Art or Propaganda? Essay

1. Introduction.W.E.B. Dubois and Alain Locke were definitive contri scarcelyors to the epoch c solelyed Harlem conversion. With their writings atrists cute to do aroundthing against racial discrimination, they indispensabilityed to submit that the Afri faecal matternister the nationsns dont prepargon to purport history inferior.Writing in the April, 1915, issue of Crisis, DuBois express In trick and belles-lettres we should humble to loose the tre mendous emotional wealth of the scandalousness and the dramatic strength of his enigmas by dint of with(predicate) writing and a nonher(prenominal) exercises of device. We should resurrect bury ancient light slightness guile and history, and we should round the disconsolate man before the argonna as two a fanciful wileist and a self-coloured overt for inventive personic creationistic treatment.DuBois stated what were to be continual themes of the decade of the twenties the inkiness as a producer an d a undecided of guile, and the pitch l sustainesss deviceisanryistic production as indices of his contri besidesion to American animateness. (Linnemann R.J. p 79)In essense, both Locke and DuBois agreed astir(predicate) what compensated good trick. It was the function of machination on which they did non agree. DuBois doubted if unmatchable could unfeignedly tolerate a bodyless fine prowess or situationer save Locke was non proveing for the unforgivingamoor economiser a disembodied knockout. (Linnemann, R.J. p 92)DuBois strongly disagreed with Lockes view that beaut preferably than Propaganda should be the object of pitch blackness literary works and prowess. If Mr. Lockes thesis is insisted upon alike much is pas prattle game to turn the pitch blackness metempsychosis into decadence. (Marable, M.. p 130)First I volition move on some basical facts virtu on the whole(prenominal)y the Harlem reincarnation. In the briny go against I volition show the opinions of A. Locke, who preferred impostures, and W.E.B. DuBois, who was for propaganda. In lay iii I give write to the highest degree DuBoiss life. After that I will show what he precious in general. The last donation of peak deuce-ace I will show w presentfore he was for propaganda. Therefore I analysed several(prenominal) of his works, e peculiar(prenominal)ly his paper Criteria of Negro blind.In point four I will introduce Alain Locke with a terse biography and portioningly I will show what he sine qua noned for the African Americans. The second p fraud of point four will show why he preferred art. My focus will be on his anthology The naked Negro and his clause craft or Propaganda?.Basi keyy in that location were thoughts which DuBois and Locke sh ared. star example is the bringing close together of tuition which will play a utilisation in point five. In point six I will spend a penny a short summary.2. The Harlem RenaissanceIn the early 19 00s, tokenly in the 1920s, Afro-American literature, art, unison, dance, and neighborly commentary began to flourish in Harlem, a section of sassy York City. This African-American ethnic movement became known as The spic-and-span Negro deed and by and by as the Harlem Renaissance. More than a literary movement, the Harlem Renaissance exalted the erratic refining of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression. African-Americans were encouraged to commemorate their inheritance. ( whoremasterson, W.) unrivaled of the factors contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the gigantic migration of African-Americans to northern cities ( much(prenominal) as recent York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) among 1919 and 1926. In his authoritative book The saucily Negro (1925), Locke described the northward migration of obtuses as something like a sacred emancipation. scurrilous urban migration, combined with trends in American society as a t po p ensemble toward experimentation during the 1920s, and the rise of radical relentless intellectuals including Locke, Marcus Garvey, fo chthonian of the Universal Negro procession Association (UNIA), and W. E. B. DuBois, editor of The Crisis magazine all contributed to the particular trends and unprecedented success of black artists during the Harlem Renaissance period.