THE NEGRO WRITER AND HIS ROOTS: TOWARD A NEW ROMANTICISM
Author(s): Lorraine Hansberry
Source: The Black Scholar , March/April 1981, Vol. 12, No. 2, Black Literature: Criticism
(March/April 1981), pp. 2-12
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41068050
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THE NEGRO WRITER AND
HIS ROOTS: TOWARD A
NEW ROMANTICISM
by Lorraine Hansberry
Williams:
"The Negro Writer and His Roots:
Towards a New Romanticism, " is in effect
Life is cannibalistic. Truly. Egos eat egos,
personalities eat personalities. Someone is
Hansberry 's credo, a fundemeñtal attempt
always eating at someone else for position,
to articulate the challenge to black writers,
gain, triumph, greed, whatever. The human
as she saw it, at the start of the 1960's.
It
individual
is a cannibal in the worst way.
was written during the productionThat,
of Ain the middle years of life, at the
RAISIN IN THE SUN and delivered Mar-
height of all critical and monetary rewards,
ch 1, 1959- two weeks before the Broadis the American dramatist Tennessee
way opening- to a major black writers
Williams.
conference convened by the AmericanLet it be said immediately and em-
Society of African Culture. This is the first
publication of this significant essay.
phatically that the use of these two
quotations is not intended to vilify a great
the end of his last autobiography
creative artist. That gentleman with the
Sunset And Evening Star, the great
painfully sympathetic eyes and the sweetest
and beloved poet-dramatist of the Irish
of smiles who is the gifted playwright Tennessee Williams, has presented to American
people, Sean O'Casey, writes:
Even here, even now, when the sun had set culture a great body of work which
and the evening star was chastely touching the
significantly embodies the particular death
bosom of the night, there were things to say,
things to do. A drink first! What would heagonies of a dying and panic-stricken social
drink to- the past, the present, the future? order. With horror and fear he has presen-
To all of them! He would drink to the life
ted anguished indictments of that which too
that embraced the three of them! Here, with
whitened hair, desires failing, strength ebbingmany others would actually celebrate. The
out of him, with the sun gone down, and withpoet Tennessee Williams is a mourner of
only the serenity and the calm warming of the beauty
evening star left to him, he drank to Life, to all
it had been, to what it was, to what it would
be. Hurrah!
and decency, not their enemy.
It is, however, to the point of a
discussion of the writer and his roots to
This, even in the autumn years of his life,pose the social viewpoints of two of the
is Sean O'Casey: warrior against despair
modern world's most important writers one
and lover of humankind.
against the other. They serve as poles of
A few weeks ago the following appearedclarity in the great intellectual controversy
in the newspapers, the remarks of another now raging among thinking men and
poet-dramatist of stature, Tennessee women everywhere. For at the core of
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these two expressions lies the essence of all
arguments concerned with the destiny of
the human race.
Tennessee Williams is, after all, a
product of what the brilliant young Negro
novelist James Baldwin has called "perhaps
the loneliest country in the world."
Williams himself has said, "Desire is rooted
in a longing for companionship, a release
from the loneliness which haunts every in-
dividual." The implications of his sense of
defeat and futility transcend mere
vilification or stupid, empty-headed
hostility. They invite study and concern
and involvement- and argument of equal
stature.
TRUTH AND ART
the most painful truth. That is a terrifying
assertion, shattering in its simple assessment
of at least one feature of life. It is so
terrifying in fact that the immediate temI choose this introduction to a discussion
ptation on hearing it is to quickly assign its
of the Negro writer because I energetically
origin to some brutal cynic and pass on, in
suffer the view that, more than anything
defense of ourselves, to all those situations
else, the compelling obligation of the Negro
in life which we know warrant fragile, lifewriter, as writer and citizen of life, is pargiving lies: lies told with skill and confiden-
ticipation in the intellectual affairs of all
ce to the dying, to the romantically
men, everywhere. The foremost enemy of
deceived- and, of course, to those
the Negro intelligentsia of the past has been
stout-hearted but untalented performers we
and in a large sense remains - isolation. No
all seem to know, whose recitals we all seem
more than can the Negro people afford to
obliged to attend at some point in life.
