ABSTRACT
Despite the scarcity of book-length studies in criticism, there exist well formed ways of looking at the Negro literary artist and at the Negro in American literature. Any current survey of the Negro in America, on whatever level, places considerable emphasis upon literary achievement. Thus, the historian, John Hope Franklin, in From Slavery to Freedom; the sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier, in The Negro in America; and the journalist, Roi Ottley, in Black Odyssey all view his literature as an important part of the Negro’s American experience. Though the works may be judged in terms of their historical significance, their contribution to the emergence of a group consciousness, or their adaptability to rather racy reportage, the accounts in these three books are in the direct tradition of literary criticism by Negroes. For criticism has generally been a handmaiden of progress, illuminating not the works themselves but the wonder that they exist, analyzing not the problems and methods of the authors but their effect, actual and probable, upon their audiences, always remembered as comprising both Negro and whites.
