ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

CALL AND RESPONSE Key Debates in African American Studies

HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. Harvard University

JENNIFER BURTON University of California, San Diego

W. W. NORTON AND COMPANY

NEW YORK LONDON

To Maggie Gates: May our profession give you the pleasure and satisfaction that it has given me.

For Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham: For being there for me, first, foremost, and always.

HLG

For the Burton family and Aniruddh, Roger, and Lilia: my past, present, and future.

JB

W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People's Institute, the adult education division of New York City's Cooper Union. The Nortons soon expanded their program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By mid-century, the two major pillars of Norton's publishing program-trade books and college texts-were firmly established. In the 195os, the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and today-with a staff of four hundred and a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year- W. W. Norton & Company stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees.

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Call and response : key debates in African American studies / edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Jennifer Burton. --1st ed.

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Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-393-97578-9 (pbk.)

1. African Americans-History-Sources. 2. African Americans-History-Study and teaching. 3. United States-Race relations-Sources. 4. United States-Race relations-Study and teaching. I. Gates, Henry Louis. II. Burton, Jennifer, 1964-

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS X/V

FORTY MILLION WAYS TO BE BLACK BY HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. X1141

THEMATIC INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE BY JENNIFER BURTON

AND HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. /V

TIMELINE /XXX/

PART ONE The Time of Slavery (to 1865)

KEY DEBATE: Nature, Culture, and Slavery

DAVID HUME from Of National Characters (1748, 1777) 8

JAMES BEATTIE from An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770, 1772)

IMMANUEL KANT from Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime 17., 4( 6 ),, 11

PH ILLIS WHEATLEY Letter to the Reverend Samson Occum (1774) 12

JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER from Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind ( R 4-1791) 13

9

IMMANUEL KANT from Review of Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1785) 16

THOMAS JEFFERSON from Notes on the State of Virginia (1784, 1787) 17

On the Secrets of Nature 21

BENJAMIN BANNEKER Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1791) 21

V

Lxxx = Thematic Introduction: The Politics of Difference

Malcolm X. By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews, and a Letter. Ed. George Breitman. NewYork: Pathfinder Press, 1970.

Malcolm X. Telegram to Martin Luther King Jr. June 30, 1964. http://brothermalcolm.net/mxwords/letters/telegramtomartin .gif.

Matthews, Victoria Earle. "The Value of Race Literature: An Address, Delivered at the First Congress of Colored Women of the United States, at Boston, Mass., July 30th, 1895." The Massachusetts Review, XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 1986): A IQ

Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.

Stuckey, Sterling. Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Trotter, Joe William, Jr. The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.

Walker, David. Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together, with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829, rev. ed. (Boston: David Walker, 1830).

Wilmore, Gayraud S., ed. African American Religious Studies. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989.

CONTEXTS

1$13 Spanish Conquistador Juan Garrido, born in West Africa, lands in Florida

1526 African slaves arrive in San Miguel de Guandape, in South Carolina or Georgia

1619 Twenty African slaves arrive in James- town, Virginia, on Dutch ship and are sold as indentured servants

1623 William Tucker, in Jamestown, is the first black child born in the English North American colonies

1641 Massachusetts becomes first colony to legally recognize slavery

1645 First American slave ship sails from Boston

1646 John Wham and his wife are freed, becoming the first recorded free black people in New England

1652 Rhode Island passes the first North Ameri- can law against slavery

1662 Virginia is the first colony to declare that mother's status determines whether a child is born free or into slavery

1663 Major conspiracy by black and white indentured servants in Virginia is be- trayed by a servant

1664 Maryland adopts the first anti-interracial marriage statute in the United States

1688 Pennsylvanian Quakers sign the first official written protest against slavery in North America

1712 New York City slave revolt is quelled by militia Pennsylvania becomes the first colony to outlaw slave trade

1734 "Great Awakening" religious revival begins; Methodist and Baptist churches attract black converts by offering "Christianity for all"

1739 South Carolina slaves launch Stono Rebellion, killing 3o white people

Bold-face titles indicate works included or excerpted in the anthology.

TEXTS

Lxxxii ------- Timeline

1740 In response to Stono Rebellion, South Carolina outlaws teaching slaves to write

1756-1763 African Americans fight in French and Indian War

1757 Phillis Wheatley purchased in Boston

1758 First black Baptist church in the colonies is erected on a plantation in Virginia

1773 Slaves in Massachusetts petition legisla- ture for freedom for first time

1774 Continental Congress prohibits importa- tion of slaves after December 1,1774

1775-1783 American Revolutionary War; battles fought by African Americans include Bunker Hill, Lexington, and Concord

1775 First antislavery society organized by Philadelphia Quakers Royal governor of Virginia offers freedom to any slave joining the British army; Soo respond to form "Ethiopian Regiment" Second Continental Congress resolves against the importation of slaves

1776 Declaration of Independence adopted without antislavery statement proposed by Thomas Jefferson

1777 Vermont is one of the first states to abolish slavery in state constitution

New York is the first state to extend vote to black males, but limits voting in 1815 and 1821 with permit, property, and residency requirements

1746 Lucy Terry, "Bars Fight," (the first extant work of creative writing written by an African American; not published until 1855)

1748 David Hume, Of National Characters

176o Jupiter Hammon, An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries (printed as a broadside, the first poetry published by an African American)

1764 Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime

1770 James Beattie, A Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth

1773 Peter Bestes, Sambo Freeman, Felix Holbrook, and Chester Joie, Petition Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Sub- jects, Religious and Moral (published in London, first book published by an Afri- can American and second book published by an American woman)

1774 Phillis Wheatley, Letter to the Reverend Samson Occum

1784 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

Timeline LXXXIII

1780 Pennsylvania becomes the first state to allow interracial marriage Group of free black people in Massachusetts protest "taxation without representation" and petition for exemption from taxes

1783 Massachusetts Supreme Court grants black taxpayers suffrage

1786 Free African Americans join in Shays's Rebellion.

1787 Constitution ratified, classifying one slave as three-fifths of one person for congressional apportionment, post- poning prohibition of slave importation until i8o8, and requiring the return of fugitive slaves to owners Congress passes Northwest Ordinance, banning slavery in Northwest Territories and all land north of Ohio River Absalom Jones and Richard Allen organize Philadelphia Free African Society

Group of free black people in Rhode Island establish African Union Society to promote repatriation to Africa.

1790 Pennsylvanian abolitionists submit the first anti-slavery petitions to U.S. Congress

1793 U.S. Congress passes the first Fugitive Slave Law Invention of the cotton gin increases demand for slaves in South

1794 U.S. Congress prohibits slave trade with foreign countries French National Convention abolishes slavery in French territories (ban will be repealed by Napo- leon in 1802) Richard Allen founds the first African Methodist Episcopal church (AME), in Philadelphia

1796 "Bars Fight" poet Lucy Terry Prince becomes the first woman to argue before Supreme Court, successfully defending against a white man trying to steal her family's land Joshua Johnson, the first black portrait painter to gain recogni- tion in the United States, opens studio in Baltimore

1798 Georgia is last state to abolish slave trade

1784-1791 Johann Gottfried von Herder, Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind

1785 Immanuel Kant, Review of Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind

1789 Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

1791 Benjamin Banneker, Letter to Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson, Reply to Benjamin Banneker

Lxxxvi Timeline

1800 U.S. citizens are prohibited from export- ing slaves Group of free black people in Pennsylvania petition U.S. Congress to outlaw slavery Gabriel Prosser and Jack Bowler organize i,000 fellow slaves to seize Richmond, but plan is quelled by militia and leaders are executed along with many others

18o2 Haitians force French government to end slavery in Haiti; Francois-Dominique Toussaint-Louverture is made governor

1803 Louisiana Purchase doubles size of the United States

1804 York, a slave, serves as guide for Lewis and Clark expedition to Pacific Ohio sets precedent with passage of the first "Black Laws" restricting rights and move- ments of free African Americans in North

1807 Britain abolishes slave trade

1808 Congress bans the importation of slaves from Africa on January 1, the earliest date allowed by the Constitution

1811 Slave revolt in Louisiana led by Charles Deslondes ends with over ioo slaves killed or executed by U.S. troops

1812 Slaves and free African Americans fight in War of 1812

1815 Quaker Levi Coffin establishes Under- ground Railroad to help slaves escape to Canada

1816-1818 First Seminole War, involving runaway slaves and Native Americans fighting U.S. federal government in Florida

1816 American Colonization Society formed in Washington, D.C., to promote African repatriation of freed slaves; the society is supported by leading white members of Congress

1817 Over 3,000 free African Americans in Philadelphia meet to protest American Colonization Society

1818 President given power to use armed vessels in Africa to halt illegal slave trade U.S. Congress allots $100,000 to transport illegally imported slaves back to Africa

1809 Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Joel Barlow

1817 James Forten, Letter to Paul Cuffe

1818 James Forten and Russell Parrott, Address to the Humane and Benevolent Inhabitants of the City and County of Philadelphia

Timeline = Lxxxv

1820 Missouri Compromise reached, allowing Maine into Union as free state, Missouri as slave state in 1821, and outlawing slavery in all new northern plains states American Colonization Society sends expedition to begin establishment of Liberia, a black republic in West Africa; the first repatriation ship Mayflower of Liberia, leaves from New York City with 86 African Americans

1821 African Grove Theatre, the first all-black U.S. acting troupe, begins performances in New York City

1822 Denmark Vesey organizes slave revolt to take over Charleston, South Carolina, but is betrayed by servant Liberia formally founded by African American colonizers

1823 Alexander L. Twilight graduates from Middlebury College, Vermont, becom- ing the first African American college graduate

1826 The first U.S. colony for free African Americans, Nashoba, is established near Memphis, Tennessee

1829 Three-day race riot breaks out in Cincin- nati; more than 1,000 African Americans flee to Canada after white mobs attack them and burn their homes

1830 The first National Negro Convention convenes in Philadelphia

1831 Nat Turner leads slave uprising in Southampton County, Virginia; at least fifty seven white people are killed; 3,000 soldiers and Virginia militia react by killing black people indiscriminately; Turner is captured and hanged Wil- liam Lloyd Garrison begins publishing The Liberator, a weekly paper committed to the complete abolition of slavery

1832 Maria W. Stewart, the first American woman to engage in public political debates, begins speaking tour in Boston

1828 Thomas L. Jennings, Letter in Freedom's Journal

182,9 David Walker, Walker's Appeal

1831 Ella, Letter in The Liberator "A Subscriber," Letter in The Liberator

"A Subscriber and a Citizen of the United States," Letter in The Liberator

William Lloyd Garrison, Editorial on Walker's Appeal

1832 Anonymous, Minutes of the Second Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color Anonymous, Address to the Female Literary Asso- ciation of Philadelphia "A Colored Female of Philadelphia," Emigration to Mexico [Ralph Randolph Gurley] and "A South Carolinian," Opinions of a Freeman of Colour in Charleston

Lxxxvi , Timeline

1833 Oberlin College is founded as the first coeducational U.S. college and is racially integrated from its inception

1834 Henry Blair, inventor of corn planter, is the first recorded African American to receive patent Antiabolitionist riots in Philadelphia and New York British Parliament abolishes slavery in British Empire

1835-1842 Second Seminole War

1836 U.S. House of Representatives passes the first "gag rule," preventing any anti-slavery petition or bill from being introduced, read, or discussed

1838 Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery Joshua Giddings of Ohio is the first

abolitionist elected to U.S. Congress

1839 Cinque leads successful slave revolt on Spanish ship Amistad U.S. State Department rejects passport applica- tion by Philadelphia black man on basis that African Americans are not citizens

184o Pope Gregory XVI states opposition to slave trade and slavery

1841 Quintuple Treaty signed by England, France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, allowing mutual search of vessels on high seas to halt slave trade

1842 Frederick Douglass makes his first anti-slavery speech, in Nantucket, Massachusetts

1843 Vermont and Massachusetts defy 1793 Fugitive Slave Act

1846 Frederick Douglass launches his abolitionist newspaper

1847 Liberia declares independence and becomes the first African republic

1833 Maria W. Stewart, An Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall Richard Allen, The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen

1835 William Whipper, Minutes of the Fifth Annual Convention for the Improvement of The Free People of Color In the United States

1836 Jarena Lee, The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee

1837 Samuel E. Cornish and Philip A. Bell, Editorial in The Colored American

1841 Sidney, Letters in The Colored American William Whipper, Letter to the Editor Sidney, Letter to the Editor

1843 Henry Highland Garnet, An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America Anonymous, Report on Debate between Frederick Douglass and Henry Highland Garnet at the National Convention of Colored Citizens

1844 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Address Delivered on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies

Timeline Lxxxvii

1848 Frederick Douglass speaks at the first Women's Rights Convention, in Seneca Falls, New York Ohio reverses "Black Laws"

1849 Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery and begins work as a leader of the Underground Railroad Massachusetts Supreme Court upholds "separate but equal" ruling in the first U.S. integration suit

185o Clay Compromise strengthens 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, outlaws slave trade in Washington, D.C., admits California as free state, and admits Utah and New Mexico as either slave or free Lucy Sessions becomes the first recorded African American woman college gradu- ate, receiving her degree from Oberlin College in Ohio

1851 Sojourner Truth delivers "Ar'n't I A Woman?" at Women's Rights Conference in Acron, Ohio

1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals Missouri Compromise of 182,o Republican Party founded to oppose extension of slavery

1855 "Bleeding Kansas" fighting begins as anti-slavery and pro-slavery settlers hold separate state conventions John Mer- cer Langston is elected clerk of Brown- helm Township, Ohio, becoming the first African American elected to political office

1848 Henry Highland Garnet, The Past and the Present Condition and the Destiny of the Colored Race

1849 Frederick Douglass, Too Much Religion, Too Little Humanity C. H. Chase, Letter to Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass, Reply to C. H. Chase

Frederick Douglass and Samuel Ring- gold Ward, Resolved, That the Constitu- tion of the United States, in Letter, Spirit, and Design, Is Essentially Anti-Slavery

Frederick Douglass, The Coloniza- tionist Revival

1852. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

1853 Frederick Douglass, Letter to Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Beecher Stowe, Letter to William Lloyd Garrison

Martin Delany, Letter to Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass, Remarks

Martin Delany, Letter to Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass, Reply to Martin Delany William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (pub- lished in London, considered the first novel published by an African American)

1854 Josiah Clark Nott and George R. Gliddon, Types of Mankind Frederick Douglass, The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered Martin R. Delany, The Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent

1855 Anonymous, Minutes of the Colored National Convention Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom

LXXXVIII = Timeline

1857 In Dred Scott decision, U.S. Supreme Court declares African Americans are not citizens and rules that the Missouri Compromise of 182o is unconstitu- tional, thereby allowing slavery in all territories

1859 John Brown leads abolitionist raid in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia Last U.S. slave ship lands in Alabama

1860 South Carolina is the first state to secede from Union

1861-1865 American Civil War

1862 Congress bans slavery in District of Columbia and U.S. territories President Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in the rebel states United States recognizes Liberia as free nation

1863 Slavery abolished in all Dutch colonies

1864 Fugitive Slave Laws repealed

1865 General Sherman orders up to 4o acres given to each African American fam- ily, a policy later reversed by President Andrew Johnson Slavery outlawed by Thirteenth Amendment Freed- men's Bureau established "Black Codes" issued in former Confederate states, severely limited rights of freed women and men President Lincoln assassinated Ku Klux Klan founded in Tennessee

1866 Congress passes the first Civil Rights Act declaring freed black people U.S. citizens and nullifying Black Codes Edward G. Walker and Charles L. Mitchell are the first African Americans elected to state legislature

1867 Congress passes First Reconstruction Act granting suffrage to black males in rebel states, among other rights Last slave ship arrives in Cuba, marking the end of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

1857 Frederick Douglass, Speech on the Dred Scott Decision

1859 Frederick Douglass, African Civiliza- tion Society Henry Highland Garnet, Speech at an Enthusiastic Meeting of the Colored Citizens of Boston James McCune Smith, On the Fourteenth Query of Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia Harriet Adams Wilson, Our Nig (the first novel by an African Ameri- can published in America)

1861 Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Frances Harper, The 7'wo Offers (the first short story published by an African American)

1867 Sojourner Truth, Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association

Timeline Lxxxix

1868 Congress passes Fourteenth Amend- ment, granting African Americans equal citizenship and civil rights

1869 National Women's Suffrage Association formed Wyoming Territory is the first to grant women suffrage in the United States Howard University's law school is established, the first black law school in the United States

187o Congress passes Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing suffrage to all male U.S. citizens Congress passes Enforce- ment Acts to control Ku Klux Klan and to federally guarantee civil and political rights Hiram R. Revels of Mississippi is elected the first African American U.S. senator Joseph H. Hainey is seated as the first African American U.S. repre- sentative; five other African American men are also elected to U.S. House of Representatives Richard T. Greener is the first African American graduate of Harvard College

1871 Congress passes second Ku Klux Klan Act to enforce Fourteenth Amend- ment

1874 Women's Christian Temperance Union founded in Ohio

1875 Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1875, giving equal treatment in public places and access to jury duty

1877 Federal troops withdraw from South, of- ficially ending Reconstruction

1879 Tens of thousands of African Americans, later known as "Exodusters," migrate from southern states to Kansas

1881 Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee Institute Spelman College founded as first college for black women in the United States

1883 Supreme Court overturns Civil Rights Act of 1875

1884 Moses Fleetwood Walker plays baseball for Toledo Blue Stockings as one of the first black major leaguers

1868 Debate on Compulsory Free Public Education Frederick Douglass, Letter to Josephine Sophia White Griffing

1869 Frederick Douglass and Frances E. W. Harper, Proceedings of the American Equal Rights Association Convention

1878 Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, Ho for Kansas!

1879 Proceedings of the National Conference of Colored Men of the United States

1882 Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

1887 Ida B. Wells, "Iola" On Discrimination

1889 Josephine Turpin Washington, Needs of Our Newspapers

xc Timeline

1890 Oklahoma admitted as the first state with women's suffrage Mississippi limits black suffrage through "understanding" test, setting precedent for other southern states

1894 The Women's Era, later to become the of- ficial organ of the National Association of Colored Women, begins publication

1896 Supreme Court approves segregation with "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson National League of Colored Women and National Federa- tion of Afro-American Women merge to form National Association of Colored Women with Mary Church Terrell as president

1898 Spanish-American War

1904 AME Church Review calls for "New Negro Renaissance"

1905 Niagara Movement, dedicated to "aggres- sive action" for equal rights, is founded by Du Bois and others

1906 Madam C. J. Walker opens hair-care business, eventually becoming one of the first female American millionaires

1907 Alain Locke becomes first African American Rhodes scholar

1908 Jack Johnson becomes first African Ameri- can heavyweight champion of the world

1909 National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People (NAACP) founded by Du Bois and others

1910 -1930 Great Migration of over one million southern African Americans to northern cities

1910 The Crisis, the official journal of the NAACP, is launched with Du Bois as editor

1892 Frances E. W. Harper, Iola Leroy

1895 Booker. T. Washington, The Atlanta Exposition Address Henry McNeal Turner, Response to the Atlanta Exposi- tion Address James Crawford Em- bry, Afro-American vs. Negro Ida B. Wells-Barnett, A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States: 1892, 1893, and 1894

1900 W. E. B. DuBois, To the Nations of the World Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery

1903 Booker T. Washington, Industrial Educa- tion for the Negro W. E. B. Du Bois, The Talented Tenth W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois, Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others

1912 James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiogra- phy of an Ex-Colored Man

Timeline = xci

1914-1918 World War

1914 Marcus Garvey organizes The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica

1915 Booker T. Washington dies

1916 Marcus Garvey emigrates to New York from Jamaica and begins Back to Africa movement, establishing the first UNIA branch in the U.S. the following year

Margaret Sanger opens first birth control clinic in United States

1917 United States enters World War I Thousands of African Americans in a

"silent protest parade" down Fifth Avenue in New York City to protest lynching and Jim Crow

1918 Marcus Garvey establishes the newspaper Negro World

1919 Du Bois organizes the first Pan-African Congress in Paris Eighty three lynchings recorded during Red Summer

American Communist Party organized

1920 Ratification of Nineteenth Amendment, granting suffrage to women

1922-1933 Harlem Renaissance

1915 Kelly Miller, The Risk of Woman Suffrage W. E. B. Du Bois, Woman Suffrage

1916 Angela Weld Grimke, Rachel (performed in Washington, D.C., the first full-length play written, performed, and produced by African Americans in the twentieth century)

1917 Letters from Southern African Americans to the Chicago Defender E. W. Cooke, Letter to The Montgomery Advertiser

R. Taylor, Letter to Professor T. Atwater The Reverend I. N. Fritzpatrick, Letter

to The Atlanta Constitution

1918 George Edmund Hayes, These Are They with Hope in Their Heart W. E. B. Du Bois, Close Ranks Hubert Harrison, The Descent of Du Bois

1919 Chicago Commission on Race Rela- tions, A Negro Family Just Arrived from the Rural South Wilfred Adolphus Domingo, What Are We, Negroes or Colored People? W. E. B. Du Bois, Returning Soldiers The Messenger, Following the Advice of the "Old Crowd" Negro and The "New Crowd Negro" Making America Safe for Himself

W. E. B. Du Bois, I. W. W. A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, The Crisis of The Crisis W. E. B. Du Bois, Labor Omnia Vincit

192o The Messenger, Negroes, Leave the South! Angelina Weld Grimke, Rachel: The

Play of the Month; The Reason and Synopsis by the Author

1921 W. E. B. Du Bois, What Du Bois Thinks of Garvey Marcus Garvey, What Garvey Thinks of Du Bois Marcus Garvey, Address to the Second UNIA Convention

W. E. B. Du Bois, Manifesto of the Sec- ond Pan-African Congress W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro and Radical Thought

xcii ----- Timeline

1922 Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill passes U.S. House of Representatives but fails in Senate

1923 Oklahoma declares martial law to curb KKK

1925-1927 Annual literary contests sponsored by The Crisis and Opportunity magazines

1925 4o,000 KKK members parade in Wash- ington, D.C. Josephine Baker be- comes sensation in Paris through La Revue Negre

1927 The Jazz Singer is the first "talkie" motion picture, with white actor Al Jolson as black-faced minstrel singer

1929 Stock market crash ushers in Great De- pression

1922 James Weldon Johnson, Preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry

1923 Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois as a Hater of Dark People A. Philip Ran- dolph, The Only Way to Redeem Africa Jean Toomer, Cane

1924 W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey: A Lu- natic or a Traitor? A. Philip Randolph, Battling Du Bois vs. Kid Garvey

1925 Zora Neale Hurston, The Emperor Effaces Himself Elise Johnson McDougald, The Double Task: The Struggle of Women for Sex and Race Emancipation

[W.E.B. Du Bois], Nell Battle Lewis, William S. Turner, and W.A. Robinson, Race Drama Caroline Bond Day, What Shall We Play? W. E. B. Du Bois, Inter-marriage Joel Augustus Rogers, The Critic: Dean Miller Takes Fright at the Emancipation of the Negro Woman

Alain Locke, The New Negro

1926 W. E. B. Du Bois, Criteria of Negro Art W. E. B. Du Bois, "Krigwa Players

Little Negro Theatre" W. E. B. Du Bois et al., The Negro in Art George S. Schuyler, The Negro-Art Hokum

Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain George S. Schuyler, Letter to the Editor Langston Hughes, Letter to the Editor Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues

1927 George S. Schuyler, Pan-Africanism: A Waste of Time Samuel A. Haynes, Pan -African ism: A Mighty Force

George S. Schuyler, Pan-Africanism: A Wild Scheme Samuel A. Haynes, Pan-Africanism: The One and Only Way

1928 Alain Locke, Art ar Propaganda? Zora Neale Hurston, How it Feels to Be Col- ored Me Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing Claude McKay, Home To Har- lem Marita Bonner, The Purple Flower

1929 Augusta Savage, Gamin William Henry Johnson, Self-Portrait Jesse Fauset, Plum Bun

Timeline

1930 W. D. Fard founds Nation of Islam

1931 "Scottsboro boys" unjustly convicted of raping two white women in Alabama, prompting nationwide protest

1933 President Roosevelt pushes "New Deal" through Congress

1935 National Council of Negro Women founded

1936 Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at "Nazi Olympics" in Berlin

1937 Joe Lewis becomes boxing's world heavy- weight champion

1938 Chrystal Bird Fauset is the first female African American state legislator

1939-1945 World War II

1939 Contralto Marian Anderson sings at Lincoln Memorial for 75,000 after her concert at Constitution Hall was prevent- ed by Daughters of American Revolution

1930 Clarence Mitchell, Amos 'n' Andy Roy Wilkins, More Amos 'n' Andy ° The Cri- sis, Inter-Marriage: A Symposium A Reader of The Crisis and W. E. B. Du Bois, About Marrying

1932 Robert Lee Vann, Back to the Farm? William Nesbit Jones, Self- Determination: The Black Belt Republic Plan Carl Murphy et al., Negro Edi- tors on Communism W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Folk and Birth Control George S. Schuyler, Quantity or Quality Con- stance Fisher, The Negro Social Worker Evaluates Birth Control

1933 Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro W. E. B. Du Bois, Marx- ism and the Negro Problem

1934 W. E. B. Du Bois, On Segregation W. E. B. Du Bois, The N.A.A.C.P. and

Race Segregation Walter F. White, Reply to W. E. B. Du Bois W. E. B. Du Bois, Segregation in the North W. E. B. Du Bois, Counsels of Despair Aaron Douglas, An Idyll of the Deep South

Daily Gleaner, Marcus Garvey on Birth Control

1935 Sargent Johnson, Head of a Negro Woman Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men

1936 Father Divine, As a Man Thinketh in His Heart So Is He Marcus Garvey, Big Conference of UNIA in Canada Palm- er Hayden, Midsummer Night in Harlem

1937 Richard Wright, Blueprint for Negro Writ- ing Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God Richard Wright, Between Laughter and Tears: A Review of Hur- ston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

1938 Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Chil- dren Zora Neale Hurston, Stories of Conflict: A Review of Wright's Uncle Tom's Children

xciv Timeline

1940 Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African American to win Academy Award for her role in Gone With the Wind (1939)

1941 United States enters war after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor A. Philip Ran- dolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organizes march on Wash- ington to protest segregation in military and employment discrimination; Presi- dent Roosevelt issues executive order forbidding racial and religious discrimi- nation in government training programs and defense industries; Randolph calls off march

1943 The first successful "sit-in" demonstration staged by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Over 4o killed in race riots in Detroit and Harlem

1947 Jackie Robinson signs with the Brooklyn Dodgers, integrating Major League Baseball

1948 President Truman approves desegrega- tion of the military and creates Fair Employment Board

1950 -1953 Korean War

1950 Ralph J. Bunche is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the 1949 Armistice Agreements that ended the

1940 Richard Wright, Native Son

1941 Melville J. Herskovits, On West African Influences

1942 A. Philip Randolph, Why Should We March? Alain Locke, Who and What Is "Negro"?

1943 Ralph Ellison, Editorial Comment A. Philip Randolph, March on Washington Movement Flyer

1944 Horace R. Cayton Jr., Frederick Douglass Patterson, and George S. Schuyler, Round Table: Should Negroes in the South Mi- grate North? William L. Patterson and George S. Schuyler, Round Table: Have Communists Quit Fighting for Negro Rights?

