John H. Clark lecture, "The Influence of Slave Narratives on Afro-American Literature," at the University of Iowa, June 18, 1974

Speaker 1: The following was recorded June 18, 1974 as part of the sixth annual Institute on Afro-American Culture held at the University of Iowa. Speaking on the influence of slave narratives on Afro-American literature is John H. Clarke, professor of African history at Hunter College, and City College of New York. Speaker 1: Making the introduction Professor Darwin Turner, Chairman of the Department of Afro-American studies at the University of Iowa. Darwin Turner: Ladies and gentlemen, our guest lecturer for this evening is John Henrik Clarke, author, editor, teacher whose distinguished achievements have earned him awards in all fields. In 1958, he earned a for creative contributions in editing. In 1969, the National Association of Television and Radio Announcers awarded him a citation for Meritorious Achievement in Educational Television. Darwin Turner: In 1971, he received the Carter G. Woodson Award for distinguished and outstanding work in the teaching of history. Born in Alabama, Professor Clarke studied at New York University and The New School for Social Research. He's received the Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Denver, and presently is Professor of African History at Hunter College, and also at the City College of New York. Darwin Turner: His earliest recognition came as a writer of fiction, especially for such stories about Black children as Santa Claus Is A White Man, and his most frequently anthologized story, The Boy Who Painted Christ Black. For many years, he was the guiding spirit of the Harlem Writers Guild, which included such other writers as Lorraine Hansberry, and Harold Cruse among its associates. Darwin Turner: In addition to his own creative work, John Henrik Clarke has written essays on Afro American literature, and on African history. Among the best known of the half dozen books which he has edited are American Negro Short Stories, Harlem, and Black Titan. He is the author of Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa, and he is the coauthor of Black Heritage, and of Slave Trade and Slavery. Presently, he is working on a study of slave narratives, and this evening will talk with us on the topic the influence of slave narratives on Afro-American literature. It is my pleasure to introduce Professor John Henrik Clarke. John Henrik Cla...: Thank you very much. This marks, to the best of my memory, my second appearance in this state. My first appearance was in the journey of escape from the south as a young vagabond hopping freights. I came through this state, and what I remember most about it, there were so few Black people that every time I passed through a town, I became some kind of curio piece. I went into stores to buy simple things, a loaf of bread, and the store keeper would just look at me, and call somebody else to look at me. John Henrik Cla...: I hope this state is more introduced to Black people who are part of America, and except for them being a part of America, especially its labor force, you may not have a capitalist system that is now declining. What I'm talking about tonight is the influence of the slave narrative on Afro-American literature, but the slave narrative had an influence on literature in general. John Henrik Cla...: My notes are extracted from a much larger work in progress dealing with the slave revolt, which was rather natural for the Black Americans considering that they came out of storytelling societies where storytelling was passed down from one to the other. I'm going to take a rather bold approach to the subject, and I'm not trying to be provocative, I'm trying to set up something for you to think about. John Henrik Cla...: I maintain that the slave narrative is the foundation, the pillar of Afro-American literature, and was the seed of the first genuine native-born literature to be developed in this country. It is both the floor and the roof of Afro-American literature, and it has been the means of holding Afro-American literature together. John Henrik Cla...: In spite of the fact that you had slaves in other parts of the hemisphere, the slave narrative in America had its single uniqueness, and I further maintain that every Black writer of caliber has used this form of the slave narrative, consciously or unconsciously. The base of the narrative is both broad, narrow, and elastic, and forever flexible. And it is the only American literature that could not have been created in any other place except in the atmosphere of the United States. John Henrik Cla...: It was the special condition of oppression that created the slave narrative, and also gave birth to the spirituals, and the blues. Here, I'd like to call attention to the fact that Blacks were oppressed in other parts of the hemisphere. There was slavery and oppression in South America, the Caribbean islands, Mexico and Central America. Yet, these essentially African people did not differ from the African people in the United States. And yet, the special condition of their oppression did not lead to the creation of the slave narrative, the blues, and the spiritual. John Henrik