Criteria of Negro Art W.E.B. Du Bois Published in The Crisis of
October 1926, DuBois initially spoke these words at a
celebration for the recipient of the Twelfth Spingarn Medal,
Carter Godwin Woodson. The celebration was part of the NAACP's
annual conference and was held in June 1926. (The specific
citation for the piece is: The Crisis, Vol. 32, October 1926:
pp. 290-297.) "Criteria of Negro Art" by W.E.B. Du Bois |I do
not doubt but there are some in this audience who are a little
disturbed at the subject of this meeting, and particularly at
the subject I have chosen. Such people are thinking something
like this: "How is it that an organization like this, a group of
radicals trying to bring new things into the world, a fighting
organization which has come up out of the blood and dust of
battle, struggling for the right of black men to be ordinary
human beings -- how is it that an organization of this kind can
turn aside to talk about Art? After all, what have we who are
slaves and black to do with Art?"| |O