1945 Lelia B. Strayhorn et al., Round Table: Should Negroes Attend Mixed or Negro Colleges? George S. Schuyler and Jose- phine Schuyler, Does Interracial Marriage Succeed? Julian Lewis, Can the Negro Afford Birth Control? E. Franklin Fra- zier, Birth Controlfor More Negro Babies

1946 Ann Petry, The Street

1948 Dorothy West, The Living Is Easy

1949 E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in America Claudia Jones, An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman! James Baldwin, Everybody's Protest Novel Ebony, Opposing Views of Newspapers on Walter White's Mar- riage Gwendolyn Brooks, Annie Allen (wins Pulitzer Prize in 19so, the first African American to win Pulitzer Prize, in any category)

Timeline xcv

1948 Arab-Israeli War, becoming the first African American to receive the prize

1952 Malcolm X joins Nation of Islam after release from prison

1954 In Brown v. Board of Education, Supreme Court declares segregated schools uncon- stitutional, overturning Messy v. Ferguson (1896) Malcolm X promoted to Minis- ter of Nation of Islam's New York Temple

1955 Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till lynched in Mississippi Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give seat on bus to white man, setting off Montgomery bus boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Supreme Court orders speedy integration of schools

Interstate Commerce Commission orders integration of buses, trains, and waiting rooms for interstate travel

1956 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregation of the Montgomery, Ala- bama, buses is unconstitutional One hundred and one southern congressmen sign Southern Manifesto against school desegregation

1957 King and others found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to fight for equal rights Congress ap- proves Civil Rights Act of 1957 Federal troops sent to Alabama to enforce school desegregation Ghana is the first African nation to gain independence from colonial rule Althea Gibson is the first African American woman to win a major title at Wimbledon

1960 Sit-in staged by four African American students at Woolworth's lunch counter in North Carolina; six months later the same students are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) founded Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1960

1961 Thirteen Freedom Riders sponsored by CORE take bus trip across South to force

1952 Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

1953 James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain

1955 James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

1956 Richard Wright, Tradition and Industri- alization: The Plight of the Tragic Elite in Africa Esther Popel Shaw, Review of Frazier's Bourgeoisie Noire

1957 E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie

1958 Martin Luther King Jr., My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence

1959 Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (first Broadway play by an African Ameri- can woman)

1960 Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin, A Choice of Two Roads

xcvi Timeline

integration of terminals Hoyt Fuller revives Negro Digest

1962 Riots break out after Supreme Court orders University of Mississippi to ac- cept James H. Meredith as the first black student; nearly 30,000 federal troops are employed to restore order and ensure Meredith's admission

1963 National support for civil rights roused after police attacked Alabama demonstra- tion led by King; King arrested Civil rights March on Washington attracts over 200,000 demonstrators; King delivers "I Have a Dream" speech Vivian Malo- ne and James Hood register for classes at University of Alabama, even though Governor George Wallace tries to physi- callyblock them President Kennedy assassinated Bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, kills four African American girls

1964 Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Economic Opportunity Act

Malcolm X founds Organization of Afro-American Unity, officially splitting with Elijah Muhammad and the Black Muslims Civil rights groups including SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP launch Mississippi "Freedom Summer," a mas- sive voter registration drive; three CORE workers murdered in Mississippi by white segregationists King wins Nobel Peace Prize Twenty-fourth Amendment ratified, outlawing poll tax used to limit black suffrage Sidney Poitier becomes the first black actor to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (1963) Cassius Clay wins world heavyweight boxing championship, sub- sequently converts to Islam and changes name to Muhammad All

1965-73 Vietnam War 1965 Malcolm X assassinated in New York

City King leads march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama Voting Rights Act outlaws efforts to disenfranchise voters Watts riot is most serious single

1962 James Farmer and Malcolm X, A Debate at Cornell University E. Franklin Frazier, Preface to Black Bourgeoisie

Adrienne Kennedy, Funnyhouse of a Negro (wins Obie award in 1964)

1963 Malcolm X, Message to the Grassroots Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from

Birmingham Jail Irving Howe, Black Boys and Native Sons LeRoi Jones, Enter the Middle Class Ralph Ellison, The World and the Jug

1964 Howard Zinn, The Limits of Nonviolence Malcolm X, Letter from Saudi Arabia Ralph Ellison, Review of Jones's Blues

People Amiri Baraka, Dutchman (wins Obie award)

1965 Bayard Rustin, Protest to Politics Staughton Lynd, Coalition Politics or

Nonviolent Revolution? James Farmer, Freedom-When? Elijah Muhammad, Program and Position: What Do the

Timeline ------- xcvil

racial disturbance in U.S. history Black Arts Movement started by Amiri Baraka in Harlem

1966 Black Panther Party founded National Organization for Women (NOW) founded

SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael coins the phrase Black Power in a speech in Seattle Black Power concept is adopted by CORE and SNCC Kwanzaa is cre- ated by Maulana Ron Karenga

1967 King announces his opposition to Vietnam War Worst race riot in U.S. history in Detroit kills fourty three; major riots in Newark and Chicago Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-MA) becomes the first African American senator since Reconstruction Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice Supreme Court overturns law against interracial marriage in Virginia v. Loving

1968 King assassinated in Memphis Senator Robert F. Kennedy assassinated in Los Angeles President Johnson signs Civil Rights Act of 1968 outlawing discrimina- tion in housing Shirley Chisholm be- comes the first African American woman elected to U.S. Congress Arthur Ashe is the first African American to win the U.S. Open

1969 Major antiwar demonstrations in Wash- ington, D.C.

1970 Toni Cade Bambara edits The Black Woman The business magazine Black Enterprise established

Muslims Want? Daniel Patrick Moyni- han, The Negro Family: The Case For National Action William Ryan, The New Genteel Racism Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

1966 Martin Luther King Jr., Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, October 1966 Black Panther Platform and Program

Phyl Garland, The Natural Look: Many Negro Women Reject White Standards of Beauty Readers of Ebony, Letters on "The Natural Look" Long Aid Brands, Long Aid K7 Supreme Beauty Prod- ucts, Duke Greaseless Hair Pomade

1968 Larry Neal, The Black Arts Movement Huey Newton, Huey Newton Talks

to The Movement Elsie C. Rollock, A Negro Speaks to Jews Rayner W. Mann, A Negro Discusses Anti-Semitism

1969 Eugene D. Genovese, Black Studies: Trouble Ahead June Jordan, Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person

James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power Nikki Giovanni, Black Poems, Poseurs, and Power Mor- rie Turner, Humor in Hue Charles Gordon, No Place to Be Somebody (wins Pulitzer Prize in 1970)

197o Shirley Chisholm, Facing the Abortion Question Frances M. Beal, Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female

Linda La Rue, The Black Movement and Women's Liberation Darwin T. Turner, The Teaching of Afro-American Literature

xcvm Timeline

1971 Supreme Court approves busing as method of desegregation Supreme Court rules closing of Mississippi swim- ming pools to avoid desegregation is constitutional Jessie Jackson founds Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) Congressional Black Cau- cus formed by fifteen African American members of Congress

1972 Congress passes Equal Rights Amend- ment, which goes to states for ratification

Congress passes Equal Employment Opportunity Act that extends enforce- ment and punishment for job discrimi- nation Chisholm is the first African American woman to run for U.S. president

Barbara Jordan of Houston and Andrew Young of Atlanta become the first African Americans elected to Congress from the South since Reconstruction

1973 Supreme Court prohibits state restrictions on abortions in Roe v. Wade Tom Brad- ley elected mayor of Los Angeles May- nard Jackson elected mayor of Atlanta

1974 Henry Louis "Hank" Aaron breaks Babe Ruth's record by hitting his 715th home run Clive "Hercules" Campbell, aka "Kool Herc," initiates rap music in the Bronx

1975 Arthur Ashe is the first African American man to win the single's championship at Wimbledon

1977 TV miniseries based on Alex Haley's Roots attracts more viewers than any tele- vision program in history

1978 In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Supreme Court disallows quotas for college admissions but gives limited approval to affirmative action programs

Albert Murray, James Baldwin, Protest Fiction, and the Blues Tradition Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

1971 Addison. Gayle Jr., Introduction to The Black Aesthetic Joan Downs, Black/ White Dating Readers of Life, Letters on "Black/White Dating" Dick Gregory, My Answer to Genocide

Readers of Ebony, Letters on "My Answer to Genocide"

1973 Barbara Sizemore, Sexism and the Black Male William R. Jones, Divine Rac- ism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology

1974 June Jordan, On Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston: Notes toward a Balancing of Love and Hatred

1975 Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rain- bow is enuf (the second play by an African American woman to reach Broadway)

1976 Alex Haley, Roots (awarded special Pulit- zer Prize in 1977)

1977 Barbara Smith, Toward a Black Feminist Criticism Combahee River Collective, A Black Feminist Statement James Allen McPherson, Elbow Room (wins Pulitzer Prize in 1978)

1978 Thurgood Marshall, Opinion on Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

William Julius Wilson, The Declining

198o Liberian president William Tolbert oust- ed by Staff Sergeant Samuel K. Doe, end- ing over 13o years of Americo-Liberian rule over indigenous Africans Robert L. Johnson founds Black Entertainment Television (BET), later selling it to Via- corn for some $3 billion

1982 Michael Jackson's Thriller sells $110 mil- lion, becoming the best-selling recording of all time Equal Rights Amendment fails after ten years, three states short of ratification

1983 Louis Gossett, Jr., wins Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) Vanessa Williams crowned the first black Miss America

1984 August Wilson'stMa Rainey's Black Bot- tom opens on Broadway Jesse Jackson wins 17 percent of the popular vote in the Democratic primary in the first serious bid by an African American man for the U. S. presidency The Cosby Show, about a professional African American family in Brooklyn, New York, premieres and be- comes the biggest hit on television during the 198os, running for eight seasons

1985 Oprah Winfrey's talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show is syndicated in more than 120 cities, eventually becoming the high- est rated talk show in television history

1986 Martin Luther King k's birthday officially celebrated as federal holiday Wole

Timeline = xcix

Significance of Race Charles Vert Willie, The Inclining Significance of Race

William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race: Revisited but Not Revised

1979 Jacquelyn Grant, Black Theology and the Black Woman Michele Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman

Robert Staples, The Myth of Black Ma- cho: A Response to Angry Black Femi- nists Alice Walker, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing . . And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader (brings Hurston's work back into print)

1981 Charles Fuller, A Soldier's Play (wins Pulitzer Prize in 1982)

1982 Alice Walker, The Color Purple (wins Pu- litzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1983)

1983 Cheryl Clarke, The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community

1985 Glenn C. Loury, Beyond Civil Rights Beth E. Richie, Battered Black Women:

A Challenge for the Black Community

1986 Clarence Thomas, Views on Affirmative Action Randall Kennedy, Persuasion

c Timeline

Soyinka of Nigeria is the first person of African descent to win Nobel Prize for Literature

1988 Jesse Jackson receives 24 percent of the popular vote in the democratic presiden- tial primary, coming in second to Michael Dukakis

1989 Frederick Drew Gregory becomes the first African American to command a space shuttle L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia is the first elected black governor since Reconstruction General Colin Powell becomes the first black Chief of Staff for U.S. Armed Forces 500,000 march in Washington for pro-choice rally

Supreme Court approves state limits on abortion

1990 Nelson Mandela is freed after twenty seven years in prison in South Africa

August Wilson wins Pulitzer Prize for Broadway play The Piano Lesson (1989)

Charles Johnson's Middle Passage wins National Book Award Denzel Wash- ington wins Best Supporting Actor Acad- emy Award for his role in Glory (1989), about the all-black 54th Massachusetts regiment in the Civil War

1991 Clarence Thomas confirmed as Supreme Court Justice following contentious con- firmation hearings that included sexual harassment testimony from Anita Hill

Civil Rights Act of 1991 strengthens laws against job discrimination and pro- vides damages for intentional employment discrimination

1992 Police acquitted of beating Rodney King, setting off riots in Los Angeles Mae Jemison becomes the first black female astronaut Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois becomes the first African Ameri- can woman elected to the U.S. Senate

and Distrust August Wilson, Fences (wins Pulitzer Prize in 1987) Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah (wins Pulitzer Prize in 198'7)

1987 Henry Louis Gates, Jr. et al., The Black Person in Art: How Should S/He Be Portrayed? Delores S. Williams, Worn- anist Theology: Black Women's Voices

Toni Morrison, Beloved (wins Pulitzer Prize in 1988)

1990 William Julius Wilson, Race-Neutral Programs and the Democratic Coalition

Laura B. Randolph, What Can We Do about the Most Explosive Problem in Black America: The Widening Gap between Women Who Are Making It and Men Who Aren't Portia K. Maultsby, Africanisms in African American Music

1991 Clarence Thomas, First Statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee Anita F. Hill, Statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee Clarence Thomas, Sec- ond Statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee Orlando Patterson, Race, Gender and Liberal Fallacies Elsa Barkley Brown, Deborah King, Barbara Ransby, et al., African American Women in Defense of Themselves

1992 Deborah K. King, Unraveling Fabric, Missing the Beat: Class and Gender in Afro-American Social Issues Kathy Rus- sell, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall, Hair: The Straight and Nappy of ItAll Angela Y. Davis and Ice Cube, Nappy Happy:

Timeline - ei

Supreme Court rules against state bans of "hate speech"

1993 Toni Morrison is the first African Ameri- can to win Nobel Prize for Literature

Rita Dove becomes the first African American U.S. Poet Laureate Maya Angelou reads "On the Pulse of Morning" at Clinton inauguration, becoming the first black poet to participate in a U.S. presidential inauguration Supreme Court disallows congressional districts drawn to increase black representation

1994 O. J. Simpson accused of murdering ex- wife and her friend; ensuing trial grips nation

1995 O. J. Simpson acquitted of murder charges in criminal trial Million Man March in Washington organized by Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan Colin Powell is the first African American seriously considered as a presidential candidate of a major party

1996 Texaco settles $1'76-million class action racial discrimination suit by African American employees denied promotions and pay increases

1997 California voters pass Proposition 209 banning all state affirmative action; initiative sponsored by Ward Connerly

Tiger Woods becomes the youngest and the first African American golfer to win the Master's tournament

A Conversation with Ice Cube Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars

1993 Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, The Black Church: A Gender Perspective Bar- bara Ransby and Tracye Matthews, Black Popular Culture and the Transcendence of Patriarchal Illusions Barbara Smith, Blacks and Gays: Healing the Great Divide Vince Nobile, White Professors, Black History: Forays into the Multicultural Classroom Cynthia Fleming, Race beyond Reason Molefi Kete Asante, Where Is the White Profes- sor Located? Yosef Komunyahkaa, Neon Vernacular (wins Pulitzer Prize)

David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (wins Pulitzer Prize in 1994)

1995 Come! West, Why I'm Marching in Wash- ington A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Why I Didn't March Johnnie Cochran, Closing Argument of the Defense in The People v. Orenthal James Simpson Christopher Darden, Clos- ing Argument of the Prosecution in The People v. Orenthal James Simpson

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man August Wilson, Seven Guitars (opens on Broadway in 1996)

1996 Cornel West, Affirmative Action in Context Michael Eric Dyson, Gang- sta Rap and American Culture Afro .com Website Commentators, Reactions to the Million Man March Roy L. Brooks, The Case for a Policy of Limited Separation Board of Education of the Oakland, California, Unified School District, Resolution Adopting the Report and Recommendations of the African American Task Force (rev. 1997)

1997 Dorothy Roberts, The Dark Side of Birth Control Louis Farrakhan and Tim Rus- sert, Interview on Meet the Press Bill Cosby, Elements of Igno-Ebonics Style

Ellis Cose, Why Ebonics Is Irrelevant John R. Rickford, Letter to the

cit Timeline

1998 Voters in Washington state pass Initiative zoo outlawing all state affirmative action, also sponsored by Ward Conner ly O. J. Simpson found guilty of wrongful death in civil trial

1999 African American farmers win class ac- tion suit against U.S. Department of Ag- riculture for discrimination in granting of loans and subsidies Amadou Diallo is mistakenly shot and killed by police officers in New York, raising public outcry

zoo° Coca-Cola Company settles largest racial discrimination suit in U.S. history, agreeing to pay 192.5 million to African American employees Venus Williams wins singles title in tennis at Wimbledon, the first black woman to win since Althea Gibson in 1958 President Bush ap- points General Colin L. Powell secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice national security advisor

2001 Lewis wins second Pulitzer Prize in Biography for W E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 On September u, terrorists hijack four commercial jetliners; two crash into World Trade Center in New York, one into Pentagon, and one into a field in Pennsylvania

1002 Halle Berry becomes the first African American woman to win Academy Award for Best Actress, for Monster's Ball (low.) Denzel Washington is the first black actor since Poitier to win an Oscar for Best Actor, for Training Day (2001)

Honorary Lifetime Achievement Academy Award given to Sidney Poitier

Suzan-Lori Parks wins Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Topdog/ Underdog

Editor on Cose's "Why Ebonies Is Irrel- evant" Brent Staples, The Last Train from Oakland: Will the Middle Class Flee the Ebonies Fad? John Baugh, Ebonics Isn't 'Street English' but a Heritage

1998 Brent Staples, The Quota Bashers Come In from the Cold

1999 John Baugh, Interview with an Unidenti- fied Woman Margo Jefferson, Labels Change, Carrying Different Emotional Baggage John Baugh, Changing Terms of Self-Reference among American Slave Descendants Kara Walker, Out of Africa Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth (published posthumously)

2000 John R. Rickford, Linguistics, Education, and the Ebonies Firestorm Aaron Mc- Gruder, The Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read the Newspaper Jack Hitt et al., Making the Case for Racial Reparations Adolph L. Reed Jr., The Case against Reparations Randall Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks

2001 Us Helping Us, On the Down Low

2002 Hannah Craft, The Bondwoman's Nar- rative (written c. 185os, the only known novel written by a female fugitive slave)

Timeline

2.003 Illinois governor George Ryan grants clemency to all 16o death-row inmates after his 2002. blue-ribbon Commission on Capital Punishment finds systematic failures In Grutter v. Bollinger, Supreme Court rules that University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action policy is constitutional

2005 Condoleezza Rice becomes the first black female secretary of state Hurricane Katrina hits Mississippi and Louisiana, devastating New Orleans

2006 Barack Obama (D-IL) elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming the third African American elected to the Senate since Reconstruction

2008 Obama becomes the first African Ameri- can nominated for president by a major party, defeating Senator Hilary Clinton

Obama elected President of the United States, defeating Senator John McCain

2009 Obama sworn in as 44th president of the United States Eric H. Holder, Jr. becomes first African American Attorney General of the United States

2006 Michael Eric Dyson, Is Bill Cosby Right?

2007 Tony Cox and Bishop Harry Jackson, Homosexuality in the Black Church

Noma LeMoine, Contrastive Analysis: A Linguistic Strategy for Advancing Lan- guage Acquisition in Standard English Learners (SELs) K. T. Bradford, Why "Black" and Not "African-American"?

2oo8 Barack Obama, A More Perfect Union Gloria Steinem, Women are Never

Front-Runners DeNeen L. Brown, A Vote of Allegiance

120 = Part One THE TIME OF SLAVERY (TO 1865)

I must indulge the hope you will see reason at some future time to alter your opinion and that what you now cast aside as worthless shall yet appear to be a treasure. There is abundant room in the anti-slavery field for him to perform a work without crossing the track or impeding the movements of his old friends, and perhaps in some future time, meeting each other from opposite quarters of a victorious field, you may yet shake hands together.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Speech on the Dred Scott Decision [1857]

"Power concedes nothing without a demand," Frederick Douglass declared in an August 1857 speech on West Indian emancipation. "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both." Douglass's stress on the need for resistance, whether verbal or physical, highlights his shift away from the Garrisonian strategy of moral suasion. In a speech earlier that year, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, Douglass underscores his break with Garrison (p. 111) not only over the issue of political and physical resistance, but also over the question of whether the Constitution and the Union itself were worthy of pres-

ervation. Douglass's faith in the governing principals of the

United States, which he underscores with his support

I write this note, because in the conversation I had with you, and also with Miss Weston, I admitted so much that was unfavorable to Mr. Douglass that I felt bound in justice to state the more favorable views which had arisen to my mind.

Very sincerely your friend,

H. B. STOWNE.

of the Constitution and the Union, is striking in light of the specifics of the Dred Scott decision. Dred Scott, who was enslaved in St. Louis, first filed suit for his freedom in 1846, but over ten years passed before his case reached the Supreme Court. The Court ruled not only that Scott did not have the right to sue for his free- dom in a federal court because he was not a U.S. citi- zen, but that no one of African descent, whether enslaved or free, could become a U.S. citizen. In his majority decision, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney declared, "The Negro has no rights that a white man is bound to respect." Moreover, the Court decided that Congress could not outlaw slavery in the territories, thereby over- turning key parts of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. In supporting the Constitution in spite of this landmark decision, Douglass makes a clear distinction between the administration of the Constitution and the docu- ment itself.

Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.

While four millions of our fellow countrymen are in chains-while men, women, and chil-

dren are bought and sold on the auction-block with horses, sheep, and swine while the remorseless slave-whip draws the warm blood of our common humanity-it is meet that we assemble as we have done to-day, and lift up our hearts and voices in ear- nest denunciation of the vile and shocking abomina-

tion. It is not for us to be governed by our hopes or our fears in this great work; yet it is natural on occasions like this, to survey the position of the great struggle which is going on between slavery and freedom, and to dwell upon such signs of encouragement as may have been lately developed, and the state of feeling these signs or events have occasioned in us and among the people generally. It is a fitting time to take an

FREDERICK DouGLAss Speech on the Dred Scott Decision

observation to ascertain where we are, and what our prospects are.

To many, the prospects of the struggle against slavery seem far from cheering. Eminent men, North and South, in Church and State, tell us that the omens are all against us. Emancipation, they tell us, is a wild, delusive idea; the price of human flesh was never higher than now; slavery was never more closely entwined about the hearts and affections of the southern people than now; that whatever of conscientious scruple, reli- gious conviction, or public policy, which opposed the system of slavery forty or fifty years ago, has subsided; and that slavery never reposed upon a firmer basis than now. Completing this picture of the happy and prosperous condition of this system of wickedness, they tell us that this state of things is to be set to our account. Abolition agitatipn has done it all. How deep is the misfortune of my poor, bleeding people, if this be so! How lost their condition, if even the efforts of their friends but sink them deeper in ruin!

Without assenting to this strong representation of the increasing strength and stability of slavery, with- out denouncing what of untruth pervades it, I own myself not insensible to the many difficulties and dis- couragement, that beset us on every hand. They fling their broad and gloomy shadows across the pathway of every thoughtful colored man in this country. For one, I see them clearly, and feel them sadly. With an ear- nest, aching heart, I have long looked for the realiza- tion of the hope of my people. Standing, as it were, barefoot, and treading upon the sharp and flinty rocks of the present, and looking out upon the boundless sea of the future, I have sought, in my humble way, to pen- etrate the intervening mists and clouds, and, per- chance, to descry, in the dim and shadowy distance, the white flag of freedom, the precise speck of time at which the cruel bondage of my people should end, and the long entombed millions rise from the foul grave of slavery and death. But of that time I can know noth- ing, and you can know nothing. All is uncertain at that point. One thing, however, is certain; slaveholders are in earnest, and mean to cling to their slaves as long as they can, and to the bitter end. They show no sign of a wish to quit their iron grasp upon the sable throats of their victims. Their motto is, "a firmer hold and a tighter grip" for every new effort that is made to

break their cruel power. The case is one of life or death with them, and they will give up only when they must do that or do worse.

In one view the slaveholders have a decided advantage over all opposition. It is well to notice this advantage--the advantage of complete organization. They are organized; and yet were not at the pains of creating their organizations. The State governments, where the system of slavery exists, are complete slav- ery organizations. The church organizations in those States are equally at the service of slavery; while the Federal Government, with its army and navy, from the chief magistracy in Washington, to the Supreme Court, and thence to the chief marshalship at New York, is pledged to support, defend, and propagate the crying curse of human bondage. The pen, the purse, and the sword, are united against the simple truth, preached by humble men in obscure places.

This is one view. It is, thank God, only one view; there is another, and a brighter view. David, you know, looked small and insignificant when going to meet Goliath, but looked larger when he had slain his foe. The Malakoff was, to the eye of the world, impregna- ble, till the hour it fell before the shot and shell of the allied army. Thus hath it ever been. Oppression, orga- nized as ours is, will appear invincible up to the very hour of its fall. Sir, let us look at the other side, and see if there are not some things to cheer our heart and nerve us up anew in the good work of emancipation.

Take this fact-for it is a fact-the anti-slavery movement has, from first to last, suffered no abate- ment. It has gone forth in all directions, and is now felt

in the remotest extremities of the Republic. It started small, and was without capital either in

men or money. The odds were all against it. It literally had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. There was ignorance to be enlightened, error to be combatted, conscience to be awakened, prejudice to be overcome, apathy to be aroused, the right of speech to be secured, mob violence to be subdued, and a deep, radical change to be inwrought in the mind and heart of the whole nation. This great work, under God, has gone on, and gone on gloriously.

Amid all changes, fluctuations, assaults, and adverses of every kind, it has remained firm in its pur-

pose, steady in its aim, onward and upward, defying all

122 --- Part One THE TIME OF SLAVERY (TO 1865)

opposition, and never losing a single battle. Our strength is in the growth of anti-slavery conviction, and this has never halted.

There is a significant vitality about this abolition movement. It has taken a deeper, broader, and more lasting hold upon the national heart than ordinary reform movements. Other subjects of much interest come and go, expand and contract, blaze and vanish, but the huge question of American Slavery, compre- hending, as it does, not merely the weal or the woe of four millions, and their countless posterity, but the weal or the woe of this entire nation, must increase in magnitude and in majesty with every hour of its his- tory. From a cloud not bigger than a man's hand, it has overspread the heavens. It has risen from a grain not bigger than a mustard seed. Yet see the fowls of the air, how they crowd its branches.

Politicians who cursed it, now defend it; ministers, once dumb, now speak in its praise; and presses, which once flamed with hot denunciations against it, now surround the sacred cause as by a wall of living fire. Politicians go with it as a pillar of cloud by day, and the press as a pillar of fire by night.' With these ancient tokens of success, I, for one, will not despair of our cause.

Those who have undertaken to suppress and crush out this agitation for Liberty and humanity, have been most woefully disappointed. Many who have engaged to put it down, have found themselves put down. The agitation has pursued them in all their meanderings, broken in upon their seclusion, and, at the very moment of fancied security, it has settled down upon them like a mantle of unquenchable fire. Clay, Calhoun, and Webster each tried his hand at suppressing the agita- tion; and they went to their graves disappointed and defeated.

