since 1945.

Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. Hayden, Robert. Collected Poems. New York: Liveright, 1985.

Hughes, Langston. The Langston Hughes Reader. New York: G. Braziller, 1958.

——. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.

——. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Perennial Library, 1990.

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.

James, Darius. Negrophobia: An Urban Parable. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1992.

Johnson, Charles. Oxherding Tale. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

——. Middle Passage. New York: Atheneum, 1990.

Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Lewis, David L., ed. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Viking, 1994.

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.

——. Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.

Mullane, Deirdre. Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing. New York: Doubleday, 1993.

Osofsky, Gilbert, ed. Puttin' on Ole Massa: The Slave Narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, and Solomon Northup. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.

Petry, Ann. The Street. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985.

Reed, Ishmael. Flight to Canada. New York: Random House, 1976.

——. Poems: New and Collected. New York: Atheneum, 1988.

Shange, Ntozake. for colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem. New York:Collier Books, 1989.

Shockley, Ann Allen. Afro-American Women Writers, 1746-1933. New York: Meridian, 1988.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.

——. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.

Walker, Margaret. This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989.

West, Dorothy. The Living Is Easy. London: Virago Modern Classics, 1987.

Wheatley, Phillis. The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. New York:Oxford University Press, 1988.

Wilson, Harriet E. Our Nig, or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. New York: Random House, 1983.

Wright, Richard. Uncle Tom's Children. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

——. Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth. New York: Perennial Library, 1966.

——. Native Son. New York: Perennial Library, 1987.

PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT

A Poem for a General, by Phillis Wheatley, and His Response

INTRODUCTION

On October 18, 1775, as the colonies prepared to go to war with England, the Continental Congress adopted a resolution banning African Americans from the Revolutionary army. A week after this decision was made, the enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley sent this poem to George Washington, along with a modest letter introducing herself and reminding him of his commanding position as "Generalissimo of the Armies of North America."

Although the poem made no reference to her race or enslaved condition, it did contain language suggesting that Wheatley knew of the Continental Congress's recent decision. The words, "we demand the grace and glory of thy martial band," seem to deplore the exclusion of African American soldiers from the Revolutionary army, and twice in the poem Wheatley reminds Washington of the "virtue" that should be on his side.

On December 30, 1775, possibly in response to Wheatley's poem, Washington issued orders that army recruiters were to accept any "Free Negroes … desirous of enlisting. "Four months after sending the poem to General Washington, he sent her the following courteous reply, apologizing for the delay, thanking her for the poem and inviting her to visit him at his Cambridge headquarters.

To His Excellency General Washington, by Phillis Wheatley

Celestial choir! enthron'd in realms of light,
Columbia's scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom's cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
See mother earth her offspring's fate bemoan,
And nations gaze at scenes before unknown!
See the bright beams of heaven's revolving light
Involved in sorrows and the veil of night!

The goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,
Olive and laurel bind her golden hair:
Wherever shines this native of the skies,
Unnumber'd charms and recent graces rise.

Muse! bow propitious while my pen relates
How pour her armies through a thousand gates,
As when Eolus heaven's fair face deforms,
Enwrapp'd in tempest and a night of storms;
Astonish'd ocean feels the wild uproar,
The refluent surges beat the sounding shore;
Or thick as leaves in Autumn's golden reign,
Such, and so many, moves the warrior's train.
In bright array they seek the work of war,
Where high unfurl'd the ensign waves in air.
Shall I to Washington their praise recite?
Enough thou know'st them in the fields of fight.
Thee, first in place and honours,—we
demand The grace and glory of thy martial band. Fam'd for thy valour, for thy virtues more,
Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!

One century scarce perform'd its destined round,
When Gallic powers Columbia's fury found;
And so may you, whoever dares disgrace
The land of freedom's heaven-defended race!
Fix'd are the eyes of nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia's arm prevails.
Anon Britannia droops the pensive head,
While round increase the rising hills of dead.
Ah! cruel blindness to Columbia's state!
Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.

Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev'ry action let the Goddess guide
. A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, Washington! be thine.

Letter from George Washington to Phillis Wheatley

Miss Phillis, Your favor of the 26th of October did not reach my hands till the middle of December. Time enough—you will say, to have given answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming, but not real neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me in the elegant lines you enclosed; and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents; in honor of which, and as a tribute justly due you, I would have published the poem, had I not been apprehensive that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This, and nothing else, determined me not to give it a place in the public prints.

