Viewing page 56 of 100

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

FREEDOMWAYS    THIRD QUARTER 1969

But in reviewing Home and the horrendous social and human deprivation the Black man has gone through in the years since Wright wrote White Man, Listen! from which the above quotation is taken, it is absolutely obvious that we are nowhere near reaching that basic unity and oneness of all men. If anything, we are coming to the point where a polarity is most evident: whites on one side, Blacks on the other, youth on one side, adults on the other; all in their own ways, thinking they have the firmest grip on reality-on themselves. I believe, however, that the Black man and the radical white youth will ultimately help to bring into creation a new world, a new country; for the basic reason that it is these two groups (sub-cultures) who have come to terms with all that represents the repressive aspects of Western civilization and are seeking other roads to lead them to the resurrection of themselves and of mankind as a whole. But before this is possible, after establishing a firm foothold in their Black culture and selves, the Black masses and intelligentsia must move beyond the narrowness of their present writing, and celebrate the coming of a new era where all men will be free to grow in an unrepressed, loving world. For John Henrik Clarke, a writer of what might be called the "older generation" of Black artists, finds this transition a necessity:

The black writer must realize that his people are now entering the last phase of a transitional period between slavery and freedom. It is time for the black writer to draw upon the universal values in his people's experience, just as Sean O'Casey and Sholem Aleichem drew upon the universal values in the experiences of the Irish and Jews. In the next phase of Afro-American writing, a literature of celebration must be created-not a celebration of oppression-but a celebration of survival in spite of it-a survival which will be for all peoples.85

REFERENCES
1. Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York, 1968), p. 61.
2. Addison Gayle, Jr. (ed.) Black Expression (New York. 1969), p. 111.
3. Ibid., p. 112.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. LeRoi Jones, Home: Social Essays (New York. 1966), p. 9.
7. Ibid., p. 61.
8. Ibid., p. 62.
9. Ibid., p. 65.
10. Ibid., p. 66.

246

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-15 11:27:41