Following is an excerpt from the preface of this book.
This alone should pique your interest enough
to stimulate you to continue reading. Enjoy :)
A people may become great through many means,
but
there is only one measure by which its
greatness is recog-
nized and acknowledged. The final measure
of the great-
ness of all peoples is the amount and
standard of the
literature and art they have produced. The
world does
not know that a people is great until that
people pro-
duces great literature and art. No people
that has pro-
duced great literature and art has ever
been looked upon
by the world as distinctly inferior.
The status of the Negro in the United
States is more
a question of national mental attitude
toward the race
than of actual conditions. And nothing will
do more
to change that mental attitude and raise
his status than
a demonstration of intellectual parity by
the Negro
through the production of
literature and art.
Is there likelihood that the American Negro
will be
able to do this? There is, for the good
reason that he
possesses the Innate powers. He has the
emotional en-
dowment, the originality and artistic
conception, and,
what is more important, the power of
creating that which
has universal appeal and influence.
I make here what may appear to be a more
startling
statement by saying that the Negro has
already proved
the possession of these powers by being the
creator of the
only things artistic that have yet sprung
from American
soil and been universally acknowledged as
distinctive
American products.
Author: Johnson, James Weldon, 1871-1938
Subject: American poetry -- African American authors
Publisher: New York : Harcourt, Brace and Company
Possible copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT
Link
https://archive.org/details/bookofamericanne00johnrich
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