If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near head-quarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the Muses, and to whom nature has been so beneficent in her dispensations. I am with great respect, your obedient and humble servant.

PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT

"An Address to the Negroes of the State of New York" by Jupiter Hammon

INTRODUCTION

Jupiter Hammon, the first published American black poet, was born a slave of the Lloyd family on Long Island, New York, in 1711. A favored bondsman, Hammon received an education on his master's premises. His first known publication, an eighty-eight-line poem entitled "An Evening Thought. Salvation by Christ, with Penetential Cries: Composed by Jupiter Hammon, a Negro Belonging to Mr. Lloyd of Queen's Village, on Long Island," appeared in 1761. During the American Revolution, Hammon fled with his master to Hartford, Connecticut where he remained until 1782.

Hammon wrote this address for the members of the African Society in New York. In it, he encouraged other slaves to obey their masters and above all to be good Christians. Hammon died soon after, and the address was published posthumously.

Gentlemen,

I take the liberty to dedicate an Address to my poor brethren to you. If you think it is likely to do good among them, I do not doubt but you will take it under your care. You have discovered so much kindness and good will to those you thought were oppressed, and had no helper, that I am sure you will not despise what I have wrote, if you judge it will be of any service to them. I have nothing to add, but only to wish that "the blessing of many ready to perish, may come upon you."

I am Gentlemen, Your Servant, Jupiter Hammon.

Queen's Village, 24th Sept. 1786.

When I am writing to you with a design to say something to you for your good, and with a view to promote your happiness, I can with truth and sincerity join with the apostle Paul, when speaking of his own nation the Jews, and say:"That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. "Yes my dear brethren, when I think of you, which is very often, and of the poor, despised and miserable state you are in, as to the things of this world, and when I think of your ignorance and stupidity, and the great wickedness of the most of you, I am pained to the heart. It is at times, almost too much for human nature to bear, and I am obliged to turn my thoughts from the subject or endeavour to still my mind, by considering that it is permitted thus to be, by that God who governs all things, who setteth up one and pulleth down another. While I have been thinking on this subject, I have frequently had great struggles in my own mind, and have been at a loss to know what to do. I have wanted exceedingly to say something to you, to call upon you with the tenderness of a father and friend, and to give you the last, and I may say dying advice, of an old man, who wishes your best good in this world, and in the world to come. But while I have had such desires, a sense of my own ignorance, and unfitness to teach others, has frequently discouraged me from attempting to say any thing to you; yet when I thought of your situation, I could not rest easy.

When I was at Hartford in Connecticut, where I lived during the war, I published several pieces which were well received, not only by those of my own colour, but by a number of the white people, who thought they might do good among their servants. This is one consideration, among others, that emboldens me now to publish what I have written to you. Another is, I think you will be more likely to listen to what is said, when you know it comes from a negro, one of your own nation and colour, and therefore can have no interest in deceiving you, or in saying any thing to you, but what he really thinks is your interest, and duty to comply with. My age, I think, gives me some right to speak to you, and reason to expect you will hearken to my advice. I am now upwards of seventy years old, and cannot expect, though I am well, and able to do almost any kind of business, to live much longer. I have passed the common bounds set for man, and must soon go the way of all the earth. I have had more experience in the world than the most of you, and I have seen a great deal of the vanity and wickedness of it, I have great reason to be thankful that my lot has been so much better than most slaves have had. I suppose I have had more advantages and privileges than most of you, who are slaves, have ever known, and I believe more than many white people have enjoyed, for which I desire to bless God, and pray that he may bless those who have given them to me. I do not, my dear friends, say these things about myself, to make you think that I am wiser or better than others; but that you might hearken, without prejudice, to what I have to say to you on the following particulars.

1st. Respecting obedience to masters.—Now whether it is right, and lawful, in the sight of God, for them to make slaves of us or not, I am certain that while we are slaves, it is our duty to obey our masters, in all their lawful commands, and mind them unless we are bid to do that which we know to be sin, or forbidden in God's word. The apostle Paul says: "Servants be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling in singleness in your heart as unto Christ: Not with eye service, as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart: With good will doing service to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatever thing a man doeth the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free."—Here is a plain command of God for us to obey our masters. It may seem hard for us, if we think our masters wrong in holding us slaves, to obey in all things, but who of us dare dispute with God! He has commanded us to obey, and we ought to do it cheerfully, and freely. This should be done by us, not only because God commands, but because our own peace and comfort depend upon it. As we depend upon our masters, for what we eat and drink and wear, and for all our comfortable things in this world, we cannot be happy, unless we please them. This we cannot do without obeying them freely, without muttering or finding fault. If a servant strives to please his master and studies and takes pains to do it, I believe there are but few masters who would use such a servant cruelly. Good servants frequently make good masters. If your master is really hard, unreasonable and cruel, there is no way so likely for you to convince him of it, as always to obey his commands, and try to serve him, and take care of his interest, and try to promote it all in your power. If you are proud and stubborn and always finding fault, your master will think the fault lies wholly on your side; but if you are humble, and meek, and bear all things patiently, your master may think he is wrong; if he does not, his neighbours will be apt to see it, and will befriend you, and try to alter his conduct. If this does not do, you must cry to him, who has the hearts of all men in his hands, and turneth them as the rivers of waters are turned.

