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FREEDOMWAYS                        
FIRST QUARTER 1973 

nevertheless because apparently genteel criticism still envisions a literature immured in Old South values and Puritan idolatries rather than one rooted in the soil of social reality. Instead of a humanist literature it has nurtured a kind of belles-lettres of white middle-class conceit. While this exclusion has caused the black writer much hardship, perhaps it has been a blessing in disguise, exempting him from the literary establishment's mean-spirited illiberalism; freeing him from its corrupting mythologies. Thus the black writer is left free to develop creative standards worthy of his ideals, standards that will strengthen his commitment to a humanist literature. His art will then become imbued with a liberating freshness and endowed with that spiritual richness gathered during the long winter of the American black experience-portraying its sorrows, defeats, and triumphs in all their manifold complexities. A growing clarity of vision informs him that "a new day is aborning."
History is fast overtaking the despoilers of human freedom. The black writer knows that those gathered in gloomy council in the blood-stained court of imperialism are doomed, that their social order has become an anachronism of the twentieth century-that the winds of change won't abate until that system has been divested of its oppressive power. But knowing this is not enough. The black writer must become a participant in this change by using his creative powers to help advance the cause of human freedom. In the process he will create a new aesthetic out of what John O. Killens once called the highest form of morality-man's struggle for liberation.
Understandably, such is not the aspiration of the literary establishment and this explains much of its fear of and antipathy for the serious black writer. But today the black writer's destiny is in his own hands. His recognition as an American writer no longer awaits the literary establishment's stamp of approval but depends upon whether his work is wedded to the realities of our times, on whether he approaches his work with sufficient courage, dedication, knowledge, talent to gain the attention and respect of black and Third World audiences. The lesson the literary establishment will finally learn is that the black experience is a vital part of the American experience.

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Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-21 14:23:31