I Am the American Negro Frank Davis
(1937)
The second volume of poetry published by FRANK
DAVIS, a Kansas-born poet and journalist. Davis
produced his second book in 1937 shortly after he
was appointed executive editor of the CHICAGO-
based ASSOCIATEDNEGROPRESS.
The title of Davis’s second book signaled his
claim on the rights and privileges of all Americans.
His assertion was rooted in defining moments of his
own life. As a young boy of five, for instance, he had
been set upon by a group of white boys who wanted
to lynch him. In I Am the American Negro,he alerted
readers to the type of work that the book contained.
Declaring that neither “Fairy words” nor a “Pollyanna
mind... roam[ed] these pages,” he described the
poems as “coarse victuals / A couch of rough boards.”
Davis’s poems were realistic and unapologetic re-cre-
ations of African-American experiences.
The volume also appeared just after he be-
came the first winner of the JULIUSROSENWALD
FELLOWSHIP, an award designed to support the in-
novative research and work of African-American
artists and scholars.
Bibliography
Davis, Frank Marshall. I Am the American Negro.
Chicago: The Black Cat Press, 1937.
Tidwell, John Edgar. Black Moods: Collected Poems—
Frank Marshall Davis.Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2002.
Idle Head Willis Richardson(1929)
A one-act play by WILLISRICHARDSON, who in
1923 became the first African-American playwright
to have his work produced on BROADWAY. Idle
Head,published in Carolina Magazinein April 1929,
appeared some six years after Richardson’s Broad-
way triumph with THECHIPWOMAN’SFORTUNE.
The play is a domestic tragedy that showcases
the desperation produced by racism and poverty.
The matriarch of the family is Mrs. Broadus, a wid-
owed mother whose husband was a proud, indepen-
dent man. She lives with her two children, George
and Alice. George, despondent about his lack of em-
ployment options, refuses to submit to the wide-
spread racism in the workplace. He helps his mother
by picking up the laundry that she does for a wealthy
white woman but refuses to use the rear servant’s
entry when he goes. While sorting the laundry, he
discovers a diamond brooch and promptly goes off to
pawn it. His motive is to provide his family with
much-needed funds and the opportunity to preserve
their membership in the local church. Alice discov-
ers the pawn slip in George’s pockets, even though
her brother and mother have chided her for habitu-
ally searching through her sibling’s clothes. When
the police, alerted by the white employer’s chauffeur,
return to the Broaduses’ apartment, Alice is forced
to reveal the incriminating evidence that she holds
in her hands. George, inadvertently undone by his
sister, is hauled off to jail. In a scene reminiscent of
heart-wrenching family dramas such as AFTERMATH
(1928) by MAMIEBURRILL, who was Richardson’s
former English teacher, the play closes as a powerless
Mrs. Broadus sinks to her knees in grief.
Richardson underscores George’s unwavering
blackness by representing his speech in dialect
while that of his moderate sister, Alice, is in stan-
dard, somewhat stilted English. The two children266