2d. The particular I would mention, is honesty and faithfulness.

You must suffer me now to deal plainly with you, my dear brethren, for I do not mean to flatter, or omit speaking the truth, whether it is for you, or against you. How many of you are there who allow yourselves in stealing from your masters. It is very wicked for you not to take care of your masters goods, but how much worse is it to pilfer and steal from them, whenever you think you shall not be found out. This you must know is very wicked and provoking to God. There are none of you so ignorant, but that you must know that this is wrong. Though you may try to excuse yourselves, by saying that your masters are unjust to you, and though you may try to quiet your consciences in this way, yet if you are honest in owning the truth, you must think it is as wicked, and on some accounts more wicked, to steal from your masters, than from others.

We cannot certainly, have any excuse either for taking any thing that belongs to our masters, without their leave, or for being unfaithful in their business. It is our duty to be faithful, not with eye service as men pleasers. We have no right to stay when we are sent on errands, any longer than to do the business we were sent upon. All the time spent idly, is spent wickedly, and is unfaithfulness to our masters. In these things I must say, that I think many of you are guilty. I know that many of you endeavour to excuse yourselves, and say, that you have nothing that you can call your own, and that you are under great temptations to be unfaithful and take from your masters. But this will not do, God will certainly punish you for stealing and for being unfaithful. All that we have to mind is our own duty. If God has put us in bad circumstances, that is not our fault, and he will not punish us for it. If any are wicked in keeping us so, we cannot help it, they must answer to God for it. Nothing will serve as an excuse to us for not doing our duty. The same God will judge both them and us. Pray then my dear friends, fear to offend in this way, but be faithful to God, to your masters, and to your own souls.

The next thing I would mention, and warn you against, is profaneness. This you know is forbidden by God. Christ tells us: "swear not at all," and again it is said, "thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless, that taketh his name in vain. "Now, though the great God has forbidden it, yet how dreadfully profane are many, and I don't know but I may say the most of you? How common is it to hear you take the terrible and awful name of the great God in vain?—To swear by it, and by Jesus Christ, his Son—How common is it to hear you wish damnation to your companions, and to your own souls—and to sport with the name of Heaven and Hell, as if there were no such places for you to hope for, or to fear. Oh my friends, be warned to forsake this dreadful sin of profaneness. Pray my dear friends, believe and realize, that there is a God—that he is great and terrible beyond what you can think—that he keeps you in life every moment—and that he can send you to that awful Hell, that you laugh at, in an instant, and confine you there forever, and that he will certainly do it, if you do not repent. You certainly do not believe, that there is a God, or that there is a Heaven or Hell, or you would never trifle with them. It would make you shudder, if you heard others do it, if you believe them as much, as you believe any thing you see with your bodily eyes.

