TWO IN ONE BODY

Way back in the 1920s, a black scholar named Alain Locke remarked that "in the case of the American Negro, the sense of race is stronger than that of nationality." And yet, Locke pointed out, "some of the most characteristic American things are Negro or Negroid, derivatives of the folk life of this darker tenth of the population." Small wonder, then, that the greatest American Negroes feel torn at times.

An early beacon of black culture in America, W.E.B.

DuBois, died self-exiled in Ghana just six years ago. DuBois composed the poem that here accompanies and reveals the hidden thunder of Bellows' Both Members of This Club. Again, it was DuBois who wrote the classic prose statement of what lies deepest in black blues: "After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son born with a veil and gifted with second sight in this American world--a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness --an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

Changing social attitudes have continually reshaped white mirrors of black images. The attitudes may or may not appear acceptable from a contemporary Negro point of view. But the images hold, and will survive--a settled beauty enduring through and ultimately beyond this year or any year's contention on campus, street riot or ghetto anger. They are a testament of shared respect, an acknowledgment of mutual dignity.

No artist today, either black or white, could possibly paint or envision the tender, natural black and white spirits as Michelangelo did on the Sistine Ceiling--the twin inspirations of the prophetess Cumaea. But along with Michelangelo, today's artists might ponder the thought of Plotinus, the sooty, stooped and radiant philosopher who argued that dark and light together shape the world.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.