Black Beauty

“ Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by fateful chance the Negro folk-song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas. ”

“ Black Beauty, in recounting the many incidents of his life, has given us a series of stories full of interest, danger and excitement, through all of which is a pathetic plea for the more considerate treatment of his kind. ”

“ As a creator of beauty the black man is capable of contributing to the great art of the world.
“The Negro’s pronounced gift for music is today widely recognized. That gift, brought to America in slave-ships, was nurtured by that mother of woe, human slavery, till out of suffering and toil there sprang a music which speaks to the heart of mankind—the prayer-song of the American Negro. In Africa is rooted the parent stem of that out-flowering of Negro folk-song in other lands. “Through the Negro this country is vocal with a folk-music intimate, complete and beautiful. ”

“ The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people. ”

“ I was led home, placed in a comfortable stable, fed, and left to myself. The next day, when my groom was cleaning my face, he said, "That is just like the star that Black Beauty had, he is much the same height too ”

“ If that she learn not of her eye to look.
No face is fair that is not full so black.
KING.
O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
The hue of dungeons and the school of night;
And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.
BEROWNE.
Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. ”

“ Follow those pure beams, whose beauty burneth,
That so have scorchèd thee
As thou still black must be
Till her kind beams thy black to brightness turneth.
Follow her, while yet her glory shineth!
There comes a luckless night
That will dim all her light;
—And this the black unhappy shade divineth.
Follow still, since so thy fates ordainèd!
The sun must have his shade,
Till both at once do fade,—
The sun still proved, the shadow still disdainèd. ”

“ NEGRO ART AND LITERATURE
The Negro is primarily an artist. The usual way of putting this is to speak disdainfully of his “sensuous” nature. This means that the only race which has held at bay the life destroying forces of the tropics, has gained therefrom in some slight compensation a sense of beauty, particularly for sound and color, which characterizes the race. ”

“ Moreover, while, in a dead black or any dark color of face, it cannot be pretended that, considering its color only, we should have more than blackness or darkness for admiration, it is evident that, in a fair complexion, we have, in addition to its general brilliance or splendor, the infinite variety of its teints, their exquisite blendings, and the beautiful expression of every transient emotion. ”

“ Then turning gravely to Harry:
“My boy, I hope you will always defend your sister, and give anybody who insults her a good thrashing—that is as it should be; but mind, I won't have any election blackguarding on my premises. There are as many 'blue' blackguards as there are 'orange', and as many white as there are purple, or any other color, and I won't have any of my family mixed up with it. Even women and children are ready to quarrel for the sake of a color, and not one in ten of them knows what it is about.” ”

“ This process, if it did not add to their beauty, certainly did not detract from it, as their faces were originally so plain that the black covering could not make them more ugly. The young men and lads formed a curious contrast to the women in this respect, many of them being remarkable for their good looks. ”

“ On an African visage, on the contrary, all is black, even the eyebrows, as inky as the rest, are merged in the general colour; scarcely another shade is perceptible, except at the line where the lips join each other. ”

“ They miss the inwardness, which love alone can supply. If we look without love we can only see the outside, the mere form and expression of the subject studied. Only with tender compassion and loving sympathy can we see the beauty even in the eye dull with weeping and in the fixed face pale with care. ”

“ The colours of these cells blend with that of the blood, thus producing, according to their number and depth of coloration, the brunette, black, yellow, or red complexion. The palm of the negro’s hand is whiter than the rest of his body, because there the horny epidermis is so thick that the black pigmentary matter cannot be seen through it. And the reason why every negro is born to blush unseen is because the pigmentary matter in his skin is so deep and abundant that it neutralises the colour of the blood. ”

“ That, independent of any association, blackness is naturally disagreeable, if not painful, is happily determined by the case of the boy restored to sight by Cheselden, who tells us that the first time the boy saw a black object, it gave him great uneasiness ”

“ We will often see noble patience shining through them, and loyalty to duty, and virtues and graces unsuspected by others.
The divine meaning of a true friendship is that it is often the first unveiling of the secret of love. It is not an end in itself, but has most of its worth in what it leads to, the priceless gift of seeing with the heart rather than with the eyes. To love one soul for its beauty and grace and truth is to open the way to appreciate all beautiful and true and gracious souls, and to recognize spiritual beauty wherever it is seen. ”

“ ⁠Now black, and deep, the night begins to fall,
A shade immense. Sunk in the quenching gloom,
Magnificent and vast, are heaven and earth.
Order confounded lies; all beauty void; ⁠1130
Distinction lost: and gay variety
One universal blot: such the fair power
Of light, to kindle and create the whole. ”

“ His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them still green. ”

