Bibliography
Brown, Sterling. The Negro in American Fiction.Albany,
N.Y.: The J. B. Lyon Press, 1937.
Gabbin, Joanne. Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black
Aesthetic Tradition.Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1985.
Negro in Art, The: A Pictorial Record
of the Negro Artist and of the Negro
Theme in ArtAlain Locke, ed.(1940)
A highly regarded history of art that ALAINLOCKE
edited and published in 1940. It was one of three
works that Locke published with the Associates in
Negro Folk Education, the WASHINGTON, D.C.–
based organization with which he was affiliated
and served as secretary. He had, since 1936, edited
the Bronze Booklet series for the Associates group
and had overseen works on African-American lit-
erature, art, and culture.
This volume appeared four years after Locke
published Negro Art: Past and Present(1936), the
third installment in the Bronze Booklet series. It is
regarded as one of the most popular of his works,
after the influential anthology, THENEWNEGRO
(1925).
Locke, who earned a doctorate in philoso-
phy, had a deep interest in African-American art.
He was intrigued by the ways in which this body
of work was influenced and shaped by African
art. He challenged those who regarded African
art as primitive and simplistic; instead, he ar-
gued, such works had a sophisticated artistry and
demonstrated intricate techniques. Locke also
used this work to encourage African-American
artists to seek out native African art traditions
and to incorporate these styles and themes in
their own works.
Bibliography
Linneman. Russell. Alain Locke: Reflections on a Modern
Renaissance Man. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University, 1982.
Locke, Alain. Negro Art: Past and Present.Washing-
ton, D.C.: Associates in Negro Folk Education,
1936.
———, ed. The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the
Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art.1940;
reprint, New York: Hacker Art Books, 1971.
Negro in Art, The: How Shall He Be
Portrayed? A Symposium(1926)
In 1926 W. E. B. DUBOISinitiated a seven-month-
long discussion in THECRISISabout the artistic and
literary representations of African Americans. Con-
vinced that all art was propaganda, DuBois endeav-
ored to engage his contemporaries in serious debate
about the responsibilities, tendencies, and philoso-
phies of writers who pursued racial themes and sub-
jects in their works. DuBois and his literary editor
JESSIEFAUSET distributed some seven questions,
developed apparently by CARLVANVECHTEN,to
prominent African-American and white writers, lit-
erary figures, and scholars. Their answers were pub-
lished in seven issues of The Crisisduring 1926.
The respondents included SHERWOOD AN-
DERSON,COUNTEECULLEN,JOHNFARRAR, Jessie
Fauset, DUBOSEHEYWARD,LANGSTONHUGHES,
ALFREDKNOPF,SINCLAIRLEWIS,GEORGIADOU-
GLASJOHNSON, Vachel Lindsay, H. L. MENCKEN,
JULIAPETERKIN, Carl Van Vechten, and WALTER
WHITE.
Van Vechten, whose novel NIGGERHEAVEN
was forthcoming, suggested that the “squalor of
Negro life, the vice of Negro life, offer a wealth of
novel, exotic, picturesque material to the artist.”
He also suggested that the real issue at hand was
whether or not “Negro writers are going to write
about this exotic material while it is still fresh or
will they continue to make free gift of it to white
authors who will exploit it until not a drop of vital-
ity remains?” Countee Cullen argued for artistic
freedom and encouraged others to generate litera-
ture that was “representative” of the race. John Far-
rar, a prominent book critic and cofounder of the
publishing house Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, pro-
posed that African Americans be forthright and
confident, showing “as little self-consciousness as
possible.” H. L. Mencken, the writer and satirist,
suggested that African Americans fight pernicious
stereotypes by crafting equally devastating images
of their oppressors. Walter White called for gen-
uine, polished, and diverse representations of
African-American life and, like Vachel Lindsay, the
poet who catapulted Langston Hughes into the
spotlight, proposed that publishers refrain from pro-
jects that contained sloppy and divisive works.
The debate about the politics of artistic repre-
sentation, the nature of African-American images,Negro in Art, The: How Shall He Be Portrayed? A Symposium 375