(http//encarta.msn.com)More than a literary movement and much than a loving revolt against racism, the Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique subtlety of African-Americans andredefined African-American expression. African-Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become The invigorated Negro, a term coined in 1925 by sociologist and dilettante Alain LeRoy Locke.3. About W.E.B. DuBois what did he want? point up in the compete for Afro-American judgment of dismissal and for African liberation, prolific black scholar, W.E.B. DuBois (1868 1963) was one of the giants of the twentieth centur y. (Foner, flap text)DuBois mature corking deal was a reconcilation of the sense of double mind the two warring ideals of universe both black and American. He came to accept struggle and conflict as essential elements of life, but he continued to think in the inevitable progress of the human guide that out of individual struggles against a split self and semipolitical struggles of the oppressors, a broader and brimfull human life would emerge that would receipts all of man mixed bag (Kerry W.).Dr. Dubois was awarded the prototypal Spingarn laurel in 1920. This was awarded to that Negro who succeedd the highest in whatever human endeavor. He was an activist for orbiculate affairs, editor of the NAACP Crisis publication, and set up the brush for the first Pan-African Congress. He was an individual of tenet and conviction. The beginnings he planted in time get totain us today. (http//www.websn.com/Pride/Pride/w.htm)To derive racial equality he founded the Niaga ra exertion a group of African-American back a flair committed to an active struggle for racial equality. The Niagara Movement was founded in 1905, by a group of African-Americans, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, John Hope, and William Monroe Trotter, who called for full civil liberties, an end to racial discrimi nation, and recognition of human brotherhood. (http//en.wikipedia.org)W.E.B. DuBois see that racism and preconceived opinions are a business. Therefore he wrote erstwhile upon a time in my younger historic period and in the track of this centuryI wrote The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. It was a pert and singing phrase which I then liked and which since I pack often rehearsed to my soul and askedhow faraway is this forecasting or speculation? Today in the last years of the centurys first quarter, let us insure the matter again, especially in the stock of that great razet of these great years, the dry land War.Fruit of the bitt er rivalries of economic imperialism, the root of the catastrophe were in Africa, deeply entwined at bottom with the problems of the color line. And of the legacy left, the problems the terra firma inherits h black-and-blue-haired the equal fatal seed world dissension and catastrophe still lurk in the unsolved problems of melt relations. What then is the world view that the reflection of this question offers?.(DuBois, W.E.B. The Negro Mind Reaches erupt) DuBois valued to encourage African American community. In his es utter On world Ashamed Of angiotensin converting enzymeself from 1933 he described the tactility of inferiority. At the resembling time he encouraged the lot to find out footsurewe moldiness oppose all separatism and all racial patriotism we essential salute the American flag and sing Our coun afflict Tis of Thee with devotion and fervor, and we essential(prenominal) stir up for our rights with long and care fully planned campaigns amalgamation for this purpose with all sym base concourse, colorful and livid. entirely in that location are authorized practical elusiveies connected with this program which are be plan of attack more than than and more sluttish today. First of all comes the fact that we are still ashamed of ourselves and are thusly stopped from valid objection when bloodless houses are ashamed to call us human. (Weinberg, M. p 12)DuBois wanted to adjure against the problems which African Americans draw. Their bad situation was explained in his paper The Study Of The Negro Problemslet us inquire somewhat more carefully down the stairs the form under which the Negro problems present themselves today after 275 years of evolution. Their existence is plainly manifested by the fact that a definitely separate survey of eight millions of Americans do non wholly share the interior(a) life of the people, are non an integral part of the sociable body. The points at which they fail to be incorporate d into this group life constitute the particularNegro problems, which can be divided into two distinct and jibe parts, depending on two factsFirst Negroes do non share the full national life because as a mass they ready not filter outed a sufficiently high grade of culture.Secondly They do not share the full national life because there has always existed in America a conviction variable in intensity, but always far-flung that people of Negro blood should not be admitted into the group life of the nation no matter what their condition top executive be. Con gradientring the problems arising from the backward development of Negroes, we may introduce that the mass of this race does not reach the complaisant substantiateards of the nation with respect to a) economical condition, b) Mental train, c) affectionate efficiency. (Foner, p 108)Du Bois was a induct uphold of the black beauty concept and of black power although he refrained from attaching a color tag. In his n imble Program of the American Negro (April, 1915) he asserted The Negro must have power the power of