I have heard some learned and good men say, that the heathen, and all that worshipped false Gods, never spoke lightly or irreverently of their Gods, they never took their names in vain, or jested with those things which they held sacred. Now why should the true God, who made all things, be treated worse in this respect, than those false Gods, that were made of wood and stone. I believe it is because Satan tempts men to do it. He tried to make them love their false Gods, and to speak well of them, but he wishes to have men think lightly of the true God, to take his holy name in vain, and to scoff at, and make a jest of all things that are really good. You may think that Satan has not power to do so much, and have so great influence on the minds of men: But the scripture says: "he goeth about like a roaring Lion, seeking whom he may devour—That he is the prince of the power of the air—and that he rules in the hearts of the children of disobedience,—and that wicked men are led captive by him, to do his will. "All those of you who are profane, are serving the Devil. You are doing what he tempts and desires you to do. If you could see him with your bodily eyes, would you like to make an agreement with him, to serve him, and do as he bid you. I believe most of you would be shocked at this; but you may be certain that all of you who allow yourselves in this sin, are as really serving him, and to just as good purpose, as if you met him, and promised to dishonour God, and serve him with all your might. Do you believe this? It is true whether you believe it or not. Some of you excuse yourselves, may plead the example of others, and say that you hear a great many white people, who know more, than such poor ignorant negroes, as you are, and some who are rich and great gentlemen, swear, and talk profanely, and some of you may say this of your masters, and say no more than is true. But all this is not a sufficient excuse for you. You know that murder is wicked. If you saw your master kill a man, do you suppose this would be any excuse for you, if you should commit the same crime? You must know it would not; nor will your hearing him curse and swear, and take the name of God in vain, or any other man, be he ever so great or rich, excuse you. God is greater than all other beings, and him we are bound to obey. To him we must give an account for every idle word that we speak. He will bring us all, rich and poor, white and black, to his judgment seat. If we are found among those who feared his name and trembled at his word, we shall be called good and faithful servants. Our slavery will be at an end, and though ever so mean, low, and despised in this world, we shall sit with God in his kingdom as Kings and Priests, and rejoice forever, and ever. Do not then my dear friends, take God's holy name in vain, or speak profanely in any way. Let not the example of others lead you into the sin, but reverence and fear that great and fearful name, the Lord our God.

I might now caution you against other sins to which you are exposed, but as I meant only to mention those you were exposed to, more than others, by your being slaves, I will concluded what I have to say to you, by advising you to become religious, and to make religion the great business of your lives.

Now I acknowledge that liberty is a great thing, and worth seeking for, if we can get it honestly, and by our good conduct prevail on our masters to set us free. Though for my own part I do not wish to be free: yet I should be glad, if others, especially the young negroes were to be free, for many of us who are grown up slaves, and have always had masters to take care of us, should hardly know how to take care of ourselves; and it may be more for our own comfort to remain as we are. That liberty is a great thing we may know from our own feelings, and we may likewise judge so from the conduct of the white people, in the late war. How much money has been spent, and how many lives have been lost, to defend their liberty. I must say that I have hoped that God would open their eyes, when they were so much engaged for liberty, to think of the state of the poor blacks, and to pity us. He has done it in some measure, and has raised us up many friends, for which we have reason to be thankful, and to hope in his mercy. What may be done further, he only knows, for known unto God are all his ways from the beginning. But this my dear brethren is by no means, the greatest thing we have to be concerned about. Getting our liberty in this world, is nothing to having the liberty of the children of God. Now the Bible tells us that we are all by nature, sinners, that we are slaves to sin and satan, and that unless we are converted, or born again, we must be miserable forever. Christ says, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God, and all that do not see the kingdom of God, must be in the kingdom of darkness. There are but two places where all go after death, white and black, rich and poor; those places are heaven and hell.—Heaven is a place made for those, who are born again, and who love God, and it is a place where they will be happy forever. Hell is a place made for those who hate God, and are his enemies, and where they will be miserable to all eternity. Now you may think you are not enemies of God, and do not hate him: But if your hearts have not been changed, and you have not become true christians, you certainly are enemies to God, and have been opposed to him ever since you were born. Many of you, I suppose, never think of this, and are almost as ignorant as the beasts that perish. Those of you who can read, I must beg you to read the Bible, and whenever you can get time, study the Bible, and if you can get no other time, spare some of your time from sleep, and learn what the mind and will of God is. But what shall I say to them who cannot read? This lay with great weight on my mind, when I thought of writing to my poor brethren, but I hope that those who can read, will take pity on them, and read what I have to say to them. In hopes of this, I will beg of you to spare no pains in trying to learn to read. If you are once engaged, you may learn. Let all the time you can get, be spent in trying to learn to read. Get those who can read, to learn you, but remember that what you learn for, is to read the bible. It tells you what you must do to please God; it tells you how you may escape misery, and be happy forever. If you see most people neglect the bible, and many that can read, never look into it; let it not harden you and make you think lightly of it, and that it is a book of no worth. All those who are really good, love the bible, and meditate on it day and night. In the bible God has told us every thing it is necessary we should know, in order to be happy here and hereafter. The bible is a revelation of the mind and will of God to men. Therein we may learn what God is. That he made all things by the power of his word; and that he made all things for his own glory, and not for our glory. That he is over all, and above all his creatures, and more them than we can think or conceive—that they can do nothing without him—that he upholds them all, and will over-rule all things for his own glory. In the bible likewise we are told what man is. That he was at first made holy, in the image of God, that he fell from that state of holiness, and became an enemy to God, and that since the fall, all the imaginations of the thoughts of his heart, are evil and only evil, and that continually.—That the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. And that all mankind were under the wrath and curse of God, and must have been for ever miserable, if they had been left to suffer what their sins deserved. It tells us that God to save mankind, sent his Son into this world to die, in the room and stead of sinners, and that God will save from eternal misery, all that believe in his son, and take him for their Saviour, and that all are called upon to repent, and believe in Jesus Christ. It tells us, that those who do repent, and believe, and are friends to Christ, shall have many trials and sufferings in this world, but that they shall be happy forever, after death, and reign with Christ to all eternity. The bible tells us that this world is a place of trial, and that there is no other time or place for us to alter, but in this life. If we are christians when we die, we shall awake to the resurrection of life; if not, we shall awake to the resurrection of damnation. It tells us, we must all live in heaven or hell, be happy or miserable, and that without end. The bible does not tell us but of two places, for all to go to. There is no place for innocent folks, who are not christians. There is no place for ignorant folks, that did not know how to be christians. What I mean is, that there is no place besides heaven and hell. These two places will receive all mankind, for Christ says, there are but two sorts, he that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth abroad. The bible likewise tells us, that this world and all things in it shall be burnt up—and that "God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world, and that he will bring every secret thing, whether it be good or bad, into judgment—that which is done in secret shall be declared on the house top. "Then every thing that every one has done, through his whole life, is to be told, before the whole world of angels and men. There, Oh how solemn is the thought! You and I must stand, and hear every thing we have thought or done, however secret, however wicked and vile, told before all the men and women that ever have been, or ever will be, and before all the angels, good and bad.

