Introduction to Southern Road (1932)

Abstract

Abstract In any inquiry regarding the important developments that have taken place in American Negro life within the past decade, I should at once cite the degree of ascendancy reached by the Negro artist, especially the Negro writer, as one of the most significant and vital. The record of the Negro’s efforts in literature goes back a long way, cover- ing a period of more than a century and a half, but it is only within the past ten years that America as a whole has been made consciously aware of the Negro as a literary artist. It is only within that brief time that Negro writers have ceased to be regarded as isolated cases of exceptional, perhaps accidental ability, and have gained group recognition. It is only within these few years that the arbiters of American letters have begun to assay the work of these writers by the general literary standards and accord it such appraisal as it might merit.