imagine themselves removed from the most
Yet, in the larger sense, in the more
pressing world issues of our time - war and
peace, colonialism, capitalism vs.
deeply philosophical sense, I think it
socialism - can I believe that the Negroremains virtually as John Keats insists:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty /That is all ye
writer imagines that he will be exempt from
know on earth and all ye need to know."
the artistic examination of questions which
This idea, this idea of the inseparability of
plague the intellect and spirit of man. If the
truth and beauty, and therefore of truth
and art, will be at the heart of these
vival and destruction, involving the most
remarks.
fundamental questions of society and the
world is engaged in a dispute between sur-
individual - in a dispute between the cham- A DELUDED AMERICAN CULTURE
pions of despair and those of hope and
There is a desperate need in our time for
glorification of man - then we, as members
the
Negro writer to assume a partisanship in
of the human race, must address oursleves
what I believe has been the traditional batto that dispute.
tleground of writers of stature for centuries,
can no longer remember who it wasnamely the war against the illusions of one's
time and culture. And there are several
who said, in effect, that the most
illusions rampant in contemporary
gentle lie is ultimately more harmful than
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American culture, which, in my opinion,
. Sexual ideas of the past will be the
deserve the critical attention of black artists
sexual ideas of the future.
in particular.
. Things as they are, as they are and
First of all, it seems to me from my
reading and from the popular cultural
have been and will be that way because
media, that we are beset with the most fun-
damental illusion of all- and one which is,
in its operation, the most contradictory.
This is the notion put forth that art is not,
and should not and, when it is at its best,
CANNOT possibly be "social." The most
eminent scholars and critics do not hesitate
they got that way because things were as
they were in the first place.
. The present social order is here forever
and this is the best of all possible
worlds.
. The present social order is here forever
and this is the worst of all possible
worlds but there -is-nothing-we-can-doto suggest that social consciousness can be about-it-anyway-' 'human-nature"the product of anything - bad manners, being-what-it-is.
psychoses, infantilism, lack of
. The present social order does not exist.
It is all in the mind.
sophistication, or almost anything else
other than a reaction to the world around
. Women long to castrate men and are
us. "Social statement" is excluded from
doing so and taking the "man's place"
the realm of true art, and true art is not
in society and thereby causing a
national neurosis.
social. At the same time they must insist,
necessarily, that permissible content - that
. Women are also causing the increase in
is, that which merely accepts or affirms
juvenile delinquency, divorce, hypertenthings as they are- is not social statement,
sion, and, of course, they elected
not a judgement, but merely entertainment
Eisenhower to office because they liked
his smile.
Of it is popular), or "Art" (if it is not). Yet
.
Businessmen are hard-headed if
I think you will agree with me that some or
all of the following topical ideas are fairly
slightly adorable realists who are also
certain to pound at one in the course of
a supreme moralists of our culture
the
year's steady diet of television, motion
who work like fury keeping the world
pictures, the legitimate stage and the novel.
going in spite of people who lack drive
These are ideas to the effect that:
and initiative like intellectuals and most
. Most people who work for a living
working people.
(and they are few) are executives and/or
. Intellectuals are unattractive people
work in some kind of office.
who wear oversize glasses and baggy
. Women are idiots.
clothes and are very boring and who
make life dull for truly romantic
. People are white.
. Negroes do not exist.
people who know how to get the most
. When a girl takes off her glasses and out of life.
unpins her hair, she becomes a woman. . War is inevitable.
. Sex is the basis of all psychological, . So are armies.
economic, political, historical, social, in . Conservatives are the only real
radicals.
fact known, problems of man.
. Radicals are infantile, adolescent, or. Sex is very bad.
. Sex is very good and the solution to all senile. Any form of radicalism (except
psychological , economic , political , conservatism) is latent protest against
historical, social, in fact known,
Mom, toilet-training, or hetero-
problems of man.
sexuality.