“ The black pigment protects the underlying nerves of temperature, while the solar heat absorbed by this pigment is immediately radiated in the form of perspiration. Now we can see not only why the negro’s skin is more velvety, smooth, and hairless than our own, but why its sweat-pores are larger and more numerous than in our skin. ”

“ Oh, why should she be so proud to this poor lover, who stood so meekly before her? "Coquette, coquette" (Macleod could have cried to her) , "the days are not always full of sunshine; life is not all youth, and beauty, and high spirits; you may come to repent of your pride and your cruelty." ”

“ This old dead Hero had one only Daughter left of his Race, a Beauty, that to describe her truly, one need say only, she was Female to the noble Male; the beautiful Black Venus to our young Mars; as charming in her Person as he, and of delicate Virtues. I have seen a hundred White Men sighing after her, and making a thousand Vows at her Feet, all in vain and unsuccessful. And she was indeed too great for any but a Prince of her own Nation to adore. ”

“ Thus the 'beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty' means the fair veil concealing a black, that is loathsome, beauty. ”

“ An American newspaper paragraph, for the truthfulness of which I cannot vouch, recently stated that twenty-one men in Cincinnati, who had married red-haired women, were found to be colour-blind. A person who is colour-blind mistakes red for black.
(3) Eyes.—But it is when we leave the scalp that the superiority of dark over light hair becomes most manifest. That black eyelashes and eyebrows are infinitely more beautiful than light-coloured ones, is admitted without a dissentient voice ”

“ The Music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil. Sprung from the African forests, where its counterpart can still be heard, it was adapted, changed, and intensified by the tragic soul-life of the slave, until, under the stress of law and whip, it became the one true expression of a people's sorrow, despair, and hope. ”

“ Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expression of every passion by a greater or less suffusion of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, that immovable veil of black, which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference to them, as uniformly as is the preference of the oroonowtang for the black women over those of his own species? ”

“ It is the Negro music with its by-product of ‘ragtime’ that today most widely influences the popular song-life of America, and Negro rhythms have indeed captivated the world at large. Nor may we foretell the impress that the voice of the slave will leave upon the art of the country—a poetic justice, this! ”

“ For in truth, and for once, the epithet raven was not misapplied to those soft, silky, glistening masses, which were not of the cold and hueless black, but of that nameless and indescribable hue which is never seen but in the hair of women of Moorish or Irish blood—and in the latter probably as originated of the former—black indeed, but black warmed and glowing with a rich metallic purplish lustre, unlike any thing on earth but the changeful hues that dance on the dark plumage of several of the feathered tribes. ”

“ I have no doubt that what you have intimated with regard to the dexterities imposed by the skirt is quite true. There must be a certain important amount of muscular power not otherwise demanded in the current method of holding up the skirt with one hand at the back, or even in twisting the loose of it into a tuft on one hip. The habit doesn’t seem to be intrinsically pretty, yet it has that fascination which makes us wonder whether conventional ideas of beauty are of any importance whatever. ”

“ There is nothing like a Caffre for power and grace; and the face, though very African, has a sort of grandeur which makes it utterly unlike that of the negro. That woman’s bust and waist were beauty itself. ”

“ Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live,—a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head—ah, bitterly!—the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand—ah, wearily!—to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw the shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby, I saw the cold city towering above the blood-red land. ”

“ Beyond the specific ways in which the Negro has contributed to American art stands undoubtedly his spirit of gayety and the exotic charm which his presence has loaned the parts of America which were spiritually free enough to enjoy it. In New Orleans, for instance, after the war of 1812 and among the free people of color there was a beautiful blossoming of artistic life which the sordid background of slavery had to work hard to kill. The “people of color” grew in number and waxed wealthy. Famous streets even today bear testimony of their old importance. ”

“ A Negro sculptor, Mrs. Meta Warrick Fuller, not knowing of this proverb about the tortoise which has only recently been brought from Africa, but simply interpreting Negro life in America, has embodied the very idea of the African saying in bronze. Under the title “Secret Sorrow” a man is represented as eating his own heart.
The interpretation in art of the Spirituals, or a poetry of art developed along the lines and in the spirit of those songs, is something we may expect the black singers of no distant day to produce. Already we have many a poem that offers striking reminiscences of them. ”

“ The unlettered black singers have taught us to live music that rakes our souls and gives us moments of exquisite joy. The later Negro has made us feel the majesty of Nature, the ineffable peace of the woods and the great open spaces. He has shown us that the events of our every-day American life contain for him a poetry, rhythm and charm which we ourselves had never discovered. Through him we have seen the pathos, comedy, affection, joy of his own daily life, unified into humorous dialect verse or perfected sonnet that is a work of exquisite art. ”