Cla...: The slave narrative had its early development as an instrument of the abolitionist movement, and some of the narratives were written by, and some of the narratives were told, too. It might take some doing, and some astute attention to detail, to find out to what extent the narrative was tampered with during its formative period of development. John Henrik Cla...: Frederick Douglass was probably the first of the great slave narrators to get something like nationwide attention. Some of the early narratives were told to whites, some were tampered by whites, and some were used as fundraising means of the abolitionist movement. During these early years, Frederick Douglass stood at the center of the Blacks using the slave narrative as an instrument of getting across an indictment of the system of oppression. John Henrik Cla...: He might be called the father of the slave narrative, in the formal sense, mainly because he made the best use of it, though he was not, by no means, the first slave narrative. Now as the slave narrative developed, it began to influence the whole of the writing of Afro-American literature. It began to influence the essay, and its greatest influence in the essay was in David Walker's Appeal. John Henrik Cla...: David Walker's Appeal, written in 1829, helped to lay the basis of concepts called Black power and pan-Africanism. Of course, they did not call them by those names at this time, but what went into the making of pan-Africanism, and the concepts of Black power, all of the ingredients can be found in David Walkers Appeal. John Henrik Cla...: It was the first time that a Black writer had thrown an appeal, and asked for the attention not just of the Blacks in the united states, but the Blacks in all of the world of that day. Now the writing of Henry Highland Garnet is, in my opinion, second only to David Walker in its dynamic, and its appeal to the people to take up arms, and also the use of the story of oppression as an instrument of their liberation. John Henrik Cla...: The slave narrative would influence some of our early writers, William Wells Brown and his novel Clotel, or The President's Daughter. This was the first of the novels with the tragic mulatto theme. This was a reoccurring theme in Afro-American literature from its introduction in the novel by William Wells Brown, to the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. John Henrik Cla...: Now the influence of the slave narrative also had its impact on the first formal back to Africa movement. Not the movement that started with the physical move back to Africa with Paul Cuffee, but with the intellectual awareness of Africa as a possible homeland in the 1850s, and it's reflected best during this period in the works of Martin Delany, especially in his novel Blake, and in his writings about his journey to Abeokuta, in present day Nigeria. John Henrik Cla...: And in the works of his partner on this trip, Robert Campbell, and his account, Journey: Pilgrimage to My Motherland. This arresting account of an Afro-American's return to his motherland used the slave narrative quite well in demonstrating that there had to be a wedding between the African and the Afro-American, and that while all of them could not return physically, that a return was necessary spiritually, if not physically. John Henrik Cla...: In the years following the Civil War, the slave narrative was reflected in Afro-American literature with some degrees of sophistication, but the form remained. The subject changed somewhat, but the writers of that day were still telling slave narratives. We might call this the ex-slave narrative, and the ex would be questioned if the emancipation was true, but the emancipation was not true. John Henrik Cla...: The slave narrative is reflected again in the speeches and writings of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, and then again in the works of the first Black formal historian, formal in the sense that he had some training in history, George Washington Williams and his History of the Negro Race in the United States, but most expressly in his essays. John Henrik Cla...: Now in the closing years of the 19th century, the slave narrative and its technique would have a different kind of influence, and this influence would be reflected early in the 20th century, in a small classic by W. E. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk. This book and its essay represents the most sophisticated use of the technique of the slave narrative. John Henrik Cla...: What DuBois was saying in these essays is that we are men and women of dignity, and we do not choose to walk the earth any other way. In my opinion, these essays laid the basis for the dynamic social thought among Black Americans in the early part of the 20th century. John Henrik Cla...: Souls of Black Folk is a milestone in Afro-American literature. The spirit and the influence of Souls of Black Folk would be felt in the literary period called the Harlem Renaissance itself. Now this period called the Harlem Renaissance, where the slave narrative took on some sophistication was not really a renaissance in the general sense, and I've had this out with several writers. John Henrik Cla...: And I remember talking to Langston Hughes, and I said, "The word renaissance means the return of something that had been before." And Langston Hughes said "Leave it alone. I like the word renaissance. I know as much about the dictionary as you do, and I know that a renaissance is something else, but the word rose, and the idea of having a renaissance, meaning the return to something that you had before. So let us leave it at renaissance." John Henrik Cla...: Sterling Brown, one of our most able critics, said that it really wasn't a renaissance, and should've been called something else. But one use of the slave narrative during this period was in the writings about the tragic mulatto theme. Now these novels, in my opinion, are unique exaggerations. In all my life, I have never met a tragic mulatto that was as tragic as the tragic mulatto in these stories. John Henrik Cla...: And yet, the tragic mulatto theme, especially the novels of Nella Larson, Passing and Quicksand, became a popular theme for that day, and I think the best use of the tragic mulatto theme was in the work by James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. I think the best use was made in this book because it made a comment on the period of the time, and it was not just a book of protracted crying. John Henrik Cla...: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man says more about the society that produce a person, and made a person deny his being, and tried to imitate another person in order to escape some form of oppression. Quicksand and other passing theme novels didn't say that much about the period that one was living in at the time. John Henrik Cla...: I detect, though somewhat slightly, the slave narrative and its influence in the works of [inaudible] the works about thinly disguised something called the Black middle class, and I won't get too far into this because I don't believe there is a Black middle class as such, because I think this class is so weak that any one of them can be destroyed with one telephone call from one powerful white person. John Henrik Cla...: And a class must have some means of defending itself. It is so thin and tenuous it can be wiped out overnight. Let me show you what I'm talking about, so you can understand what I'm trying to get across to you. If all the big advertisers in the United States that advertise in Ebony Magazine came together an agreed that Ebony Magazine would get no big advertisement, overnight, Johnson would be wiped out. John Henrik Cla...: But if they made the same kind of decision on a white publication, the whites have enough political influence to get them to, at least in part, reverse this decision. There would have been nothing that Johnson could do about it. And so Johnson belongs to a kind of middle class waiting to become a class, because no class is secure until it has the political means of protecting itself. John Henrik Cla...: I think the more genuine use of the slave narrative was in the folk writings of Zora Neale Hurston, particularly in her more than minor masterpiece, Mules and Men. The same technique would be reflected in Dust On the Road, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. I do not think the slave narrative is totally absent in the works of Claude McKay, especially Home to Harlem, and in Langston Hughes's Not Without Laughter. John Henrik Cla...: Now as this period called the Harlem Renaissance developed, it was partly made in Harlem, and partly imposed on Harlem. The best assessment of it is still in Alain Locke's edited work, The New Negro. I think what happened during this period following the first World War, is that blacks discovered self, and some people discovered blacks. John Henrik Cla...: Many whites, lost from their social moorings, kind of estranged from their family, discovered Black people, and began to treat them in a kind of a so-so, pseudo-social equality. These whites, lost from their mooring, began to underwrite the works of blacks, began to introduce them to publishers, and they began to get their work published. John Henrik Cla...: These whites, many of them monied people from social families, were kind of not educated enough to teach, and not holy enough to preach. And they came to the Black community at the right time. They wanted to discover negroes. They were looking for something which white people still seem to be looking for, the mythological noble savage. The exotic negro. John Henrik Cla...: And it became fashionable to invite at least one to your party, and many unemployed Black college graduates, all they had to do was to tell one of these whites they've got a message inside of them waiting to be put on paper, if only they had the money. And some of these writers who couldn't even write a good letter home to mama got that work underwritten. And many writers were discovered several times. John Henrik Cla...: Langston Hughes was discovered several times, and each discovery gave him a little stipend to move his work along. He was discovered by Vachel Lindsay and he was discovered again by Carl Van Vechten, and some white woman, who had more money than she's got any business with, a widow, discovered him and sent her chauffeur to bring him for