men, the right to do, to know, to feel and express that knowledge, action and spiritual gift. He must not simply be free from the political tyranny of egg albumin household, he must have the right to vote and rule over the citizens, white and black, to the extent of his proven foresight and ability. (Moon, H.L.)One way of looking at it is that the Harlem Renaissance attacked the superstructure of White supremacy while ratified and political activists in the 1930s and forties began to attack the daily practice of racism by dint of the courts and demonstrations. For example, the Harlem Renaissance is generally assign with heightening awareness of the heathenish contributions that African and African American peoples have make to American culture, specifically in music, dance, meter, and speech, as closely as in agriculture, medicine, and inventions. here(predicate) the idea was that (1) racism in America would be undermined not only through with(predicate) protest against racialist practices, but similarly by changing the wonted meets and associations that European Americans, especially educated European Americans, had al intimately coloured people. And then (2)by disseminating irresponsible images of African Americans as contributors to American Culture, umteen of these Harlem Renaissance intellectuals hoped to raise the self-esteem of dreary people themselves. A people with a higher(prenominal) self-esteem would be more resistant to segregation and discrimination, and more willing to challenge the system than those who were demoralized.(Powell, R.)3.1. How did he want to reach his aims?After scholar Alain Locke compiled the new-fangled Negro heralding a younger generation of black voices and establishing Harlem as a cultural center Du Bois vented his ire some the state of the arts in Harlem. At the NAACPs annual convention in June 192 6, Du Bois delivered a dun entitled Criteria of Negro Art in which he insisted that all relevant art should be propaganda. The lecture was later published in a special Crisis series, The Negro in Art. (http//artsedge.kennedy-center.org/)In his paper Criteria of Negro art W.E.B. DuBois wrote consequently all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for each art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent. (Weinberg, M. p 258)DuBois didnt totally turn down art but in his opinion art is supposed to have a message. He points out that there is no take up to feel inferior and because of that inexorable people should fight for their rights.Colored people have said This work must be inferior because it comes from colored people. White people have said It is inferior because it is through by colored people. But today there is coming to both the acknowledgment that the work of the black man is not always inferior. ( W.E.B. DuBois Criteria of Negro art in Weinbeg, M. p 255)I already mentioned that Harlem Renaissance intellectuals wanted to raise peoples self esteem. In his paper Criteria of Negro Art DuBois also emphasizes that the art coming from African Americans is good.And then you know what will be said? It is already being said. Just as soon as true art emerges but as soon as the black artist appears, someone touches the race on the lift and says, 2he did that because he was an American, not because he was a Negro he was born here he was trained here he is not a Negro what is a Negro anyhow? He is unspoiled human it is the kind of thing you ought to expect.I do not doubt that the net art coming from black folk is going to be in effect(p) as pretty, and beautiful largely in the same ways, as the art that comes from white folk, or yellow, or red but the point today is that until the art of black folk compels recognition, they will not be rated as human. And when through art they compel recognition, then let the world discover if it will, that their atr is as revolutionary as it is old and as old as brand-new. (Weinberg, M. p 260)Du Bois thorough attitude regarding the relationship between art and politics was not entirely shared by Alain Locke, but adequately uttered the prevailing mood among the intelligentsia in Harlem in the early and middle part of the twenties. Post-war American might still be determined to deny the Negro cordial, political and economic equality, but art was other matter. It was the chink in the racists armour. (Williams, A. p 5)DuBois believed that art could bridge cultural gaps between black and white Americans if black artists were given the opportunity to explore their talents, because, he reasoned, art can inculcate a sense of cultural heritage and individ ualism to an oppressed group. For DuBois, African culture and African American heritage were rich comely to help blacks in the join States get hold their political and cultural consciousness.DuBois started a gathering of backchat in the Crisis magazine, entitled, How Should the Negro Be Portrayed? in which he asked artists to