in Quest of an Afrocentric Tradition for Black American Literature.

329 Pages·2017·14.36 MB·English

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LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School
1972
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Arthenia Bates Millican
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Millican, Arthenia Bates, "James Weldon Johnson: in Quest of an Afrocentric Tradition for Black American
Literature." (1972). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 2229.
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MILLICAN, Arthenia Bates, 1920-
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON: IN QUEST OF AN AFROCENTRIC
TRADITION FOR BLACK AMERICAN LITERATURE.
The Louisiana State University and Agricultural
and Mechanical College, Ph.D., 1972
Language and Literature, modern
University Microfilms, A XEROK Company, Arm Arbor, Michigan
© 1972
ARTHENIA BATES MILLICAN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON: IN QUEST OF
AN AFROCENTRXC TRADITION FOR
BLACK AMERICAN LITERATURE
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
The Department of English
by
Arthenia Bates Millican
B. A., Morris College, 1941
M. A., Atlanta University, 1948
May, 1972
PLEASE NOTE:
Some pages may have
Indistinct print.
Filmed as received.
University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Gratitude must be expressed, first of all, to everyone who helped
in some small way to make the task of writing this doctoral dissertation
easier for its author.
I owe gratitude to the chief members of ray doctoral committee — Dr.
Lewis P. Simpson, Dr. Darwin H. Ghrell, and Dr. John H. Wildman — for
encouragement along the way and for their critical reading and evaluation
of the original manuscript. Dr. VfiLUiam J. Olive and Dr. Lawrence A.
Sasek, who also served on the committee, must also be thanked for their
critical reading and evaluation of the work. I am especially indebted
to Dr. Simpson, the chairman of the committee and to Dr. Shrell. Both
lent guidance from the inception of the idea for the dissertation to the
preparation of the final draft.
lira. Jane T. Kleiner and her staff of the Interlibrary Loan
Department at Louisiana State Library were helpful in locating books that
could not be found in the local libraries. The staff of the New York
Public Library also helped by permitting the reproduction of a book from
the Schomburg Collection, out of print for many years. Mrs. Dorothy E.
Davis, Black Heritage Librarian at Southern University in Baton Rouge,
assisted in numerous ways, but especially by pointing the writer to
source material that might not have been discovered in any other manner.
Mr, Edward Fontenette, Director of Libraries at Southern University, was
of special assistance in securing books and other materials that helped
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In the preparation of this study.
Thanks must also go to the typist, Miss Shirley M. Coutee who worked
patiently in the preparation of both drafts of the manuscript.
Finally, the writer must acknowledge the encouragement given by
persons who have every right to be impatient and demanding over the years
but instead have been patient and considerate: Dr. Melvin A. Butler, Chair­
man of the Department of English at Southern University, her husband,
Wilbert Millican, and her mother, Mrs. Susan Snma David Jackson.
FOREWORD
In the black world of 1972, "How Black is Black?" is a pertinent
question* One thing is certain — the terms Negro and colored are not
"black" enough to designate the minority group in America now more
acceptably called Blacks or Afro-Americans•
James Vfeldon Johnson expressed the view that black men had every
reason to be proud of the word "Negro*" During the Harlem Renaissance
the connotations of the term had changed from those it had during the
antebellum days and the Reconstruction era in the South. During the
period of "The Awakening," roughly, 1920-1930, the "New Negro" had come
into existence and had begun to spell "Negro" with a capital "N."
But the recent Jet surveys show that of the three names — Black,
Afro-American and Negro — Negro is the least popular among today*s
younger black people. The tem "Negro," then, will be used in quotation
marks in the text of this paper, although it will appear in direct
quotations without quotation marks. The terms "black" and "Afro-
American" will be used interchangeably to designate the darker American.
"Black" used as a noun or proper adjective will be capitalized. Whenever
it occurs with the capital "B" in references from other works, the
capitalization will be kept. As a common adjective form, it will not
be capitalized.
At the present time, a basic issue in the "How Black is Black?"
question is aesthetics. Black critics have all but rejected what
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Ameer Barak* calls "a theory of ether." This refers to the idea that
white critics search for artistic excellence divorced from the source
stream of existence. Aesthetics for Blacks have come to mean "feelings
about reality." Blacks are more in harmony now with the African concept
of art for life's sake than with the Euro-American concept of art for
art's sake. As Baraka states it, the new concept calls for "an expression
of total being in the work of art — for many levels of feeling compre­
hension. "
James Weldon Johnson's quest for an Afrocentric tradition for Black
American literature was not a conscious one at first. His growth in
black awareness was slow and often painful; he himself acknowledged that
he had no assurance that he had moved in the right direction until he had
made his discovery of the deepest revelation of Soul. Creative force as
the "vector of existence," "rhythm as a basic creative principle," and
"rhythm as an expression of race memory" (Larry Neal's phrases), all
suddenly became clear to Johnson as he listened to an old-fashioned black
preacher. Together with the members of the congregation, he experienced
fully a primordial ecstasy. Out of a world replete with Western values,
Johnson came into another world teeming with black values. Johnson's
discovery of these values opened a path to the hidden treasury of African
and Afro-American folk art for black literary artists who would follow him.
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS WORK
1. Along This Why............................... AW
2. Atlanta University. .......................... AU
3. Black Manhattan...............................3K
A. Negro American. What Now? ..................... WN
5. The Autobiography of An Ex-Coloured I-lan.......... EXC11
6. The Book of American Negro Poetry............... ANP
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