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. Belief in God is instinctual to man.
. The Supreme Good, the ultimate
achievement, is - "balls."
And, of course, finally:
time, it is a sterile and deceiving force. The
problem is that the spirit portrayed is inex-
plicably adolescent, and the nature of the
torture undefined. It becomes the essence
. European culture is the culture of the of the literature of man who simply is: unworld.
formed and uncertain, helpless in the face
It seems to me that these ideas, even
of a fate he cannot call by name.
presented in this topical form, offer
profoundly social points of view- and
Like Miller I do not believe that a proper
or successful attack on this particular
deeply controversial ones insofar as I for illusion should unleash the old horrors of
one would beg to differ with all or most of
them. I persist in the simple view that all art
is ultimately social: that which agitates and
that which prepares the mind for slumber.
The writer is deceived who thinks that he
so-called "problem dramas" or "agit
prop" pieces. On the contrary, there is a
simple and beautiful fusion of the two sides
of the artistic inspection of any question
when it is genuinely inspected. Miller says it
has some other choice. The question is not
more complicatedly, but also more hanwhether one will make a social statement in dsomely, when he writes: "The shadow of
one's work - but only what the statement
a cornstalk on the ground is lovely, but it is
will say, for if it says anything at all, it will
not a denial of its loveliness to see as one
be social.
looks at it that it is telling the time of day,
attack on this particular illusion the position of the earth and the sun, the
is of vital importance for the Negro size of our planet and its shape and perhaps
writer in particular, because those who say even the length of its life and ours among
the stars...."
they do not wish to have "social" material
on the stage, motion picture or TV screen In other words, let there be no rush in the
are the same persons who in the past havename of a "socially conscious" attack in
not hesitated to relegate all black material, literature to throw out the anguish of man;
save hip-swinging musicals, to the "social"but let there be magnificent efforts to
category- which, as we can see, becomes a examine the sources of that anguish. We
vicious circle and demands that we be in the must have the cornstalk for itself and for
forefront of those who insist on a more
what it can tell us about the world and the
nature
of itself in that world.
rational discussion of the meaning of social
statement in art.
A third illusion which it seems must be
A second great illusion which seems dealt
to with is the idea that our country is
me rampant in the cultural sphere of made
our up of one huge sprawling middle class
lives is the assumption prevalent among whose
so
problems, valid though they are as
many artists that people exist independent
subject matter, are considered to represent
the problems of the entire nation and whose
of the world around them. This has given
rise to an entire body of literature, among
values are thought to be not only the values
which are what Arthur Miller calls the
of the nation but, significantly enough, of
the
"adolescent plays": plays in which the
whole world!
adolescent spirit endlessly beats itself again- The simple fact is that sections of the
st the imprisonment of its tortured soul. In
world's people remain unimpressed, to say
and of itself, as Miller carefully notes, thisthe
a least, and even aloof from our efforts at
valid area for the exploration of human
demonstrating leadership and seem, at this
experience. But as the sum total of thepoint, perfectly capable of omitting from
their historical destinies much of what we
greater weight of literary statement in our
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have thought was the very essence of the
reason is under attack in some quarters and
American past and the great American
some now turn to one form or another of
dream. That is to say - cur particular form
medieval mysticism for escape. Having
discovered that the world is incoherent,
of organization of industrial society. It is
idle to argue the patriotism of those who
call this question to our attention. It is
they have, some of them, come to the conclusion that it is also unreal. Having determined that life is in fact an absurdity, they
more relevant to recognize its truth and to
alert the people of this nation to that truth.
Which brings me to the last great illusion
that I think still clings to the cultural fabric
of the country like dampness to wool on a
rainy day. This is the all-important illusion
in America that there exists an inexhaustible
while a sense of fraternity with the human
period of time during which we as a nation
may leisurely resurrect the promise of our
the most outlandish, utter "square".
Constitution and begin to institute the
equality of man within the frontiers of this
land.
