[There] have been in America many negro writers of exceptional skill and talent…. But as yet no negro writer has been able to detach himself from the problem of the color line and stand out boldly as an artist and nothing else. Racial discrimination has been his bar. When that bar is removed, he will write about his people as no white could possibly write about them. Of all the whites who have made the attempt, Julia Peterkin is the truest and the finest—not excepting Joel Chandler Harris, whose Uncle Remus tales are established classics, nor Dubose Heyward, whose Porgy ought to become a classic, nor Roark Bradford, who is the real creator of America's greatest folk-play, The Green Pastures (Marc Connelly's part in the authorship of this play was mere transcription). It was indignation at the way these writers and others dealt with the negro that...