write in anddiscuss what kinds of images of coloured people ought to be disseminated by artists in America. opus there was a wide contrariety on how much control should be imposed on what images artists should take a crap, most believed that out of the greater access to the publishing and art world would come an abandonment of the racist imagery that predominated in popular American culture and justified, by dehumanizing macabre people, the racist amicable and political practices that also abounded in America in the 1920s and 1930s. Du Bois plain coined the phrase, all art is propaganda to reflect his view that the purpose of an art movement among African Americans was to combat the negative propaganda against the Negro coming from racist America with a prescribed propaganda for the Negro. (Powell, R.)4. About Alain Locke.For Alain Locke, propaganda was the slanted rhetoric that cautioned the Negro writers of the Harlem Renaissance to avoid. Being a Negro, he knew the harmful do the contented buckle down stereotype of a Thomas Nelson Page, the harlequinade of an early Roark Bradford, and the savage beast in the works of Thomas Dixon had on his race. He new that the works of these authors, aside from presenting such insulting and distorted images, neither had verisimilitude nor were they great literature. (Linnemann, R.J. p 91)African American philosopher educator Alain LeRoy Locke (1886 1954) compete an influential post in identifying, nurturing, and publishing the works of young black artists during the New Negro Movement. His philosophical system served as a strong motivating jam in forecloseing the energy and heating plant of the Movement at the forefront. He spent his life want to understand the re put upation of cultural conflicts and suggesting measures that must be taken to reduce conflict and allow consonance to prevail. A fundamental question that lingered in his mind was How can a multi-ethnic society, such as that in the United States organize itself so that its diverse groups can live together without intense unpeaceful conflicts? (Washington, J. p vii)He served for many years as a chairman of the philosophical system department at Howard University, but his headway(prenominal) contribution to American culture lies in his swithers to make the public aware of the Negros aesthetic achievements from the art and artefacts of Africa to the poetry and novels of the American writer. (The Negro Almanac, p 990)Alain Locke played an influential role in identifying, nurturing, and publishing the works of young black artists during the New Negro Movement. His philosophy served as a strong motivating force in keeping the energy and passion of the Movement at the forefront. Ernest Mason explains thatmuch of the creative work of the period was guided by the ideal of the New Negro which mean a range of ethical ideals that often emphasized and intensified a higher sense of group and social cohesiveness. The writersliterally expected liberationfrom their work and were possibly the first group of Afro-American writers to believe that art could radically transform the artist and attitudes of other human beings. (Dictionary of Literary historyp 313)As a pioneer collector, Locke was one of the first Americans to write about the significance of African art, demonstrating its wideness far beyond an influence on the cubists and other members of the European artistic avant-garde. He wanted all African Americans, in particular contemporary African American artists, to seek inspiration and take pride in their rich artistic heritage. To this end he lectured, organized nu merous exhibitions, and wrote the introductions for several marches catalogs of African art. (http//www.africa deep down.com)In his anthology The New Negro ( pen in 1925) Alain Locke wanted to show that Afro Americans are able to produce art and literature as well as white people.He discussed the encourage of black art in wrong of its contribution to community. In his defining essay of 1925, come the New Negro, for instance, Locke urges young artists to embrace the fullness of theirheritage, old customs married to new possibilities. Once again, Locke emphasizes the purpose for artists in doing so the responsibility of these artists to be leaders for their people. In Lockes countersignaturesWith his renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life of the Negro community is bound to enter a new dynamic phase, the archness from within compensating for whatever pressure there may be of conditions without. The migrant masses, shimmy from countryside to city, hurdle several gen erations of welcome at a leap, but more important, the same thing happens spiritually in the life-attitudes and self-expression of the early daysful Negro, in his poetry, his art, his rearing and his new outlook, . . . From this comes the hope and warrant of a new leadership.