The truth is of course that a deluded and
misguided world-wide minority is rapidly
losing ground in the area of debating time
alone. The unmistakable roots of the
have not yet decided that the task of the
thoughtful is to try to help impose purposefulness on the absurdity. In these same
circles display of emotion is considered the
mark of the unspeakably unsophisticated,
race is but of course, the accoutrement of
current vogue for certain
European dramatists favors Genet,
Beckett, and Ionesco. Among the
novelists and essayists, the name of Albert
Camus now enjoys an almost holy stature.
People seem to have become obsessed with
the almost sudden universality of "guilt."
universal solidarity of the colored peoples
We are told to stop feeling partisan about
of the world are no longer "predictable" as
Jesus upon the cross because he bore his
they were in my father's time - they are
own guilt. Those who find issues to fight
here. And I for one, as a black woman in
are only "sublimating" this or that sexual
the United States in the mid-twentieth cenneurosis. I have watched these ideas take
tury, feel that I am more typical of the
hold and become fast in the minds of cerpresent temperament of my peopletain
than
of my generation: brilliant and
not, when I say that I cannot allow
the
thoughtful young people searching actively
devious purposes of white supremacy
for to
a way out of what they perceive as the
lead me to any conclusion other than what
human condition - without commitment to
may be the most robust and important
one
anything.
of our time: that the ultimate destiny and
In pursuit of the defeat of illusions it is
aspirations of the African people and twenimportant that we black writers not get lost
ty million American Negroes are ininexthe various revolts of the merely revolted.
tricably and magnificently bound
up now to that small segment of the
I refer
together forever.
literati who have broken away to form their
own vague, non-inspirational rebellion of
rejection and nothingism: the Beat. They
Is it really true that everything ourare
parena failure. They disturb no one because
ts longed for is now really too they
much
attack everything and nothing. They
trouble? Has aspiration really become
are atoo
source of amusement and confused
THE BEAT
exhausting? Or, love too adolescent? misunderstanding to the very people who
It is a curious thing, but I am not the
firstfeel most indicted by their emergenshould
to note that when hope begins to
ce. die,
They serve no significant purpose,
reason is often swift to follow. Thus,
neither to art nor society. Perhaps they are
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angry young men, but insofar as they do
not make it clear with whom or at what
who come from those who have loved when
all reason pointed to the uselessness and
of love! Perhaps we shall be
they are angry, they can be said only to foolhardiness
add
the teachers when it is done. Out of the
bedlam to his already chaotic house.
Beyond observing that here is the logical depths of pain we have thought to be our
projection of a culture steeped in aimlessne- sole heritage in this world- O , we know
ss and placing too much of apremium on about love!
Thus comes the Negro writer. And,
sophistication for the sake of
thus,
does his mid-twentieth century task
sophistication, it is idle to speak of
the
bear within
it an explosive artistic potential
respective degrees of talent among them:
it
is talent which exhausts itself in its own
that must not escape us for lack of
awareness. We must turn our eyes outnegation. As unruly as the source of its birward-but, to do so, we must also turn
th, it feeds and distills agonies it will not by
them inward toward our people and their
name indict.
There is a uselessness in the beat. They complex and still transitory culture. There
is much to celebrate, there always has been.
are a second part of one illusion: the
illusion that man possesses a choice as to We have given the world many of its heroes
whether or not he will participate in the and the marching feet have not stopped yet.
creation of the present and the future. Like Turn inward to where a culture has never,
it or not, by his silence or his raised
as Alain Locke pointed out thirty years ago,
in what is - he participates.
true today that the soaring greatest of the
voice - his freely given commitment to what been adequately understood.