dinner, and then one day, sadly, sad for Langston, she read one of his poems and the dream was over, and the sponsorships was over. John Henrik Cla...: One of the early radical poems that did not get to the House Un-American Activity, and the one that did get there was bad enough. A long poem, and kind of beautiful poem for that day. Stanza after stanza all ending Comrade Lenin of Russia. Encased in a marble tomb, Comrade Lenin of Russia. Move over and give me room. John Henrik Cla...: But this is the poem that got Langston Hughes out of one of his last meal tickets, and he had to go back to work until he could find a new kind of sponsor. Now the interesting thing about this period is that many of the blacks would have written just as well, whether they had been the period or not. John Henrik Cla...: And the sincere black who was going to write anyway would have still written. But it gave Black literature and Black writers a kind of a rallying place called Harlem, and it gave them a salon, a place to meet. And it gave them some public attention they otherwise would not have had. And the contribution of the phony hangers-on, if many of them went to the parties of whites, and proved in a social setting they could behave just as well, if not better. John Henrik Cla...: Many of them discussed the works of Beethoven, and talked about vichyssoise as though they had never heard of a ham hock. Some of them went to yacht parties on the Mediterranean with some of their white sponsors. These hangers-on would never write, but they gave a kind of dash and color to the situation. John Henrik Cla...: The serious writers went on and continued to get their work done, and one of the best writers to use the form of the slave narrative to make a comment about this middle class that wasn't so middle, was Jessie Fauset and her three main novels, The Chinaberry Tree, Comedy, American Style, and Plum Bun and yes, four. And There is A Confession, which I think is her first novel. John Henrik Cla...: What she was trying to deal with is the complication of standards in America, the complications of people who find out what the rules are, try to obey them, and still do not get accepted into what we call the American mainstream. Now while this period ended around 1929 and 1930 when whites, having lost considerable money, no longer found any thrill in searching for the noble savage, while it ended in some way during this period, I maintain that the real end of the renaissance came around 1939 and 1940 when a writer, Richard Wright, emerged. John Henrik Cla...: The emergence of Richard Wright was a milestone in Afro-American literature that should be celebrated every year, if not every day. If it can be said that Beethoven freed music, it can also be said with absolute justification that Richard Wright freed Black writing from white paternalism, condescension, and pampering. John Henrik Cla...: Here at last we had produced a writer who wrote considerably better than his white counterpart. Singularly his greatest contribution was the elimination of the double standard judging Black writers. This was done in his novel Native Son that emerged on the horizon like a clap of thunder followed by a hurricane. John Henrik Cla...: Richard Wright came on the scene like a giant stumbling out of the mountains, and after Richard Wright, the Black writer began to get some respectful attention, and we began to pay attention to the Black writer as a craftsman, and not just a curio piece. In his review of the book Example of Richard Wright by Dan McCall [inaudible] has said when Richard Wright created Bigger Thomas, and sent him stumbling forth all black and sweaty and brutal to murder blond Mary Dalton, and to send thereafter bold and unrepentant, and to stand there after claiming his manhood, Black writing emerged forever from the smothering shadows of western literature. John Henrik Cla...: Richard Wright had influence on the next generation of writers, including those who now deny his influence. And one of the greatest, one of the most notable deniers of the influence of Richard Wright, who acknowledged it early, is Ralph Ellison. I won't go too deeply into Ralph Ellison because he is a writer, I happen to think kind of stood on the sidelines, and at a time when he should have come into the mainstream of his peoples social protest movement. John Henrik Cla...: Now this is a fight between Ellison and I, and its not going to be resolved on this platform, or by this audience. But in the closing and the years immediately following the Second World War, and in and during the Second World War itself, we met and we talked, and just before that war I joined with Richard Wright with Ralph Ellison, [inaudible] still alive, and Allan Morrison, and we found a magazine that lasted exactly nine months. John Henrik Cla...: It was called the Negro World Digest. Later, Johnson picked up this magazine, and laid the basis for Johnson Publishing Company. We were too broke to renew the copyright on the magazine, and anybody who wanted to pick it up and republish it was home free. This was period following the war in Harlem when writers like Ann Petry and her work The Street, Chester Himes and If He Hollers, Let Him