_“What a self-conscious people your Negroes are!” a recent French visitor exclaimed. He was right. The Negro lives constantly on two planes of awareness. Watching the telecast of a boxing match between Ezzard Charles, the Negro who happened to be heavyweight champion, and a white challenger, a friend of mine said, “I don’t like Charles as a person but I’ve got to root for him to beat this white boy—and good.”_ _One’s heart is sickened at the realization of the primal energy that goes undeflected and unrefined into the sheer business of living as a Negro in the United 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 of modern masterworks, printed on high quality paper with sewn bindings in hardback size and format._ ON BEING NEGRO IN AMERICA J. Saunders Redding _Charter Books_ _Copyright 1951 by J. Saunders Redding_ _All rights reserved_ _Bobbs-Merrill hardcover edition published September 1951_ _Charter edition published August 1962_ _This book is the complete text of the hardcover edition_ _Printed in the U.S.A._ CHARTER BOOKS _Published by_ [Illustration] THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY, INC. _A subsidiary of_ HOWARD W. SAMS & CO., INC. _Publishers_ _Indianapolis and New York_ _Distributed by the Macfadden-Bartell Corp., Inc., 205 East 42nd Street, New York 17, New York_ EDITOR’S NOTE When it was decided to reissue J. Saunders Redding’s famous little book in a paperback edition, we wrote to Mr. Redding at Hampton Institute, where he teaches English, to ask if he wished to update the book or perhaps write a new introduction. In due course an answer arrived from Nigeria, where Mr. Redding is presently lecturing and traveling, telling us to go ahead with whatever updating we would think important to the text. We went over the book carefully. It is true, some things have changed: Mr. Redding is a little older, his sons have grown into young men, his father died last year, at the age of ninety-two—but except for those things we found that, unfortunately, no updating was needed. New York City May 12, 1962 “By the way, have I ever told you——” “Enough of the truth?” she asked. “There is never enough of the truth,” the Colonel said. “There is only more and more.”