CHAPTER 44

NEGRO DRAMA, PAINTING, AND SCULPTURE

Ira Aldridge and Charles Gilpin as Dramatists-Henry O. Tanner, E. W. Scott, and Albert Smith as Painters-Edmonia Lewis and Meta Warrick as Sculptors

AS yet the Negroes have no outstanding figure in the theatrical

world. Several of them, however, have had successful careers on the stage. One of these is Ira Frederick Aldridge, said to have been born in Maryland about 1810, who accompanied Edmund Kean to England and who became a popular actor there, playing the part of Othello. He received decorations from European crowned heads.

Several years ago a Negro, Charles Gilpin, successfully played a star part in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones. The leading character of this drama is a Negro who is represented as an ex-Pullman porter and ex-convict, who escapes to the West Indies, and there sets himself up as a person of royalty among the natives. When his deception begins to be discovered, he flees to the woods, where he is overcome with superstitious fears. The play is a psychological study designed to reveal the supposed superstitious nature of the Negro. The critics generally agreed that Gilpin played the part well.

Robert Allen Cole (Bob Cole), a native of Georgia, 1868-1911, won success and reputation in New York as an organizer and actor of comic plays depicting Negro life. He was also a composer of comic songs.

Several Negroes have taken part in photoplays, and others, mostly women, have won popularity as dramatic readers.

The most celebrated Negro painter is Henry O. Tanner, a native of Ohio. He studied in Paris and achieved distinction as a painter of pictures representing scenes from the Bible, such as "The Holy Family," "Christ Walking on the Sea," "Christ at the Home of Lazarus," etcetera. Several of his productions have found a place in the Luxembourg gallery, and at various times his paintings have been exhibited in the art galleries of the United States. He won money awards and gold medals for his exhibition of paintings at the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, and the St. Louis Exposition in 1905.

Edward William Scott of Indiana manifested at an early age a taste for painting, and, after a course of training at the Chicago Art Institute, went to Paris and studied at the Julian Academy and under Henry O. Tanner. Several of his paintings have been exhibited in the Salon des Beaux Arts at Toquet; one of his paintings, “La Pauvre Voisine,” was purchased by the Argentine Republic. He has done some mural decorative work on public buildings in Indianapolis, Chicago, and other cities. The Negro Year Book says: "He is interesting himself in Negro subjects and is doing in painting what Dunbar has done in verse. He is now spending considerable time in the South painting Negro types."

No painter of African descent seems to have done anything notable in the interpretation of nature. Sir Harry H. Johnston thinks that the Negro lacks feeling for landscape.1

Albert A. Smith, born in 1896, has shown conspicuous merit as an etcher of portraits, and has won deserved recognition. In 1911 he was awarded, by the DeWitt Clinton High School of New York, a scholarship in the Ethical Culture Art School. In 1915 he entered the National Academy of Design, and received several medals for clever work. In 1918 he enlisted in the World War and served until July of the year following, when he reëntered the National Academy of Design and won a prize for a painting from life. His best work has been in etchings, and he has just completed a series of portraits of noted Negroes, including Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Booker Washington, Toussaint Louverture, etcetera. His most recent work is an etching of Alexander S. Pushkin, a Russian poet of African ancestry.

In the art of sculpture two Negro women have attained prominence. Edmonia Lewis of New York attracted attention in 1865 by a bust of Robert Gould Shaw. Soon thereafter she went to Italy, where she continues to reside. Her works include "The Freedwoman," "The Death of Cleopatra," "The Marriage of Hiawatha," etcetera, and busts of John Brown, Charles Sumner, Lincoln, and Longfellow.

Meta Warrick (Mrs. Fuller), of Massachusetts, studied in Paris and is said to have been admired by the great sculptor Rodin. Her works lean towards the gruesome and the gloomy, and bear such titles as "The Wretched," "The Silent Sorrow," and "Carrying the Dead Body."

The Negro in the New World, p. 426.

CHAPTER 45

THE NEGRO PRESS

Representative Newspapers and Magazines-Contrast between Northern and Southern Papers-Over-emphasis of the Negro's Grievances by the Negro Press-Obligation of Both the Negro and the White Press to Bring About Better Race Relations

BEFOR

EFORE the Civil War there had been started at various times about twenty-four periodicals published by Negroes. Among these, only one survived and attained to any notable success and that was the North Star published by Frederick Douglass at Rochester, New York. The motive of Douglass in launching this paper was to arouse interest in the Negro and especially to remove the prejudices against him. He believed that a well-conducted press in the hands of the Negro would convince the white people of the Negro's capacity. The North Star, later entitled the Frederick Douglass Paper, became an effective force in the movement for the abolition of slavery.

