Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Editorial Note

Part 1: Literature

Introduction

Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Romantic Movement as Expressed by John Keats

Emile Verhaeren

The Colonial Literature of France

The Younger Literary Movement: W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke

Color—A Review

The Weary Blues

Common Clay and Poetry

The Poetry of Negro Life

American Literary Tradition and the Negro

Fire: A Negro Magazine

The Message of The Negro Poets

Foreword to An Autumn Love Cycle, by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Both Sides of the Color Line

The Negro Minority in American Literature

Part 2: Art, Drama, and Music

Introduction

Steps Toward the Negro Theatre

A Note on African Art

The Negro Spirituals

More of the Negro in Art

The Negro and the American Stage

The Drama of Negro Life

The Blondiau-Theatre Arts Collection

The American Negro as Artist

Toward a Critique of Negro Music

Excerpt from The Negro and His Music (1936): From Jazz to Jazz Classics: 1926–1936

Negro Art: Past and Present

Negro Music Goes to Par

Broadway and the Negro Drama

Part 3: Esthetics

Introduction

Impressions of Luxor

Internationalism—Friend or Foe of Art?

Negro Youth Speaks

The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts

African Art: Classic Style

The Negro in American Culture

Our Little Renaissance

Beauty Instead of Ashes

Art or Propaganda?

Beauty and the Provinces

Spiritual Truancy

Propaganda—or Poetry?

The Negro’s Contribution to American Culture

Part 4: Race

Introduction

Race Contacts and Inter-Racial Relations

Apropos of Africa

The Concept of Race as Applied to Social Culture

The Problem of Race Classification

Should the Negro be Encouraged to Cultural Equality?

The Contribution of Race to Culture

Slavery in the Modern Manner

Harlem: Dark Weather-Vane

Foreword: Frederick Douglass “Life and Times”

Whither Race Relations? A Critical Commentary

The Negro in the Three Americas

Special Section: When Peoples Meet: A Study in Race and Culture Contacts

Part 5: Value and Culture

Introduction

Oxford: By a Negro Student

The American Temperament

The Ethics of Culture

The New Negro

Values and Imperatives

Value

A Functional View of Value Ultimates

Self-Criticism: The Third Dimension of Culture

Frontiers of Culture

Values that Matter

Freud and Scientific Morality

Part 6: Democracy

Introduction

The Mandate System: A New Code of Empire

The Negro Vote in 1936

Ballad for Democracy

Color: Unfinished Business of Democracy

Democracy Faces a World Order

Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace

Moral Imperatives for World Order

Color and Democracy

Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy

Pluralism and Ideological Peace

List of Persons Discussed in Locke’s Essays

Index