go was brought to our attention. John Henrik Cla...: Now in a few years, James Baldwin would emerge. His short stories had appeared in a few magazine, and a few essays had appeared. But with the publication of his novel and with the publication of his main essay, principally The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin began to use some of the same technique of the slave narrative in a more refined way. But he did something else. He restored the personal essay as a literary form, and now the slave narrative began to influence other aspects of Black literature, including some rather phony slave narratives. John Henrik Cla...: The most notable slave narrative to come out of the period all written by whites for blacks, Ethel Waters' book His Eye on the Sparrow, and Billie Holiday's The Lady Sings the Blues. And Sammy Davis' Yes, I Can. What was these show business slave narratives saying? They were saying something, if you understand, rather detrimental, and only in a sideway complimentary. John Henrik Cla...: They were saying through their white writers, who really wrote them, if these people can rise from being prostitutes, or coming out of the houses of prostitutes, and if Sammy Davis can be born in a trunk backstage, and straighten himself out and be something, what's wrong with the rest of you Black people? John Henrik Cla...: And it was created in a kind of "yes, I can syndrome" and this show business slave narrative needs to be examined for what it is. But the most notable of the slave narratives was the urban slave narrative, and the most of the lot was Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land. Written, really, by a white writer, a white editor who took the basic story and shaped it into a best seller, and this idea of being a writer got so good to Claude, he began to tell the story of his book to some of the people who's lives were distorted in the book. John Henrik Cla...: And finally, one night in the Red Rooster , they told him, "Look, Claude we're very glad that you and some white person turned out this book, but you know that most of it is false. Now the situation in the ghetto is bad enough without you making it worse with this novel." So many of the things stated in the book, autobiography was not factually true. John Henrik Cla...: Gangs didn't have mascots in Harlem, and besides, a lot of people still alive grew up in the same community that he was writing about, and they know that he over told the story. Now, you have not seen Claude Brown's second book, and I doubt if you ever would. But the urban slave narrative, mostly written by whites as some of the early slave narratives were written by whites for blacks, reached a kind of peak with Manchild in the Promised Land. John Henrik Cla...: A unique document as a document, but somewhat phony, if you know the Harlem community as well as I do. Now the greatest and most important of the slave narratives that had reality and beauty was books like Langston Hughes's great urban character Jesse B. Semple. Here we have a body of literature that will probably outlive the circumstances of its creation. John Henrik Cla...: Langston Hughes Jesse B. Semple is more than a story about a barhop. It is a kind of urban philosopher commenting on the conditions of the day, and it may be the finest example of the urban character in Afro-American literature. I think Jesse B. Semple may well outlive the circumstances of his creation. But I think the slave narrative form and the slave narrative influence in the autobiography may have reached some kind of a peak in the works of Malcolm X. John Henrik Cla...: The Autobiography of Malcolm x has a special place in Afro-American literature. In the truest sense, it is a slave narrative. It is about slavery and liberation, and the restoration of the manhood of a human being who, in spite of what the society said to him, insisted that he would emerge as a man, and did emerge as a man. His autobiography says something to this generation that needs to be repeated. John Henrik Cla...: It says you can come out of the mire. You can be men, and you can be women of stature. I maintain that the slave narrative is an inexhaustible foundation of information, form, and technique for the Black writer, and that he will return to it again and again. I think out of the slave narrative the Black writer might find a kind of genre that will preserve and teach lessons through his writing about the nature of his oppression. John Henrik Cla...: I think out of the form of the slave narrative and the inspiration of the slave narrative will come what I call a literature of celebration. And what I mean by literature of celebration, I mean from the narrow view of the writer's ethnic being, he may look out on the world and become as broad as the universe. I think we might discover what the Irish writers, and the Jewish writers discovered and practiced well, and became universal writers. John Henrik Cla...: Out of Sean O'Casey's specific Irishness, he became a universal writer. Out of Sholem Aleichem's profound Jewishness, he became an international writer. I think when we produce the literature of celebration, it will not be a celebration of oppression, but a