(Locke, A. Enter The New Negro in Bracey, J. p 222)The New Negro emerged from within the black community, in contrast to the white sort out literary image of the comic and pathetic plantation black. Alain Locke is acknowledged as the leading black philosopher who asked blacks to recognize their African heritage as New Negroes.4.1. A. Locke -how did he want to reach his aims?Writing in 1928, Alain Locke, the influential philosopher of the Harlem Renaissance, observed that the fundamental question for any anti-racist social docket was Art or Propaganda. Which? (Locke, A.) Artists and writers of the movement regarded the Harlem Renaissance not simply as a spontaneous favourable of African-American creativit y but as a critical historical upshot to be seized in order to commute the course of American racism.Its social mission, as Locke and many others adage it, was to overturn the prevailing perception of drearys as inferior to whites. Its effects would be two-fold fostering pride amongst the foul population and addressing whites from a position of strength. barely if the anti-racist social agenda of the Harlem Renaissance were to go after in changing peoples minds about race, Locke believed, it could not proceed rhetorically. Art could offer a new social vision propaganda would only exacerbate the polarization of Black and white positions. (Thompson, A.)His strategy was to produce a new and an own esthetic in order to strenghten the standing and the dominance of African-Americans. (http//userpage.fu berlin.de)For A. Locke art ist he best way of life to prove that Black culture and art is as good as the culture and the art of white people. Art in the best sense is rooted in se lf expression and whether naive or sophisticated is self contained. In our spiritual growth genius and talent must more and more choose the role of group expression, or even at times the role of free individualist expression in a word must choose art and put aside propaganda. (Locke, A. Art or Propaganda? p 312)The problem with propaganda, he argued, is that it cannot reframe the terms of the debate. To try to discredit racism is already to accord racist arguments a presumptive legitimacy. My chief objection to propaganda, apart from its besetting sin of monotony and disproportion, is that it perpetuates the position of group inferiority even in crying out against it. For it speaks under the shadow of a dominant majority whom it harangues, cajoles, threatens, or supplicates. It is too extroverted for equalizer or poise or versed dignity and self-respect. (Locke, A. Ibid. p 312. )Propaganda, in Lockes view, is inevitably either protective or strident, if not both. By contras t, art is rooted in self-expression and whether naive or sophisticated is poised. (Locke,A. Ibid. p 312) Creating its own terms for reasonableness and appreciation, art allows us to sidestep the received, conventional terms of meaning, and to take up possibilities presented to us within the self-contained realm of the individual work. While art could not completely accomplish the variety needed to realign Black and white relations in American society, Locke believed that it could lead the way. (Locke, Ibid. p 312)For the most part, thusly, the art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance were expressive rather than creative, creative rather than argumentative. And it was specifically because they avoided propaganda, avoided benignant racist ideology directly, that Locke believed that art and literature could teach the truth about total darkness in the white world. For Locke, the breedingal value of the movement consisted above all in its capacity to represent blackness without part to the terms set by a racist society. Disregarding conventional perceptions and assumptions, art could offer an objective look at black experience, sanction, and heritage. (Thompson, A. p 18)Key to Lockes notion of art as education is its avoidance of argumentation. For him, the problem posed by propaganda is not that it serves a particular agenda obviously, he meant for art to serve a distinct social, political, and intellectual agenda. The problem with propaganda, as he saw it, is that it is reactive, and thus dependent upon the very assumptions it is intended to displace. Unlike the more familiar opposition between propaganda and uncouth sense or between propaganda and apply inquiry, Lockes art/propaganda dichotomy suggests that the most important obstacle to social reasonableness may be a form of literal-mindedness accepting our starting points as a given and seeking change through incremental adjustments.In effect, then, Locke rejects the kind of blast to promotin g interracial understanding taken by munificent education. In the traditional liberal arts model, the path to a freer understanding is through careful analysis, reasoned argumentation, and dialogue. But from Lockes perspective, that approach reintroduces at any turn the very assumptions that preclude a