SOURCE: An Introduction to The Folk Roots of Contemporary Afro-American Poetry, Broadside Press, 1974, pp. 11-15.

In the following excerpt, Bell discusses the formation of an African-American "high art" in contrast to the literature of the black folk consciousness.

Groping toward a realization of Afro-American genius, James Weldon Johnson—like W. E. B. DuBois, Alain Locke and other elder statesmen of the Harlem Renaissance—believed that a "demonstration of intellectual parity by the Negro through the production of literature and art"¹ would serve to eliminate racism. History has not vindicated this faith in "high art," Western reason, or American egalitarianism. Yet some of the most impressive poems by Robert Hayden, Gwendolyn Brooks, Melvin Toison, Mari Evans, Audre Lorde, Etheridge Knight and other Black poets of the 1960's unquestionably fall within the tradition of high art. All art arises more or less in response to vital human needs. To denigrate...