Now my dear friends seeing the bible is the word of God, and every thing in it is true, and it reveals such awful and glorious things, what can be more important than that you should learn to read it; and when you have learned to read, that you should study it day and night. There are some things very encouraging in God's word, for such ignorant creatures as we are: for God hath not chosen the rich of this world. Not many rich, not many noble are called, but God hath chosen the weak things of this world, and things which are not, to confound the things that are: And when the great and the rich refused coming to the gospel feast, the servant was told to go into the highways, and hedges, and compel those poor creatures that he found there, to come in. Now my brethren, it seems to me that there are no people that ought to attend to the hope of happiness in another world, so much as we. Most of us are cut off from comfort and happiness here in this world, and can expect nothing from it. Now seeing this is the case, why should we not take care to be happy after death. Why should we spend our whole lives in sinning against God: And be miserable in this world, and in the world to come. If we do thus, we shall certainly be the greatest fools. We shall be slaves here, and slaves forever. We cannot plead so great temptations to neglect religion as others. Riches and honours which drown the greater part of mankind, (who have the gospel,) in perdition, can be little or no temptation to us.

We live so little time in this world, that it is no matter how wretched and miserable we are, if it prepares us for heaven. What is forty, fifty, or sixty years, when compared to eternity. When thousands and millions of years have rolled away, this eternity will be no higher coming to an end. Oh how glorious is an eternal life of happiness! and how dreadful, an eternity of misery. Those of us who have had religious masters, and have been taught to read the bible, and have been brought by their example and teaching to a sense of divine things, how happy shall we be to meet them in heaven, where we shall join them in praising God forever. But if any of us have had such masters, and have yet lived and died wicked, how will it add to our misery to think of our folly. If any of us, who have wicked and profane masters should become religious, how will our estates be changed in another world. Oh my friends, let me intreat of you to think on these things, and to live as if you believed them true. If you become christians, you will have reason to bless God forever, that you have been brought into a land where you have heard the gospel, though you have been slaves. If we should ever get to heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves. Let me beg of you my dear African brethren, to think very little of your bondage in this life, for your thinking of it will do you no good. If God designs to set us free, he will do it, in his own time, and way; but think of your bondage to sin and satan, and do not rest, until you are delivered from it.

We cannot be happy if we are ever so free or ever so rich, while we are servants of sin, and slaves to satan. We must be miserable here, and to all eternity.

