Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

to say that "yet an irreverent reviewer could merely repeat Larry
Neal's own statement and say, `the text could be destroyed and no one
would be hurt in the least by it' ." He, the Saturday Review's black
literature authority, does not remotely understand what Larry Neal
meant by that statement ; Brother Neal was working from an ideological
concept so foreign, so alien to the Western mind that one wonders
how such people (as the reviewer) continue to have such control over
blackpeople . Brother Neal was quite clearly talking about the perishability
of blackart. Remember, art for the people's sake ; art being
functional and social (meaning that the people will help to shape the
art), not here forever but until its full meaning has been realized .
What we have to understand is that every piece of writing in Black
Fire is legitimate regardless of excellence ; because, as with the French-
Africans of Negritude, black writers are in a process of defining and
legitimizing their own worth/works and we don't need the great white
pens of the Saturday Review or other "liberal" white sheets to sanction
what (they feel) is or is not black literature or literature, period .
Black Fire helped us to move into our own direction . James T .
Stewart points out what's necessary : "the point of the whole thing is
that we must emancipate our minds from Western values and standards .
We must rid our minds of these values . Saying so will not be enough ."
With that we can easily understand what A . B . Spellman was relating
when he wrote : "there is a school of young African painters who have
never seen a European painting and who refuse to be shown one ."
David Llorens clears the air, when in "The Fellah, The Chosen Ones,
The Guardian," he writes : "Perhaps the starting point is to look at
ourselves, finally to question our existence ." Not only to question it
but also to realize our existence . But sister Lethonia Gee is hipped to
a beautiful part of her existence as indicated in her poem "By Glistening,
Dancing Seas" :
On ugly, cement, city streets
Or quiet village-lands
Black woman has one heavy thought
And it's about her man
All art is the reflection of its creator . Look at New York City,
Chicago, Washington, D . C . ; need I say more . Where and what you
live in reflects you, if you created it . Art is total-being . It cannot be
separated from life . That's why we say that blackart is not only social
but political, which leads Larry Neal to say : "the artist and the political
activist are one . They are both shapers of the future reality . Both
understand and manipulate the collective myths of the race ." How
else could A . B . Spellman write lines like this : .
in the Congo
they say tshombe leaning
on the beast is leaning on air.
There has to be that political consciousness, too . Social, political,
and, of course, spiritual balance, also . When I say spiritual I mean
an inner peace, the -ability to live with one's self ; only then can you
NEGRO DIGEST March 1969 79