It was true thirty years ago and it is still
can be, or his merely passive acquiescence
spirituals begin and end in some minds as
the product of religious childishness; they
RECLAMATION
do not hear, even yet, in the "black and
The Negro writer, then, stands surroununknown bards" of whom James Weldon
THE BLACK ARTISTS' HISTORICAL
ded by these whirling elements inJohnson
this sang, the enormous soul of a great
world. He stands neither on the fringe nor
and incredibly courageous people who have
utterly involved: the prime observer
known how to acknowledge pain and
waiting posied for inclusion. For two hundespair as one hope. In jazz rhythms, alien
dred and fifty years he shouted because
he find only symbols for their own conminds
found it difficult to be heard. Then, on ocfused and mistaken yearnings for a return
casion, he allowed his voice to drop to
toprimitive
a
abandon: Norman Mailer
whisper, stillness even. Now it is time
to
writes, "For jazz is orgasm; it is the music
shout again.
of orgasm, good orgasm and bad...." They
O, the things that we have learned
do in
not hear as yet the tempo of an imthis unkind house that we have to tell the
patient and questioning people. Above all,
world about! Despair! Did someone say
in the murmur of the blues, they believe
"despair" was a question in the world?
they know communion with naked sexual
Well, then, listen to the sons of those who
impulses peculiar to imperfect apes or noble
have known little else if you wish to know savages; they miss the sweet and sad indic-
the resiliency of this thing you would so tment of misery that forms that music.
They "done taken our blues and gone."
the human spirit! Life! Ask those who
And similarly the speech of our people
have tasted of it in pieces rationed out by has been the victim of hostile ears and
enemies! Love? Ah, ask the troubadors
commentary. That there are tones and
quicly resign to mythhood, this thing called
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moods of language that the African tongue
prefers, escapes attention, when that atten-
tion would demand admiration of beauty
and color rather than mere amusement or
derision. The educated are expected to
South and wrecked its ancient
democratic culture.
4 - That with the exception of George
Washington Carver, Marian Anderson,
Ralph Bunche, Joe Louis, and a slave
apologize for slurrings that haunt our
girl who wrote poems back in the 17th
speech; the mark of ascendancy is the absence of recognizable Negro idiom or in-
and a task on an otherwise smoothly
flection. It is an attitude that suggests that
century, we have really been a burden
functioning society.
we should most admire the peacock when
And so on.
he has lost his colors. Perhaps someday
If this be unreasonable and unwieldy
they will know it is not mere notes of music exaggeration, then more the pain for the
which command us- "when Malindy
sings."
indisputable recognition of truth in such
enlargement. I shall never forget once
being on a pilgrimage to the shrine which is
the former home of Frederick Douglass, in
make no mistake, these very
cultural values have spilled in
the company of a group of women who had
malignant portions into the life of our
traveled many miles from many parts of the
people. A minute and well-groomed black
country. When I expressed my excitement
bourgeoisie is cautious of the implications
at the possibility of seeing the home of this
of a true love of the folk heritage.
perhaps greatest of all Americans, I was
Sophistication allows the listening to
asked quite sincerely by one of the group
spirituals if performed by concert artists,
whether or not I thought, "Mr. Douglass
but in church- Bach chorales and Handel,
will be home?"
please!
Such then be the arena into which our
There is a job to be done. White
people must thrust their destiny. The work
supremacy has long accustomed our
of the Negro artist is cut out for him: the
enemies to assume that to the most opvast task of cultural and historical
pressed is due the most amount of brainreclamation- to reclaim the past if we
washing. Thus, our children grow up
would claim the future.
believing:
1- That the African continent was
But this alone is not enough. I began
these remarks by saying that truth has pains
merely a handy place for catching slaves
that lies could only seemingly assuage. If
for plantations and lions for circuses.
the Negro writer would confound the hearts
2 - That we endured - and on occasion
of his readers with unassailable dimen-
rejoiced - in bondage that was impaired
sionality, with the complexity of man and
unwittingly by an unfortunate and unnot symbolic figures that can speak only to
necessary war which had "nothing to
the already persuaded, then we, too, must
do with slavery anyway," a war imdiscard some of the paraphernalia of our
posed on a genteel and delicate
former selves. What are the sores within
civilization by a villainous Congress and
our people that bear exposure and
a bemused president with a beard who
really hated Negroes anyway.
3 - Moreover, that following that
examination?
