Christian to Elmer A Carter

Letter 2

Christian Responds to Criticism

of Elmer A. Carter, Editor

New Orleans, La.

April 9, 1934

Mr. Elmer Anderson Carter,

1133 Broadway

New York City

Dear Mr. Carter:

Yours of March 2nd received. I should like very much to thank you for the suggestions contained therein. Concerning them, I should like to state, in explanation, that my irregular meter and varied rhyme schemes were purposedly done in most instances.

Certain so-called poetic authorities assert that such things are permissible in strictly modern poetry. However, your kind letter has caused me to realize that perhaps I have placed a wider interpretation than was intended. Viewed in this light, your suggestions were indeed necessary.

One of the most pathetic cases in the world is a Negro trying to write fine poetry in the South. Very often the environment is not sympathetic to indigenous poetry.

I am hoping that you will perhaps find something of interest in these poems which I am sending.

Sincerely,

Marcus B. Christian

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Elmer A. Carter (1890-1973), editor and a prominent Republican, was the first chairman of the New York State Commission Against discrimination (the predecessor of the State Division of Human rights) and first director of the State Human rights Division until his resignation in 1961. he then served for two years as special assistant to Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller on issues of race relations. In 1937, while editor of opportunity, a journal published by the Urban League, Carter was appointed by Governor Herbert Lehman to the Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board, and thus began a career in public service devoted to eliminating racial bias in housing, employment, and public accommodation. carter's wife, the former Thelma Johnson, died just a few weeks before her husband. the carters lived at 409 Edgecombe Avenue from the 1940s until their deaths.

OPPORTUNITY -- Journal of Negro Life, the official organ of the National Urban League, completing in December thirteen brilliant years under the able editorship of distinctive contribution to the literature dealing with the problems of interracial contacts in America. Dispassionate, factual data and illuminating articles from the pens of some of America's most distinguished students and writers graced the columns of the magazine -- establishing it in the minds of discriminating readers as one of the indispensable sources of light on "America's most baffling problem." Opportunity Journal, thanks to its perceptive, broad-minded editors, first, Charles S. Johnson, and then Elmer A. Carter, was a leading venue for the work of African-American artists.