Loud and exultingly have we been told that the slavery question is settled, and settled forever. You remember it was settled thirty-seven years ago, when Missouri was admitted into the Union with a slave- holding constitution, and slavery prohibited in all terri- tory north of thirty-six degrees of north latitude. Just

fifteen years afterwards, it was settled again by voting down the right of petition, and gagging down free dis- cussion in Congress.' Ten years after this it was settled again by the annexation of Texas, and with it the war with Mexico. In 185o it was again settled. This was called a final settlement. By it slavery was virtually declared to be the equal of Liberty, and should come into the Union on the same terms. By it the right and the power to hunt down men, women, and children, in every part of this country, was conceded to our south- ern brethren, in order to keep them in the Union. Four years after this settlement, the whole question was once more settled, and settled by a settlement which unset- tled all the former settlements.

The fact is, the more the question has been set- tled, the more it has needed settling. The space between the different settlements has been strikingly on the decrease. The first stood longer than any of its succes- sors.

There is a lesson in these decreasing spaces. The first stood fifteen years-the second, ten years-the third, five years-the fourth stood four years-and the fifth has stood the brief space of two years.

This last settlement must be called the Taney set- tlement. We are now told, in tones of lofty exultation, that the day is lost-all lost-and that we might as well give up the struggle. The highest authority has spoken. The voice of the Supreme Court has gone out over the troubled waves of the National Conscience, saying peace, be still.

This infamous decision of the Slaveholding wing of the Supreme Court maintains that slaves are within the contemplation of the Constitution of the United States, property; that slaves are property in the same sense that horses, sheep, and swine are property; that the old doctrine that slavery is a creature of local law is false; that the right of the slaveholder to his slave does not depend upon the local law, but is secured wherever the Constitution of the United States extends; that Congress has no right to prohibit slavery anywhere; that slavery may go in safety anywhere under the star-spangled banner; that colored persons of African

1. Reference to Exodus 13:21, "And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night." 2. Between 1836 and 1844, Congress passed a series of "gag rules," resolutions banning the reading or discussion of petitions against

slavery.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS Speech on the Dred Scott Decision = 123

descent have no rights that white men are bound to respect; that colored men of African descent are not and cannot be citizens of the United States.

You will readily ask me how I am affected by this devilish decision-this judicial incarnation of wolf- ishness? My answer is, and no thanks to the slavehold- ing wing of the Supreme Court, my hopes were never brighter than now.

I have no fear that the National Conscience will

be put to sleep by such an open, glaring, and scandal-

ous tissue of lies as that decision is, and has been, over

and over, shown to be. The Supreme Court of the United States is not the

only power in this world. It is very great, but the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater. Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot perform impossi- bilities. He cannot bale out the ocean, annihilate the firm old earth, or pluck the silvery star of liberty from our Northern sky. He may decide, and decide again; but he cannot reverse the decision of the Most High. He cannot change the essential nature of things- making evil good, and good evil.

Happily for the whole human family, their rights have been defined, declared, and decided in a court higher than the Supreme Court. "There is a law," says Brougham, "above all the enactments of human codes, and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, man can- not hold property in man."

Your fathers have said that man's right to liberty is self-evident. 'There is no need of argument to make it clear. The voices of nature, of conscience, of reason, and of revelation, proclaim it as the right of all rights, the foundation of all trust, and of all responsibility. Man was born with it. It was his before he compre- hended it. The deed conveying it to him is written in the centre of his soul, and is recorded in Heaven. The sun in the sky is not more palpable to the sight than man's right to liberty is to the moral vision. To decide against this right in the person of Dred Scott, or the humblest and most whip-scarred bondman in the land, is to decide against God. It is an open rebellion against God's government. It is an attempt to undo what God has done, to blot out the broad distinction instituted by the Allwise between men and things, and to change the image and superscription of the everliv-

ing God into a speechless piece of merchandise.

Such a decision cannot stand. God will be true though every man be a liar. We can appeal from this hell-black judgment of the Supreme Court, to the court of common sense and common humanity. We can appeal from man to God. If there is no justice on earth, there is yet justice in heaven. You may close your Supreme Court against the black man's cry for justice, but you cannot, thank God, close against him the ear of a sympathising world, nor shut up the Court of Heaven. All that is merciful and just, on earth and in Heaven, will execrate and despise this edict of Taney.

If it were at all likely that the people of these free States would tamely submit to this demonical judg- ment, I might feel gloomy and sad over it, and possibly

it might be necessary for my people to look for a home in some other country. But as the case stands, we have

nothing to fear. In one point of view, we, the abolitionists and col-

ored people, should meet this decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears, in a cheerful spirit. This

very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the downfall and com- plete overthrow of the whole slave system.

The whole history of the anti-slavery movement is studded with proof that all measures devised and exe- cuted with a view to ally and diminish the anti-slavery agitation, have only served to increase, intensify, and embolden that agitation. This wisdom of the crafty has been confounded, and the counsels of the ungodly brought to nought. It was so with the Fugitive Slave Bill. It was so with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill; and it will be so with this last and most shocking of all pro- slavery devices, this Taney decision.

When great transactions are involved, where the fate of millions is concerned, where a long enslaved and suffering people are to be delivered, I am supersti- tious enough to believe that the finger of the Almighty

may be seen bringing good out of evil, and making the wrath of man redound to his honor, hastening the tri- umph of righteousness.

The American people have been called upon, in a most striking manner, to abolish and put away forever the system of slavery. The subject has been pressed upon their attention in all earnestness and sincerity. The cries of the slave have gone forth to the world, and

124 Part One THE TIME OP SLAVERY (TO 1865)

up to the throne of God. This decision, in my view, is a means of keeping the nation awake on the subject. It is another proof that God does not mean that we shall go to sleep, and forget that we are a slaveholding nation.

Step by step we have seen the slave power advanc- ing; poisoning, corrupting, and perverting the institu- tions of the country; growing more and more haughty, imperious, and exacting. The white man's liberty has been marked out for the same grave with the black man's.

The ballot box is desecrated, God's law set at nought, armed legislators stalk the halls of Congress, freedom of speech is beaten down in the Senate. The rivers and highways are infested by border ruffians, and white men are made to feel the iron heel of slavery. This ought to arouse us to kill off the hateful thing. They are solemn warnings to which the white people, as well as the black people, should take heed.

If these shall fail, judgment, more fierce or terri- ble, may come. The lightning, whirlwind, and earth- quake may come. Jefferson said that he trembled for his country when he reflected that God is just, and his justice cannot sleep forever. The time may come when even the crushed worm may turn under the tyrant's feet. Goaded by cruelty, stung by a burning sense of wrong, in an awful moment of depression and desper- ation, the bondman and bondwoman at the south may rush to one wild and deadly struggle for freedom. Already slaveholders go to bed with bowie knives, and apprehend death at their dinners. Those who enslave, rob, and torment their cooks, may well expect to find death in their dinner-pots.

The world is full of violence and fraud, and it would be strange if the slave, the constant victim of both fraud and violence, should escape the contagion. He, too, may learn to fight the devil with fire, and for one, I am in no frame of mind to pray that this may be long deferred.

Two remarkable occurrences have followed the presidential election; one was the unaccountable sick- ness traced to the National Hotel at Washington, and the other was the discovery of a plan among the slaves, in different localities, to slay their oppressors. Twenty or thirty of the suspected were put to death. Some were shot, some hanged, some burned, and some died under the lash. One brave man owned himselfwell acquainted with the conspiracy, but said he would rather die than

disclose the facts. He received seven hundred and fifty lashes, and his noble spirit went away to the God who gave it. The name of this hero has been by the meanness of tyrants suppressed. Such a man redeems his race. He is worthy to be mentioned with the Hoffers and Tells, the noblest heroes of history. These insurrectionary movements have been put down, but they may break out at any time, under the guidance of higher intelli- gence, and with a more invincible spirit.

The fire thus kindled, may be revived again; The flames are extinguished, but the embers

remain; One terrible blast may produce an ignition, Which shall wrap the whole South in wild

conflagration.

The pathway of tyrants lies over volcanoes The very air they breathe is heavy with sorrows; Agonizing heart-throbs convulse them while

sleeping, And the wind whispers Death as over them

sweeping.

By all the laws of nature, civilization, and of prog- ress, slavery is a doomed system. Not all the skill of politicians, North and South, not all the sophistries of Judges, not all the fulminations of a corrupt press, not all the hypocritical prayers, or the hypocritical refus- als to pray of a hollow-hearted priesthood, not all the devices of sin and Satan, can save the vile thing from extermination.

Already a gleam of hope breaks upon us from the south-west. One Southern city has grieved and aston- ished the whole South by a preference for freedom. The wedge has entered. Dred Scott, of Missouri, goes into slavery, but St. Louis declares for freedom. The judgment of Taney is not the judgment of St Louis.

It may be said that this demonstration in St. Louis is not to be taken as an evidence of sympathy with the slave; that it is purely a white man's victory. I admit it. Yet I am glad that white men, bad as they generally are, should gain a victory over slavery. I am willing to accept a judgment against slavery, whether supported by white or black reasons-though I would much rather have it supported by both. He that is not against us, is on our part.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS Speech on the Dred Scott Decision 125

Come what will, I hold it to be morally certain that, sooner or later, by fair means or foul means, in quiet or in tumult, in peace or in blood, in judgment or in mercy, slavery is doomed to cease out of this other- wise goodly land, and liberty is destined to become the settled law of this Republic.

I base my sense of the certain overthrow of slav- ery, in part, upon the nature of the American Goyern- ment, the Constitution, the tendencies of the age, and the character of the American people; and this, not- withstanding the important decision of Judge Taney.

I know of no soil better adapted to the growth of reform than American soil. I know of no country where the conditions for affecting great changes in the set- tled order of things, for the development of right ideas of liberty and humanity, are more favorable than here in these United States.

The very groundwork of this government is a good repository of Christian civilization. The Constitution, as well as the Declaration of Independence, and the sentiments of the founders of the Republic, give us a platform broad enough, and strong enough, to support the most comprehensive plans for the freedom and ele- vation of all the people of this country, without regard to color, class, or clime.

There is nothing in the present aspect of the anti- slavery question which should drive us into the extrav- agance and nonsense of advocating a dissolution of the American Union as a means of overthrowing slav- ery, or freeing the North from the malign influence of slavery upon the morals of the Northern people. While the press is at liberty, and speech is free, and the ballot-box is open to the people of the sixteen free States; while the slaveholders are but four hundred thousand in number, and we are fourteen millions; while the mental and moral power of the nation is with us; while we are really the strong and they are the weak,

it would look worse than cowardly to retreat from the Union.

If the people of the North have not the power to cope with these four hundred thousand slaveholders inside the Union, I see not how they could get out of the Union. The strength necessary to move the Union must ever be less than is required to break it up. If we have got to conquer the slave power to get out of the Union, I for one would much rather conquer, and stay

in the Union. The latter, it strikes me, is the far more rational mode of action.

I make these remarks in no servile spirit, nor in any superstitious reverence for a mere human arrange- ment. If I felt the Union to be a curse, I should not be far behind the very chiefest of the disunion Aboli- tionists in denouncing it. But the evil to be met and abolished is not in the Union. The power arrayed against us is not a parchment.

It is not in changing the dead form of the Union, that slavery is to be abolished in this country. We have to do not with the dead, but the living; not with the past, but the living present.

Those who seek slavery in the Union, and who are everlastingly dealing blows upon the Union, in the belief that they are killing slavery, are most woefully mistaken. They are fighting a dead form instead of a living and powerful reality. It is clearly not because of the peculiar character of our Constitution that we have slavery, but the wicked pride, love of power, and selfish perverseness of the American people. Slavery lives in this country not because of any paper Consti- tution, but in the moral blindness of the American people, who persuade themselves that they are safe, though the rights of others may be struck down.

Besides, I think it would be difficult to hit upon any plan less likely to abolish slavery than the disso- lution of the Union. The most devoted advocates of slavery, those who make the interests of slavery their constant study, seek a dissolution of the Union as their final plan for preserving slavery from Abolition, and their ground is well taken. Slavery lives and flourishes best in the absence of civilization; a dissolution of the Union would shut up the system in its own congenial barbarism.

The dissolution of the Union would not give the North one single additional advantage over slavery to the people of the North, but would manifestly take from them many which they now certainly possess.

Within the Union we have a firm basis of anti- slavery operation. National welfare, national prosperity, national reputation and honor, and national scrutiny; common rights, common duties, and common country, are so many bridges over which we can march to the destruction of slavery. To fling away these advantages because James Buchanan is President, or Judge Taney

126 Part One THE TIME OF SLAVERY (TO 1865)

gives a lying decision in favor of slavery, does not enter into my notion of common sense.

Mr. Garrison and his friends have been telling us that, while in the Union, we are responsible for slav- ery; and in so telling us, he and they have told us the truth. But in telling us that we shall cease to be respon- sible for slavery by dissolving the Union, he and they have not told us the truth.

There now, clearly, is no freedom from responsi- bility for slavery, but in the Abolition of slavery. We have gone too far in this business now to sum up our whole duty in the cant phrase of "no Union with slave- holders."

To desert the family hearth may place the recreant husband out of the sight of his hungry children, but it cannot free him from responsibility. Though he should roll the waters of three oceans between him and them, he could not roll from his soul the burden of his respon- sibility to them; and, as with the private family, so in this instance with the national family. To leave the slave in his chains, in the hands of cruel masters who are too strong for him, is not to free ourselves from responsibility. Again: If I were on board of a pirate ship, with a company of men and women whose lives and liberties I had put in jeopardy, I would not clear my soul of their blood by jumping in the long boat, and singing out no union with pirates. My business would be to remain on board, and while I never would perform a single act of piracy again, I should exhaust every means given me by my position, to save the lives and liberties of those against whom I had committed piracy. In like manner, I hold it is our duty to remain inside this Union, and use all the power to restore to enslaved mil- lions their precious and God-given rights. The more we have done by our voice and our votes, in times past, to rivet their galling fetters, the more clearly and solemnly comes the sense of duty to remain, to undo what we have done. Where, I ask, could the slave look for release from slavery if the Union were dissolved? I have an abiding conviction founded upon long and careful study of the certain effects of slavery upon the moral sense of slaveholding communities, that if the slaves are ever delivered from bondage, the power will ema- nate from the free States. All hope that the slave- holders will be self-moved to this great act of justice, is groundless and delusive. Now, as of old, the Redeemer

must come from above, not from beneath. To dissolve the Union would be to withdraw the emancipating power from the field.

But I am told this is the argument of expediency. I admit it, and am prepared to show that what is expe- dient in this instance is right. "Do justice, though the heavens fall." Yes, that is a good motto, but I deny that it would be doing justice to the slave to dissolve the Union and leave the slave in his chains to get out by the clemency of his master, or the strength of his arms. Justice to the slave is to break his chains, and going out of the union is to leave him in his chains, and without any probable chance of getting out of them.

But I come now to the great question as to the constitutionality of slavery. The recent slaveholding decision, as well as the teachings of anti-slavery men, make this a fit time to discuss the constitutional pre- tensions of slavery.

The people of the North are a law abiding people. They love order and respect the means to that end. This sentiment has sometimes led them to the folly and wickedness of trampling upon the very life of law, to uphold its dead form. This was so in the execution of that thrice accursed Fugitive Slave Bill. Burns and Simms were sent back to the hell of slavery after they had looked upon Bunker Hill, and heard liberty thun- der in Faneuil Hall. The people permitted this outrage in obedience to the popular sentiment of reverence for law. While men thus respect law, it becomes a serious matter so to interpret the law as to make it operate against liberty. I have a quarrel with those who fling the Supreme Law of this land between the slave and freedom. It is a serious matter to fling the weight of the Constitution against the cause of human liberty, and those who do it, take upon them a heavy responsibil- ity. Nothing but absolute necessity, shall, or ought to drive me to such a concession to slavery.

When I admit that slavery is constitutional, I must see slavery recognized in the Constitution. I must see that it is there plainly stated that one man of a certain description has a right of property in the body and soul of another man of a certain description. There must be no room for a doubt. In a matter so important as the loss of liberty, everything must be proved beyond all reasonable doubt.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS Speech on the Dred Scott Decision 127

The well known rules of legal interpretation bear me out in this stubborn refusal to see slavery where slavery is not, and only to see slavery where it is.

The Supreme Court has, in its day, done some- thing better than make slaveholding decisions. It has laid down rules of interpretation which are in har- mony with the true idea and object of law and liberty.

It has told us that the intention oflegal instruments must prevail; and that this must be collected from its words. It has told us that language must be construed strictly in favor of liberty and justice.

It has told us where rights are infringed, where fundamental principles are overthrown, where the general system of the law is departed from, the Legis- lative intention must be expressed with irresistible clearness, to induce a court of justice to suppose a design to effect such objects.

These rules are as old as law. They rise out of the very elements of law. It is to protect human rights, and promote human welfare. Law is in its nature opposed to wrong, and must everywhere be presumed to be in favor of the right. The pound of flesh, but not one drop of blood,' is a sound rule of legal interpretation.

Besides there is another rule of law as well of com- mon sense, which requires us to look to the ends for which a law is made, and to construe its details in har- mony with the ends sought.

Now let us approach the Constitution from the standpoint thus indicated, and instead of finding in it a warrant for the stupendous system of robbery, com- prehended in the term slavery, we shall find it strongly against that system.

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America."

Such are the objects announced by the instrument itself, and they are in harmony with the Declaration of Independence, and the principles of human well-being.

Six objects are here declared, "Union," "defence," "welfare," "tranquility," and "justice," and "liberty."

Neither in the preamble nor in the body of the Constitution is there a single mention of the term slave or slave holder, slave master or slave state, neither is there any reference to the color, or the physical pecu- liarities of any part of the people of the United States. Neither is there anything in the Constitution standing alone, which would imply the existence of slavery in this country.

"We, the people"-not we, the white people-not we, the citizens, or the legal voters-not we, the privi- leged class, and excluding all other classes but we, the people; not we, the horses and cattle, but we the people the men and women, the human inhabitants of the United States, do ordain and establish this Con- stitution, &c.

I ask, then, any man to read the Constitution, and tell me where, if he can, in what particular that instru- ment affords the slightest sanction of slavery?

Where will he find a guarantee for slavery? Will he find it in the declaration that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due pro- cess of law? Will he find it in the declaration that the Constitution was established to secure the blessing of liberty? Will he find it in the right of the people to be secure in their persons and papers, and houses, and effects? Will he find it in the clause prohibiting the enactment by any State of a bill of attainder?

These all strike at the root of slavery, and any one of them, but faithfully carried out, would put an end to slavery in every State in the American Union.

Take, for example, the prohibition of a bill of attainder. That is a law entailing on the child the mis- fortunes of the parent. This principle would destroy slavery in every State of the Union.

3. Allusion to Portia's ruling in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I, which prevents a death as settlement of a debt:

Then take thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate Unto the state of Venice.

128 = Part One THE TIME OF SLAVERY (To 1865)

The law of slavery is a law of attainder. The child is property because its parent was property, and suffers as a slave because its parent suffered as a slave.

Thus the very essence of the whole slave code is in open violation of a fundamental provision of the Con- stitution, and is in open and flagrant violation of all the objects set forth in the Constitution.

While this and much more can be said, and has been said, and much better said, by Lysander Spooner, William Goodell, Beriah Green, and Gerrit Smith, in favor of the entire unconstitutionality of slavery, what have we on the other side?

How is the constitutionality of slavery made out, or attempted to be made out?

First, by discrediting and casting away as worth- less the most beneficent rules of legal interpretation; by disregarding the plain and common sense reading of the instrument itself; by showing that the Constitu- tion does not mean what it says, and says what it does not mean, by assuming that the WRITTEN Constitution is to be interpreted in the light of a SECRET and UNWRIT-

TEN understanding of its framers, which understand- ing is declared to be in favor of slavery. It is in this mean, contemptible, under-hand method that the Constitution is pressed into the service of slavery.

They do not point us to the Constitution itself, for the reason that there is nothing sufficiently explicit for their purpose; but they delight in sup- posed intentions-intentions no where expressed in the Constitution, and every where contradicted in the Constitution.

Judge Taney lays down this system of interpreting in this wise:

"The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human family, and, if they were used in a similar instrument at this day, would be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration; for if the language, as under- stood in that day, would embrace them, the conduct of the distinguished men who framed the Declaration of Independence would have been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted; and instead of the sympathy of mankind, to which they

appealed, they would have deserved and received uni- versal rebuke and reprobation.

"It is difficult, at this day, to realize the state of public opinion respecting that unfortunate class with the civilized and enlightened portion of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Constitution; but history shows they had, for more than a century, been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and unfit associates for the white race, either socially or politically, and had no rights which white men are bound to respect; and the black man might be reduced to slavery, bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise. This opinion, at that time, was fixed and universal with the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom of morals, which no one thought of disputing, and everyone habitually acted upon it, without doubt- ing, for a moment, the correctness of the opinion. And in no nation was this opinion more fixed, and generally acted upon, than in England; the subjects of which gov- ernment not only seized them on the coast of Africa, but took them, as ordinary merchandise, to where they could make a profit on them. The opinion, thus enter- tained, was universally maintained on the colonies this side of the Atlantic; accordingly, negroes of the African race were regarded by them as property, and held and bought and sold as such in every one of the thirteen colonies, which united in the Declaration of Indepen- dence, and afterwards formed the Constitution."

The argument here is, that the Constitution comes down to us from a slaveholding period and a slavehold- ing people; and that, therefore, we are bound to sup- pose that the Constitution recognizes colored persons of African descent, the victims of slavery at that time, as debarred forever from all participation in the benefit of the Constitution and the Declaration of Indepen- dence, although the plain reading of both includes them in their beneficent range.

As a man, an American, a citizen, a colored man of both Anglo-Saxon and African descent, I denounce this representation as a most scandalous and devilish perversion of the Constitution, and a brazen misstate- ment of the facts of history.

But I will not content myself with mere denuncia- tion; I invite attention to the facts.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS Speech on the Dred Scott Decision = 129

It is a fact, a great historic fact, that at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the leading religious denominations in this land were anti-slavery, and were laboring for the emancipation of the colored people of African descent.

The church of a country is often a better index of the state of opinion and feeling than is even the gov- ernment itself.

The Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and the denomination of Friends, were actively opposing slav- ery, denouncing the system of bondage, with language as burning and sweeping as we employ at this day.

Take the Methodists. In 1780, that denomination said: "The Conference acknowledges that slavery is contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature, and hurt- ful to society-contrary to the dictates of conscience and true religion, and doing to others that we would not do unto us." In 1784, the same church declared, "that those who buy, sell, or give slaves away, except for the purpose to free them, shall be expelled immedi- ately." In 1785, it spoke even more stringently on the subject. It then said: "We hold in the deepest abhor- rence the practice of slavery, and shall not cease to seek its destruction by all wise and proper means."

So much for the position of the Methodist Church in the early history of the Republic, in those days of darkness to which Judge Taney refers.

Let us now see how slavery was regarded by the Presbyterian Church at that early date.

In 1794, the General Assembly of that body pro- nounced the following judgment in respect to slavery, slaveholders, and slaveholding.

"ist Timothy, ist chapter, loth verse: 'The law was made for man-stealers.' 'This crime among the Jews exposed the perpetrators of it to capital punishment,' Exodus, xxi, 15.4-And the apostle here classes them with sinners of the first rank. The word he uses in its original import, comprehends all who are concerned in bringing any of the human race into slavery, or in retaining them in it. Stealers of men are all those who bring off slaves or freemen, and keep, sell, or buy them. `To steal a freeman,' says Grotius, 'is the highest kind of theft.' In other instances, we only steal human prop-

4. The correct citations are 1 Timothy 1:6 and Exodus 21:16.

erty, but when we steal or retain men in slavery, we seize those who, in common with ourselves, are consti- tuted, by the original grant, lords of the earth."

I might quote, at length, from the sayings of the Baptist Church and the sayings of eminent divines at this early period, showing that Judge Taney has grossly falsified history, but will not detain you with these quotations.

The testimony of the church, and the testimony of the founders of this Republic, from the declaration downward, prove Judge Taney false; as false to history as he is to law.

Washington and Jefferson, and Adams, and Jay, and Franklin, and Rush, and Hamilton, and a host of others, held no such degrading views on the subject of slavery as are imputed by Judge Taney to the Fathers of the Republic.

All, at that time, looked for the gradual but cer- tain abolition of slavery, and shaped the constitution with a view to this grand result.

George Washington can never be claimed as a fanatic, or as the representative of fanatics. The slave- holders impudently use his name for the base pur- pose of giving respectability to slavery. Yet, in a letter to Robert Morris, Washington uses this language- language which, at this day, would make him a terror of the slaveholders, and the natural representative of the Republican party.

"There is not a man living, who wishes more sin- cerely than I do, to see some plan adopted for the abo- lition of slavery; but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by Legislative authority; and this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall not be wanting."

Washington only spoke the sentiment of his times. There were, at that time, Abolition societies in the slave States-Abolition societies in Virginia, in North Car- olina, in Maryland, in Pennsylvania, and in Georgia--- all slaveholding States. Slavery was so weak, and liberty so strong, that free speech could attack the monster to its teeth. Men were not mobbed and driven out of the presence of slavery, merely because they condemned the slave system. The system was then on its knees

130 Part One THE TIME OF SLAVERY (TO 1865)

imploring to be spared, until it could get itself decently out of the world.

In the light of these facts, the Constitution was framed, and framed in conformity to it.

It may, however, be asked, if the Constitution were so framed that the rights of all the people were natu- rally protected by it, how happens it that a large part of the people have been held in slavery ever since its adoption? Have the people mistaken the requirements of their own Constitution?

The answer is ready. The Constitution is one thing, its administration is another, and, in this instance, a very different and opposite thing. I am here to vindi- cate the law, not the administration of the law. It is the written Constitution, not the unwritten Constitution, that is now before us. If, in the whole range of the Con- stitution, you can find no warrant for slavery, then we may properly claim it for liberty.

Good and wholesome laws are often found dead on the statute book. We may condemn the practice under them and against them, but never the law itself. To condemn the good law with the wicked practice, is to weaken, not to strengthen our testimony.

It is no evidence that the Bible is a bad book, because those who profess to believe the Bible are bad. The slaveholders of the South, and many of their wicked allies at the North, claim the Bible for slavery; shall we, therefore, fling the Bible away as a pro-slavery book? It would be as reasonable to do so as it would be to fling away the Constitution.

We are not the only people who have illustrated the truth, that a people may have excellent law, and detestable practices. Our Savior denounces the Jews, because they made void the law by their traditions. We have been guilty of the same sin.

The American people have made void our Con- stitution by just such traditions as Judge Taney and

Mr. Garrison have been giving to the world of late, as the true light in which to view the Constitution of the United States. I shall follow neither. It is not what Moses allowed for the hardness of heart, but what God requires, ought to be the rule.

It may be said that it is quite true that the Consti- tution was designed to secure the blessings of liberty and justice to the people who made it, and to the pos- terity of the people who made it, but was never designed to do any such thing for the colored people of African descent.

This is Judge Taney's argument, and it is Mr. Gar- rison's argument, but it is not the argument of the Con- stitution. The Constitution imposes no such mean and satanic limitations upon its own beneficent operation. And, if the Constitution makes none, I beg to know what right has anybody, outside of the Constitution, for the special accommodation of slaveholding villainy, to impose such a construction upon the Constitution?

The Constitution knows all the human inhabit- ants of this country as "the people." It makes, as I have said before, no discrimination in favor of, or against, any class of the people, but is fitted to protect and pre- serve the rights of all, without reference to color, size, or anyphysical peculiarities. Besides, it has been shown by William Goodell and others, that in eleven out of the old thirteen States, colored men were legal voters at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.

