America owes much to the foreigner and the Negro in America owes even more. For it was the white foreigner who first proclaimed that the only music which America had produced that was worthy of the name was Negro music. It naturally took some time for this truth to sink in, and, in the meantime, the younger element of Negroes, in their weird worship of everything that was white, neglected and despised their own race-music. More than one college class had walked out, highly insulted, when their white teachers had asked them to sing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “My Lord, What a Morning.”
It is to be hoped that they now know better. But the real subject of this editorial is not Negro music, but Negro women. If any foreigner should come here from Europe, Asia or Africa and be privileged to pass in review the various kinds of women who live in our America he would pick out as the superior of them all—the Negro woman. It seems a great pity that it should be left to the foreigner to “discover” the Negro-American woman. For her own mankind have been seeing her for centuries. And yet, outside of the vague rhetoric of the brethren in church and lodge when they want her to turn their functions into financial successes, and outside of Paul Dunbar and perhaps two other poets, no proper amount of esthetic appreciation of her has been forthcoming from their side.
Consider the facts of the case. The white women of America are charming to look at-in the upper social classes. But even the Negro laundress, cook or elevator-girl far surpasses her mistress in the matter of feminine charms. No white woman has a color as beautiful as the dark browns, light-browns, peach-browns, or gold and bronze of the Negro girl. These are some of the things which make a walk through any Negro section of New York or Washington such a feast of delight.
Then, there is the matter of form. The bodies and limbs of our Negro women are, on the whole, better built and better shaped than those of any other women on earth—except perhaps, the Egyptian women’s. And their gait and movement would require an artist to properly describe. The grace of their carriage is inimitable.
But their most striking characteristic is a feature which even the crude mind of mere man can appreciate. It is, to quote “Gunga Din,” “the way in which they carry their clothes.” They dress well—not merely in the sense that their clothing is costly and good to look at; but in that higher sense in which the Parisian woman is the best-dressed woman in Europe. From shoes and stockings to shirtwaists and hats, they choose their clothes with fine taste and show them off to the best advantage when they put them on. That is why a man may walk down the avenue with a Negro cook or factory girl without anyone’s being able to guess that she has to work for a living. And, finally, in the matter of that indefinable something which, for want of a better word, we call simply “charm”—the Negro women are far ahead of all others in America. They have more native grace, more winsomeness, greater beauty and more fire and passion. These facts have already begun to attract attention, here and elsewhere, and, eventually, the Negro woman will come into her own.
What say you, brothers! Shall we not love her while she is among us? Shall we not bend the knee in worship and thank high heaven for the great good fortune which has given us such sisters and sweethearts, mothers and wives?
To the Young Men of My Race
The Negro is already at work on the problems of reconstruction. He finds himself in the midst of a world which is changing to its very foundations. Yet millions of Negroes haven’t now—and have never had—the slightest knowledge or idea of what those foundations are. How can they render effective aid to the world without understanding something of how the world, or society, is arranged, how it runs, and how it is run?
No one, friendly or unfriendly, can deny that the Negroes of America do wish to help in constructing this world of men and things which will emerge from the Great War. They want to help, because they realize that their standing and welfare and happiness in that world will very largely depend upon what kind of world it is. They have not been happy, so far, in America—nor, so far as the white man’s rule is concerned,—anywhere else under it. And they want to be happy, if that be possible. For which reason they want to help in the re-shaping of the world-to-be.