Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
“What a self-conscious people your Negroes are!” arecent French visitor exclaimed. He was right. TheNegro lives constantly on two planes of awareness.Watching the telecast of a boxing match betweenEzzard Charles, the Negro who happened to beheavyweight champion, and a white challenger, afriend of mine said, “I don’t like Charles as a personbut I’ve got to root for him to beat this white boy—andgood.”
One’s heart is sickened at the realization of theprimal energy that goes undeflected and unrefinedinto the sheer business of living as a Negro in theUnited States—in any one of the United States.
J. Saunders Redding has also written:
- TO MAKE A POET BLACK
- NO DAY OF TRIUMPH
- STRANGER AND ALONE
- THEY CAME IN CHAINS
- READING FOR WRITING (A college text with Ivan E. Taylor)
- AN AMERICAN IN INDIA
- LONESOME ROAD
Charter Books represent a new venture in publishing.They offer at paperback prices a set ofmodern masterworks, printed on high qualitypaper with sewn bindings in hardback sizeand format.
ON BEING NEGRO IN AMERICA
EDITOR’S NOTE
When it was decided to reissue J. Saunders Redding’sfamous little book in a paperback edition, we wroteto Mr. Redding at Hampton Institute, where heteaches English, to ask if he wished to update the bookor perhaps write a new introduction. In due coursean answer arrived from Nigeria, where Mr. Reddingis presently lecturing and traveling, telling us to goahead with whatever updating we would think importantto the text. We went over the book carefully.It is true, some things have changed: Mr. Redding isa little older, his sons have grown into young men, hisfather died last year, at the age of ninety-two—butexcept for those things we found that, unfortunately,no updating was needed.