“Most things I write I do for the sheer love of the music in them. Somehow or other, however, I find my poetry of itself treating of the Negro, of his joys and his sorrows—mostly of the latter—and of the heights and the depths of emotion which I feel as a Negro.”

Music comes first, yet race keeps entering the poems of its own accord · Interview, Chicago Bee, 1927

• Emotion
• Music
• Poetry

“In spite of myself I find that I am actuated by a strong sense of race consciousness. This grows upon me, I find, as I grow older, and although I struggle against it, it colors my writing, I fear, in spite of everything I can do.”

Admits that race consciousness returns even when he tries to write past it · Remark, 1926, as quoted by Stephen H. Bronz

• Identity
• Race
• Writing

“That is what has hindered the development of artists among us. Their one note has been the concern with their race. That is all very well, none of us can get away from it. I cannot at times.”

Admits race as inescapable feeling while resisting it as an artist's only subject · Interview, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 10 February 1924

• Artists
• Poetry
• Race