[John W. Cromwell. The American Negro Bibliography of the Year]
The following resolution adopted at the last meeting is self-explanatory: "That the Academy publish a list of books, pamphlets, magazines and newspaper articles bearing on the Negro Question, with appropriate comment." A letter sent to the Library of Congress brought from the Chief Bibliographer the following reply: "Titles of books relating to the Negro may be found by means of the Cumulative Book Index, published monthly; articles in magazines, etc., are listed in the Readers' Guide to periodical literature and its supplements, and in the annual magazine subject index; legal literature is indexed in the index to legal periodicals and the literature of medicine in the Index Medicus. These publications are all subject indexes and to approach the matter from the side of Negro authorship it would be necessary to start with some such book as "Who's Who of the Colored Race," which would enable the compiler to pick out the Negro authors. It would then be necessary to go through the indexes to see whether these authors had published anything during the current year. A source of additional titles," continues the letter, "would be the periodicals devoted to the interests of the Negro race. These frequently note pamphlets, privately or obscurely printed books which do not get into the regular lists."
This reference to "Who's Who," a book just issued, shows that the Academy is beginning this work at a very propitious time. One year ago "Who's Who" was only a prospect; now it is a realization, the most important this year in this field of bibliography. Its price, $6.00, may restrict its circulation to public libraries, colleges and universities until some worthier publication appears to take its place by the side of similarly named publications which include leaders of thought and action the world over.
Scarcely less important is the Negro Year Book, by Monroe N. Work, in charge of Division of Records and Research at Tuskegee. This is an annual encyclopedia of the Negro, for its scope includes the population of the earth by races, the periodicals published by Africans, "where black men govern," Negroes and Spanish Explorers, Negro Slavery in Colonies and in States, Abolition, Agitation, Slavery and Religious Denominations, Slave Insurrections, the Underground Railroad, Civil Status, Civil and Political Rights, Negro Soldiers, The Church, Education Before and Since the Civil War, Arts, Occupations, Inventions, Agriculture, Crime, Health, Population, National and Fraternal Organizations, Social Settlements, Periodical publications and bibliographies pertaining to the Negro. In no other publication of more than four hundred pages is so much information assembled. The price, 35 cents, should warrant its circulation wherever there is found school, college or church, student or professional man who affects a serious study of our relative conditions and their adaptation to the broader ones of country and civilization.
"The Negro," by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, Ph. D., No. 91 in the Home University Library of H. Holt & Co., New York, traces in twelve chapters the evolution of the race from Ethiopia and Egypt, from its original habitat, from the Cross and the Crescent to the period when the power and the influence of the race were generally recognized, up to the rise of the slave trade, with its blighting effect on conditions in the New World, and the introduction of the Negro Problem in the United States. Suggestions for further reading follow. An index and maps add to its adaptation and value.
"Education of the Negro Before 1860," by Carter G. Woodson, Ph. D. (Macmillan), embraces the results of an intensive study of educational conditions prevalent in the United States from Colonial days to the Civil War. The influence of the Quaker, the Jesuit and the Abolitionist is traced to its fruitage, contributory to the laws which gave the public school system in the South. This book deserves to be consulted by the investigator and the student.
"The Black Man's Burden," by William H. Holtzclaw, principal of the Utica (Miss.) N & I. Institute for the training of colored young men and women, is also a book of the year. The introduction is written by Booker T. Washington. It tells the story of the establishment of a school in the black belt of Mississippi hardly less thrilling though on a smaller scale than that of Tuskegee itself, of which the author is a graduate.
Among publications of a sociological nature are "Colored People of Chicago, Ill.," L. H. Bowen; "Industries Among Negroes in St. Louis," by W. A. Crossland; "The Negro as a Dependent, Defective and Delinquent," by C. H. McChord; "Urban Conditions in Harlem," by E. F. Dycloff (Outlook, 108:949-54); ditto, by E. D. Jones (Outlook, 109:597); "Manual of Freedmen's Progress," by Francis H. Warren, Secretary of Freedmen's Progress Commission. This volume of 372 pages was authorized by Act 47, Public Acts of Michigan, 1915.
Political conditions of the Negro Problem are discussed in the "Aftermath of the Civil War," by Powell Clayton; "Political History of Slavery," by J. Z. George; "Studies in South: Parties and Politics of Georgia," by C. M. Thompson; "President Lincoln's Attitude," by H. W. Wilbur; "Police Control in South Carolina," by H. M. Henry; "Slavery Early Heritage of the South"; "America's Greatest Problem," R. W. Shufeldt. Though all these are white authors, they are in an objective sense inclusive in an American Negro Bibliography.