Page:An Anthology of Verse By American Negroes (1924).djvu/18



It is a happy and significant fact that this book comes from one of the leading white colleges of the South. There is nothing in the book to claim any special note of remarkableness on this score. It is simply a good piece of work done in a scholarly way, just as if the subject matter were any other body of literary production, as, for example, the poetry of Massachusetts or the poetry of Georgia. The treatment is both critical and sympathetic and quite free from any implication of patronage or favor.

This book is a needed book for two reasons. It is needed as a contribution to American criticism dealing with a large and already distinguished mass of poetical production which is little known to the general public. It is needed because the general public, let us say the general white public, ought to know of such a body of poetry coming from the colored people of this country and marking both the accomplishment and the promise of notable progress. As the Introduction says, "A race, unquestionably endowed with humor and music, that has made a marked advance in poetry within the scant sixty years of its freedom, will as unquestionably produce finer poetry when conditions have followed their present tendency for a generation or two."

The editors are to be congratulated on the discriminating and representative character of the selections which they have made from the body of available