Encouraging Verse: William S. Braithwaite and the Poetics of Race

Abstract

BY the first years of the twentieth century, America boasted international leadership in industry, finance, and corporate organization. The country could not, however, brag about its literary prowess. In the decades following the Civil War, no poet arose to rival Whitman, nor did any endowments, prizes, or professional forums exist to promote verse. Magazines sometimes printed poems to fill space, but only if they conformed to genteel guidelines. As Edgar Lee Masters lamented about the era, There was no market for anything.' In a society that venerated businessmen and a Protestant work ethic, pursuing a career in poetry seemed precious, and so aspiring bards such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Frost sought more cordial prospects overseas. The situation for African-American men and women of letters was even more dismal. Between 188o and 191o, a series of state laws and Supreme Court decisions had produced a segregated society. Although racism certainly existed in the North, it was more habitual than systematic; in the South, on the other hand, states embarked on an aggressive strategy of molesting African Americans' rights. In response to this alarming onslaught of bigotry, calamity, and disenfranchisement, black spokesman Booker T. Washington proposed a policy of compliance. African Americans would forego claims to civil and political equality; they would focus instead on creating material prosperity, on tilling fields rather than writing poems.