Art or Propaganda? High or Low Culture? Summary

A portion of James Weldon Johnson's "From the Book of American Negro Poetry" details events and information about the Negro artists in general and several poets in particular. One of those is Phyllis Wheatley, who arrived in American as a child and was purchased by a man in Boston as a servant for his wife. The wife recognizes Phyllis's natural intelligence and gives her the opportunity to hone it, resulting in a volume of poems. Johnson cites Paul Laurence Dunbar as the first of the Negro poets to be able to "rise to a height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race." Johnson notes that this includes humor and desires as well as the superstitions and failures, and that Dunbar's view is objective. Another of the...