In conclusion, let me say, all I ask of the American people is, that they live up to the Constitution, adopt its principles, imbibe its spirit, and enforce its provisions.

When this is done, the wounds of my bleeding people will be healed, the chain will no longer rust on their ankles, their backs will no longer be torn by the bloody lash, and liberty, the glorious birthright of our common humanity, will become the inheritance of all the inhabitants of this highly favored country.

KEY DEBATE Education

ANONYMOUS

from Minutes of the Second Annual Convention for the Improvement

of the Free People of Color [18321

In April 1830, a young man from Baltimore, Hezekiah Grice, circulated a flyer proposing a national convention of African American leaders to discuss the idea of emi- gration. The time was ripe for the novel idea of a national convention, and Grice's efforts resulted in a small meet- ing in Philadelphia in September of that year. In addition to discussing emigration (they decided on the province of Upper Canada as the most suitable destination), the delegates wrote a constitution and arranged for subse- quent national conventions. These conventions met on average every three years through 1864, the concluding year of the Civil War. Collectively, the meetings were known as the National Negro Conventions or the National Colored Conventions. (The specific names of the meet- ings varied from year to year.)

Beginning with the First Annual Colored Conven- tion of the People of Color in 1831, education was a primary area of discussion. At the 1831 convention, the delegates identified the areas of "Education, Temper-

ance and Economy" as "best calculated to promote the elevation of mankind to a proper rank and standing among men." The delegates ("after an interesting discus- sion") also unanimously adopted a report proposing the establishment of a black college in New Haven, Con- necticut, that would provide students with both "a scien- tific education" and training in "a useful Mechanical or Agricultural profession." The project met with a number of obstacles, including difficulty raising $20,000 to establish the school and resistance from white citizens in New Haven who did not wish the college to be located there. Despite those obstacles, convention delegates in the following year gave renewed support to the effort. The proceedings of the second annual convention, held in Philadelphia from June 4 to 13, 1832, assert that high schools and colleges on the manual-labor model are the key to enlightened education and refute the idea that primary schools alone can provide an education suffi- cient to foster moral and productive citizens.

Howard Holman Bell, ed., Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, 1830-1864 (New York: ArnoPress,1964), n.p.

T t will be seen by a reference to our proceedings, that 1 we have again recommended the further prosecu- tion of the contemplated college, proposed by the last Convention, to be established at New Haven, under the rules and regulations then established. A place for its location will be selected in a climate and neighbor- hood, where its inhabitants are less prejudiced to our rights and privileges. The proceedings of the citizens of New Haven, with regard to the erection of the col- lege, were a disgrace to themselves, and cast a stigma on the reputed fame of New England and the country. We are unwilling that the character of the whole coun-

try shall sink by the proceedings of a few. We are determined to present to another portion of the coun- try not far distant, and at no very remote period, the opportunity of gaining for them the character of a truly philanthropic spirit, and of retrieving the charac- ter of the country, by the disreputable proceedings of New Haven. We must have Colleges and high Schools on the Manual Labor system, where our youth may be instructed in all the arts of civilized life. If we ever expect to see the influence of prejudice decrease, and ourselves respected, it must be by the blessings of an enlightened education. It must be by being in possession

131

i6o Part One THE TIME OF SLAVERY (TO 1865)

this work may be instrumental in leaving a lasting impression upon the minds of the impenitent; may it

prove to be encouraging to the justified soul, and a comfort to the sanctified.

Though much opposed, it is certainly essential in life, as Mr. Wesley wisely observes. Thus ends the Nar-

rative ofJARENA LEE, the first female preacher of the

First African Methodist Episcopal Church.

BETHEL AT PHILADELPHIA. Penn., UNITED STATES

OF AMERICA.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Too Much Religion, Too Little Humanity [1849]

Although avowedly religious himself, Frederick Douglass (p. 38) frequently criticized religious practices he viewed as hypocritical or as distractions from the cause of aboli-

tion, whether promoted by abolitionists, slaveholders, or church leaders. As evident in the speech reprinted here, delivered on May 9, 1849, at a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York City, Douglass dis- agreed with the indirect abolitionist strategy of expend- ing resources to spread religion. Interjected into his

speech is a debate with James S. Warner (mistakenly called James S. Warren in the reported speech), a mem-

ber of the executive committee of the rival organization, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, over the

practice of distributing Bibles to slaves. The debate serves as a platform for Douglass to discuss what he

views as a fundamental distinction between abstract faith and concrete works that "are of God." The lively debate also bolstered Douglass's characterization of the American Anti-Slavery Society, co-founded by his men- tor William Lloyd Garrison (p. 111) in 1833, as a group fostering "free-discussion," in contrast to the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which split off from the

former group in 1840 over such issues as Garrison's rejection of politics, his call to include women delegates at anti-slavery conventions, and his criticism of organized

religion. In this speech, as in other speeches and writings,

Douglass attacks the hypocrisy of slaveholders who use the Bible to justify slavery. This argument can be traced to one of Douglass's first recorded speeches, given on

November 4, 1841, in which he describes the beating a cousin received at the hands of his master, who was "all the time quoting scripture, for his authority, and appeal- ing to that passage of the Holy Bible which says, 'He

FINIS.

that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes!'" (Luke 12:47). Douglass is I

also harshly critical of church leaders. While he force-

fully condemned white church leaders for their history of

acting on behalf of slavery, as in this speech, he did not

spare others, including black church leaders, who pas-

sively ignored the abolitionist cause by focusing primarily

on spiritual needs rather than social or political concerns

In the July 14, 1848, issue of The North Star, Douglass expressed regret that "those who have the ear of our people on Sundays, have little sympathy with the anti- slavery cause, or the cause of progress in any of its

phases. [* *] The most they aim at is to get to heaven

when they die." The speech and debate reprinted here were tran-

scribed at the meeting by W. Henry Burr and published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard, which had been established in 1840 as the official newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society. As reported in the Standard, Douglass's speech followed one by William Lloyd Garrison (p. 111), who was the chair of the meet-

ing and who also spoke about the division between churches that did not support abolition and true Chris- tianity. The meeting's resolutions reflected these ideas

voiced by Douglass and Garrison, but there was some dissent. A white New Yorker named Mr. Atwill rose after

Douglass to speak about his experiences teaching slaves to read the Bible in Georgia, and to express con-

cern that prior speeches reflected what "might better be termed an Anti-Church Society" rather than an anti- slavery society. The prominent white abolitionist Wen-

dell Phillips followed Atwill, giving the last speech of

the day in support of Douglass's position over that of

Atwill's:

FREDERICK DOUGLASS Too Much Religion, Too Little Humanity -------- 161

"Now the white man who has passed along the highways of the South, and gone from the table of

the slaveholder to such quarters as he may chose

to let him, gets up and would place his facts, his traveller's acquaintance, against the knowledge

From the National Anti-Slavery Standard, May 24,1849.

which has been gained by a slave-born man through years of suffering," Phillips declared. "This is testimony, it is fact, and you ought not to place anything beside it, for there is nothing of equal character to place."

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.1-Mr. Chairman I think we, as Abolitionists, are apt to overrate the intelligence of our audiences with respect to their knowledge of Slavery, and also with respect to their knowledge of the guilt of the churches. I think there are few people out of the ranks of the Abolitionists, who really know anything of the real position of the American Church in regard to Slavery. We meet in this city from year to year and denounce the pro-slavery position of the American Church and Clergy, but we seldom have time to lay before our meetings any facts connected with the proceedings of the Churches in regard to Slavery. I propose in the few remarks that I shall make this evening to say a word with respect to this sort of evidence, and to give a few facts which are familiar enough to the Abolitionist, but which are quite unknown, I have reason to believe, even to the very church members themselves. The ministers know what action they have taken on the subject of Slavery, but the people know very little about it.

Take for instance, the Methodist Episcopal Church. That Church probably wields an influence in this country second to no other in the land. In the year 1836, when the question of Slavery was rocking this country from centre to circumference and when the lives of Abolitionists were scarcely safe at times from the fury of the mobs that were howling round their persons and their houses, this subject came up before the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It seems that two ministers of that denomina- tion ventured to lecture upon, and in favour of emanci- pation in the city of Cincinnati. The very next day after

these lectures were given, the Rev. Stephen G. Roszell, a distinguished minister in that Church, brought for- ward two or three distinct resolutions setting forth the views of the General Conference with respect to Slav- ery. What were these views? They declared in their first resolution, in Annual Conference assembled, "that they were wholly opposed to modern Abolitionism, and that they wholly disapproved of the conduct of the two ministers who were reported to have lectured upon and in favour of this agitated topic." They went further; and in another resolution declared, "that they were not only wholly opposed to modern Abolitionists, but they had no right, no wish, no intention to in tcrfere with the relations existing between masters and dare: in the Southern States of our Union." These resolutions were adopted by that large conference, with only eleven voting against them. An overwhelming concourse of divines professing to be called of God to preach the Gospel, to proclaim deliverance to the captive and the opening of the prison doors to those that were bound, declared before the world that they had "no right, no wish, no intention to interfere with the relations of masters and slaves." The slaveholders rejoiced in that action. They could smoke their pipes in comfort when they got a knowledge of the proceedings of that body of divines. They could hear of revivals of religion going on in the. Church with, the utmost complacency. They felt in no wise alarmed but rather strengthened by the members that were added to that Church, for that Church so far from being an abolition Church, had "no right, no wish, no intention to interfere with the rela- tion of master and slave." That is the religion for me,

1. Additional reports on Douglass's speech and the May 9, 1849 meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society are in the May 18 and May /5 issues of The North Star and the May 17 issue of the National Anti-Slavery Standard; Douglass reprinted both his and Garri- son's speeches in the June 1, 1849 issue of his influential abolitionist newspaper The North Star (which he edited from 1847 until 1851, when he merged it with the Liberty Party Paper and renamed it Frederick Douglass' Paper).

162 -----= - Part One THE TIME OF SLAVERY (TO 1865)

said the slaveholder. There sat the bondman before that body of Methodist divines in his chains calling upon them in the name of God and of humanity to give him his iledoin and deliver him from his bonds. Deliver me from my chains! was the cry that came up from the lips of three millions of bondmen, and yet these Meth- odist clergymen responded, "We have no right, no wish, no intention to give you freedom."

How is it with the Presbyterian Christian? You know that a few years ago, through the agency of the Abolitionists in New England, a large number of petitions and memorials were sent to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, calling upon that body to pass resolutions declaring Slavery to be only a moral evil. They stated that that body had already denounced dancing, declaring it to be incom- patible with church membership to move the feet at the sound of music, and they believed that their consciences were now becoming alive at least to something more than the sin of dancing. They were encouraged therefore to send petitions asking these divines merely to consider Slavery to be a moral evil. So the General Assembly passed this resolution in answer to their memorials:

"Resolved, that it is inexpedient and not for the edification of the Church to pass any judgment in respect to Slavery."

It is the boast of the Protestant Episcopal Church of this country that it never has anything to do with such sins as Slavery. It is their boast that their Church has not been distracted or disturbed by this agitating topic. To be sure it has had some other topics that have agitated the public mind to some extent, which I need not mention here. If I were in a Moral Reform meeting I might speak of them. (Laughter.) But as to the ques- tion of American Slavery, it is their boast that they are not disturbed by it. The groans of heart-broken mil- lions come up on every breeze, but they do not hear,

\ them, they are indifferent about them: "We are wor- shipping the Lord," say they, "we are engaged in giving

\ honours to God; that is our business." Now I have taken these three Christian Churches

and they are for samples of the rest. The Baptists are no better than the Methodists and Presbyterians, and the Episcopalians are as bad as either. They are all as pro-

} slavery as they well can be. It is because these churches

have passed resolutions favouring Slavery, and have in other cases resolved to have nothing to do with the matter, that we are compelled to attack them if we would be faithful to [Anti -] Slavery. And if there is one thing that leads me to identify myself with the Ameri- can Anti-Slavery Society, more than another, it is their readiness at all times and in all circumstances to apply the highest and the most radical Anti-Slavery tests to all parties, all institutions, and all organizations of the land. [I have been into various] Anti-Slavery meetings since I came to this city, and I have heard speeches on various branches of the Anti-Slavery topic; but the most earnest, the most sincere, the most radical tone of sentiment from any quarter has been from the plat- form of the old fashioned Garrisonian Abolitionists. (Applause.) I mention this for the benefit of some I see before me who attended these other meetings, and who think that because everything went on orderly at them it indicates great progress.

Why, the other day I went into the meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and after a long abstract of the report was read and my soul was fired up with the expectation of hearing Slavery denounced and its supporters held up to the detestation of all those who loved the slave, while I was waiting to get my spiritual strength renewed, a grave gentleman arose and said "The next thing in order will be music." (Laughter.) Now Anti-Slavery meetings, according to my notion, should not be very orderly. I like the wild disorder of our free-discussion meetings. I like to hear the earnest voice of Anti-Slavery, so far forgetting the character of its speech, and manner of its delivery, that almost any person may be able to take exceptions to the remarks made. I always feel glad when I have a thousand explanations to make after I go away from Anti-Slavery meetings. When I have spoken in such a way as to lead the people to think that I am a despiser of religion, or that I hate the very name of a clergyman, or that I am myself an Infidel, then I feel that I have done something towards leading the people to think of their responsibil- ity in regard to Slavery.

I believe the grand reason why we have Slavery in this land at the present moment is that we are too reli- gious as a nation, in other words, that we have substi- tuted religion for humanity-we have substituted a :form of Godliness, an outside show for the real thing

FREDERICK DouGLAss Too Much Religion, Too Little Humanity 163

itself. We have houses built for the worship of God, which are regarded as too sacred to plead the cause of the down-trodden millions in them. They will tell you in these churches that they are willing to receive you to talk to them about the sins of the Scribes and Phari- sees, or on the subject of the heathenism of the South Sea Islands, or on any of the subjects connected with missions, the Tract Society, the Bible Society, and other Societies connected with the Church, but the very moment you ask them to open their mouths for the liberation of the Southern slaves, they tell you, that is a subject with which they have nothing to do, and which they do not wish to have introduced into the Church; it is foreign to the object for which churches in this country were formed, and houses built.

The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society seems to have fallen into the error of supposing that the distribution of the Bible among the slaves will be the means of their ultimate liberation. I should not wonder, if the slaves could be allowed to make known to that Society [their] view of [its] efforts to give them liberty, if they should say "First give us ourselves and then we will get Bibles." What the slave begs for is his freedom and the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society comes forward and says "Here is a Bible." To be sure, they say they would be glad to have the slave free, but I ask any of you who were present in their meeting yesterday and heard the speech made by Mr. Henry Bibb if the chief design of that Society did not seem to be, to give the slave the Bible, which when it is given him he cannot read. For my part I am not for giv- ing the slave the Bible or anything else this side of his freedom. Give him that first and then you need not give him anything else. He can get what he needs. (Applause.) I know that the inference was left in the minds of some who attended that meeting that the Old Organization were not in favour of giving the Bible to the slaves, for the [American and Foreign Anti- Slavery] Society arrogated to itself a great amount of piety in that it was in favour of giving the Bible to the slave, and it was said by their speaker, I believe, that if the Old Abolitionists had gone to work and tried to distribute the Bible among the slaves, ere this, Slavery

would have been abolished. Now what we want is first to give the slave himself. It is but another attempt to mend old garments with new cloth-to put new wine into old bottles, to think of giving the slave the Bible without first giving him himself. God did not say to Moses "Tell my people to serve me that they may go free," but "Go and tell Pharoah to let my people go that they may serve me."' (Great applause.) The first thing is freedom. It is the all important thing. There can be no virtue without freedom-there can be no obedi- ence to the Bible without freedom. When the slave is free he can own a Bible; but suppose we carry it to him now, what is the law of Slavery? It is that the slave shall be taken, deemed, reputed, and judged in law to be property to all intents and purposes whatsoever. Now how can property own property-how can property own the Bible? It takes persons to own property, but the personality of the slave is annihilated. He is not looked upon or treated in any way as a person except when he is to be punished.

I throw out these remarks because I think there is danger of confounding our Anti-Slavery duties with what are not ourAnti-Slavery duties. There is an attempt on the part of some professedly Anti-Slavery advo- cates to make themselves out as the religious advocates of Anti-Slavery and all others as irreligious advocates of the cause.

MR. FOSTERS (interposing).-I should like to know if Henry Bibb and the rest of the men concerned in that movement, professedly to give the Bible to the slave, are not, all of them without exception, fully aware of the fact that they cannot give the Bible to the slave and that no matter how much money they may collect for that purpose they dare not and do not mean to do so? I ask therefore if it is not a deceptive mo[ve]ment, intended to misguide and beguile the people of the North who are beginning to be aroused to a sense of their duty of doing something for the slave?

MR. DOUGLASS.-I am inclined to think that a good many who are connected with the movement have been really blinded into the belief that in one or two slave States they can give the Bible.

a. Paraphrase of a passage from Exodus (7:16, 8:1, 8:2o, 9:1, 9:13, or 10:3). 3. Stephen Symonds Foster (18 o 9-81), a radical abolitionist.

164 = Part One THE TIME OF SLAVERY (TO 1865)

MR. FOSTER.-Are they the slaveholders?

MR. DOUGLASS.-Mr. Bibb thinks it can be done in Kentucky.

MR. FOSTER. Does he not know that they are not allowed to do it?

MR. DOUGLASS.-There is a class of men who seem to believe if a man should fall overboard into the sea with a Bible in his pocket it would be hardly possible for him to drown. Mr. Bibb told me in conversation, that he believed if the slave had the Bible, the Lord would help him to read it. (Laughter,) Well, if he has worked himself up into that belief, let us give him the credit for his sincerity, and battle with the belief itself.

A STRANGER-(from the back part of the house). Mr. Bibb stated that there were no legal impediments in several of the States.

MR. DOUGLASS.-And what is more remarkable, he stated that on every plantation at the South where there were any considerable number of slaves, there were always one or more among them who could read. I do not know how he could make such a statement. I am from the State of Maryland, where slaves are as highly favoured as in any State in the Union, and I believe more so, because it is one of the more northerly States, and peopled by persons from the North, and yet I must tell you that in a neighbourhood where there were no fewer than 5,000 slaves in a distance of twelve miles around from where I lived, I never met more than two out of the whole number who could read. And yet Mr. Bibb states to his audience as a sort of plaster to their consciences-as a sort of moral chloroform, as Mr. Pillsbury 4 would say, to the consciences of those who are just opening their eyes and who are alarmed by our rebukes, that there are one or more on every plan- tation who can read. I do not believe in the statement. I know from my own experience that not more than perhaps one in five thousand can read in the State of Maryland.

MR. FOSTER.-Now to test the honesty and integrity of those men, I will state here publicly, and any gentle- man present may carry the intelligence to the leaders

of that party, that to save them the trouble of raising funds, I will furnish them with ONE THOUSAND BIBLES,

if Mr. Bibb or any other prominent man, among them will go, openly and in person, and carry them to the slaves. I will have nothing to do with any underhanded move- ment to steal Bibles into the South. Thieving is bad enough when connected with getting property, but when it is connected with the glory of God it is utterly detestable, and I will have nothing to do with it. And I think I can do more; I think I can pledge that individ- ual one thousand more after he has distributed the first thousand; but I will keep within my means [-**,] Let them spare themselves the trouble to go through this city to collect funds for that purpose, for I am ready to fulfil my pledge. (Applause.)

STRANGER.--There is a missionary in Kentucky dis- tributing Bibles, and if you will present your account tomorrow, the Bibles will be taken. (Applause.)

MR. FOSTER.--Will the gentleman repeat this state- ment? I did not hear it, but from the manner in which it was received, I think it must be interesting.

STRANGER.-Call at 61 John street,' and your propo- sition will be faithfully received.

MR. FOSTER.-I did not agree to call anywhere. I am here to be called upon. (Applause.) [I will be in] this city to-morrow, and after that I shall be at my resi- dence in Worcester, Mass. I shall be happy to be called upon by any of those gentlemen who are ready to go forward and distribute the Bibles. I do not want to be referred to some impossible shadow at 61 John street, merely for the sake of doing away with the effect of my proposition. Does the gentleman say that he is the man who will take the Bibles to the South?

STRANGER.-If you will give me your address, you will be called upon to-morrow.

MR. FOSTER.-My address is the Anti-Slavery meet- ing to-morrow, and after that Stephen S. Foster, Worcester, Mass. (Applause.) Since the gentleman has taken the liberty to ask me my address, of course he will return the favour by giving me and this audience his own address. I want this audience to know who it is

4. Parker Pillsbury (1809-98), an abolitionist orator and writer. s. Address of offices shared by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and its offshoot, the American Missionary Association.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS Too Much Religion, Too Little Humanity 165

that backs out of their position, the Old Organization or the New.

STRANGER.--My name is James S. Warren, 9 Univer- sity Place.

MR. FOSTER.--Mr. James S. Warren may call for his Bibles to-morrow.

MR. DOUGLASS.-I shall be pleased to ask the gentle- man a question. Can the gentleman inform' me whether it is the intention of the American and For- eign Anti-Slavery Society to get the consent of the slaveholders before giving the slaves the Bible?

MR. WARREN.-The object of the Society is to dis- tribute the Bible among the slaves whether with or without the consent of the slaveholder.

MR. DOUGLASS.-They do not avow their public dec- larations that they are going to give the Bible with or without the consent of the slaveholders.

MR. FOSTER.-I wish, Mr. Chairman, to call the attention of the reporters to that statement of one of the friends of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, for I want it to go to the world that that Soci- ety, avows it through one of its leading members (for I take it that the gentleman would not have pledged the Society if he were not one of its leading mem- bers), that the Society avows it as its intention to put the Bible into the hands of the slaves with or without the consent of the masters. If the master does not con- sent, of course, the design is to go there with force and arms to do it. I wish this declaration of one of the prominent members of that Society who feels him- self authorized to speak in its behalf, to go forth to the world.

MR. DOUGLASS.-I wish to make a single remark fur- ther about giving the Bible to the slaves. Here are three or four facts connected with the matter which make the thing impossible. In the first place the slavehold- er's consent must be obtained before any Bibles can be given to the slaves, and the slaveholder will never give his consent to let the slave have anything which may open his mind to the wrong of holding him as his property. If his consent is had at all, it is purchased at the expense of the silence of the person giving the

6. Paraphrase of Matthew 7:12.

Bible to his slave, as to its being presented for the pur- pose of opening his mind to the sin of Slavery.

In the next place, if the Bible is given to the slave he cannot read it. So it is absolutely not giving it at all; for you might as well give him a block with no letters upon it as the Bible with letters in it; because he cannot read it. Now if this Society would only ask for money to educate the slaves whether the masters would or not, and some good volunteer like my friend in the distance should go there professing that his object is to educate the slave whether with or without the consent of the slaveholders, I should think the movement, however impracticable, was in the hands of honest and sincere men at any rate. (Applause.) The fact is they cannot give the Bible to the slave. It is idle to make the Bible and Slavery go hand in hand; they are at war with each other, and the slaveholder knows it as well as any man. The moment they begin to read, that moment they begin to be restless in their chains. There are only three or four passages of Scripture that the slaveholder wants them to learn to read, and these he can read to them. They are the passages which relate to servants being obedient &c., which they torture into a sort of sanction of Slavery. These they like to have the slaves know, but as to knowing anything about the Golden Rule, All things whatsoever ye would that others should do unto you do ye also to them," or anything of the doctrine of love to man, they do not want them to know anything about it. The more ignorant he is, the better slave he makes, and hence the most strin- gent laws are enacted throughout the South to prevent the slaves from learning to read.

The cry of infidelity has long been raised against those who stand on the old platform and adhere to the Old Anti-Slavery Organization. While I was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, I had heard Gar- rison denounced as an infidel and I wanted to hear what his infidelity consisted in; and the moment I heard him pour out his soul in behalf of the down- trodden bondsman and utter his voice against the oppressor as if his own wife and children were in chains, I wanted to know nothing further of his religious views; I felt that in his heart was the love of Christ, and that was the Christianity for me. I did not want

166 = Part One THE TIME OF SLAVERY (TO 1865)

to know anything of his abstract faith, for I felt very much as I suppose John the Baptist felt when he received the tidings from Christ, saying: "Go tell John that the deaf hear, the blind see, the poor have the Gospel preached unto them."' Those works testified as to what manner of man he was, as to whence he came,

and what his objects were. When we see men binding up the wounds of those who fall among thieves, admin-

istering to the necessities of the down-trodden, and breaking off the chains of the bondsmen, it is evidence enough that their works are of God, and, whatever may be their abstract notions, Christ himself lives within them; for this was his spirit. He went about doing good to the souls and bodies of men. Whenever the cry of sorrow saluted his ear, there he was to soothe and con- sole the afflicted heart. Among the cries of joy and tri- umph that surrounded him as he marched amid the multitudes, he heard the single voice of the blind man, and when the multitude bid him hold his peace, Christ rebuked them and turning to the poor man, said: "What will thou have me do unto thee?" I believe if he had been on his way to create a world, he would have stopped to attend to the wants of that poor blind man. "I will have mercy and not sacrifice"9 is the great doctrine which distinguishes the Christian religion from the Jewish ceremonial ritual and the current religion of our times. The Christian religion is one of mercy, lifting up the bowed down and disconsolate. 0 for a revival of this religion!

The great difficulty about our Christianity is, we have got certain notions about religion that turn off our attention from humanity altogether. We think that religion is the entertainment of a hope. I know there is a hope in religion. I know there is faith and I know there

is prayer about religion and necessary to it, but God is most glorified when there is peace on earth and good will towards men. It is said that when our Saviour came into the world, the angels sang "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace and good will to men."' It

may be rendered with no violation to the original text, I am told, "The highest glory to God is peace on earth and good will towards men." (Applause.) This is the religion which Christ came to establish; it was to pro- mote peace on earth and good will towards men. The religion of our country seems to have very little of peace on earth and good will towards men in it. Instead of bestowing blessings on the peacemakers, we as a nation confer blessings on war-makers. Instead of blessing those who feed the hungry and clothe the naked,' we confer honour upon men who bury the lash in the quivering flesh of the bondmen, and exalt to the high- est office in the gift of the nation the men who have been most skillful in teaching the nations war, and blowing out the brains of our enemies. (Applause and hisses.)

Now I suppose that those who hiss think that I have stated what is not true, but what is the fact? There is Zachary Taylor in the Presidential Chair. You knew nothing about Taylor, until you heard of his blowing out the brains of the Mexicans. (Applause and hisses.) No minister of the Gospel ever came out and endorsed the Christian character of General Taylor before he suc[ceeded in taking Monterrey].3 No minister of the Gospel ever made him a member of the Home Mis- sionary Society until he heard that he had fought his battles in Mexico. No one thought of saying aught in favour of that man for the Presidency until the Christi- anity of this country learned that he had favoured the importation of blood-hounds from Cuba to hunt down the Florida Indians. (Hisses and applause.)

MR. GARRISON here repeated the reasons why the applause should be controlled, and stated as a further reason, that he had been informed that there was a sick

person near. He hoped the Anti-Slavery friends would control their feelings, and invited those who disap- proved of what had been said to come and take the platform when Mr. Douglass had concluded.