transformed understanding. Particularly in the causal agency of Black/white relations, what is called for is a reorientation in our thinking rather than the castigation of each and every error in existing understandings. As a pragmatist, Locke saw change not in terms of incremental improvement but in terms of shifts adopting new positions and entering into new relations.Whereas propaganda, in Lockes formulation, refers to an emendatory or change impulse, art refers to the development of new perspectives. The magnificence of art lies in its refusal to read social convention literally.As a fable for anti-racist education, it means, in part, problematizing the supposedly neutral standards that privilege whiteness, and, in part, reconceiving both whiteness and Blackness. In invoking art as the opposite of propaganda, though, Locke grants too much to art. By holding on to Enlightenment assumptions about truth, Locke proposes a lead role for art as someways apolitical in contrast to propaganda as inherently ideological.The romantic strain in Lockes conception of art is revealed in his belief that the art of the people, specifically peoples of African ancestry, is a tap root of vigorous, well-fixed living. (Locke, A. Art or Propaganda p 313) much(prenominal) art, he believed, is the source of a beauty that reveals truth, for unlike academic art, it has not been subjected to generations of the inbreeding of style and idiom, (Locke, A. The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts, p 258) nor confused the capacity to see objectively.The Negro physiognomy must be freshly and objectively conceived on its own patterns if it is ever to be seriously and importantly interprete d. Art must discover and reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have overlaid. And all alert art discovers beauty and opens our center of attentions to that which previously we could not see. (Locke,A. Ibd. p 264)Art, Locke believed, offered a way to break with old stereotypes and invent new forms, while remaining true to some sort of characteristic idiom, (Locke,A. Ibd. p 267) is a distinctive heritage and expressive style. Pragmatist that he was, he saw art as a way to come to experience both with a fresh eye and with the funded experience of a rich patrimonial legacy.(Thompson, A. in Anti-Racist Pedagogy Art or Propaganda?)5. What is it that DuBois and Locke have in putting surface?A. Locke and W.E.B. DuBois had various opinions about the question whether art or propaganda is the right way to integrate the African Americans into the American society. I have written about W.E.B. DuBois ,who is for propaganda, and about A. Locke, who is for art, so far. What we sho uld keep in mind is basically they wanted the same. The thing they have in common isthat they generally had the same ideas they wanted to do domething for the African Amerians, they wanted a racial uplift. (http//userpage.fu-berlin.de/wilker/harlem/Bildungselite.htm)One example is the idea of education and the idea of a Black elite, which they both shared.It is obvious that DuBois and Locke mat up that the Black elite (or Talented Tenth) were to articulate the Black ideals for which the masses were to strive. A task that infallible members of the Talented Tenth to be well educated. For DuBois, no less than Locke, insisted that an education that allowed Blacks to achieve cultural freedom and autonomy would be an education that exposed the selected Black youth to the higher cultural values the arts, music, drama, poetry, and history, aimed at the development of labouring skills. Alain Locke, no less than W.E.B DuBois, focused on Blacks cultural contributions to America. Hence, the importance of educating the Black elite, who would serve as Socratic midwives in such creative efforts. (Washington, p 22 ff.)Significant social transformations occurred, concord to Locke, through the effort of what he called the black elite the talented, well educated, cultured clan of Blacks that distinguished itself from the Black masses through the formers contributions to the development of art and culture. The black elite took initiative in the realm of human affairs. It was concerned with service of process to shape, among other things, public policy. Booker T. Washington, Alain Locke, W.E.B. DuBois, bloody shame Bethune, Zora Hurston, Roland Hayes, Paul Robeson, Countee Cullen, Ida B. Wells, Langston Huges, Marian Anderson, James Weldon Johnson these were among the Black elite during Lockes time.It was their artistic and political activities to the civil rights movements of the mid-sixties that advanced the social political status of Black Americans, and bring on the country to make a more serious commitment to the principle of equality. Indeed, members of the Black elite inspired Africans on the guiltless of Africa in the 1950s and early 1960s as they sought to rid themselves of European colonial rule. In a word, the American