I say that foremost are the villainous and
often ridiculous money values that spill
destructive war, there was apparently a
over from the dominant culture and often
lapse in American civilization when
make us ludicrous in pursuit of that which
barbarians with carpet bags invaded the
has its own inherently ludicrous nature:
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acquisitori for the sake of acquisition. The
desire for the possession of "things" has
rapidly replaced among too many of us the
impulse for the possession of ourselves, for
hideous malignancy yet lingering from the
slave history of this country. Does it persist
among black men? Then let us hold it up to
the light and examine it for all the ugliness
freedom. The exploration of babbitry
that is there, and when we are done,
would have been unwarranted twenty years
ago in whatever there was of a black middle
perhaps the only thing it will be fit for is the
class. That is not the case today, and Dr.
writer begin to examine much that has for-
E. Franklin Frazier has made this clear in
trash cap. And similarly, let the Negro
merly been romanticized about Negro ur-
brutally painful clinical portraiture whichban life in particular. If "the numbers" are
basically a prey upon our people, then it
The war against illusions must dispel the should be inconceivable that that particular
would bear extension to fiction.
romance of the black bourgeoisie. Nor aspect of gambling should emerge as a
does this imply the creation of a modernfolksy and harmless pastime in our novels.
kind of buff on dressed up in a business suit,The evils of the ghetto, whatever they are,
haplessly trying to imitate the white coun- must emerge as evils - not as the romantic
terpart. On the contrary. These valuesand exotic offshoots of a hilarious people
have their root in an American perversion who can simply endure anything. Dope
and no place else. The man in pursuit of addiction , alcoholism , prostitution- all
idle dreams is a man in pursuit of idledeserve this kind of treatment. In the effort
to make the people beautiful we must not
dreams. His color does not confound this
to the point of absurdity- it merely makes beautify the disease.
it complex.
the contrary, I do not believe that
We do not laugh at Willy Loman, white
or black- the impluse is more to cry. We
do not reject him: we worry for him. Heis
the spawn of something he never really understood, its victim and its product. Sooner
or later between the man and his source we
the deep-seated propensity for
cultural apology which affects such a large
section of the Negro middle class should or
must affect the Negro writer: the attitude
that any reminder of the slave past or the
sharecropper and ghetto present is an af-
must indict something if we agree that Willyfront to the dignity of every Negro who
Loman is a failure. But when we have seen
wears a shirt and tie. I submit that much of
what is noble and most of what is distinhis helplessness- the limitation of the
in true native American culture has its
choices his world (or his understanding ctive
of
it) has offered him- it will not be Willy we
origins in those very areas of the life and
indict. It is again Sean O 'Casey who tells us
history of our people. In fact this spiritual
that he does not think the world will be
self-denigration is itself deserving of literary
blown up because: "Mankind is foolish,
treatment that would analyze it for its inbut men are not fools." In the act of livingteresting indications of the confusion that
and overcoming the destitution of much
can sometimes reign among oppressed
that surrounds him, man commits many an
peoples.
outlandish and cruel act; but we are not
outlandish and cruel - or else how could we
And finally there is the matter of political
naivete: the isolation and insularity of our
have measured our desires in such noble
struggles. Too often has political leaderturns, lo these many centuries?
ship fallen to those who seem only to have
There are many facets of our life that the
crymost ambitious paths on which to lead
out for attention. Let us look, for example,
us. Obsessive over-reliance upon the courat color prejudice- perhaps the most
ts, legalistic pursuit of the already guaranTHE BLACK SCHOLAR MARCH- APRIL 1981 PAGE 9
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teed aspects of our Constitution (if that is,
of that which he presents or performs
there were but the will to enforce them)
suggests to the nations of the world that our
preoccupies us at the expense of more
potent political concepts. I suspect, for
people do not yet languish under privation
example, in my heart of hearts, that the
longings of twenty million black folk in
America will lie idle until half their number
still living in the Southern states of this
nation enjoy complete and utter political
representation in the national government.
The Negro writer has a role to play in
shaming, if you will, the conscience of the
people and the present national gover-
and hatred and brutality and political oppression in every state of the forty-eight.