7. Paraphrase of Matthew 11:4-5 or Luke 7:22. 8. Reference to the story of Jesus restoring a blind man's sight, in Mark 10:49-31 and Luke 88:40-41.

9. Matthew 9:13 or Matthew 12:7. 1. Luke 2:14. 2. Reference to Isaiah 58:7 and Matthew 25:35-36. 3. These words are taken from the report on the speech in the North Star on June 1,1849, since they are obliterated in the May 240849

report in The National Anti-Slavery Standard, an edit suggested by The Frederick Douglass Papers (1982), edited by John Blassingame.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS Too Much Religion, Too Little Humanity 167

MR. DOUGLASS. I mentioned yesterday in another place, that the great men of the nation might always be taken as fair examples of the moral sentiment of the people. I have taken Zachary Taylor who I believe is just as good as those who voted for him; I do not think he is in any degree worse at heart than those who had no objections to him as their candidate on moral grounds. I am not at all lowering him that you need come to his defence. In him I see yourselves reflected who have no moral objections to Slavery. You only need a geographical change. You need only to be trans- ported from New York to New Orleans to become as much a slaveholder as General Taylor at Baton Rouge. Sir, if the American pulpit had been what it ought to have been, and what I trust it will yet be, no party in this country could have been found base enough to have brought forward the name of such a candidate for the suffrages of the American people. No!. had the American pulpit uttered its voice in righteous denun- ciation against Slavery and War and kindred crimes, we should never have heard of such a being as a legal- ized cut-throat presiding over the destinies of this nation. (Hisses.)

But I will touch no longer your idol, friends. I will leave him and pass to another who is perhaps less an idol now, because he has not the reins of Government in his hand, and no office to give to those who may be disposed to hiss in his favour. (Laughter.) I allude to Henry Clay. I never was more forcibly struck with the truth of Garrison's remarks, that he never looked upon the slave but as upon a member of his own family, than when I heard the various eulogies showered down upon this man by the North on account of his letter on Emancipation, or rather Expatriation. You are aware of the character of that letter. It sets out with a sort of argument against Slavery, declares that the arguments that are put forth by Calhoun and that class of politi- cians at the South in favour of eternizing Slavery are erroneous, and then goes on to say, granting that the whites are superior to the blacks, that it is the duty of the whites to instruct, improve, and enlighten the blacks. For so much I thank him, but take this out, and the remainder is full of all manner of sin and injustice. With the exception of these few sentiments, it is one of the most skillfully-contrived schemes for oppressing the slave and perpetuating Slavery that I ever read. Mr.

Clay, after having laid down his platform of principles, that the slaves should be enlightened and instructed by the superior classes, goes on to fix a day when the slaves should be emancipated, and that day is set in this wise: All children born of slave parents after the year 186o, shall be free at twenty-five. And how free? Free to stay where they are, and work for a living? No. Free to be expelled, free to be driven away from Ken- tucky and transported to Africa, on the ground that it is their native land. But they are not free even then, for he has another proviso, and it is this: That after having arrived at the age of twenty-five, they shall be hired out under an officer of the State for three years, in order to raise Siso to pay for their own exportation from their homes and their families. Yet the people read this letter and say, 0! how just, how merciful, how humane, how philanthropic is Henry Clay!

There is another point about this letter to which I object strongly; it is this: You are aware that at the age of twenty-eight almost all the slaves have families. Mr. Clay proposes that the slaves having families and chil- dren of three, four, and five years of age shall be snatched from those children and hurried off to Africa, leaving those children parentless, guardianless, with no one to care for them. Those children are to live twenty-five years longer in Slavery, and then to be hired out until they are twenty-eight years of age, and afterward to be hurried out of the country. And yet young men and young women, old men and old women, mothers, sisters, and daughters read the cold-blooded proposition, from which, if it were to be applied to white persons, they would shrink in horror, and they say, how good, how kind, how philanthropic is Mr. Clay. Such is the man in whose pathway they will strew flowers when he comes to the North--a man who boldly proposes to sunder parents from their chil- dren, and compel them to leave the country on pain of being again reduced to Slavery.

In another part of that letter he says that the tri- fling loss that would result from Emancipation may [be] prevented by leaving the rights of the owners undisturbed during the next twenty-five years. What is the meaning of this? It is just this: That Henry Clay would leave the slaveholder, after the year 186o until the year 1885, in full possession of the right to sell slaves from Kentucky into Louisiana or any of the more

168 = Part One THE TIME OF SLAVERY (TO 1865)

southern States. The proposition is not, after all, that they shall emancipate their slaves at the end of twenty- five years, but it allows them twenty-five years in which to watch the New Orleans and Mobile markets, and if they do not see fit to sell them during the course of ten, fifteen or twenty years, just in the last of the twenty- fifth year, when the slave is about to grasp hold of Free- dom, their masters can put them upon the block and sell them to the highest bidder; thus Kentucky will only be getting rid of Slavery to send their slaves to clank their chains on Southern plantations.

Oh, the blinded moral sense of the American people! how lost to all principle! how lost to all sense of justice! We can eulogize the man who with iron heart would revive the horrors of the Slave Trade, under the delusive idea of advancing the cause of Free-

dom. Friends, I have not used the name of General Tay-

lor or Henry Clay because I have any personal pique towards them, or any difference of political opinion with them, or political ends to serve. You have denied me the right of citizenship, you have trampled on my rights as a man. I have no voice in your politics, I only speak as one of the three millions of slaves in your

land. I speak as one of the injured party. I speak in the name of four sisters and one brother who now live, if indeed they live at all, under the burning sun and the biting lash of the slavedriver. I speak in behalf of those whom I have left behind me. How would you speak if you yourselves had relatives and friends in the condi- tion of Slavery? Would you speak soft words of the Church and clergy who could live indifferent to the condition of your sisters and brothers? Think not because I am black that I love not my kindred and friends.

"Fleecy locks and black complexion

Do not alter nature's claims.

Skins may differ, but affection

Dwells in white and black the same"4

My sisters are as dear to me as yours can be to you. My brother lies as near my heart as your brother can lie to yours. My mother, my family, my friends are all as dear to me as yours can possibly be to you. 0! if you could put yourselves in the place of the slave the ques- tion would soon be carried; there would be no differ- ences at all; you would feel that we were your brothers and sisters and Slavery would soon be at an end.

4. Paraphrase of British poet William Cowper's "The Negro's Complaint," written and line is: "Cannot forfeit nature's claim;".

11788 and first published in 1793; Cowper's sec-

KEY DEBATE The Government: Civic Rights and Civic Duties

On the Constitution as a Pro- or Anti-Slavery Document

C. H. CHASE: Letter to Frederick Douglass [1849]

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: Reply to C. H. Chase [1849]

FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND SAMUEL RINGGOLD WARD: Resolved, That the Constitution of the United States, in Letter; Spirit, and

Design, Is Essentially Antislavery [1849]

A 2002 survey conducted by Public Agenda, a nonpar- tisan organization that conducts public opinion research, asked the following question: "Some people say that when the Constitution was originally written over 200 years ago it had virtually no regard for the rights of Afri- can Americans or women. In your opinion, does this mean: that the Constitution is a fundamentally flawed or racist document [or] that the Constitution is a great doc- ument that had some blind spots"? A majority of all races focused on the greatness of the document, but 28 percent of black respondents (versus only 8 percent of white respondents) viewed the Constitution as "funda- mentally flawed or racist."

Since its creation, in 1787, the Constitution has fueled debates about the relationship between the U.S. government and African Americans. Antebellum debates explored the extent to which the three-fifths clause- which added three-fifths of the slave population to the

C. H. CHASE

Letter to Frederick Douglass [1849]

Rochester, January 23, 1849

FREDERICK DOUGLASS-DEAR SIR:

I have called twice at the Star office, for the purpose of conferring with you about our discussion on American slavery, but did not find you. I am very anxious, in view of the good which I think may be done, to have the discussion immediately, and will

population of free people when apportioning represen- tation in Congress and direct taxes-undercut claims that the Constitution affirmed equality of all men. Early in 1849, C. H. Chase invited the abolitionist leader Freder- ick Douglass (p. 38) to debate the merits of the Consti- tution as a pro-slavery document. Douglass declined the invitation, hinting at his conflicted thoughts about the Constitution's position on slavery. Later that year, however, Douglass did agree to debate the issue in New York with the Reverend Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817 ca. 1866), a former slave and leading abolitionist. Ward emphasized the meaning of the words of the Constitu- tion, while Douglass focused on the intent of the writers. At stake was whether the Constitution could be "wield[ed] *] for the abolition of American slavery," to use the words of the white abolitionist Gerrit Smith. Douglass later wrote that this exchange with Ward, on May 11, 1849, was his first formal debate.

cheerfully meet you at any time and place in this city, which you may propose, provided it shall be soon, as business will call me from the city in a few days. The resolution to be discussed, as you doubtless recol- lect, is the one which I presented at the Anti-Slavery Convention recently held in this city, at which time you challenged me to debate it and I accepted the challenge.

"Resolved, That the Constitution of the United States, if strictly construed according to its reading,

is anti-slavery in all of its provisions."

169

206 ,---- Part Two RECONSTRUCTION AND THE NADIR (1865-1909)

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

The Atlanta Exposition Address [1895]

On September 18, 1895, Booker T. Washington gave his famed "Atlanta Compromise" speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. "My Dear Mr Washington," W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in a note to Washington following the speech, "Let me heartily congratulate you upon your phenomenal success at Atlanta-it was a word fitly spoken." Moderate white Americans as well as moderate African Americans saw potential in Washington's tactful rhetoric, which stresses the inescapable interdependence of black and white southerners and emphasizes that mutual goals (such as economic development) are obtainable through strate- gic compromise. Others were less enthusiastic, such as AME bishop Henry McNeal Turner (p. 209), who expressed concern over Washington's concessions on segregation and equal rights. Despite those dissenting voices, the speech launched Washington into the role of

a national leader and "spokesperson" for African Ameri-

cans, a role that Frederick Douglass had played until his

death earlier that year. Dubbed both the Great Educator and the Wizard of Tuskegee, Washington served as the

most powerful black leader in America for over a decade.

With the backing of politicians, northern philanthropists, and southern business leaders, he created a powerful system of patronage, serving as the gatekeeper of resources for black organizations. He used his eco- nomic and political clout to advance his vision of eco- nomic development (supported by thrift and industrial education) as the best route to racial advancement.

Washington was born into slavery in 1856. While studying at Virginia's Hampton Institute after the Civil War, he became a protégé of the white American edu- cator Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the founder and head

of the school and a strong advocate of agricultural and industrial education. Drawing on the Hampton model of vocational schooling, Washington founded the Tuske- gee Institute in 1881. His autobiography, Up from Slav-

ery (1901), in which he included the complete text of his

1895 Atlanta Exposition address, uses his own rise from poverty as a prime example of the efficacy of self-help, economic development, industrial education, and the importance of remaining in the South.

From Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1907), pp. 217-25.

The Atlanta Exposition, at which I had been asked to make an address as a representative of the

Negro race [. .1 was opened with a short address from

Governor Bullock. After other interesting exercises, including an invocation from Bishop Nelson, of Geor- gia, a dedicatory ode by Albert Howell, Jr., and addresses by the President of the Exposition and Mrs. Joseph Thompson, the President of the Woman's Board, Governor Bullock introduced me with the words, "We have with us to-day a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization."

When I arose to speak, there was considerable cheering, especially from the coloured people. As I remember it now, the thing that was uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement the friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between them. So far as my out-

ward surroundings were concerned, the only thing that I recall distinctly now is that when I got up, I saw thousands of eyes looking intently into my face. The following is the address which I delivered:-

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board

of Directors and Citizens

One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest suc- cess. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Direc- tors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON The Atlanta Exposition Address 207

Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recog- nition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.

Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate ves- sel was seen a signal, "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; send us water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a for- eign land or who underestimate the importance of cul- tivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbour, I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are"-cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in com- merce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and

put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportu- nities.

To those of the white race who look to the incom- ing of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, "Cast down your bucket where you are." Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fire- sides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blos- som the waste places in your fields, and run your facto- ries. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be sur- rounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your moth- ers and fathers, and often following them with tear- dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

There is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all. If

208 Part Two RECONSTRUCTION AND THE NADIR (1865 -1909)

anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the full- est growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed-"blessing him that gives and him that takes."

is no escape through law of man or God from

the inevitable:

The laws of changeless justice bind Oppressor with oppressed;

And close as sin and suffering joined We march to fate abreast.2

Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one- third its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance

the body politic. Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to

you our humble effort at an exhibition of our prog- ress, you must not expect overmuch. Starting thirty years ago with ownership here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember the path that has led from these to the inventions and production of agricultural implements, buggies, steam-engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings, the management of drug-stores and banks has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment for- get that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has

come to our educational life, not only from the South-

ern states, but especially from Northern philanthro- pists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of

blessing and encouragement. The wisest among my race understand that the

agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privi- leges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is impor- tant and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but

it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house.

In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more hope and encouragement, and drawn us so near to you of the white race, as this opportunity offered by the Exposition; and here bend- ing, as it were, over the altar that represents the results

of the struggles of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only let this be constantly in mind, that, while from representations in these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, let- ters, and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspi- cions, in a determination to administer absolute jus- tice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, this, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.

1. Reference to Portia's ruling in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice [4.1.184-871:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

z. From John Greenleaf Whittier's At Port Royal" (1862).

HENRY MCNEAL TURNER Response to the Atlanta Exposition Address = 209

HENRY MCNEAL TURNER

Response to the Atlanta Exposition Address [1895]

While moderate black and white Americans praised Washington's address at the 1895 Atlanta Exposition, later known as the "Atlanta Compromise" speech, other leaders and writers harshly criticized it. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, in his 1895 response to the Atlanta Exposition address, published in the newspaper he founded, The Voice of Missions, expressed his convic- tion that Washington "will have to live a long time to undo the harm he has done our race." Turner reveals the strong reservations some black leaders had about both the speech and Washington's subsequent propulsion into a position of national leadership.

Like Booker T. Washington and Ida B. Wells, Turner was positioned for potential national leadership follow- ing the death of Frederick Douglass in 1895 (the year of Washington's address and Turner's response). Like Wells, however, Turner failed to achieve that level of national recognition, in part because he promoted ideas that were out of sync with prevailing opinion. In particular, Turner committed himself to the unpopular position that African colonization was the best route by which to obtain dignity and "manhood." His theological beliefs and actions also made him controversial as a church leader. Not only did he ordain Sarah Ann Hughes as the first woman deacon of the AME church (a move he later felt pressured to rescind), but he also became known for preaching that "we have as much right bibli- cally and otherwise to believe that God is a Negroe, as

From The Voice of Missions, October 1895.

you buckra or white people have to believe that God is a fine looking, symmetrical and ornamented white man."

Turner was born free in 1834 near Abbeville, South Carolina. His father died when he was a child, and the young boy worked in the cotton fields alongside black slaves to help support his family. When he was in his teens, Turner found work as a janitor in a law firm. Some of the lawyers there recognized his ability and helped him obtain a basic education, even though it was then illegal in South Carolina to teach African Americans to read and write. As a young man, Turner moved to Balti- more, where he continued his education, pursuing his interests in grammar, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, and theology. He went on to hold a range of leadership positions, becoming the first African American army chaplain (appointed by President Lincoln to the First Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops), a representative in the Georgia state legislature during Reconstruction, the twelfth bishop of the AME church, and chancellor of Morris Brown College in Atlanta. Turner's obituary in the July 1915 issue of The Crisis recognized the difficulties he faced as a southerner struggling to overcome the deprivations of poverty and working to rise to a position of national prominence: "Turner was the last of his clan: mighty men, physically and mentally, men who started at the bottom and hammered their way to the top by sheer brute strength, they were the spiritual progeny of African chieftains."

rof. Booker T. Washington, president of the State r Normal College at Tuskegee, Ala., whose clear, forcible, eloquent, and terse speech before an immense throng of white and colored people at the opening of the great exposition will be found in another column of this issue. Few men could have been more happy in the points raised, and in the manner of their disposi- tion. The circumstances surrounding the occasion required the brightest aspects in the sphere of possi- bility, and thus no reference was made to the lynchings

and enactments of cruel and revolting laws against our race in this country. And as the great professor adjudged it prudent and discreet to pass by those phases of our barbarous civilization, as well as the efforts being made to disfranchise the Negro in some of the states, we only wish he had deemed it impolitic to say: "The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly." For if the professor means by the term "my race," the colored race of this country, some of

282 Part Three THE GREAT MIGRATION AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE (1910-1929)

But, after all, we are living in a material world, even though it is partly spiritual, and since we have been very spiritual in the past, we are going to take a part of the material now, and will give others the opportunity to practice the spiritual side of life. There- fore, I am not telling you to lead in humanity; I am not telling you to lead in the bringing about of the turning of humanity, because you have been doing that for three hundred years, and you have lost. But the com- promise must come from the domina[n]t races. We are warning them. We are not preaching a doctrine of hatred, and I trust you will not go back to your respec- tive homes and preach such a doctrine. We are preach- ing, rather, a doctrine of humanity, a doctrine of human love. But we say love begins at home; "charity begins at home."'

We are aggrieved because of this partitioning of Africa, because it seeks to deprive Negroes of the chance of higher national development; no chance, no opportunity, is given us to prove our fitness to govern, to dominate in our own behalf. They impute so many bad things against Haiti and against Liberia, that they themselves circumvented Liberia so as to make it impossible for us to demonstrate our ability for self- government. Why not be honest? Why not be straight- forward[?] Having desired the highest development, as they avowed and professed, of the Negro, why not give him a fair chance, an opportunity to prove his capacity for governing? What better opportunity ever presented itself than the present, when the territories of Germany in Africa were wrested from her control by the Allies in the last war-what better chance ever offered itself for trying out the higher ability of Negroes to govern themselves than to have given those territories to the civilized Negroes, and thus give them a trial to exercise themselves in a proper system of government? Because of their desire to keep us down, because of their desire to keep us apart, they refuse us a chance. The chance that they did give us is the chance that we are going to take. (Great applause.) Hence tonight, before I take my

seat, I will move a resolution, and I think it is befitting at this time to pass such a resolution as I will move, so that the League of Nations and the Supreme Council of the Nations; will understand that Negroes are not asleep; that Negroes are not false to themselves; that Negroes are wide awake, and that Negroes intend to take a serious part in the future government of this world; that God Almighty created him and placed him in it. This world owes us a place, and we are going to occupy that place.

We have a right to a large part in the political hori- zon, and I say to you that we are preparing to occupy that spot.

Go back to your respective corners of the earth and preach the real doctrine of the Universal Negro Improvement Association-the doctrine of universal emancipation for Negroes, the doctrine of a free and a redeemed Africa!

RESOLUTION

Be It Resolved, That we, the duly elected representa- tives of the Negro peoples of the world, assembled in this Second Annual Convention, do protest against the distribution of the land ofAfrica by the Supreme Coun- cil and the League of Nations among the white nations of the world. Africa, by right of heritage, is the property of the African races, and those at home and those abroad are now sufficiently civilized to conduct the affairs of their own homeland. This convention believes in the right of Europe for the Europeans; Asia for the Asiatics, and Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad. We believe, further, that only a close and unselfish application of this principle will prevent threatening race wars that may cast another gloom over civilization and humanity. At this time humanity everywhere is determined to reach a common standard of nationhood. Hence 400,000,000 Negroes demand a place in the political sun of the world.

2. Translation of Proximus sum egomet mihi [Latin] from Andria Act IV, Scene 1, 12, by Terence (185 13.c.E.-159 B.C.E. ), Roman play- wright. 3. Known commonly as the Supreme Council or the Supreme Council of the Allies, this group was made up of representatives from the Allied Nations of World War I; established in 1917 by British Prime Minister Lloyd George to coordinate allied forces, the group negotiated peace agreements and treaties after the war.

W. E. B. Du Bois Manifesto of the Second Pan-African Congress = 283

W. E. B. Du Bois

Manifesto of the Second Pan-African Congress [1921]

Following the end of World War I, Du Bois renewed his commitment to the development of Pan-Africanism. In conjunction with his trip to Paris in 1919 as an observer at the Paris Peace Conference for the National Associa- tion for the Advancement of Colored People, he orga- nized the First Pan-African Congress, an international conference aimed at increasing the attention paid to problems faced by black people in Africa and around the world. In his historic 1945 report, "The Pan-African Movement," Du Bois recalled: "I went [to Paris] with the idea of calling a Pan-African Congress' and trying to impress upon the members of the Peace Congress meeting at Versailles the importance of Africa in the future world. I was without credentials or influence, but the idea took on." Building on his success, Du Bois organized several more congresses, in 1921, 1923, and 1927. He also served as honorary chair of the Fifth Pan-African Congress, in 1945, which was propelled by the burgeoning African independence movement.

Du Bois's "Manifesto of the Second Pan-African Congress" illustrates the differences between Du Bois's

The Crisis, November 1921, pp. 5-8,

vision of Pan-Africanism and that offered by Marcus Garvey. Key areas of debate centered on who should lead the movement ("the thinking intelligentsia," as Du Bois proposes, or a representative of the black masses, as Garvey argued), the relationship between Pan-Africanism and international groups such as the League of Nations, and especially a vision for the future. A fundamental issue was whether Pan-Africanism should work toward an egalitarian diaspora or a world of auton- omous race-based states. At the time, Du Bois rejected the race-based separatism of Garvey's Back to Africa movement, viewing Pan-Africanism as a strategy for securing civil rights around the world. However, Du Bois's conclusions about the future of Africa-that it might end up divided among and assimilated with sev- eral world states or as an autonomous "great black African state"-reveal that his own ideas about the rela- tionship of Pan-Africanism to separatism and integration were evolving.

The absolute equality of races,-physical, political and social-is the founding stone of world peace

and human advancement. No one denies great differ- ences of gift, capacity and attainment among individu- als of all races, but the voice of science, religion and practical politics is one in denying the God-appointed existence of super-races, or of races naturally and inev- itably and eternally inferior.

That in the vast range of time, one group should in its industrial technique, or social organization, or spiri- tual vision, lag a few hundred years behind another, or forge fitfully ahead, or come to differ decidedly in thought, deed and ideal, is proof of the essential rich- ness and variety of human nature, rather than proof of the co-existence of demigods and apes in human forms. The doctrine of racial equality does not interfere with individual liberty, rather, it fulfills it. And of all the vari- ous criteria by which masses of men have in the past

been prejudged and classified, that of the color of the skin and texture of the hair, is surely the most adventi- tious and idiotic.

It is the duty of the world to assist in every way the advance of the backward and suppressed groups of mankind. The rise of all men is a menace to no one and is the highest human ideal; it is not an altruistic benev- olence, but the one road to world salvation.

For the purpose of raising such peoples to intelli- gence, self-knowledge and self-control, their intelli- gentsia of right ought to be recognized as the natural leaders of their groups.

The insidious and dishonorable propaganda, which, for selfish ends, so distorts and denies facts as to repre- sent the advancement and development of certain races of men as impossible and undesirable, should be met with widespread dissemination of the truth. The experi- ment of making the Negro slave a free citizen in the

2.84 Part Three THE GREAT MIGRATION AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE (1910-1929)

United States is not a failure; the attempts at autono- mous government in Haiti and Liberia are not proofs of the impossibility of self-government among black men; the experience of Spanish America does not prove that mulatto democracy will not eventually succeed there; the aspirations of Egypt and India are not successfully to be met by sneers at the capacity of darker races.

We who resent the attempt to treat civilized men as uncivilized, and who bring in our hearts grievance upon grievance against those who lynch the untried, disfran- chise the intelligent, deny self-government to educated men, and insult the helpless, we complain; but not simply or primarily for ourselves-more especially for the millions of our fellows, blood of our blood, and flesh of our flesh, who have not even what we have-the power to complain against monstrous wrong, the power to see and to know the source of our oppression.

How far the future advance of mankind will depend upon the social contact and physical intermix- ture of the various strains of human blood is unknown, but the demand for the interpenetration of countries and intermingling of blood has come in modern days, from the white race alone, and has been imposed upon brown and black folks mainly by brute force and fraud. On top of this, the resulting people of mixed race have had to endure innuendo, persecution, and insult, and the penetrated countries have been forced into semi- slavery.

If it be proven that absolute world segregation by group, color or historic affinity is best for the future, let the white race leave the dark world and the darker races will gladly leave the white. But the proposition is absurd. This is a world of men, of men whose likenesses far out- weigh their differences; who mutually need each other in labor and thought and dream, but who can success- fully have each other only on terms of equality, justice and mutual respect. They are the real and only peace- makers who work sincerely and peacefully to this end.

The beginning of wisdom in interracial contact is the establishment of political institutions among sup- pressed peoples. The habit of democracy must be made to encircle the earth. Despite the attempt to prove that

its practice is the secret and divine gift of the few, no habit is more natural or more widely spread among primitive people, or more easily capable of development among masses. Local self-government with a mini- mum of help and oversight can be established tomor- row in Asia, in Africa, in America and in the Isles of the Sea.' It will in many instances need general control and guidance, but it will fail only when that guidance seeks ignorantly and consciously its own selfish ends and not the people's liberty and good.

Surely in the loth century of the Prince of Peace, in the millennium of Buddha and Mahmoud,2 and in the mightiest Age of Human Reason, there can be found in the civilized world enough of altruism, learn- ing and benevolence to develop native institutions for the native's good, rather than continue to allow the majority of mankind to be brutalized and enslaved by ignorant and selfish agents of commercial institutions, whose one aim is profit and power for the few.

And this brings us to the crux of the matter: It is the shame of the world that today the relation between the main groups of mankind and their mutual estimate and respect is determined chiefly by the degree in which one can subject the other to its service, enslaving labor, making ignorance compulsory, uprooting ruth- lessly religion and customs, and destroying govern- ment, so that the favored Few may luxuriate in the toil of the tortured Many. Science, Religion and Philan- thropy have thus been made the slaves of world com- merce and industry, and bodies, minds, souls of Fiji and Congo, are judged almost solely by the quotations on the Bourse.'

The day of such world organization is past and whatever excuse be made for it in other ages, the 2 oth century must come to judge men as men and not as material and labor.

The great industrial problem which has hitherto been regarded as the domestic problem of culture lands, must be viewed far more broadly, if it is ever to reach just settlement. Labor and capital in England, France, and America can never solve their problem as long as a similar and vastly greater problem of poverty

i. Pacific Islands. z. Muhammad, prophet of Islam; Prince of Peace: Jesus Christ. 3. A stock exchange, from the name of the French stock exchange in Paris.

W. E. B. Du Bois Manifesto of the Second Pan-African Congress ------- 285

and injustice marks the relations of the whiter and darker peoples. It is shameful, unreligious, unscien- tific and undemocratic that the estimate, which half the peoples of earth put on the other half, depends mainly on their ability to squeeze profit out of them.