I will conclude what I have to say, with a few words to those negroes who have their liberty. The most of what I have said to those who are slaves, may be of use to you, but you have more advantages, on some accounts, if you will improve your freedom, as you may do, than they.You have more time to read God's holy word, and to take care of the salvation of your souls. Let me beg of you to spend your time in this way, or it will be better for you, if you had always been slaves. If you think seriously of the matter, you must conclude, that if you do not use your freedom, to promote the salvation of your souls, it will not be of any lasting good to you. Besides all this, if you are idle, and take to bad courses, you will hurt those of your brethren who are slaves, and do all in your power to prevent their being free. One great reason that is given by some for not freeing us, I understand is, that we should not know how to take care of ourselves, and should take bad courses. That we should be lazy and idle, and get drunk and steal. Now all those of you, who follow any bad courses, and who do not take care to get an honest living by your labour and industry, are doing more to prevent our being free, than any body else. Let me beg of you then, for the sake of your own good and happiness, in time, and for eternity, and for the sake of your poor brethren, who are still in bondage, "to lead quiet and peaceable lives in all Godliness and honesty,"and may God bless you, and bring you to his kingdom, for Christ's sake, Amen.

PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT

"We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

INTRODUCTION

The poem "We Wear the Mask" (1896) reflects Paul Laurence Dunbar's dedication to issues of race. Much like W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk , Dunbar suggests that blacks lead a dual existence in American society. While they show one face in their dealings with whites, underneath they hide the true pain and misery of their difficult lives. Sometimes criticized for the lack of racial consciousness implied by some of his other poetry, in "We Wear the Mask" Dunbar clearly demonstrates his concern for the condition of blacks nationwide.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ,
our cries To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT

Excerpt from Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

INTRODUCTION

Ralph Ellison might be labeled a great intellectual simply for the breadth of his output as an essayist and the astonishing perspicacity of his analysis of the African American social and intellectual condition. However, in 1952, Ellison published the novel Invisible Man, his answer to all the lore in letters regarding the "Great American novel. "The book was composed over more than a decade while Ellison worked a variety of jobs. After its publication, Invisible Man was almost immediately canonized and won the National Book Award, though it took five to six years to reach extreme popularity, as the novel was so scathing and visionary it offended many African Americans upon publication. Ellison struggled the rest of his career to produce another great work of fiction. A fire destroyed a work in progress, and then followed a period of coming to terms with the loss of this second novel. After his death, Juneteenth was published, a work culled from the pages of a novel clearly intended for completion and publication, but critics contend that Ellison did not have the opportunity to polish the work as only Ellison could have.

Invisible Man is for African American letters what Gabriel García Marquez's masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, is to Hispanic letters. It is a careening journey through the efforts of a man to leave his hometown, educate himself, and find his place in the world. However, the book reads like a surreal collapse of the African American experience, complete with archetypal figures of an "accomodationist" father figure and educator, a Rockefeller-like great white patron, a social theory organization determined to bring equality to the races, a believer who falls into the Sambo-like minstrelsy of personal disillusionment, and finally, an astonishing presage of the Malcolm X type reverend-orator-inciter who seeks to unleash black rage in a violent riot on the streets of New York. In the end, the narrator discovers he is an invisible man and falls literally into the "pit," a New York City manhole, where he decides to remain until he can devise an alternate reality.

This novel, with its repeating double and triple significances, along with Ellison's pitch-perfect tongue-in-cheek oratory and effortless movement through the conventions of the American novelistic tradition, has caused many to label Invisible Man one of the greatest novels produced in American letters.

Words, phrases, skipped through my mind; I saw the blue haze again. What had I meant by saying that I had become "more human"? Was it a phrase that I had picked up from some preceding speaker, or a slip of the tongue? For a moment I thought of my grandfather and quickly dismissed him. What had an old slave to do with humanity? Perhaps it was something that Woodridge had said in the literature class back at college. I could see him vividly, half-drunk on words and full of contempt and exaltation, pacing before the blackboard chalked with quotations from Joyce and Yeats and Sean O'Casey; thin, nervous, neat, pacing as though he walked a high wire of meaning upon which no one of us would ever dare venture. I could hear him: "Stephen's problem, like ours, was not actually one of creating the uncreated conscience of his race, but of creating the uncreated features of his face. Our task is that of making ourselves individuals. The conscience of a race is the gift of its individuals who see, evaluate, record…We create the race by creating ourselves and then to our great astonishment we will have created something far more important: We will have created a culture. Why waste time creating a conscience for something that doesn't exist? For, you see, blood and skin do not think!"

But no, it wasn't Woodridge. "More human"…Did I mean that I had become less of what I was, less a Negro, or that I was less a being apart; less an exile from down home, the South?…But all this is negative. To become less—in order to become more? Perhaps that was it, but in what way more human? Even Woodridge hadn't spoken of such things. It was a mystery once more, as at the eviction I had uttered words that had possessed me.