The truth demands its own equals.
Therefore, let an America that respects its
name and aspirations in the world anticipate the novels and plays and poetry of
Negro writers that must now go forth to an
eager world. For we are going to tell the
truth from all its sides, including what is the
still bitter epic of the black man in this most
nment, executive and legislative, into action
on behalf of the free and unharassed voting
hostile nation.
rights of all people of the South.
and essay and drama.
I suspect, again, that equality- which
above all must mean equal job opportunity,
the most basic right of all men in all
societies anywhere in the world- implies
vast economic transformations far greater
than any our leaders have dared to en-
vision. Until such time, on behalf of an
oppressed people who yet labor daily under
the rigors of second-class citizenship in
these United States, the Negro artist must
display wit and imagination, and energy to
As it is, so shall it be recorded in fiction
And, because it is as it is, when the
questions are asked in Bombay and Peking
and Budapest and Laos and Cairo and
Jakarta- so I will tell it. And, as of today,
if I am asked abroad if I am a free citizen in
the United States of America, I must say
only what is true: No.
If I am asked if my people enjoy equal
opportunity in the most basic aspects of
American life, housing, employment, franchise - I must and will say: No.
And, shame of shames, under a government that wept for Hungery and sent
time, the artist who participates in
troops
to Korea, when I am asked if that
programs of apology, of distortion, of
the depths of our beings. And until such
camouflage in the depiction of the life adn most primitive, savage and intolerable
trials of our people, behaves as the paid custom of all- lynching- still persists in the
agent of the enemies of Negro freedom.
United States of America, I will say what
Our objective is art, not distortion, andevery mother's child of us knows: that they
this in itself is a reflection of the maturationare still murdering Negroes in this country,
of any artist. Moreover, we know that awith and without rope and faggot, in all the
presentation of the full-scale nature of allold ways and many new ones. Lest We
the complexities and confusions and back-Forget, I give you the name of an American
wardnesses of our people will, in the end, boy, Emmett Till. But more: that the
only heighten and make more real thesocial and economic havoc wreaked on the
inescapable image of their greatness and American Negro takes some ten to fifteen
courage.
years off the life-expectancy of our people.
There are some passionate people in this
However, we see no reason to stop there.
world who would not hesitate to call this
Let no Negro artist who thinks himself
deserving of the title take pen to paper -last
or,fact- murder.
for that matter, body to dance or voice toI am prepared to tell all America and the
world about our people. That we are yet
speech or song - if in doing so the content
PAGE 10 THE BLACK SCHOLAR MARCH-APRIL 1981
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backward and ourselves mired in many of
universe, the only creature who has in fact
the corruptions of our culture. I am saying
the power to transform the universe.
that whatever the corruption within our
people, tear it out and expose it and let us
Therefore, it did not seem unthinkable to
me that man might just do what the apes
then take measure of what is left. I believe
never will - impose the reason for life on
in the truth of art and the art of truth and
life. That is what I said to my friend. I
the most painful exigency of cultural andwish to live because life has within it that
social life will not be exempt from ex- which is good, that which is beautiful, and
ploration by my mind or pen.
that which is love. Therefore, since I have
known all of these things, I have found
CONCLUSION
them
I must share with you now a part oftoabe reason enough and- I wish to
live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish
conversation I had with a young New York
others to live for generations and
intellectual a year ago in my living room in
generations and generations and
Greenwich Village. It is to the essence of
generations.
these remarks and it will bring me full cirI was born on the South Side of Chicago.
cle-back to O'Casey, Williams, and what
I was born black and a female. I was born
I posed as "the great intellectual controver-
in a depression after one world war, and
sy" now raging among thinking men and
came into my adolescence during another.
women everywhere. He was a young man I
While I was still in my teens the first atom
had known, not well, but for a number of
bombs were dropped on human beings at
years, who was, by way of description, an
Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and by the time I
ex-Communist, a scholar and a serious
was twenty-three years old my government
student of philosophy and literature, and
and that of the Soviet Union had entered
whom I consider to possess quite a fine and
actively into the worst conflict of nerves in
exceptinally alert mind. In any case, he and
human history - the Cold War.