If we are coming to recognize that the great mod- ern problem is to correct maladjustment in the distri- bution of wealth, it must be remembered that the basic maladjustment is in the outrageously unjust distribu- tion of world income between the dominant and sup- pressed peoples; in the rape of land and raw material, and monopoly of technique and culture. And in this crime white labor is particeps criminis4 with white capi- tal. Unconsciously and consciously, carelessly and deliberately, the vast power of the white labor vote in modern democracies has been cajoled and flattered into imperialistic schemes to enslave and debauch black, brown and yellow labor, until with fatal retribu- tion, they are themselves today bound and gagged and rendered impotent by the resulting monopoly of the world's raw material in the hands of a dominant, cruel and irresponsible few.

And, too, just as curiously, the educated and cul- tured of the world, the well-born and well-bred, and even the deeply pious and philanthropic, receive their training and comfort and luxury, the ministrations of delicate beauty and sensibility, on condition that they neither inquire into the real source of their income and the methods of distribution or interfere with the legal props which rest on a pitiful human foundation of writhing white and yellow and brown and black bodies.

We claim no perfectness of our own nor do we seek to escape the blame which of right falls on the backward for failure to advance, but noblesse oblige, and we arraign civilization and more especially the colonial powers for deliberate transgressions of our just demands and their own better conscience.

England, with her Pax Britannica,5 her courts of justice, established commerce and a certain apparent recognition of native law and customs, has nevertheless systematically fostered ignorance among the natives,

has enslaved them and is still enslaving some of them, has usually declined even to try to train black and brown men in real self-government, to recognize civi- lized black folks as civilized, or to grant to colored colo- nies those rights of self-government which it freely gives to white men.

Belgium is a nation which has but recently assumed responsibility for her colonies, and has taken some steps to lift them from the worst abuses of the auto- cratic regime; but she has not confirmed to the people the possession of their land and labor, and she shows no disposition to allow the natives any voice in their own government, or to provide for their political future. Her colonial policy is still mainly dominated by the banks and great corporations. But we are glad to learn that the present government is considering a liberal program of reform for the future.

Portugal and Spain have never drawn a legal caste line against persons of culture who happen to be of Negro descent. Portugal has a humane code for the natives and has begun their education in some regions. But, unfortunately, the industrial concessions of Por- tuguese Africa are almost wholly in the hands of for- eigners whom Portugal cannot or will not control, and who are exploiting land and reestablishing the African slave trade.

The United States of America after brutally enslaving millions of black folks suddenly emanci- pated them and began their education; but it acted without system or forethought, throwing the freed men upon the world penniless and landless, educating them without thoroughness and system, and subject- ing them the while to lynching, lawlessness, discrimi- nation, insult and slander, such as human beings have seldom endured and survived. To save their own gov- ernment, they enfranchized the Negro and then when danger passed, allowed hundreds of thousands of edu- cated and civilized black folk to be lawlessly disfran- chised and subjected to a caste system; and, at the same time, in 1776, 1812, 1861, 1897,6 and 1917, they asked and allowed thousands of black men to offer up

4. An accessory to the crime [Latin]. 5. "British Peace" [Latin], term coined for the half-century period starting in 181.5 when the British empire was a dominant power in Europe and around the world. 6. Reference to the Spanish-American War; should be 1898.

286 ------ Part Three THE GREAT MIGRATION AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE (1910-1929)

their lives as a sacrifice to the country which despised and despises them.

France alone of the great colonial powers has sought to place her cultured black citizens on a plane of absolute legal and social equality with her white and given them representation in her highest legislature. In her colonies she has a widespread but still imperfect system of state education. This splendid beginning must be completed by widening the political basis of her native government, by restoring to the indigenes the ownership of the soil, by protecting native labor against the aggression of established capital and by asking no man, black or white, to be a soldier unless the country gives him a voice in his own government.

The independence of Abyssinia, Liberia, Haiti and San Domingo, is absolutely necessary to any sus- tained belief of the black folk in the sincerity and hon- esty of the white. These nations have earned the right to be free, they deserve the recognition of the world: notwithstanding all their faults and mistakes, and the fact that they are behind the most advanced civiliza- tion of the day, nevertheless they compare favorably with the past, and even more recent, history of most European nations, and it shames civilization that the treaty of London practically invited Italy to aggression in Abyssinia, and that free America has unjustly and cruelly seized Haiti, murdered and for a time enslaved her workmen, overthrown her free institutions by force and has so far failed in return to give her a single bit of help, aid or sympathy.'

What do those wish who see these evils of the color line and racial discrimination and who believe in the divine right of suppressed and backward peoples to learn and aspire and be free?

The Negro race through its thinking intelligentsia is demanding:

I-The recognition of civilized men as civilized despite their race or color

II-Local self government for backward groups, deliberately rising as experience and knowl-

edge grow to complete self government under the limitations of a self-governed world

III-Education in self knowledge, in scientific truth and in industrial technique, undivorced from the art of beauty

IV-Freedom in their own religion and social cus- toms, and with the right to be different and non- conformist

V Co-operation with the rest of the world in gov- ernment, industry and art on the basis of Jus- tice, Freedom and Peace

VI-The ancient common ownership of the land and its natural fruits and defence against the unrestrained greed of invested capital

VII The establishment under the League of Nations' of an international institution for the study of Negro problems

VIII The establishment of an international section in the Labor Bureau of the League of Nations, charged with the protection of native labor.

The world must face two eventualities: either the complete assimilation of Africa with two or three of the great world states, with political, civil and social power and privileges absolutely equal for its black and white citizens, or the rise of a great black African state founded in Peace and Good Will, based on popular education, natural art and industry and freedom of trade; autonomous and sovereign in its internal policy, but from its beginning a part of a great society of peo- ples in which it takes its place with others as co-rulers of the world.

In some such words and thoughts as these we seek to express our will and ideal, and the end of our untiring effort. To our aid we call all men of the Earth who love Justice and Mercy. Out of the depths we have cried unto the deaf and dumb masters of the world. Out of the depths we cry to our own sleeping souls.

The answer is written in the stars.

7. The United States' occupation of Haiti lasted from 1915 unti11934. 8. By 1921, the U.S. Congress had rejected the Treaty of Versailles and U.S. participation in the League of Nations.

On Pan -African ism = 287

On Pan Africanism GEORGE S. SCHUYLER:frOM Pan-Africanism: AWaste of Time [1927]

SAMUEL A. HAYNES:frOM Pan-Africanism: A Mighty Force [1927]

GEORGE S. SCHUYLER:frOM Pan-Africanism: A Wild Scheme [1927]

SAMUEL A. HAYNES:from Pan-Africanism: The One and Only Way [1927]

The late 1920s brought new challenges to the Pan- African movement in the United States. While various Pan-African groups were still battling over leadership and philosophy, critics such as George S. Schuyler began questioning the value of Pan-Africanism itself. In contrast to earlier debates that explored the best type of Pan- African movement, the 1927 editorial exchange between Schuyler, an editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, and Samuel Alfred Haynes, a soldier, journalist, and activist from Belize, explores the importance of Pan-Africanism itself. Schuyler does not distinguish between the visions offered

by Du Bois's Pan-African Congress and Marcus Garvey's UNIA movement. His rejection of all Pan-Africanism, remi-

niscent of William Whipper's earlier stand (p. 90), is tied to his belief that there are no substantial differences between African Americans and European Americans, except for skin color. In his July 23, 1927, editorial (reprinted here) he charges that black nationalists are "nothing more than lampblacked Ku Klux Klansmen," echoing the language of his famous 1926 article, "The Negro-Art Hokum" (p. 362), in which he argues that "the Aframerican is merely a lampblacked Anglo-Saxon."

Schuyler regularly published his opinions in his col- umn "Views and Reviews," which was considered a cen- terpiece of the Pittsburgh Courier, a popular black weekly known for championing black capitalism. Schuy- ler was an iconoclastic thinker whose outspoken opin- ions often challenged the positions of both black and white leaders. Throughout his life, Schuyler "constantly fashioned himself an enemy of convention and estab- lished power," as Jeffrey Ferguson writes in The King of Sugar Hill: George S. Schuyler and the Harlem Renais- sance. Born in 1895, he grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. While serving in W.W.I., he began writing the type of satirical pieces for which he became well known. In 1923, he started writing for The Messenger, a socialist newspaper, but he later became a critic of socialism as well as a staunch anti-Communist. In 1928, he married

Josephine Cogdell, a white Texan; their daughter, Philippa,

was a child prodigy and celebrated pianist. In addition to serving as a columnist for the Pitts-

burgh Courier, Schuyler wrote numerous short stories and novels, including Black No More (1931), a satire about American race relations, and Black Empire (1937- 1938), which lampoons Garvey's Back to Africa move- ment. Starting in the McCarthy era, his politics turned sharply to the right. In 1965, he joined the John Birch Society, an ultra-conservative political organization, and began contributing pieces to their magazine American Opinion. His autobiography, Black and Conservative, was published in 1966; Schuyler died eleven years later. His acerbic satire, evident in the Pan-African editorials, earned him the nickname the "Black Mencken", a refer- ence to the famous white American writer H. L. Mencken, who was also his friend and mentor.

Samuel Alfred Haynes's impassioned responses to Schuyler's editorials reveal how the idea of Pan- Africanism remained of central importance to some in the late 1920s, despite the legal woes of Marcus Garvey and the inability of leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois to gain wide support for the movement. Haynes (1899-1971) regularly wrote for The Negro World, the official journal of Garvey's UNIA, which had a worldwide distribution and printed sections in French and Spanish. Haynes first gained prominence as an activist in his native Belize, where he was a leader of the 1919 uprising by World War I veterans who, having fought for Britain, were no longer willing to accept racial discrimination. In the 1920s, Haynes became a leading voice for Garveyism in the United States, sustaining his support even after the movement splintered following Garvey's deportation to Jamaica. At the 1929 UNIA convention in Jamaica, Gar- vey's public vilification of high-level UNIA leaders in the United States and his reorganization of his movement as a rival organization with a new name-"the UNIA, August 1929, of the World"-fueled the further disintegration of

296 -------- Part Three THE GREAT MIGRATION AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE (1910-1929)

W. E. B. Du Bois

Returning Soldiers [1919]

After World War I, W. E. B. Du Bois reasserted his com- mitment to protest with the editorial "Returning Sol- diers." While maintaining that it was "right" for African Americans to participate in the fight to defeat "German race arrogance," Du Bois condemns the United States for failing to live up to the ideals of democracy. His call for soldiers to "return fighting" presaged the Red Sum- mer of 1919, a period marked by over twenty bloody racial conflicts across the United States, many involving recently returned soldiers.

With his post-war writings in The Crisis, Du Bois became a vocal critic of the U.S. military. In his auto-

From The Crisis, May 1919, pp. 13-14.

biography, he wrote that he "was convinced and said that American white officers fought more valiantly against Negroes within our ranks than they did against the Ger- mans," a belief supported by "astonishing documents of systematic slander and attack upon Negroes," which Du Bois collected with plans to publish as "A History of the Negro Race in the World War and After." (He published the first chapter in The Crisis in January 1924, along with calls for a subscription for the book, which was never completed.) The U.S. government responded to Du Bois's

critiques with a short-lived censorship attempt, refusing to permit distribution of The Crisis through the mail.

e are returning from war! THE CRISIS and tens of thousands of black men were drafted into a

great struggle. For bleeding France and what she means and has meant and will mean to us and human- ity and against the threat of German race arrogance, we fought gladly and to the last drop of blood; for America and her highest ideals, we fought in far-off hope; for the dominant southern oligarchy entrenched in Washington, we fought in bitter resignation. For the America that represents and gloats in lynching, dis- franchisement, caste, brutality and devilish insult- for this, in the hateful upturning and mixing of things, we were forced by vindictive fate to fight, also.

But today we return! We return from the slavery of uniform which the world's madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civil garb. We stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.

It lynches. And lynching is barbarism of a degree of con-

temptible nastiness unparalleled in human history. Yet for fifty years we have lynched two Negroes a week, and we have kept this up right through the war.

It disfranchises its own citizens. Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and rob-

bery of the only protection of poor against rich and

black against white. The land that disfranchises its citi- zens and calls itself a democracy lies and knows it lies.

It encourages ignorance. It has never really tried to educate the Negro. A

dominant minority does not want Negroes educated. It wants servants, dogs, whores and monkeys. And when this land allows a reactionary group by its stolen political power to force as many black folk into these categories as it possibly can, it cries in contemptible hypocrisy: "They threaten us with degeneracy; they cannot be educated."

It steals from us. It organizes industry to cheat us. It cheats us out

of our land; it cheats us out of our labor. It confiscates our savings. It reduces our wages. It raises our rent. It steals our profit. It taxes us without representation. It keeps us consistently and universally poor, and then feeds us on charity and derides our poverty.

It insults us. It has organized a nation-wide and latterly a world-

wide propaganda of deliberate and continuous insult and defamation of black blood wherever found. It decrees that it shall not be possible in travel nor residence, work nor play, education nor instruction for a black man to exist without tacit or open acknowledgment of his inferiority to the dirtiest white dog. And it looks upon any attempt to question or even discuss this dogma as arrogance, unwarranted assumption and treason.

THE MESSENGER Following the Advice of the "Old Crowd" Negro 297

This is the country to which we Soldiers of Democracy return. This is the fatherland for which we fought! But it is our fatherland. It was right for us to fight. The faults of our country are our faults. Under similar circumstances, we would fight again. But by the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that that war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer,

more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land.

We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting. Make way for Democracy! We saved it in France,

and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America, or know the reason why.

THE MESSENGER

Following the Advice of the "Old Crowd" Negro and The "New Crowd Negro" Making America Safe for Himself [1919]

Many African Americans became radicalized by their experiences during and immediately after World War I. A fresh sense of possibility fueled by wartime job oppor- tunities and encounters with foreign cultures combined with frustration over the perpetuation of racial discrimi- nation to help spark the growth of the New Negro move- ment. The "New Negro" symbolized the self-confident and assertive African American who sought political, cultural, and social change through political protest and the arts. The term first appeared in The Ohio Democrat on May 20, 1893, but gained widespread popularity as a movement after World War I.

During the war, The Messenger, an African Americanowned socialist newspaper, argued that black soldiers had no business fighting abroad to make the world "safe for democracy" when at home the U.S. gov- ernment did nothing to ensure civil rights or to stop the waves of violence directed at African Americans. For its persistent condemnation of America's involvement in World War I, the newspaper suffered censorship and harassment, with government agents raiding The Mes- senger's Chicago office, revoking its mailing privileges, and arresting its editors, A. Philip Randolph and Chan- dler Owen-although a judge later threw out the charges against them. After the war, the newspaper built on its radical reputation to stake a claim as the voice of the New Negro, a position evident in the second panel of a Sep-

From The Messenger, September 1919.

tember 1919 cartoon, "The 'New Crowd Negro' Making America Safe for Himself." In the first panel of the car- toon, "Following the Advice of the 'Old Crowd' Negro," The Messenger portrayed W. E. B. Du Bois, Kelly Miller, and Tuskegee President Robert Russa Moton with the old, ineffectual leadership that was willing to compromise and accommodate.

The black soldier's flag in the second panel refers to three of the violent race riots of 1919: in Longview, Texas, from July 10 to 13; in Washington, D.C., from July 19 to 23; and in Chicago from July 27 to August 3. By 1919, two decades of large-scale black migration from the South had more than doubled the black population in cit- ies such as Chicago. Post-war shortages of housing and jobs fueled rising racial tensions, which exploded in riots across the country. During the Red Summer of 1919, over

twenty violent clashes took place across the country, all of them initiated by white Americans. In contrast to pre- war clashes, however, African Americans mobilized and fought back in groups. In a letter to The Crisis following the clashes in Washington, a "Southern black woman" rejoiced at the rise in resistance: "The Washington riot gave me a thrill that comes once in a lifetime [* * *] at last

our men had stood up like men. [* *] I stood up alone in

my room [* *] and exclaimed aloud, 'Oh I thank God, thank God.' The pent up horror, grief and humiliation of a life time -half a century-was being stripped from me."

398 Part Four FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (1929-1953)

North, East, and West. But once they have moved out of the South, they can vote freely, with all of the advan- tages that privilege affords.

In the North his vote is solicited; in the South it is rejected, often violently. In the North officeholders are influenced by what he says, thinks and does, but not so in the South. Obviously for political purposes the southern Negro should move North.

Regardless of what the economic situation once may have been in the South for the Negro, the gradual vanishing of "Negro jobs" down there has made the North a better place. There the Negro has a wider vari- ety of jobs and is paid the same wage rate as the white American. Throughout the North, East, and West there are thousands of Negroes in municipal, county, and state jobs. In the South there are few so fortunate.

Where in the South will you find colored motor- men and conductors, police officials, firemen, clerks, and such tax-paid workers? Wherever they are, they are extremely few in number. Outside the South Negroes have become a power in organized labor, battering down barriers to employment and opening doors to promotion. There are Negro unionists in the South- tens of thousands of them-but they lack the power of their Northern brethren. So from an economic view- point the Negro is better off in the North.

Statistics will show that proportionately the North- ern Negroes have more business per capita, a wider variety of businesses, and do more business per retail unit. Their real estate is more valuable. They have supe- rior recreational facilities, better schools and libraries, more parks and playgrounds, less illiteracy, better diet, and better clinics and hospitals.

Bad as some of the slum areas may be in some Northern Negro districts, the housing and sanitation are far superior to that available to Negroes of similar socio-economic status in the South. Culturally there

is simply no comparison between the South and the North. Living in a constant state of uncertainty or terror, hemmed in on all sides by color restrictions, exposed to the vicious propaganda of Negro inferior- ity from infancy, continued residence in the South conditions the native to acceptance of a slavish status from which there is no escape except flight.

In brief, the South is a vast insane asylum, and only the money-grubbing opportunist or the subhu- man intellect would prefer it to the far freer North.

It is true that there is widespread discrimination and segregation in the North, East, and West. But it is equally true that Negroes there have economic, politi- cal, and educational means of fighting it. In the North we have civil rights laws; in the South, Jim Crow laws. That is the measure of the difference between the two regions.

Negroes should leave the South and go North not only because of the concrete advantages of living in a civilized region but because such migration actually helps Southern Negroes. It was the vast migration of Negroes from the South during and after the First World War that shocked the South into building more and better schools. Such migration lessens the propor- tion of Negroes in the Southern population and conse- quently reduces white fears of Negro domination.

The mistake Negroes have made in moving North has been their concentration in just a few places instead of spreading out evenly. It is unfortunate that North- ern Negroes have been so busy organizing fraternities and churches that they have never got around to set- ting up a strong agricultural society for the purpose of putting Negroes on the land, where they could be more the masters of their fate if efficiently directed.

Spread the Negro people more evenly over the nation, and the lot of all Negroes everywhere will be greatly improved in every way, even in the lower South.

KEY DEBATE Separatism versus Integration

W. E. B. Du Bois

On Segregation [1934]

The Great Depression brought an end to the optimism that fueled the Harlem Renaissance. By 1935, eco- nomic and social conditions had deteriorated to such an extent that a riot swept through Harlem, spurred by resentment over disproportionately high unemployment among African Americans, employment discrimination by white business owners, and police brutality. Even before the riot signaled a shift from the Renaissance period, however, leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois were exploring alternatives to the Renaissance focus on the arts as a route to racial equality.

In a series of Crisis editorials on segregation, begin- ning with this one from January 1934, Du Bois revealed a fundamental change in his stance on integration. Distin- guishing between segregation imposed from without and voluntary self-segregation, Du Bois argued for voluntary separation. His position instigated a heated debate with the NAACP's board of directors, which eventually led to his resignation from the board and from his position as editor of The Crisis. At odds with the official NAACP position rejecting segregation in any form, Du Bois viewed self-segregation as a means to an end-a marked contrast to Garveyism (and the subsequent "black pride" nationalism of the 1960s), which viewed the creation of a

"black nation" as a positive end in itself.

The controversy proved all the more divisive because Du Bois had founded The Crisis and served as

From The Crisis, January 1934.

its editor for over twenty years, blurring the line between the journal as the official organ of the NAACP and as a personal platform for his own opinions. In The Autobiog- raphy of W E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (published posthumously in 1968), Du Bois extolled the advantages of the arrangement while recognizing its inherent ten- sion and fragility:

It was perhaps rather unusual that for two decades

the two lines of thinking ran so largely together. If on the other hand The Crisis had not been in a sense a personal organ and the expression of myself, it could not possibly have attained its pop- ularity and effectiveness. It would have been the dry kind of organ that so many societies support for purposes of reference and not for reading. It took on the part of the organization, a great deal of patience and faith to allow me the latitude that they did for so many years; and on the other hand I was enabled to lay down for the NAACP a clear, strong and distinct body of doctrine that could not have been stated by majority vote. It was prob-

ably inevitable that in the end a distinct and clear- cut difference of opinion on majority policies should lead to the dissolution of this interesting partnership.

The thinking colored people of the United States must stop being stampeded by the word segrega-

tion. The opposition to racial segregation is not or should not be any distaste or unwillingness of colored people to work with each other, to cooperate with each other, to live with each other. The opposition to segre- gation is an opposition to discrimination. The experi-

ence in the United States has been that usually when there is racial segregation, there is also racial discrimi- nation.

But the two things do not necessarily go together, and there should never be an opposition to segrega- tion pure and simple unless that segregation does involve discrimination. Not only is there no objection

399

400 Part Four FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (1929 --1953)

to colored people living beside colored people if the surroundings and treatment involve no discrimina- tion, if streets are well lighted, if there is water, sewer- age and police protection, and if anybody of any color who wishes, can live in that neighborhood. The same way in schools, there is no objection to schools attended by colored pupils and taught by colored teachers. On the contrary, colored pupils can by our own contention be as fine human beings as any other sort of children, and we certainly know that there are no teachers better than trained colored teachers. But if the existence of such a school is made reason and cause for giving it worse housing, poorer facilities, poorer equipment and poorer teachers, then we do object, and the objection is not against the color of the pupils' or teachers' skins but against the discrimination.

In the recent endeavor of the United States gov- ernment to redistribute capital so that some of the dis- advantaged groups may get a chance for development, the American Negro should voluntarily and insis- tently demand his share. Groups of communities and farms inhabited by colored folk should be voluntarily formed. In no case should there be any discrimination against white and blacks. But, at the same time, colored people should come forward, should organize and con- duct enterprises, and their only insistence should be that the same provisions be made for the success of their enterprise that is being made for the success of any other enterprise. It must be remembered that in the last quarter of a century, the advance of the colored people has been mainly in the lines where they them- selves, working by and for themselves, have accom- plished the greatest advance.

There is no doubt that numbers of white people, perhaps the majority of Americans, stand ready to take the most distinct advantage of voluntary segregation and cooperation among colored people. Just as soon as they get a group of black folk segregated, they use it as a point of attack and discrimination. Our counter attack should be, therefore, against this discrimination; against the refusal of the South to spend the same amount of money on the black child as on the white child for its education; against the inability of black groups to use public capi- tal; against the monopoly of credit by white groups. But never in the world should our fight be against association with ourselves because by that very token we give up the whole argument that we are worth associating with.

Doubtless, and in the long run, the greatest human development is going to take place under experiences of widest individual contact. Nevertheless, today such individual contact is made difficult and almost impos- sible by petty prejudice, deliberate and almost criminal propaganda and various survivals from prehistoric heathenism. It is impossible, therefore, to wait for the millennium of free and normal intercourse before we unite, to cooperate among themselves in groups oflike- minded people and in groups of people suffering from the same disadvantages and the same hatreds.

It is the class-conscious working man uniting together who will eventually emancipate labor through- out the world. It is the race-conscious black man coop- erating together in his own institutions and movements who will eventually emancipate the colored race, and the great step ahead today is for the American Negro to accomplish his economic emancipation through volun- tary determined cooperative effort.

W. E. B. Du Bois

The N.A.A.C.P. and Race Segregation [1934]

The cover of The Crisis in February 1934 contained this lead headline: "Du Bois: N.A.A.C.P. and Segregation." At three and a half columns, the editorial it heralded was more than twice as long as the January "On Segrega- tion" editorial that touched off Du Bois's fierce debate with the NAACP board over the organization's official stand on segregation (p. 399).

By tracing the NAACP's statements on the sub- ject over time, Du Bois makes the case that his new support of self-segregation is actually in line with the organization's historical position. Du Bois harshly criti- cizes those who hold rigidly to an "anti-segregation" stance regardless of changes in circumstances. At the same time, his conclusion, in which he welcomes a

W. E. B. Du Bois The N.A.A.C.P. and Race Segregation 401

wide-ranging discussion involving "ample and fair representation to all shades of opinion" indicates that at this point, Du Bois believed that the debate would

From The Crisis, February 1934, p. sz.

play itself out through articles in the pages of The Cri- sis, as had happened with other contentious issues in the past.

There is a good deal of misapprehension as to the historic attitude of the National Association for

the Advancement of Colored People and race segrega- tion. As a matter of fact, the Association, while it has from time to time discussed the larger aspects of this matter, has taken no general stand and adopted no general philosophy. Of course its action, and often very effective action, has been in specific cases of seg- regation where the call for a definite stand was clear and decided. For instance, in the preliminary National Negro Convention which met in New York May 31st and June ist, 1909, segregation was only mentioned in a protest against Jim-Crow car laws, and that because of an amendment by William M. Trotter. In the First Annual Report, January 1, 1911, the Association evolved a statement of its purpose, which said that "it seeks to uplift the colored men and women of this country by securing to them the full enjoyment of their rights as citizens, justice in all courts, and equality of opportu- nity everywhere." Later, this general statement was epitomized in the well-known declaration: "It con- ceives its mission to be the completion of the work which the great Emancipator began. It proposes to make a group of ten million Americans free from the lingering shackles of past slavery, physically free from peonage, mentally free from ignorance, politically free from disfranchisement, and socially free from insult." This phrase which I first wrote myself for the Annual Report of 1915 still expresses pregnantly the object of the N. A. A. C. P. and it has my own entire adherence.

It will be noted, however, that here again segrega- tion comes in only by implication. Specifically, it was first spoken of in the Second Report of the Associa- tion, January 1, 1912, when the attempt to destroy the property of Negroes in Kansas City because they had moved into a white section was taken up. This began

our fight on a specific phase of segregation, namely, the attempt to establish a Negro ghetto by force of law. This phase of segregation we fought vigorously for years and often achieved notable victories in the high- est courts of the land.

But it will be noted here that the N. A. A. C. P. expressed no opinion as to whether it might not be a feasible and advisable thing for colored people to establish their own residential sections, or their own towns; and certainly there was nothing expressed or implied that Negroes should not organize for promot- ing their own interests in industry, literature or art. Manifestly, here was opportunity for considerable dif- ference of opinion, but the matter never was thor- oughly threshed out.

The Association moved on to other matters of color discrimination: the "Full Crew" bills' which led to dismissal of so many Negro railway employees; the "Jim-Crow" car laws on railway trains and street cars; the segregation in government departments. In all these matters, the stand of the Association was clear and unequivocal: it held that it was a gross injustice to make special rules which discriminated against the color of employees or patrons.

In the Sixth Annual Report, issued in March, 1916, the seven lines of endeavor of the Association included change of unfair laws, better administration of present laws, justice in the courts, stoppage of public slander, the investigation of facts, the encouragement of distin- guished work by Negroes, and organizations.