I thought of Bledsoe and Norton and what they had done. By kicking me into the dark they'd made me see the possibility of achieving something greater and more important than I'd ever dreamed. Here was a way that didn't lead through the back door, a way not limited by black and white, but a way which, if one lived long enough and worked hard enough, could lead to the highest possible rewards. Here was a way to have a part in making the big decisions, of seeing through the mystery of how the country, the world, really operated. For the first time, lying there in the dark, I could glimpse the possibility of being more than a member of a race. It was no dream, the possibility existed. I had only to work and learn and survive in order to go to the top. Sure I'd study with Hambro, I'd learn what he had to teach and a lot more. Let tomorrow come. The sooner I was through with this Hambro, the sooner I could get started with my work.

SOURCE: Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York:Random House, 1947.

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"Bitter Fruit of the Tree" by Sterling Brown

INTRODUCTION

Sterling Brown's extended sonnet "Bitter Fruit of the Tree" provides a deliberate and piercing commentary on the first chapter of Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery. Anxious to assure his white audience of the emancipated slave's good will, Washington repeatedly denied that there was any bitterness among freed people: "no feelings of bitterness against the whites,""long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness,""no feeling of bitterness. "Decades beyond emancipation, and well into the era of sharecropping, disenfranchisement, and Jim Crow violence, Brown takes up the word that Washington could not help repeating. In Brown's rendering of it, Washington's hopeful description becomes a prescription: "These are your orders: you are not to be bitter."

"Bitter Fruit of the Tree" first appeared in the August 26, 1939, issue of the Nation.

They said to my grandmother: "Please do not be bitter,"
When they sold her first-born and let the second die,
When they drove her husband till he took to the swamp-lands,
and brought him home bloody and beaten at last.
They told her,"It is better you should not be bitter,
Some must work and suffer so that we, who must, can live,
Forgiving is noble, you must not be heathen bitter;
These are your orders: you are not to be bitter."
And they left her shack for their porticoed house.

They said to my father: "Please do not be bitter,"
When he ploughed and planted a crop not his,
When he weatherstripped a house that he could not enter,
And stored away a harvest he could not enjoy.
They answered his questions: "It does not concern you,
It is not for you to know, it is past your understanding,
All you need know is: you must not be bitter."
And they laughed on their way to reckon the crop,
And my father walked over the wide garnered acres
Where a cutting wind warned him of the cold to come.

They said to my brother: "Please do not be bitter,
Is it not sad to see the old place go to ruin?
The eaves are sprung and the chimney tower is leaning,
The sills, joists, and columns are rotten in the core;
The blinds hang crazy and the shingles blow away,
The fields have gone back to broomsedge and pine,
And the soil washes down the red gulley scars.
With so much to be done, there's no time for being bitter.
Your father made it for us, it is up to you to save it,
What is past is over, and you should not be bitter."
But my brother is bitter, and he does not hear.

The Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in Ohio, the son of a fugitive slave. He died in 1906 after suffering for seven years with an incurable illness. Though he lived a mere thirty-three years, Dunbar was a prolific writer and poet. His published works include four novels, six volumes of poetry, and a number of collections of short stories, but he is best known for his poetry.

Dunbar is considered by many to be one of the greatest African American poets of the early twentieth century. His poetry exhibits a gift for creating verses that feel true, simple and beautiful. Dunbar was the father of African American "vernacular" poetry, creating verses that celebrate who and what African American peoples are in their own language.

ABOVE: This photograph shows poet Paul Laurence Dunbar as a young man. Born in 1872, the child of a free father and a woman who had once been enslaved, Dunbar earned early fame with his slavery-based poems in black "dialect," though he often expressed annoyance with a public that ignored his verse written in standard English. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

African American Women Writers: Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), and Rita Dove (b. 1952)

The works of Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Rita Dove have taken African American letters into the upper echelons of world literature, often by tapping into the core of the African American experience in the United States.

In many ways the legacy of twentieth-century African American women writers begins with Hurston and her landmark novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. A writer of the Harlem Renaissance period and a contemporary of figures like Richard Wright, Hurston established the path that would guide the work of black women writers throughout the century. Brooks, born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917, was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Her remarkable collections of verse exemplify the maturation of the African American poetic tradition. Put simply, Brooks was not only a master of diverse traditional forms—ballads, sonnets, and a range of free verse styles—but also an innovator of those forms. She managed to bring the black American experience, in all of its dialectic and colloquial nuance, to her work, creating poems that came out of America and African America, yet feel immediately "classical" in their scope and balanced impact.