Black elite, especially through the effort of W.E.B. DuBois Pan African movement, was slavish in helping to dissolve the unkindly societies on the continent of Africa, societies nurtured and sustained by colonialism. (Washington, p 34)In his speech, The Training of Negroes for Social Power, Dr. DuBois set forth clearly and fully his views at the time of the type of education he felt was essential for his people.The Negro problem, it has often been said, is largely a problem of ignorance not simply of illiteracy, but a deeper ignorance of the world and its ways, of the thought and experience of men an ignorance of self and the possibilities of human souls. This can be gotten rid of only by training and primarily such t raining must take the form of that sort of social leadership which we call education. The very first step towards settlement of the Negro problem is the spread of intelligence. (Foner, p 132 ff)6.SummaryW.E.B. DuBois emphasized that art must have a function. It is not the beauty which is important. In his magazine The Crisis he wrote We want Negro writers to produce beautiful things but we stress the things rather than the beauty. It is life history and Truth that are important and Beauty comes to make their importance visible and tolerable.Locke suggested that swearword artists of the Harlem Renaissance always strive for art and avoid propaganda. Unfortunately, however, he felt that there have been very few rigorously artistic publications, as most of their expressions were include in the avowed organs of social movements and organized social programs. He felt that there must be discussion of social problems, but propaganda is too slanting to serve that function, and there must be some means of bringing all views to the table. However, he never claimed that art can serve this function, and merely hypothesized such a forum of ideas. (Cabrera, J.)DuBois doubted if one could really have a disembodied art or beauty but Locke was not seeking for the Negro writer a disembodied beauty. He expected tangible results from the Negro knowing himself through his folk cultural experiences, particulary given the Negros special circumstances as an American citizen within the wider American cultural tradition. (Linnemann, R.J. p 92)I think it is important to mention that W.E.B. DuBois was for propaganda but he didnt totally reject art as long as art has a message.DuBois had a strong sense of race pride and saw great value in muster upon the racial heritage. He was an early advocate of the use of black folk music for classical American music tradition. though he felt that art and propaganda could not be separated, he took the middle class position that characterization of black life should project a proper image of the Negro. (Linnemann, R.J. p 78)The question Who was right? is difficult to answer. A. Locke saw the beauty of art but in my opinion every kind of art has a message and is therefore more or less propaganda. One cannot separate the terms. Artist are just able to influence the kind of propaganda when they create provocative works but it is not possible to produce art just for arts sake.SourcesBracey, John H. ed. African American Mosaic, Volume Two From 1865 To The Present. New jersey Prentice Hall, 2004.Locke, Alain Art or Propaganda? in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Nathan Irvin Huggins. New York Oxford University Press, 1976.DuBois, W.E.B. The Negro Mind Reaches away (excerpts) The New Negro, An Interpretation. New York Albert and Charles Boni, 1925, p. 385.Foner, Philip Sheldon W.E.B. Du Bois speaks speeches and addresses1890-1919. New York pathfinder Press, 1970.Linnemann, Russell J., ed. Alain Locke Reflections on a modern Renaissance man. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1982.Locke,A. The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts, in The New Negro An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke New York Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968 (1925).Marable, Manning W.E.B.DuBois, Black Radical Democrat. Boston Twayne Publishers, 1986.Ploski, beset A. ed. The Negro Almanac a character reference work on the Afro-American.Detroit Gale Research, 1983.Washington, Johnny Alain Locke and philosophy a quest for cultural pluralism. New York Greenwood Press, 1986.Weinberg, Meyer ed. W.E.B. DuBois A Reader. New York Harper & Row, 1970.electronic SourcesCabrera, Jennifer. Art or Propaganda? 10 celestial latitude 1999. http//www.en. utexas. edu/classes/bremen/e314l/student_pages/student.sites/jennifer/final/home.htmlMoon, Henry Lee report of the Crisis. November 1970. The Crisis Magazine Online 10.03.05Powell, Richard, 08.03.05Thompson, Audrey For Anti racist education (p 1 38) 25.02.2005. University of Utah. ht tp//bama.ua.edu/cdi/thompson.pdf, S.18 Thompson, Audrey Anti-Racist Pedagogy Art or Propaganda? 27.02.2005. University of UtahWilliam H. Johnson Feb.16, 2000 25.02.05.