celebration of survival in spite of it. I would like to conclude by paraphrasing the last paragraph of an essay Saunders Redding, "The Negro Writer and His Roots." John Henrik Cla...: "The slave narrative is the basis of all Afro-American's literary identity. It is the root from all honest creation, from all honest creation. The relationship of Afro-American literature to the slave narrative is the same as the relationship of a child to its mother." Thank you. Darwin Turner: There will be a few moments for questions if you care to direct them to Professor Clarke. Yes sir? Audience: [inaudible] John Henrik Cla...: I'm not hearing you very well. Audience: [inaudible] John Henrik Cla...: Yes, go ahead. Audience: I wanted to know, why didn't you make your [inaudible] other writers during the Renaissance, since a lot of the writers in that period said that you was a good writer. Some of his writings were pretty professional. Why wasn't he patronized as much by vanillas and whites of that time? John Henrik Cla...: Oh, he spoke of Wally Thurman, and why didn't Wally Thurman make it as well as others, or get the attention as well as the others. In fact, to some extent, he did make it, and he did get some attention, though not as much attention as he needed. He did not devote all of his time to writing. He was one of the first blacks to serve as a full-time editor in one of the white publications. John Henrik Cla...: I think that his novels, Infants of Spring and The Blacker the Berry are more than curio pieces of that time. I think the novel has a great deal to say about that period. He died tragically early, and no doubt his greatest work was still ahead of him. There's a whole lot of writers I did not mention at all. I mean, another writer that should have gotten more attention during that period was Rudolph Fisher, and there are a number of other women writers that should've gotten more attention. John Henrik Cla...: I quite agree that Thurman and some other writers, and I think Rudolph Fisher I think probably looked at, might deserve some of the attention that went to the author of Cane, Jean Toomer. Not that I begrudge any attention that Jean Toomer got. I think one of the main reasons why Jean Toomer got attention was because he extended his writing beyond just the theme of blackness, and he did some general writing, and some critical writing, and some of it was quite good. Audience: What happens to the man who [inaudible] John Henrik Cla...: It lasted one issue, and burned itself out. And the writers spent the next year trying to pay for it. Audience: Why didn't whites support [inaudible] John Henrik Cla...: It came just at a time when white support was tapering off, and most blacks heard about Fire ten years after it had been published. It's a collectors item. [inaudible] Some of the republication houses have brought it out again. Yes sir? Audience: I think [inaudible] not only was it [inaudible] literally accurate in saying that the remaining copies of Fire burned up in fire, but Wallace Thurman tried again with other magazines, at least one other magazine during the period. This was a kind of mixture of one group, Thurman still thought the magazine was a good idea. He tried another one. A few other blacks were trying comparable magazines, but time and time again, the absence of money and sometimes the absences of talent became the death of [inaudible] John Henrik Cla...: Dorothy West, who was part of that grouping, and Marian Minus, both of them are still alive, incidentally. Dorothy West lives in Martha's Vineyard where she's been there for 30 years or so, and Mary Minus is [inaudible] in a union. They started a magazine, New Challenge that lasted a little while. It was Challenge, it lasted maybe a year. Went out and came back as New Challenge. John Henrik Cla...: A young writer, then about 17 or 18, and then very black in attitude called Frank Yerby published some of his early poems in New Challenge. He would later turn when a literary agent, I think Anne Watkins, would ask him after he wrote Foxes of Harrow whether he wanted to save his people, or wanted to become a millionaire. And you know what decision he made. John Henrik Cla...: I do not belong to the school that believes Frank Yerby is a bad writer. I think he's a good commercial writer, and I have checked a lot of his historical facts, and I think he's a good researcher. I just regret that a person with that kind of even commercial skill hasn't written a historical novels about great events in Black life. I would like to see Yerby turn that skill toward a novel of the Haitian Revolution, or some of the other revolutions. The black man at sea, or something else like that. Yeah? Audience: Why didn't you include The Dahomean in your statement about Yerby? John Henrik Cla...: I think that The Dahomean represents an attempt to come home to the historical material relating to Black people, and I thought that he brought it off quite well. But unfortunately, blacks have grown so accustomed to not reading Yerby they haven't given Yerby the proper attention. But he's really not to be written off. But to his everlasting credit, he hasn't gone around making any statements, pro or con, about our condition. When