“Only gradually through the dull purgatory of the Age of Discussion, has Negro life eventually issued forth to an Age of Expression.”

Describing the movement from being discussed by others towards creative self-expression · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

• Freedom
• Identity
• Literature

“Here a new literary generation begins; poetry that is racial in substance, but with the universal note, with the conscious background of the full heritage of English poetry.”

Describing a generation joining particular cultural experience with universal poetic expression · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

• Identity
• Poetry
• Tradition

“Negro poetic expression hovers for the moment, pardonably perhaps, over the race problem, but its highest allegiance is to Poetry—it must soar.”

Arguing that poetry can arise from social struggle while aspiring beyond immediate circumstance · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

• Freedom
• Poetry
• Struggle