At the present time there are about 500 Negro newspapers, thirtyone magazines, eighty-two school journals, two college fraternity magazines, and several periodicals of fraternal orders, of business, of music, etc.1

The leading monthly magazine is the Crisis, organ of the A. A. A. P., published in New York, which has a circulation of about 70,000.

The Journal of Negro History is a monthly publication of high standing, devoted, as its title implies, to historical research, and to the dissemination of information in regard to the achievements of the Negro race throughout the world. It is issued under the patronage of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The editor of the journal is Carter G. Woodson, Ph.D., who, in addition to his work as editor, has written several very valuable books dealing with the life of the Negro in America. The journal has just rounded out its first decade of existence, and in this short time it has made an immense contribution to the general store of knowledge concerning Negro life and achievement.

'Detweiler, The Negro Press in the United States, p. 1.

A journal which renders a very unique service to the Negroes of the United States is Opportunity, published monthly by the Department of Research and Investigations of the National Urban League. Under the editorial direction of Charles S. Johnson the magazine has attained to a high degree of excellence. It concerns itself with matters of contemporary interest, and covers very much the same field for the Negroes that the Outlook or the Independent covers for the white people. It contrasts with the Crisis in emphasizing opportunities instead of grievances. Its contributed articles would do credit to any magazine and have to do with Negro poets, painters, musicians, dramatists, and authors, and such problems as Negro migration, education, health, recreation, religious activities, and the like. In short, it portrays the Negro's part in the world's work in such a way as to stimulate hope, aspiration, and pride.

The oldest magazine published in the interest of the Negro is the Southern Workman, founded in 1872 by Samuel C. Armstrong and published monthly by the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. Its original object was to promote the interests of the undeveloped races, and, for a long time, it contained much matter pertaining to the American Indians, but in recent years it has come to deal almost exclusively with the American Negro. Its special field is education, particularly education for agriculture and the mechanic arts, but it publishes numerous articles covering all sorts of activities in the line of cultural uplift. The magazine has been of incalculable benefit to the Negro and the Indian.

The best known and most influential newspapers in the North are the Guardian of Boston; the Age, News, Messenger, Crusader, and Negro World of New York City; the Defender, Whip, Enterprise, and Broad Ax of Chicago; the Freedman of Indianapolis; the Courier and the American of Pittsburgh; and the Tribune of Philadelphia.

Among the outstanding newspapers of the South are the AfroAmerican of Baltimore; the Western Review of Little Rock, Arkansas; the Florida Sentinel, of Jacksonville; the Savannah Tribune, of Savannah, Georgia; the Louisville Leader, of Louisville, Kentucky; the Negro Advocate, of New Orleans; the St. Louis Independent; the Gate City Argus, Greensboro, North Carolina; the Black Dispatch, Oklahoma City; the Southern Indicator, Columbia, South Carolina; the Memphis Times; the City Times of Galveston; the Houston Observer; and the Richmond Planet.

In several respects the Negro papers of the North and South stand

in sharp contrast.

The papers of the North are more absorbed in politics, while the papers of the South give relatively more space to items of local interest, such as those pertaining to social functions, religious and fraternal activities, schools, health, and business.

The Northern papers are more radical and more bitter than those of the South. With a few exceptions they are extremely partisan, and discuss political issues, especially those concerning conditions in the South, with such a passion as to destroy candor and the capacity to form a judgment related to the facts. Their attitude towards the white South is that of frenzied hatred and vengefulness. They see in the Southern white man only a monster of iniquity who deserves condign punishment for his sins against the Negro. They profess to believe that the white South is endeavoring, with might and main, to reduce the Negro again to a state of slavery. They denounce very justly the lynchings and other injustices to which the Southern Negroes are subjected, but scorn to credit the white South with any worthy endeavor or achievement in behalf of the colored population. Any evidence of improvement in the status of the Southern Negro seems to be unwelcome to them as diminishing the fuel for the flame of malice. The Northern press seeks, above everything else, to inspire the Southern Negroes with a hatred of their white neighbors, and to a large extent it has succeeded in doing so. Consequently it looks with disfavor upon the movement for coöperation in the South between the two races. The rabid Northern press needs to learn that in cultivating hatred between the races in the South it is doing the same for the races in the North.

The Negro press concerns itself to an irrational extent with the colored man's grievances against the white man. The Negro, to be sure, has real grievances and plenty of them, but harping upon them has become such a habit of the Negro press that very often the Negro editor writes in vague generalities about injustices and outrages of which he has no real knowledge, and which in fact do not exist.

One of the most widespread and frequent complaints among Negro editorial writers is that the white press takes notice of Negroes only who commit crime. The white press is undoubtedly too much given to exploiting crime, and it is a fact that some papers give more prominence to crime by a Negro than by a white man, but it is not at all true that the white press overlooks the Negro who distinguishes himself in something other than crime. The white press in all sections of the 'Kerlin, The Voice of the Negro, pp. 3-4.