he didn't have anything good to say, he sure said nothing bad. John Henrik Cla...: So he is not a discredit to us in any way. Yes, ma'am? Audience: What's the influence of the Harlem Renaissance on the Negritude movement. John Henrik Cla...: She asked about the influence of Harlem Renaissance on the Negritude movement. I don't think that there was any influence of consequence. Let's see how Negritude concept go itself underway. Now it was created mainly by French West Indians, those that the French had trained to help the hold down their colonial empire. And so the people from Martinique, and Guadalupe, that crowd, they had a little more than equality. John Henrik Cla...: They had the best of the wine, and the best of the women, and the French gave them the best of classical French education, but told them they were French. Then they began to ask questions about their blackness. What's wrong with their blackness? And they began to look inside of themselves, and they saw some pictures that interest them, and they began to drift back and examine their relationship with their own people. John Henrik Cla...: I think it's a form of intellectual nationalism that has been rather misunderstood in some quarters, I think Leopold Senghor would be the first African to pick it up, but Aime Cesaire, and Leon Damas, and other French Caribbeans would be the forerunners of this concept. John Henrik Cla...: Aime Cesaire, I've been told, wrote his famous poem My Negritude when he was in Czechoslovakia on vacation with his white wife. And those who are discovering themselves had quite a lot more to discover, and some of them never did take it, that essential step forward and relating more specifically to Africa. John Henrik Cla...: Aime Cesaire wrote, and still writes, with such beauty and sincerity about Africa is that most people do not know that Aime Cesaire is not an African. In the general sense, he is form the French Caribbean. Yes? Audience: [inaudible] certain degree of respect towards people such as [inaudible] and particularly universality, and also [inaudible] with the evolution [inaudible] Where do you suppose that we go from here? John Henrik Cla...: We go from here I think is an essential, probably a better interpretation of ourselves, and I think we're going to begin maybe slowly produce Black writers who would write for a Black audience and not care too much about whether white people read them or not. And I think by writing specifically for a Black audience in a tone that that Black audience can understand, this work is going to have a better chance of universality than some of the work written mostly for a white audience, because it's going to say something authentic. John Henrik Cla...: It may not have been said before, and I think that Black writing, particularly Caribbean writing would have to come out of its dead end street, and begin to address itself more specifically to Caribbean subjects, and to Caribbean situations. Most of the Caribbean writers live outside of the Caribbean. George Lamming has lived in London for 23 years, and he's still writing about the Caribbeans. John Henrik Cla...: And as I've talked to some of them, I say you have to get home and get your soul refilled. You have to replenish subject area, and your subject matter. But I think the great themes in Black life hasn't even been handled by any black writer. In America, in the Caribbeans, or Africa. I think there are greater themes than anything that has so far appeared in their works. And I think the greatest theme is how we have managed to survive, because by all of the rules of logic, we don't even supposed to be here talking about it. John Henrik Cla...: And yet, we're here. Why have we survived while other people are extinct? Other people who had a blow directed at them not half as bad as one directed at us are not even around to talk about it. They're all gone. Find me an Arawak Indian, or [inaudible] Indian. Find one. The whole people are extinct. What is that in the attitude about Black people that keep them surviving while other people perish? John Henrik Cla...: It's a great theme. And not in an epic poem, or in a novel has any Black writer handled it. I think it has been kind of touched by the essay, but in a massive novel, I don't think the theme of survival in spite of oppression has been properly addressed. John Henrik Cla...: Yes, sir? Will somebody, yes ma'am? Audience: Don't you think that this theme is at least strongly implied in Margaret Walkers Jubilee? Have you ever seen a person face as many obstacles [inaudible] and then overcome them with a smile and a positive attitude? John Henrik Cla...: Yes, I quite agree, and I'm sorry I forgot that. The theme is more than implied in Margaret Walker Alexander's novel Jubilee. And in other novels its kind of touched on but not as strong as in Jubilee. I tend to like John Killens's novel Young Blood. It's his first novel, it has many technical flaws, and yet it's a novel about a Black family. And I think that the framework of the Black family, and how it stayed together, is another theme for the novel. And I think that in spite of the bad novels about the miscegenation whatsoever that is, that one day, somebody's