Very soon, however, there came up a more com- plex question, and that was the matter of Negro schools. The Association had avoided from the begin- ning any thoroughgoing pronouncement on this mat- ter. In the resolutions of 1909, the conference asked: "Equal educational opportunities for all and in all the

1. Bill requiring employment on each train of a minimum number of brakemen and other union workers, effectively eliminating the jobs of black porter brakemen, who also acted as brakemen but were not officially recognized as brakemen because they were excluded from the all-white unions.

434 ^= Part Four FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (1929-1953)

has become too radical for those who for years have pulled the strings of Negro middle class leadership.

A second problem for Negro leadership to master is that of accurately defining the relation between the increasing innovations in technology and the Negro people's political and economic survival and advance- ment. During the war the mastery of hitherto unavail- able techniques by Negroes is equivalent to the winning of a major military objective: after the war they will be able to give leadership to the working class and that leadership always rests with those workers who are most skilled.

A third major problem, and one that is indispensi- ble to the centralization and direction of power, is that of learning the meaning of the myths and symbols which abound among the Negro masses. For without this knowledge, leadership, no matter how correct its program, will fail. Much in Negro life remains a mys- tery; perhaps the zoot suit conceals profound political meaning; perhaps the symmetrical frenzy of the Lindy- hop4 conceals clues to great potential power-if only Negro leaders would solve this riddle. On this knowl- edge depends the effectiveness of any slogan or tactic. For instance, it is obvious that Negro resentment over their treatment at the hands of their allies is justified. This naturally makes for resistance to our stated war aims, even though these aims are essentially correct; and they will be accepted by the Negro masses only to the extent that they are helped to see the bright star of their own hopes through the fog of their daily experi- ences. The problem is psychological; it will be solved only by a Negro leadership that is aware of the psycho- logical attitudes and incipient forms of action which the black masses reveal in their emotion-charged myths, symbols and war-time folklore. Only through a skillful and wise manipulation of these centers of repressed social energy will Negro resentment, self-

pity and indignation be channelized to cut through temporary issues and become transformed into posi- tive action. This is not to make the problem simply one of words, but to recognize (as does the 0.W.I.5 with its fumbling Negroes and the War pamphlet) that words have their own vital importance.

Negro participation in other groups is valuable only to the extent that it is objectively aggressive and aware of this problem of self-knowledge. For no matter how sincere their intentions, misunderstandings between Negroes and whites are inevitable at this period of our history. And unless these leaders are objective and aggressive they have absolutely no possi- bility of leading the black masses-who are thoroughly experienced with leaders who, in all crucial situations, capitulate to whites-in any direction. Thus instead of participating along with labor and other progressive groups as equals with the adult responsibility of seeing to it that all policies are formulated and coordinated with full consideration of the complexities of the Negro situation, they will have in effect, chosen simply to be subsidized by Labor rather than by Capital.

Finally, the attitudes list above must be watched, whether displayed by individuals or organizations. They take many forms the first two being exploited by those who like the Negro best when he is unthinking or passive. The second will help only Fascism. The third contains the hope of the Negro people and is spreading; but these hopes can be used by the charla- tan and agent provocateur as well as by the true leader. In this time of confusion many wild and aggressive- sounding programs will be expounded by Negroes who, seeking personal power, would lead the people along paths away from any creative action. Thus all programs must be measured coldly against reality. Both leaders and organizations must be measured not by their words, but by their actions.

4. Popular dance style developed during the ffizos and 193os; zoot suit: style of suit from the 193os and 194os, featuring padded shoulders, wide lapels, and wide-legged pegged trousers. 5. Office of War Information.

A. PHILIP RANDOLPH Why Should We March? 435

The March on Washington Movement A. PHILIP RANDOLPH: Why Should We March? [19421

A. PHILIP RANDOLPH: March on Washington Movement Flyer [c.1943]

In the first years of World War II, U.S. federal defense

contracts were almost exclusively awarded to companies that only employed white workers. In 1940, for example, out of 100,000 aircraft workers, only 240 were black. In

1941, A. Philip Randolph (1889 -- 1979), head of the pow-

erful Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, organized a mass march on Washington, D.C., to protest this sys-

ternatic discrimination in wartime employment. Just days before 100,000 protesters were set to march, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, ban- ning discrimination in government hiring.

In the 1942 article in Survey Graphic that is reprinted here, Randolph declares that the 1941 march

on Washington was merely postponed. He situates the ,M.MM...2.=

A. PHILIP RANDOLPH

Why Should We March? [19421

Though I have found no Negroes who want to see the United Nations lose this war, I have found

many who, before the war ends, want to see the stuff-

ing knocked out of white supremacy and of empire over subjeci. peoples. American Negroes, involved as

we are in the general issues of the conflict, are con- fronted not with a choice but with the challenge both

_,....,

to win democracy for ourselves at home and to help

win the war for democracy the world over. There is no escape from the horns of this

dilemma. There ought not to be escape. For if the war for democracy is not won abroad, the fight for democ- racy cannot be won at home. If this war cannot be won for the white peoples, it will not be won for the

darker races. Conversely, if freedom and equality are not

vouchsafed the peoples of color, the war for democ-

march not as an event that ended with Executive Order 8802 but as the beginning of a movement: the March on Washington Movement (MOWM). Declaring the movement "All-Negro and Pro-Negro" (partly as a way to avoid potential control by the Communist Party), Randolph organized a series of mass protests around the country using flyers such as the one reprinted here. Even though the MOWM stopped meeting in 1946, the movement paved the way for the effective use of civil disobedience during the civil rights movement, most notably the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, initiated by Randolph and featuring Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

racy will not be won. Unless this double-barreled the- sis is accepted and applied, the darker races will never wholeheartedly fight for the victory of the United Nations. That is why those familiar with the thinking of the American Negro have sensed his lack of enthu- siasm, whether among the educated or uneducated, rich or poor, professional or nonprofessional, religious or secular, rural or urban, north, south, east, or west.

That is why questions are being raised by Negroes in church, labor union, and fraternal society; in pool-

room, barbershop, schoolroom, hospital, hair-dressing parlor; on college campus, railroad, and bus. One can hear such questions asked as these: What have Negroes

to fight for? What's the difference between Hitler and that "cracker" Talmadge of Georgial? Why has a man got to be Jim Crowed to die for democracy? If you haven't got democracy yourself, how can you carry it

to somebody else? What are the reasons for this state of mind? The

answer is: discrimination, segregation, Jim Crow.

1. Eugene Talmadge (1884-1946) white southern Democrat elected four times as governor of Georgia.

436 Part Four FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (1929-1953)

Witness the navy, the army, the air corps and also gov- ernment services at Washington. In many parts of the South, Negroes in Uncle Sam's uniform are being put upon, mobbed, sometimes even shot down by civilian and military police, and on occasion lynched. Vested political interests in race prejudice are so deeply entrenched that to them winning the war against Hit- ler is secondary to preventing Negroes from winning democracy for themselves. This is worth many divi- sions to Hitler and Hirohito.' While labor, business, and farm are subjected to ceilings and doors and not allowed to carry on as usual, these interests trade in the dangerous business of race hate as usual.

When the defense program began and billions of the taxpayers money were appropriated for guns, ships, tanks and bombs, Negroes presented themselves for work only to be given the cold shoulder. North as well as South, and despite their qualifications, Negroes were denied skilled employment. Not until their wrath and indignation took the form of a proposed protest march on Washington, scheduled for July 1, 1941, did things begin to move in the form of defense jobs for Negroes. The march was postponed by the timely issu- ance ( June zs, 1941) of the famous Executive Order No. 8802 by President Roosevelt. But this order and the President's Committee on Fair Employment Prac- tice, established thereunder, have as yet only scratched the surface by way of eliminating discriminations on account of race or color in war industry. Both manage- ment and labor unions in too many places and in too many ways are still drawing the color line.

It is to meet this situation squarely with direct action that the March on Washington movement launched its present program of protest mass meetings. Twenty thousand were in attendance at Madison Square Garden, June 16; sixteen thousand in the Coliseum in Chicago, June 26; nine thousand in the City Auditorium of St. Louis, August 14. Meetings of such magnitude were unprecedented among Negroes. The vast throngs were drawn from all walks and levels of Negro life- businessmen, teachers, laundry workers, Pullman por-

ters, waiters, and red caps;3 preachers, crapshooters, and social workers; jitterbugs4 and Ph.D.'s. They came and sat in silence, thinking, applauding only when they con- sidered the truth was told, when they felt strongly that something was going to be done about it.

The March on Washington Movement is essentially a movement of the people. It is all Negro and pro-Negro, but not for that reason anti-white or anti-Semitic, or anti-Catholic, or anti-foreign, or anti-labor. Its major weapon is the non-violent demonstration of Negro mass power. Negro leadership has united back of its drive for jobs and justice. "Whether Negroes should march on Washington, and if so, when?" will be the focus of a forthcoming national conference. LFor the plan of a protest march has not been abandoned) Its purpose would be to demonstrate that American Negroes are in deadly earnest and all out for their full rights. No power on earth can cause them today to abandon their fight to wipe out every vestige of second class citizenship and the dual standards that plague them.

A community is democratic only when the hum- blest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess. To trample on these rights of both Negroes and poor whites is such a commonplace in the South that it takes readily to anti-social, anti-labor, anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic propaganda. It was because of laxness in enforcing the Weimar constitu- tions in republican Germany that Nazism made head- way. Oppression of the Negroes in the United States, like suppression of the Jews in Germany, may open the way for a fascist dictatorship.

By fighting for their rights now, American Negroes are helping to make America a moral and spiritual arsenal of democracy. Their fight against the poll tax, against lynch law, segregation, and Jim Crow, their fight for economic, political, and social equality, thus becomes part of the global war for freedom.

From Survey Graphic, November 1942, PP. 488 -89.

z. Emperor ofJapan from 1926 to 1989, also known as Emperor Showa (1901 -89). 3. Baggage handlers in train stations, organized in 1937 as the International Brotherhood of Red Caps. 4. Dancers of the jitterbug, a jazzy and acrobatic swing style. s. German constitution written in 1919 after World War I, making Germany a republic with an elected parliament and universal suffrage.

A. PHILIP RANDOLPH Flyer 437

A. PHILIP RANDOLPH

March on Washington Movement Flyer [c. 1943]

What Are Our Imnicalatc Goal

To .mooslizr t,, Ire crw TAthInt procure

2. Tc sr. tic la.I 0.-Pk in Mly 1943 fot the

,,lebr.fion 13

-WE ARE AMERICANS - TOO' WEEK And to pond,r 42 9u,i;..?r, of tiv,VopIri

end Non-Coop,rdt.r, isrd a Mass Mar', On WOongton.

SE WE MARCH?

15.000 Nuiroes Assembled at Si. Louis, M1550 20,000 Negroes Assembled at Chicaoo. Illinoi 23 500 Negro A.,h,emblea at New York City

Million,: of Negro A1ner;ear'e all Over This Great Land Claim rha Righi to be Free'

FREE FROM WANT' FREE FROM FEAR'

FREE FROM JIM CROW! nr

. wit-0,41°1;T;

A. Philip Randolph Papers, Manuscript Division (8-8), Library of Congress.

576 Part Five THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND BLACK FEMINISM (1954-1979)

wife was beaten by a deputy sheriff, while his brother was beaten, is now being vigorously prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice on a charge which can send him to jail for five years.

The simple and harsh fact, made clear in Albany, and reinforced by events in Americus, Georgia, in Selma and Gadsden, Alabama, in Danville, Virginia, in every town in Mississippi, is that the federal govern- ment abdicated its responsibility in the Black Belt. The Negro citizens of that area were left to the local police. The United States Constitution was left in the hands of Neanderthal creatures who cannot read it, and whose only response to it has been to grunt and swing their clubs.

The responsibility is that of the President of the United States, and no one else. It is his job to enforce the law. And the law is clear. Previously the civil rights move- ment joined in thrusting the responsibility on Con- gress when the President himself, without any new legislation, had the constitutional power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment in the Black Belt.

The immediate necessity is for a permanent fed- eral presence in the Deep South. I am not talking of occupation by troops, except as an ultimate weapon. I am suggesting the creation of a special force of federal agents, stationed throughout the Deep South, and authorized to make immediate on-the-spot arrests of any local official who violates federal law. The action would be preventive, before a crisis has developed, and would snuff out incipient fires before they got going, by swift, efficient action. Such a force would have taken Colonel Al Lingo into custody as he was prepar- ing to use his electric prod sticks on the Freedom Walk- ers crossing the border into Alabama. Such a force would have taken Governor Wallaces to the nearest federal prison the very first time he blocked the entrance of a Negro student into the University of Alabama, and would have arrested SheriffJim Clark as he moved to drag those two SNCC youngsters off the steps of the federal building in Selma.

Many liberals are affronted by such a suggestion; they worry about civil war. My contention is that the white Southerner submits-as do most people-to a clear show of authority; note how Governors Wallace and Barnett gave in at the last moment rather than go to jail. Once Southern police officials realize that the club is in the other hand, that they will be behind bars, that they will have to go through all the legal folderal of getting bond and filing appeal, etc., which thousands of Negroes have had to endure these past few years- things will be different. The national government needs to drive a wedge, as it began to do in the First Reconstruction, between the officialdom and the ordinary white citizen of the South, who is not a rabid brute but a vacillating conformist.

Burke Marshall, head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, has been much disturbed by this suggestion of "a national police force or some other such extreme alternative." If a national police force is extreme, then the United States is already "extremist," because the Federal Bureau of Investiga- tion is just that. It is stationed throughout the country and has the power to arrest anyone who violates fed- eral law. Thus, it arrests those who violate the federal statutes dealing with bank robberies, interstate auto thefts and interstate kidnapping. But it does not arrest those who violate the civil rights laws. I am suggesting an organization of special agents, who will arrest vio- lators of civil rights laws the way the F.B.I. arrests bank robbers.

The continued dependence on nonviolence by the civil rights movement is now at stake. Nonviolent direct action can work in social situations where there are enough apertures through which economic and political and moral pressure can be applied. But it is ineffective in a totally closed society, in those Black Belt towns of the Deep South where Negroes are jailed and beaten and the power structure of the community stands intact.

The late President Kennedy's political style was one of working from crisis to crisis rather than under-

s. In his inaugural speech in 1963, Alabama governor George Wallace (1919-98) declared, "In the name of the, greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segre- gation tomorrow, segregation forever"; one of Wallace's first acts as governor was to fire Alabama Public Safety Director Floyd Mann, who had stopped the beating of Freedom Riders by the Ku Klux Klan, and replace him with Al Lingo, who was known for his segregationist views.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom 577

taking fundamental solutions-like a man who settles one debt by contracting another. This can go on and on, until the day of reckoning. And that day may come, in the civil rights crisis, this summer just before the election.

There is a strong probability that this July and August will constitute another "summer of discon- tent." The expectations among Negroes in the Black Belt have risen to the point where they cannot be qui- eted. CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and the intrepid youngsters of the Student Nonviolent Coordi- nating Committee, are determined to move forward.

With the probability high of intensified activity in the Black Belt this summer, the President will have to decide what to do. He can stand by and watch Negro protests smashed by the local police, with mass fail- ings, beatings, and cruelties of various kinds. Or he can take the kind of firm action suggested above, which would simply establish clearly what the Civil War was fought for a hundred years ago, the suprem- acy of the U.S. Constitution over the entire nation. If he does not act, the Negro community may be

pressed by desperation to move beyond the nonvio- lence which it has maintained so far with amazing self- discipline.

Thus, in a crucial sense, the future of nonviolence as a means for social change rests in the hands of the President of the United States. And the civil rights movement faces the problem of how to convince him of this, both by words and by action. For, if nonviolent direct action seems to batter itself to death against the police power of the Deep South, perhaps its most effec- tive use is against the national government. The idea is to persuade the executive branch to use its far greater resources of nonviolent pressure to break down the walls of totalitarian rule in the Black Belt.

The latest victim of this terrible age of violence which crushed the life from four Negro girls in a church basement in Birmingham, and in this century has taken the lives of over fifty million persons in war-is President John F. Kennedy, killed by an assas- sin's bullet. To President Johnson will fall the unfin- ished job of ending the violence and fear of violence which has been part of the everyday life of the Negro in the Deep South.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom [1966]

In this 1966 article for the popular magazine Ebony, Martin Luther King Jr. (p. 559) responds to the advocacy of violence by militant groups such as the Black Pan- thers by reframing the debate on the use of violence. King's language is strikingly militaristic, but he reverses the traditional association of violence with power: calls for violence are the "posturing of cowards," while non- violence is linked to action. Throughout the essay, he uses words typically associated with war to describe the nonviolent movement. To King, marches, boycott's, and political and economic organization are weapons, and violent "self-defense" distracts from the main fight. Rejecting the use of violence as a way to end violence, King calls for people to have the courage to accept suf- fering as the way to end suffering.

Although King and Malcolm X never directly debated each other, critics often place King's views in opposition to those of Malcolm X. Malcolm X's critiques of King

reinforce the idea that their platforms were oppositional. For example, when asked to comment on King in a 1963

interview, Malcolm X replied bluntly: "I think that any black man who goes among so-called Negroes today who are being brutalized, spit upon in the worst fashion imaginable, and teaches those Negroes to turn the other cheek, to suffer peacefully, or love their enemy is a trai- tor to the Negro. r *1 It is time for the black people in this country to come together and unite and do whatever is necessary to gain the recognition and respect of the world." In 1964, however, after his break with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X sent a number of telegrams to King offering to work with him, albeit on his terms. His three- sentence telegram of June 30, 1964, sent to King in St. Augustine, Florida, says simply:

We have been witnessing with great concern the vicious attacks of the white races against our poor

578 Part Five THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND BLACK FEMINISM (1954-1979)

defenseless people there in St. Augustine. If the federal government will not send troops to your aid, just say the word and we will immediately dispatch

some of our brothers there to organize self defense

units among our people and the Klu Klux Klan [sic]

will then receive a taste of its own medicine. The day of turning the other cheek to those brute beasts

is over.

Malcolm X had also expressed his desire to form a "united front" with King nearly a year earlier. In a July 31, 1963, letter inviting King to express his views at a Black Muslim-led rally in Harlem, Malcolm X proclaimed, "it is a disgrace for Negro leaders not to be able to submerge

From Ebony, October 1966, pp. 27-34.

our 'minor' differences in order to seek a common solu- tion to a common problem posed by a Common Enemy." King did not attend that rally, and consistently declined to debate Malcolm X directly, for, as his secretary, Dora McDonald, wrote in November 1962, King "has always considered his work in a positive action framework rather than engaging in consistent negative debate." Although the two men met face-to-face only once (on March 26, 1964, while King was waiting for a news con- ference at the U.S. Capitol), they came to represent opposite poles of thought on the use of violence in the civil rights movement, a dichotomy that tends to obscure the complexity of their thought on nonviolence and armed self-defense.

The year 1966 brought with it the first public challenge to the philosophy and strategy of non-

violence from within the ranks of the civil rights movement. Resolutions of self-defense and Black Power sounded forth from our friends and brothers. At the same time riots erupted in several major cities. Inevitably a link was made between the two phenom- ena though movement leadership continued to deny any implications of violence in the concept of Black Power.

The nation's press heralded these incidents as an end of the Negro's reliance on nonviolence as a means of achieving freedom. Articles appeared on "The Plot to Get Whitey," and, "Must Negroes Fight Back?" and one had the impression that a serious movement was underway to lead the Negro to freedom through the use of violence.

Indeed, there was much talk of violence. It was the same talk we have heard on the fringes of the nonvio- lent movement for the past ten years. It was the talk of fearful men, saying that they would not join the non- violent movement because they would not remain non-

violent if attacked. Now the climate had shifted so that it was even more popular to talk of violence, but in spite of the talk of violence there emerged no action in this direction. One reporter pointed out in a recent New Yorker article, that the fact that Beckwith, Price, Rainey, and Collie Leroy Wilkins' remain alive is liv- ing testimony to the fact that the Negro remains non- violent. And if this is not enough, a mere check of the statistics of casualties in the recent riots shows that the vast majority of persons killed in riots are Negroes. All the reports of sniping in Los Angeles' expressways did not produce a single casualty. The young demented white student at the University of Texas' has shown what damage a sniper can do when he is serious. In fact, this one young man killed more people in one day than all the Negroes have killed in all the riots in all the cit- ies since the Harlem riots of 1964. This must raise a serious question about the violent intent of the Negro, for certainly there are many ex-GIs within our ghettos, and no small percentage of those recent migrants from the South have demonstrated some proficiency hunt- ing squirrels and rabbits.

s. White southerners linked to the murders of civil rights workers: Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of killing Medgar Evers; Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey and his deputy Cecil Price were tied to the murders of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, and to the subsequent cover-up; Rainey and Price were both indicted for conspiracy, and Price was convicted; Collie Leroy Wilkins was twice tried for the murder of Viola Liuzzo, and ultimately convicted of conspiracy. 2. On August 1, i966, after killing his wife and mother, Charles Whitman (1941-66) went to the University of Texas campus where he shot 27 people, 14 of whom died.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom 579

I can only conclude that the Negro, even in his bitterest moments, is not intent on killing white men ' to be free. This does not mean that the Negro is a saint who abhors violence. Unfortunately, a check of the hospitals in any Negro community on any Saturday night will make you painfully aware of the violence within the Negro community. Hundreds of victims of shooting and cutting lie bleeding in the emergency rooms, but there is seldom if ever a white person who is the victim of Negro hostility.

I have talked with many persons in the ghettos of the North who argue eloquently for the use of violence. But I observed none of them in the mobs that rioted in Chicago. I have heard the street corner preachers in Har- lem and in Chicago's Washington Park, but in spite of the bitterness preached and the hatred espoused, none of them has ever been able to start a riot. So far, only the police through their fears and prejudice have goaded our people to riot. And once the riot starts, only the police or the National Guard have been able to put an end to them. This demonstrates that these violent eruptions are unplanned, uncontrollable temper tantrums brought on by long neglected poverty, humiliation, oppression and exploitation. Violence as a strategy for social change in America is non-existent. All the sound and fury seems but the posturing of cowards whose bold talk produces no action and signifies nothing.3

I am convinced that for practical as well as moral reasons, nonviolence offers the only road to freedom for my people. In violent warfare, one must be pre- pared to face ruthlessly the fact that there will be casu- alties by the thousands. In Viet Nam, the United States has evidently decided that it is willing to slaughter millions, sacrifice some 200,000 men and $20 billion a year to secure the freedom of some 14 million Viet- namese. This is to fight a war on Asian soil, where Asians are in the majority. Anyone leading a violent conflict must be willing to make a similar assessment regarding the possible casualties to a minority popula- tion confronting a well armed, wealthy majority with a fanatical right wing that is capable of exterminating

the entire black population and which would not hesi- tate such an attempt if the survival of white Western materialism were at stake.

Arguments that the American Negro is a part of a world which is two-thirds colored and that there will come a day when the oppressed people of color will rise together to throw off the yoke of white oppression are at least so years away from being relevant. There is

no colored nation, including China, which now shows even the potential of leading a revolution of color in any international proportion. Ghana, Zambia, Tanza- nia and Nigeria are fighting their own battles for sur- vival against poverty, illiteracy, and the subversive influence of neo-colonialism, so that they offer no hope to Angola, Southern Rhodesia, and South Africa, and much less to the American Negro.

The hard cold facts of racial life in the world today indicate that the hope of the people of color in the world may well rest on the American Negro and his ability to reform the structures of racist imperialism from within and thereby turn the technology and wealth of the West to the task of liberating the world from want.

This is no time for romantic illusions about free- dom and empty philosophical debate. This is a time for action. What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program which will bring the Negro into the main stream of American life as quickly as possible. So far,

this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Our record of achievement through nonviolent

action is already remarkable. The dramatic social changes which have been made across the South are unmatched in the annals of history. Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham, and Selma have paved the way for untold progress. Even more remarkable is the fact that this progress occurred with a minimum of human sacrifice and loss of life.

Not a single person has been killed in a nonviolent demonstration. The bombings of the 16th Street Bap- tist Church occurred several months after demonstra- tions stopped. Rev. James Reeb, Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, and Jimmie Lee Jackson4 were all murdered at night

3. Allusion to Macbeth Act s, Scene 5: "it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, /Signifying nothing." 4. While trying to protect his mother from beingbeaten after a march in Marion, Alabama, Jackson (1938-65), a Baptist deacon, was shot by police; Reeb (1927-65), a white American Unitarian minister, died after being beaten by segregationists during the march in

Selma on March 9,1965; Liuzzo, a white civil rights activist from Michigan, was shotby Ku Klux Klan members after the March 25,

1965, march from Selma to Montgomery.

58o Part Five THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND BLACK FEMINISM (1954-1979)

following demonstrations. And fewer people have been killed in ten years of action across the South than were killed in three nights of rioting in Watts.' No similar changes have occurred without infinitely more sufferings, whether it be Gandhi's drive for indepen- dence in India or any African nation's struggle for independence.

THE QUESTION OF SELF-DEFENSE

There are many people who very honestly raise the question of self-defense. This must be placed in per- spective. It goes without saying that people will pro- tect their homes. This is a right guaranteed by the Constitution and respected even in the worst areas of the South. But the mere protection of one's home and person against assault by lawless night riders does not provide any positive approach to the fears and condi- tions which produce violence. There must be some program for establishing law. Our experience in places like Savannah and Macon, Ga. has been that a drive which registers Negroes to vote can do more to pro- vide protection of the law and respect for Negroes by even racist sheriffs than anything we have seen.

In a nonviolent demonstration, self defense must be approached from quite another perspective. One must remember that the cause of the demonstration is some exploitation or form of oppression that has made it necessary for men of courage and good will to dem- onstrate against the evil. For example, a demonstra- tion against the evil of de facto school segregation is based on the awareness that a child's mind is crippled daily by inadequate educational opportunity. The demonstrator agrees that it is better for him to suffer publicly for a short time to end the crippling evil of school desegregation than to have generation after generation of children suffer in ignorance.

In such a demonstration, the point is made that schools are inadequate. This is the evil to which one seeks to point; anything else detracts from that point and interferes with confrontation of the primary evil against which one demonstrates. Of course, no one wants to suffer and be hurt. But it is more important to get at the cause than to be safe. It is better to shed a

little blood from a blow on the head or a rock thrown by an angry mob than to have children by the thou- sands grow up reading at a fifth or sixth grade level.

It is always amusing to me when a Negro man says that he can't demonstrate with us because if someone hit him he would fight back. Here is a man whose chil- dren are being plagued by rats and roaches, whose wife is robbed daily at over-priced ghetto food stores, who himself is working for about two-thirds the pay of a white person doing a similar job and with similar skills, and in spite of all this daily suffering it takes someone spitting on him or calling him a nigger to make him want to fight.

Conditions are such for Negroes in America that all Negroes ought to be fighting aggressively. It is as ridiculous for a Negro to raise the question of self- defense in relation to nonviolence as it is for a soldier on the battlefield to say he is not going to take any risks. He is there because he believes that the freedom of his country is worth the risk of his life. The same is true of the nonviolent demonstrator. He sees the mis- ery of his people so clearly that he volunteers to suffer in their behalf and put an end to their plight.

Furthermore, it is extremely dangerous to organize a movement around self-defense. The line between defensive violence and aggressive or retaliatory vio- lence is a fine line indeed. When violence is tolerated even as a means of self-defense there is grave danger that in the fervor of emotion the main fight will be lost over the question of self-defense.