The poet Rita Dove also works in the traditions of verse. Dove exemplifies the best of the African American poetic tradition, while moving forcefully into new poetic landscapes—both in terms of her subject matter and her style. Her work demonstrates an exquisite sensibility, each line seemingly possessed with a silent, mournful grandeur that at once invites the reader in and keeps them at bay, treating them as strangers, rife with the potential for danger. The poet laureate's 1986 book Thomas and Beulah is loosely based on the lives of her grandparents, black southerners who migrated north during the first years of the twentieth century. Although Beulah was just an infant when her family moved, her future husband, Thomas, was already a young man when he came north on a Mississippi riverboat. Haunted by memories of his southern upbringing, Thomas experiences northern life as a kind of exile from a land that was for him both bitter and sweet.

In the worlds Dove creates everyday events, the words of relatives and ancestors, narrations of history, and even the private interchanges between the poet and her daughter make for ethereal metaphors, compound collages of image and word that evoke the mad flurry of information, racial and otherwise, that constitutes life in the late twentieth century.

LEFT: Gwendolyn Brooks is the author of numerous books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Allen, published in 1950. She was named Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress in 1985.THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

African American Novelist Toni Morrison (b. 1931)

The author Toni Morrison has taken the African American and American experiences and culled from them what are now regarded as some of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Morrison worked for years as an editor in a New York publishing house before coming out with her first novel. Among the titles to her name are Song of Solomon, Sula, The Bluest Eye, Beloved (winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize), Jazz, and Paradise. In 1999 Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, joining the most elite ranks of novelists and poets in the world.

On the surface, her subject matter is that of black women, the struggle for identity and the human bonds that make the shape of our daily realities. However, her novels have used these as vehicles to get at even larger concerns. As an author in the New World, Morrison is driven by the ghosts of history and the crimes and the motivations of the people who inhabit that land. At its best, Morrison's writing manages to give a voice and a tangible reality to the twisted legacy of slavery in the United States, the impact of the "peculiar institution" and its various permutations on the psychological landscape of Americans throughout the centuries. This is coupled with an ongoing study of the drive and will of African Americans, and the private implications of that daily battle for identity.

ABOVE: Toni Morrison has become one of the most lauded authors of the late twentieth-century, winning virtually all the major national literary awards, including the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999.AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

Twentieth Century African American Poets: Jay Wright (b. 1935), Michael Harper (b. 1938), Rita Dove (b. 1952), and Derek Walcott (b. 1930)

Derek Walcott, Jay Wright, Michael Harper, and Rita Dove have not only worked within poetic traditions, mastering and redefining them like their forbears, but they are also innovators, creating some of the most powerful and original work in American letters today.

In the work of Jay Wright, for example, it is sometimes hard to find any sort of overt reference to what the readership might recognize as "African American literary concerns. "Wright's poems are concerned with investigations of the entire psychohistorical terrain of the New World. His works find the invention—or uncovering—of identity in corners of experience ranging from day-to-day American life to Spain to South and Central American. They are all a part of the "weave" of experience that informs the poet. The poetry of Michael Harper ranges from explosive "stream of consciousness" explorations of the psyche and personal wounds that are contained in the experience of living as a black man in the United States, to a kind of new poetics of African American vernacular. These passages at once refresh the work of past poets, such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, and explode the model, taking the "heartsick" experience of black America and elevating it to the realm of the great literary expositions. In his later work, the poet turned to long-form verses that are in one sense "free verse," and in another sense, minutely controlled by underlying rhythmic and vocalic concerns. The poems in Healing Song for the Inner Ear and Honorable Amendments read almost as elegies for a private African American existence.

Although she is the youngest of the poets here, Rita Dove's place in the canon of the African American poetic tradition seems assured. Her work possesses that same subtle concern for the qualities of the words, a rhyming far beyond simple concerns of the phonetic. While she works out of the African American tradition, her palette is the world and all of history.

This "diasporic" rendition of history, identity, and personal experience is also at the heart of the work by Derek Walcott. Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in the late 1990s, Walcott has himself not so much reinvented the forms as exploded them. His roaming, balladic investigations, as in The Star-Apple Kingdom and Omeros, seek to write through the entirety of literary and world history, collapsing them into the idiosyncrasies of the poet's tongue, with the masterpieces of the original bards, Homer and Shakespeare as his models.