“Indeed, the Negro novel is one of the great potentialities of American…” — William Stanley Braithwaite | V2Melody

“Indeed, the Negro novel is one of the great potentialities of American literature.”

Expressing confidence in the future importance of Black American fiction · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

William Stanley Braithwaite

About William Stanley Braithwaite

William Stanley Braithwaite

6 December 1878–8 June 1962

William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite entered the world on December 6, 1878, in Boston, Massachusetts, a city pulsing with literary ambition and the lingering echoes of abolitionist fervor. He departed it on June 8, 1962, at his home on Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, New York, after a brief illness, at the age of…

More by William Stanley Braithwaite

Poems by William Stanley Braithwaite

More remarks by William Stanley Braithwaite

“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

“I suppose that any art may be considered American which conforms in expression to the ideals of the American people.”

Considering the relationship between artistic expression and national ideals · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

“It is not intellect that has brought this about; less has it been due to education; it has been due to character and character is the expression of habits and ideas.”

Emphasising the formative power of inherited habits and shared ideas · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921