going to write a good novel about this theme. John Henrik Cla...: I don't know a really good novel on this theme. I stand corrected if somebody else knows one. I think the passing novels were kind of experiments with the theme. But to deal miscegenation you got to deal with the contradictions in Western society, and it can be dealt with in a lot of settings other than America. I think Brazil would be another place where it might be dealt with by a master novelist knows his technique, and he also must know Brazil, and the contradictions in Portuguese society. John Henrik Cla...: See there are so many areas of Black life where there isn't one novel at all, and South America and the Caribbean area happen to be areas almost totally unexplored as themes. I think George Lamming's novels, especially Native to My Person, which is a continuation of the same theme he took up in The Castle of My Skin, and that it is saying something. But George Lamming might have been too long in London to still capture the flavor of the Caribbean islands. John Henrik Cla...: Yes, sir? Audience: What would you say to Ishmael Reed's concept of neo-slave narratives where says that that's all Black people do is write neo-slave narrative that it's burnt out. That we should look for a new subject matter, write about a cowboy, or write a gangster novel, or a mystery novel, or some other novel. [inaudible] get away from the [inaudible] I had a hard time, or you know get away from that kind of subject matter. He says that despite [inaudible] good writers creativity [inaudible] neo-slave narrative, it was a negative connotation. John Henrik Cla...: Well, I know him and I like him, and I admire his work including a lot of it that I don't understand. I disagree with him on this. Before we discard the form, I think we should get a few masterpieces out of it first, then start thinking about whether we want to discard the form. I think it's a form that in many ways can sustain almost any theme we pick up, including the comic [inaudible] and out and out humorous novels. John Henrik Cla...: I'm not against other themes he spoke about, particularly the cowboy. If you write a genuine story about the blacks in the west, I think you'd have a major novel. Not just about the Black cowboy, but about the blacks in the westward movement, and why the blacks followed so many mixed up people to the west. John Henrik Cla...: You know there were blacks following the Mormons? We follow any anybody. Why would you follow the Mormons? He did. He did. And the Black entrepreneur in the west. [inaudible] a Black hotel owner out in Colorado with no help, nothing to protect him. Carved out a niche for himself, and his family still owns a lot of property in the heart of Denver. He put on his six shooters and just outshot those who wanted to take it away from him. John Henrik Cla...: Stayed there a generation. I imagine a good novel can be written about like [inaudible] and other blacks in the west, and whether it's the neo-slave narrative or not, I can yield something in this respect. All of us don't have to use the same style, and the same technique, so long as we begin to treat more of the untreated subject matter in our lives. John Henrik Cla...: I can... understand the, I think the technique in a book should suit the subject of the book, and the form of a slave narrative may not be suitable for every kind of subject that you are willing to handle? But I just maintain that it has been almost a prevailing thing in Black writing, and I don't think it's a bad thing. John Henrik Cla...: Someone wants to go away from it, develop another technique all well and good, but I think its going to be with us for some time to come, as it has been with us for some time to come. Audience: [inaudible] John Henrik Cla...: Well, I don't profess to having understood the novel, and I have read all of Ishmael Reed's work. Some of it just didn't get quite through to me, and it was experimentation that was a little difficult to get out. And I have no assessment of it, but I enjoy... John Henrik Cla...: I think Black writers should experiment with form. I was on a committee that gave William Kelley an award for an experimental novel that I didn't quite understand what he was trying to get at, and yet I respected the attempt to break out of standard form and to demonstrate technique in another area. To try to get another dimension in the message by using a non-standard form. John Henrik Cla...: So I'm not against experimentation, and I don't think the writer should be locked into any one form. My defense of the slave narrative is that I think it has served quite well, and it may be too early to discard it. John Henrik Cla...: Okay. Thank you very much. Darwin Turner: I'd like to thank Professor Clarke, Institute for [inaudible] would have a little while longer talk with him in 304 of the English philosophy building. May I invite those who have joined with us in the institute this evening to return tomorrow evening when we will have a lecture by Professor Charles Davis, Chairmen of Afro-American studies at Yale University who previously was at this university who will be talking on the subject the art of the slave narrative. Thank you.