I had wandered conversationally into the
I have lost friends and relatives through
realm of discussion which haunts the days
cancer,
lynching and war. I have been perof humankind everywhere: the destruction
sonally the victim of physical attack which
or survival of the human race.
"Why," he said to me, "are you so sure was the offspring of racial and political
the human race should go on? You do not hysteria. I have worked with the handicap-
believe in a prior arrangement of life on this ped and seen the ravages of congenital
planet. You know perfectly well that the diseases that we have not yet conquered
reason for survival does not exist in
nature!"
because we spend our time and ingenuity in
far less purposeful wars. I have known per-
sons afflicted with drug addiction and
I was somewhat taken aback by the
severity that this kind of feeling has ap-alcoholism and mental illness. I see daily
parently reached among a generation thaton the streets of New York, street gangs
presumably should be lying on its back inand prostitutes and beggars. I have, like all
the spring woods somewhere, contem- of you, on a thousand occasions seen inplating lyrics of love and daring and the describable displays of man's very real
inhumanity to man; and I have come to
wonder of wild lilies.
maturity, as we all must, knowing that
greed and malice and indifference to
answered him the only way I could.
human misery, bigotry and corruption,
I argued on his own terms, which
brutality and, perhaps above all else,
are also mine: That man is unique in the
ignorance - the prime ancient and perTHE BLACK SCHOLAR MARCH-APIRL 1981 PAGE 1 1
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sistent enemy of man - abound in this
world.
I say all of this to say that one cannot live
with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not
know and react to the miseries which afflict
this world.
I think of Leonardo, contemplating man
in the sky - and finding about him demons
of ignorance and intolerance insisting that
if man had been meant to fly, God would
have given him wings. I think of Leonardo,
nonetheless patiently filling his notebooks
assumption of idyllic possibilities or in-
with geometric studies and algebraic
equations and anatomic diagrams, and
literally writing his exercises and con-
the human race does command its own
the figurative descendants of his per-
I have given you this account so that you
know that what I write is not based on the
clusions backwards to escape the wrack of
life- but, rather, my own personal view the inquisitor. And I think: Ah, but it is
that, posing one against the other, I thinkstill the dark ages. And while it is true that
nocent assessments of the true nature of
secutors do not hesitate to get on an airdestiny and that that destiny can eventually
plane to go and torment his spiritual
embrace the stars.
descendants - true that the shadows have
If man is as small and ugly and grotesque
never been light enough, and that there
as his most inhuman act, he is also as large
will be enough light in these
as his most heroic gesture, and he • never
is
shadowsthe fact is that it is still the dark
therefore a hero many fold. Not only
ages. And because now, at last, on the upyesterday, as some insist, but today. Not
ward ladder toward human enlightenment,
only yesterday when Spartacus rose against
we find that man's relationship to man
the Romans; not only yesterday when the
seems by far the most precarious, the most
Jews of Poland rose in the ghetto- but
dangerous, and in that sense the newest of
today. Heroic still and- make no
our terrors, we fear for the future itself.
mistake- triumphant still, for the gesture
Let us take courage. Once physics overof his heroism is many things. Who could
whelmed the minds of men. And it came to
watch the epic magnitude of fifty thousand
pass, that he who had no wings came to
Negroes in Montgomery, Alabama,
command the air at speeds no bird can
walking their way to freedom, and doubt
manage. Surely then, as we turn our full atthe heroism of the species? Or the nine
to the hearts and minds of men, we
small children who insisted on going tention
to
school in a town called Little Rock?
shall see that if man can fly- he can also be
free.
© Copyright, 1969, 1981, by Robert Nemiroff and
Robert Nemiroff as Executor of the Estate of Lor-
raine Hansberry. All rights reserved.
PAGE 12 THE BLACK SCHOLAR MARCH-APRIL 1981
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