Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/384

 sideration the dearth of such literature bearing on Negroes. This work takes rank with the recent volume of Bishop Coppin entitled Unwritten History, for certainly there are to be found therein interesting romances taken from the life of the Negro and recorded by one of the race in the manner in which these things were impressed upon him and found expression in his mind. This is the sort of literature for which the public has patiently waited and it is devoutly to be desired that other churchmen may find time to leave a written record like these of Bishop Coppin and Chaplain Steward. For anyone desirous of studying the history of the Negro in its various ramifications, such works are indispensable.

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