The Negro in Literature and Art. By Benjamin Brawley. Duffield and Company, New York, 1921. Pp. 197.
This is a revised edition of Professor Brawley's work which appeared in 1918. It follows the general outline of the first edition and sets forth additional facts but not sufficient to justify this claim to revision. The work is biographical, largely devoted to the narrative of the careers of Phyllis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chesnutt, W. E. B. Dubois, William Stanley Braithwaite, Frederick Douglass, Booker Washington, Henry O. Tanner, Meta Warrick Fuller, and Charles S. Gilpin. The unsatisfactory short sketch of Gilpin constitutes the best claim of the work to that of a revised edition.
While this work does not show by historic or philosophical development the evolution of the Negro mind as expressed in the achievements of the race in literature and art, it has some value. To have a publisher place before the public the sketches of so many prominent Negroes who might otherwise remain unknown to the public is a service to be appreciated. The world has too long considered the Negro a human machine restricted to drudgery. Any successful effort, therefore, to bring before the public from time to time the achievements of worthy Negroes, although it may be a repetition of what may be well known to the better informed few, must be welcomed as an undertaking having a direct bearing on popularizing the record of a neglected seventh of the population of the world.
Let us hope, however, that in the near future some other author, grasping more correctly the needs of the time, may set forth in literary form the interesting story of how history has been influenced by the Negro during the various stages of the world's progress and especially how the Negro of today functions efficiently in the life of Europe and America. The public will welcome too a work treating the eloquent appeals of Negro orators, the beautiful poetry voicing the strivings of this oppressed group, and its peculiar philosophy of life constructed while enduring the ordeal of racial proscription.
The Free Negro in Maryland, 1634-1860. By James M. Wright. Longmans, Green and Company, New York; P. S. King and Son, Ltd., London, 1921. Pp. 362.
This is a study in a neglected field of American history. Hitherto very little has been done to inform the world as to the actual contribution of the free Negro prior to the Civil War. Few persons realize that there were half a million such Negroes in the United States at that time. It is a mistake, therefore, to consider this better selected group of the race so insignificant as not to influence the history of the communities in which they lived. A number of histories have been written since the Civil War, however, with a view to meeting this need for a treatment of this neglected group. There have appeared John H. Russell's Free Negro in Virginia and Brackett's The Negro in Maryland. But unfortunately such works have been too rigidly restricted to the discussion of the Negro's legal, social, and religious status as determined by the laws enacted for these purposes in the South rather than to the study of the free Negro himself. As it is well known that many of these laws were never enforced, we are still at sea as to what the free Negro actually was and what he was doing.
While Professor Wright has not altogether succeeded in meeting the requirements for this more scientific study of the free Negro, he has done his task much better than those who have hitherto invaded this field. In addition to covering the ground of other such studies he has undertaken to give the historic background and by statistical method he has presented valuable information as to the apprenticeship of Negro children, the occupations and wages of free Negroes, their acquisition of property, their education and their religious strivings.
In his long-drawn-out conclusion he does not seem to have an altogether favorable impression as to the rôle played by the free Negro in the State of Maryland. He shows that the Negro was led to despise himself in keeping with the policy of regarding the white man as the superior and the Negro as the inferior. Professor Wright says, however, that the perpetuation of such a handicap for the most needy part of the population was probably not sound social policy. Upon the whites the effects were first to cause at least a formal realization of race solidarity, and secondly, to intensify class lines within the ranks, although not to define the "poor whites" as rigidly as in certain of the sister slave States. On the whole, Professor Wright believes that the free Negro was an asset to the State, but one laden with many of the characteristics of a liability. "The managers of the corporate body to which he (the Negro) belonged," says the writer, "would have been relieved, could they have written him as an item off their accounts. Nevertheless the sympathetic personal attachment of many whites to individual negro servants, whether slave or free, was permanent." Thus ends an informing book with several misconceptions, but nevertheless fraught with valuable facts.