When my home was bombed in 1955 in Montgom- ery, many men wanted to retaliate, to place an armed guard on my home. But the issue there was not my life, but whether Negroes would achieve first class treat- ment on the city's buses. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors.

I must continue by faith or it is too great a burden to bear and violence, even in self-defense, creates more problems than it solves. Only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where men can live together without fear. Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.

s. During the 6-day uprising in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in August 1965,34 people were killed and over 1,000 injured.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom --------- 581

STRATEGY FOR CHANGE

The American racial revolution has been a revolution to "get in" rather than to overthrow. We want a share in the American economy, the housing market, the educational system and the social opportunities. This goal itself indicates that a social change in America must be nonviolent.

If one is in search of abetter job, it does not help to burn down the factory. If one needs more adequate education, shooting the principal will not help, or if housing is the goal, only building and construction will produce that end. To destroy anything, person or property, can't bring us closer to the goal that we seek.

The nonviolent strategy has been to dramatize the evils of our society in such a way that pressure is brought to bear against those evils by the forces of good will in the community and change is produced.

The student sit-ins of 196o are a classic illustration of this method. Students were denied the right to eat at a lunch counter, so they deliberately sat down to protest their denial. They were arrested, but this made their parents mad and so they began to close their charge accounts. The students continued to sit in; and this further embarrassed the city, scared away many white shoppers and soon produced an economic threat to the business life of the city. Amid this type of pres- sure, it is not hard to get people to agree to change.

So far, we have had the Constitution backing most of the demands for change, and this has made our work easier, since we could be sure that the federal courts would usually back up our demonstrations legally. Now we are approaching areas where the voice of the Consti-

tution is not clear. We have left the realm of constitutional rights and we are entering the area of human rights.

The Constitution assured the right to vote, but there is no such assurance of the right to adequate housing, or the right to an adequate income. And yet, in a nation which has a gross national product of 750 billion dollars a year, it is morally right to insist that every person has a decent house, an adequate educa- tion and enough money to provide basic necessities for one's family. Achievement of these, goals will be a lot more difficult and require much more discipline, under-

standing, organization and sacrifice.

6. French writer (18°2-85).

It so happens that Negroes live in the central city of the major cities of the United States. These cities control the electoral votes of the large states of our nation. This means that though we are only ten per cent of the nation's population, we are located in such a key position geographically-the cities of the North and the Black belts of the South-that we are able to lead a political and moral coalition which can direct the course of the nation. Our position depends upon a lot more than political power, however. It depends upon our ability to marshal moral power as well. As soon as we lose the moral offensive, we are left with only our ten per cent of the power of the nation. This is hardly enough to produce any meaningful changes, even within our own communities, for the lines of power control the economy as well and once the flow of money is cut off, progress ceases.

The past three years have demonstrated the power of a committed, morally sound minority to lead the nation. It was the coalition molded through the Bir- mingham movement which allied the forces of the churches, labor and the academic communities of the nation behind the liberal issues of our time. All of the liberal legislation of the past session of Congress can be credited to this coalition. Even the presence of a vital peace movement and the campus protest against the war in Viet Nam can be traced back to the nonvio- lent action movement led by the Negro. Prior to Bir- mingham, our campuses were still in a state of shock over the McCarthy era and Congress was caught in the perennial dead-lock of Southern Democrats and Mid-Western Republicans. Negroes put the country on the move against the enemies of poverty, slums and

inadequate education.

TECHNIQUES OF THE FUTURE

When Negroes marched, so did the nation. The power of the nonviolent march is indeed a mystery. It is always surprising that a few hundred Negroes marching can produce such a reaction across the nation. When marches are carefully organized around well defined issues, they represent the power which Victor Hugo6 phrased as the most powerful force in the world, "an idea

58z Part Five THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND B ACK FEMINISM (1954-1979)

whose time has come." Marching feet announce that time has come for a given idea. When the idea is a sound one, the cause a just one, and the demonstration a righ- teous one, change will be forthcoming. But if any of these conditions are not present, the power for change is missing also. A thousand people demonstrating, for the right to use heroin would have little effect. By the same token, a group often thousand marching in anger against a police station and cussing out the chief of police will do very little to bring respect, dignity and unbiased law enforcement. Such a demonstration would only produce fear and bring about an addition of forces to the station and more oppressive methods by the police.

Marches must continue in the future, and they must be the kind of marches that bring about the desired result. But the march is not a "one shot" victory-producing method. One march is seldom suc- cessful, and as my good friend Kenneth Clark7 points out in Dark Ghetto, it can serve merely to let off steam and siphon off the energy which is necessary to pro- duce change. However, when marching is seen as a part of a program to dramatize an evil, to mobilize the forces of good will, and to generate pressure and power for change, marches will continue to be effective.

Our experience is that marches must continue over a period of 3o to 45 days to produce any meaning- ful results. They must also be of sufficient size to pro- duce some inconvenience to the forces in power or they go unnoticed. In other words, they must demand the attention of the press, for it is the press which inter- prets the issue to the community at large and thereby sets in motion the machinery for change.

Along with the march as a weapon for change in our nonviolent arsenal must be listed the boycott. Basic to the philosophy of nonviolence is the refusal to coop- erate with evil. 'There is nothing quite so effective as a refusal to cooperate economically with the forces and institutions which perpetuate evil in our communities.

In the past six months simply by refusing to pur- chase products from companies which do not hire Negroes in meaningful numbers and in all job catego- ries, the Ministers of Chicago under SCLC's Operation Breadbasket have increased the income of the Negro community by more than two million dollars annually.

In Atlanta the Negroes' earning power has been increased by more than twenty million dollars annually over the past three years through a carefully disciplined program of selective buying and negotiations by the Negro minister. This is nonviolence at its peak of power, when it cuts into the profit margin of a business in order to bring about a more just distribution of jobs and opportunities for Negro wage earners and consumers.

But again, the boycott must be sustained over a period of several weeks and months to assure results. This means continuous education of the community in order that support can be maintained. People will work together and sacrifice if they understand clearly why and how this sacrifice will bring about change. We can never assume that anyone understands. It is our job to keep people informed and aware.

Our most powerful nonviolent weapon is, as would be expected, also our most demanding, that is organiza- tion. To produce change, people must be organized to work together in units of power. These units might be political, as in the case of voters leagues and political par- ties; they may be economic units such as groups of ten- ants who join forces to form a tenant union or to organize a rent strike; or they may be laboring units of persons who are seeking employment and wage increases.

More and more, the civil rights movement will become engaged in the task of organizing people into permanent groups to protect their own interests and to produce change in their behalf. This is a tedious task which may take years, but the results are more perma- nent and meaningful.

In the future we will be called upon to organize the unemployed, to unionize the businesses within the ghetto, to bring tenants together into collective bar- gaining units and establish cooperatives for purposes of building viable financial institutions within the ghetto that can be controlled by Negroes themselves.

There is no easy way to create a world where men and women can live together, where each has his own job and house and where all children receive as much education as their minds can absorb. But if such a world is created in our lifetime, it will be done in the United States by Negroes and white people of good will. It will be accomplished by persons who have the

7. Psychologist (1914-2005); with his wife, psychologist Mamie Phipps Clark (1917-83), conducted influential experiments using dolls to study children's ideas about race.

HUEY NEWTON AND BOBBY SEALE Black Panther Platform and Program ---------- 583

courage to put an end to suffering by willingly suffer- ing themselves rather than inflict suffering upon oth- ers. It will be done by rejecting the racism, materialism

and violence that has characterized Western civiliza- tion and especially by working toward a world of brotherhood, cooperation, and peace.

HUEY NEWTON AND BOBBY SEALE

October 1966 Black Panther Platform and Program [1966] SMI.M,...MEIM76.

On October 15,1966, Huey P. Newton (1949-1982), a law student, and Bobby Seale (b. 1936), an employee of the city of Oakland, California, drafted a ten-point pro- gram calling for racial equality in employment, housing, education, and civil rights. Their "What We Believe" manifesto became the founding document of a new organization, which they dedicated to enforcing the rights of African Americans "by any means necessary," with the teachings of Malcolm X as its philosophical model. Inspired by the illustration of a panther that served as the emblem of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (a political party founded earlier in 1966 in Lowndes County, Alabama, by Stokely Carmichael) Newton and Seale called their new organization the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (later shortened to the Black Panther party). As Seale recalled in an August 1996 interview for the Cold War series on CNN:

And at another point that day, Huey says, "You know,

I think the nature of a panther is that if you push that

black panther into a corner, he will try to go left to

get out of your way. And if you keep him there, then

he's going to try to go right to get out of your way.

And if you keep oppressing him and pushing him into that corner, sooner or later that panther's going

to come out of that corner to try to wipe out who- ever's oppressing it in the corner."

I says, "Huey, that's just like us, that's just like

black people."

In 1967, when they launched their official newspa- per, The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, they included their "What We Believe" platform in each issue. The following year, they added a separate sec- tion outlining "What We Want," and gave the new doc- ument the title "October 1966 Black Panther Party Platform and Program." The final version, reprinted here,

with the "What We Believe" and "What We Want" sec- tions interleafed, was first published in 1969.

The Black Panthers challenged police brutality by monitoring police activity in predominantly black neigh- borhoods. Members armed themselves for patrols not only with loaded weapons but also with tape recorders and knowledge of the law. Although the Black Panthers later moved toward more revolutionary positions, their philosophy was initially rooted in the idea of armed self- defense as a way of stopping further violence. As Newton is famous for saying, "Sometimes if you want to get rid of

the gun, you have to pick the gun up." During their first year, the Black Panthers became

influenced by Marxist ideas and began organizing com- munity programs, such as free breakfast programs for schoolchildren and free medical clinics. As the Panthers gained popularity and started forming coalitions with other groups to further the goal of "all power to all the people" (in contrast to the black nationalist idea of Black Power, which was stressed by other groups), they became

a target of the FBI, especially its counterintelligence pro- gram, COINTELPRO. J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the FBI, called the Black Panthers "the great- est threat to the internal security of the country" and utilized police harassment, spying, infiltration, and the fostering of internal conflict to destroy the organization.

Further complicating their goal of attaining legitimacy

within the black community, some Panther members engaged in illegal activity; Newton, for example, engaged in violent behavior and abused drugs. Seale left the orga- nization in 1974, and Newton went into self-imposed exile in Cuba in 1974 to avoid being tried for the murder of a seventeen-year-old girl. The organization never regained its momentum, even after Newton's return (and acquittal) in 1977. With internal conflicts exacerbating the external attacks by the government, the Black Panthers had faded in political relevance by the end of the 1970s. In a 1997 interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr. for PBS's Front- line, former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998) linked the rise of random urban violence to the govern- ment's suppression of organized liberation groups like the

600 Part Five THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND BLACK FEMINISM (1954-1979)

"problem" which the black man poses for America or for himself). Putting it simply, the average white teacher is ignorant about black people and does not even know where to turn for reliable information about such basic matters as the meanings of slang used by blacks, the traditional jokes, and the popular stereo- types of heroes and villains. This individual will teach Afro-American literature ineptly until he learns what he needs to know.

A second failing of the well-intentioned teacher is that, subconsciously, he may be a racist. That is, sub- consciously, he may believe that black people actually are innately inferior or that historically they have been made inferior by society. This attitude may cause him to bungle the course in either of two different ways. One, believing that a black writer cannot produce lit- erary work of a quality which would be required of a white writer, the teacher may praise trash because he does not expect anything better from a black writer. Such unconscious patronizing insults black writers. Or, two, a well-meaning humanitarian may become paternalistic. Believing himself securely established in American society and, therefore, superior in judgment to those who are not, he may condemn the philosophy of life which the black author proposes for himself. A teacher has the right to assert that any writer-black or white-has failed to clarify his ideas or has failed to develop them effectively, but only a pompous pater- nalist will insist that he is better qualified than the writer to determine what the writer should have thought about himself, his race, and his relation to other people. I wish that I were exaggerating these fail- ings, but one sees them too frequently in articles cur- rently published about Afro-American literature.

A third well-intentioned teacher who fails is the one who becomes excessively sentimental about the problems which black people experience in a white- oriented society. Such a teacher may wail about the

problems in a frenzy which sickens black students who have learned that tears offer escape not solutions.

These three types of teachers the unprepared, the subconscious racist, the sentimentalist can be pitied for their failure. A fourth cannot be. He is the individual who views Afro-American literature as a vehicle for rapid promotion. He is the "instant expert," striving solely for grants and publications.

A final problem for the white teacher is not directly of his own making. Even if he has prepared conscien- tiously, black students may distrust him because their years of living in America have taught them to distrust white men's attitudes towards black culture. They will be looking for the teacher who makes the mistake, if he selects autobiography, of choosing Manchild in the Prom- ised Land rather than The Autobiography of Malcolm X.' They will be waiting for the teacher who does not under- stand the slang of the black community. In short, they will be looking for the racist or the fool hidden behind a mask. And a lot of valuable course time can be lost while the teacher proves himself to his students.

The white teacher of Afro-American literature must recognize and anticipate these problems and potential failings. But do not let my castigation of white teachers promote false assumptions about the ability of blacks. A black or brown face is not in itself sufficient qualification for teaching Afro-American lit- erature. True, a black man is generally more sensitive to the language, attitudes, and nuances of the black writer: he has the informal, extra-disciplinary knowl- edge of the subject matter of the writers. But he too must study sufficiently to know Afro-American litera- ture in its historical development, and he must be competent to teach literature.

Literature by Afro-Americans is a new, exciting subject matter for curricula. It needs to be taught, but only by teachers-black or white-who do all the homework which is required.

1. 1965 nonfiction book written by Alex Haley (1921-92) based on conversations with Malcolm X in 1964 and 1965; Manchild: 1965 autobiography by Claude Brown (1937-2002) about growing up in Harlem in the 194os and 195os amid drug abuse and gang violence.

KEY DEBATE Religion

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Letter from Birmingham Jail [1963]

Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" engages in two central debates of the era simultane- ously. It is, first, a direct response to an open letter to the Birmingham Post-Herald from eight white Alabama clergymen who criticized the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations, calling them "unwise," "untimely," and "extreme." King (p. 559) not only rejects their assertions but also characterizes the nonviolent civil rights move- ment as a model of Christian action. At the same time,

King uses this letter to suggest that the more important debate of the era is not one between white and black Americans but one between moderate groups (such as King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and radical groups (such as Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam). By privileging this second debate, between black political movements, King positions himself as an ally of the white clergymen and others who favor more moder- ate change over revolutionary change.

Originally published as "The Negro Is Your Brother" in The Atlantic Monthly, August 1963; Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait

(New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 77-100.

April 16, 1963

MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:1

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activi- ties "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such cor- respondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birming- ham, since you have been influenced by the view which

argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Lead- ership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affil- iates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birming- ham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several mem- bers of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth

1. This response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama (Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B. Harmon, the Reverend George M. Murray, the Reverend

Edward V. Ramage and the Reverend Earl Stallings) was composed under somewhat constricting circumstances. Begun on the

margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Negro trusty and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me.Although the text

remains in substance unaltered, I have indulged in the author's prerogative of polishing it for publication. [King's note] [Trusty: a

prisoner regarded by guards as trustworthy and given special privileges.]

6o1

602 Part Five THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND BLACK FEMINISM (1954 -1979)

century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his vil- lage of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.'

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What- ever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider any- where within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the super- ficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro com- munity with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treat- ment in the courts. There have been more unsolved

bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birming- ham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these con- ditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic commu- nity. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants----for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken prom- ise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.

As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to pre- pare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeat- edly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action pro- gram for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public

2. Acts: 16, 8-9: "And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. / And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them." 3. Minister and civil rights activist (b. 1922); one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, along with King, Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and others.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Letter from Birmingham Jail 603

Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor,4 had piled up enough votes to be in the run-off we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run-off so that the demon- strations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postpone- ment. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit- ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Non- violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has con- stantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. just as Socrates' felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevita- bly open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Bir- mingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The

only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Bir- mingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devo- tees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 3,jo years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled

4. White southern Democratic politician and official (1897-1973); photographs of Connorfighting civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, with fire hoses and dogs helped to galvanize the national civil rights movement. s. Greek philosopher (c. 469-369 ec) who developed the Socratic Method of teaching, first described by his student Plato, in which

a teacher asks a series of questions designed to uncover a student's preconceptions and lead to the discovery of new insight. 6. White southern Democratic politician (1904-78) who beat "Bull" Connor to become the mayor of Birmingham in 1963; considered a moderate, Boutwell had served as Lieutenant Governor of Alabama from 1959 to 1963.

604 = Part Five THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND BLACK FEMINISM (1954-1979)

policemen curse, kick and even kill your black broth- ers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an air- tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent soci- ety; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on televi- sion, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitter- ness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it neces- sary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable cor- ners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are har- ried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"-then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over,' and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our will- ingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate con- cern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segrega- tion in the public schools,' at first glance it may seem

rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine9 that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas': An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All seg- regation statutes are unjust because segregation dis- torts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segre- gated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber,2 substitutes an "Iit" relationship for an "Ithou" rela- tionship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich3 has said that sin is sep- aration. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segrega- tion ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numeri- cal or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and

7. Allusion to Psalms 23:5. 8. Brown v. Board of Education. 9. Christian theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo (354-43o) 1. Italian Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, and theologian (1225-74). 1. Austrian-born philosopher (1878-1965) who developed a philosophy of dialogue. 3. German-American Protestant theologian (1886-1965).

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Letter from Birmingham jail 6o5

that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made

legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust

if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some coun- ties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be consid-

ered democratically structured? Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in

its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peace- ful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defy- ing the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hun- gry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "ille- gal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Ger- many at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobey- ing that country's antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disap- pointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stum- bling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler4 or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who con- stantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more conve- nient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunder- standing from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would under- stand that law and order exist for the purpose of estab- lishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present ten- sion in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in

4. Member of the White Citizens Council, a white supremacist group founded in Mississippi in 195.4..

6o6 Part Five THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND BLACK FEMINISM (1954-1979)

the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of rob- bery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophi- cal inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have con- sistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teach- ings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is some- thing in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts, of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work,

time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stag- nation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national pol- icy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppres- sion, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "some- bodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes peril- ously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have abso- lutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, say- ing that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black-nationalist

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Letter from Birmingham Jail 607

ideologies-a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed for- ever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist,' and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Carib- bean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial jus- tice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public, demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides-and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonvio-

lent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satis- faction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you:' Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not

Martin Luther7 an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan': "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . .."1 So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preserva- tion of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were cruci- fied. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can under- stand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some-such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle-have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger-lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters,

5. The mood or spirit of an era [German]. 6. Galatians 6:17; "Love your enemies ...": Matthew 5:44) "Let justice roll down ...": paraphrase of Amos 5:25, "But let judgment run

down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream." 7. Priest and theologian (1483-1546) who broke from the Catholic Church and began the Protestant Reformation. 8. English Christian preacher and writer (1628-88) who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress published in 1678.

9. Lincoln's "House Divided" speech delivered in 1858. 1. The second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

6o8 Part Five THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMEN AND BLACK FEMINISM (1954-1979)

they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Let me take note of my other major disappoint- ment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcom- ing Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegre- gated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must hon- estly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leader- ship of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rab- bis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepre- senting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Bir- mingham with the hope that the white religious lead- ership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disap- pointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegrega- tion decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices

inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white church- men stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevan- cies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and eco- nomic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches com- mit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On swel- tering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impres- sive outlines of her massive religious-education build- ings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of com- placency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful-in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Letter from Birmingham Jail 609

But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and exam- ple they brought an end to such ancient evils as infan- ticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contempo- rary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncer- tain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal-sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dis- missed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia3 and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for free- dom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortu- ous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow minis- ters. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disap- pointment.

z. Reference to Philippians 3:20. 3. Church [Greek].

I hope the church as a whole will meet the chal- lenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at pres- ent misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eter- nal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing vio- lence." I doubt that you would have so warmly com- mended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treat- ment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of -the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil

Part Five THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND BLACK FEMINISM (1954-1979)

system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in pub- lic, as was Chief Pritchettl in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."'

I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungram- matical profundity to one who inquired about her wea- riness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch coun- ters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disin-

MALCOLM X

Letter from Saudi Arabia [19641

herited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formu- lation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Inde- pendence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Chris- tian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

After his split with the Nation of Islam in March 1964, Mal- colm X took a trip through the Middle East and Africa from

April 13 to May 21, making a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi

Arabia on April 19. The journey had a pi-ofound effect

on his views about race and Islam. He repudiated his for- mer belief in racial separatism (which was promoted by the Nation of Islam) in favor of a multiracial "brotherhood," as heralded by orthodox Islam. In a speech delivered on

4. White southern police chief (1926 -2000) who used nonviolence and mass arrests to quell the civil rights campaign in Albany, Geor- gia, in 1961 and 1962, known as the Albany Movement; his quiet methods attracted little media coverage, boosting their effectiveness. 5. From Eliot's verse drama Murder in the Cathedral (1935).

MALcoLm X Letter from Saudi Arabia = 6n

May 23, 1964, immediately following his return, Malcolm X

proclaimed, "In the past, I have permitted myself to be used to make sweeping indictments of all white people, and these generalizations have caused injuries to some white people who did not deserve them. Because of the spiritual rebirth which I was blessed to undergo as a

result of my pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca, I no longer subscribe to sweeping indictments of one race."

The letter reprinted here, written in Saudi Arabia on April 20, 1964, conveys the powerful shift in his beliefs from race separatism to traditional Islam as an answer to

America's "race problem."

From George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York: Grove Press, 1965), pp. 59-60.

Jedda, Saudi Arabia April 2o,1964

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient holy land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad and all the other prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week I have been utterly speechless and spell- bound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors.

Last night, April 19, I was blessed to visit the Holy City of Mecca, and complete the "Omra" part of my pilgrimage. Allah willing, I shall leave for Mina tomor- row, April 21, and be back in Mecca to say my prayers from Mt. Arafat on Tuesday, April 22. Mina is about twenty miles from Mecca.

Last night I made my seven circuits around the Kaaba, led by a young Mutawif named Muhammad. I drank water from the well of Zem Zem, and then ran back and forth seven times between the hills of Mt. Al-Safa and Al-Marwah.

There were tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans, but were all partici- pating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe could never exist between the white and non-white.

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases the race problem from its society. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with, people who would have been considered "white" in America, but the religion of Islam in their hearts has removed the "white" from their minds. They practice sincere and

true brotherhood with other people irrespective of their color.

Before America allows herself to be destroyed by the "cancer of racism" she should become better acquainted with the religious philosophy of Islam, a religion that has already molded people of all colors into one vast family, a nation or brotherhood of Islam that leaps over all "obstacles" and stretches itself into almost all the Eastern countries of this earth.

The whites as well as the non-whites who accept true Islam become a changed people. I have eaten from the same plate with people whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white-all the way from Cairo to Jedda and even in the Holy City of Mecca itself-and I felt the same sincerity in the words and deeds of these "white" Muslims that I felt among the African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana.

True Islam removes racism, because people of all colors and races who accept its religious principles and bow down to the one God, Allah, also automatically accept each other as brothers and sisters, regardless of differences in complexion.

You may be shocked by these words coming from me, but I have always been a man who tries to face facts,

and to accept the reality of life as new experiences and knowledge unfold it. The experiences of this pilgrimage have taught me much, and each hour here in the Holy Land opens my eyes even more. If Islam can place the spirit of true brotherhood in the hearts of the "whites" whom I have met here in the Land of the Prophets, then surely it can also remove the "cancer of racism" from the heart of the white American, and perhaps in time to save America from imminent racial disaster, the same destruction brought upon Hitler by his racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves. [* -*]

874 Part Six THE CONTEMPORARY ERA (1980 TO THE PRESENT)

may not be Black, but with whom I have a lot in common. Some of the issues I have are definitely Black Issues. Some are Issues Concerning People of Color.

It's all about using language in a more precise way. And as these recent posts illustrate, I'm all

BARACIC OBAMA

A More Perfect Union [2008]

In March 2008, during the presidential primaries, ABC News broadcast video clips from several sermons by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who had been Barack Obama's pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Other media outlets, as well as a variety of websites, quickly picked up the excerpts, and Obama's connection to Wright became a major challenge for his campaign, especially after Wright made a series of con- troversial media appearances in April.. Many viewers had little experience with black politics or black churches and were shocked by Wright's bitter indictment of dis- crimination in America, which seemed both anti-white and anti-American. Instead of simply condemning Wright's statements or disowning him, Obama took the opportu- nity to address the complexity of race in America. In this

about language at the moment. The words we use are powerful.

From K. T. Bradford, The Angry Black Woman: Race, Politics, Gender, Sexuality, Anger, April zo, 2007, http://theangryblackwornan .wordpress.com/2oo7/04/2o/why-black-and-not-african-american.

historic speech-which evokes speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. (p. 557) and Abraham Lincoln, as well as John F. Kennedy's famous speech on religion in America-Obama stresses the need to recognize the legitimacy of both black anger and white resentment in order to move together as a nation toward "a more per- fect union."

Obama's focus is on coalition politics as the best strategy for change, but he also draws on many of the other key themes in African American debate, including slavery and its effects-building on the debate about race and the U.S. Constitution begun by Frederick Douglass, C. H. Chase, and other nineteenth-century abolitionists (pp. 169-171)-as well as education, reli- gion, the role of government, and race and class.

"Transcript: Barack Obama's A More Perfect Union,'" March i8, 2008, Philadelphia, PA.

"1 A e the people, in order to form a more perfect V V union." Two hundred and twenty-one years ago, in a hall

that still stands across the street, a group of men gath- ered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Phila- delphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stale-

mate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution-a Con- stitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citi- zenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive genera- tions who were willing to do their part-through pro-

BARACK OBAMA A More Perfect Union 875

tests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk-to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the begin- ning of this campaign-to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosper-

ous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this

moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together--unless we perfect our union by under- standing that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction towards a bet-

ter future for our children and our grandchildren. This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the

decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assem- bly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am mar- ried to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners-an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers,

sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every

race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conven- tional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts-that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest popula- tions in the country. In South Carolina, where the

Confederate flag still flies, we built a powerful coali- tion of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the impli- cation that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary lan-

guage to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be con- sidered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely-just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent fire- storm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a pro- foundly distorted view of this country-a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right

with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stal- wart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the

perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

876 Part Six THE CONTEMPORARY ERA (1980 TO THE PRESENT

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems- two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my pro- fessed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Rever- end Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You- Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commenta- tors, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest uni- versities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the commu- nity by doing God's work here on Earth-by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In rny first book, Dreamsfrom My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the rever-

end's voice up into the rafters.... And in that single note-hope!--I heard some-

thing else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thou- sands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of

dry bones. Those stories-of survival, and free- dom, and hope-became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need

to feel shame about ... memories that all people might study and cherish-and with which we could start to rebuild.

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety-the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of danc- ing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and suc- cesses, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions-the good and the bad-of the com- munity that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother-a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves any- thing in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

BARACK OBAMA A More Perfect Union 877

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro,' in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial

bias. But race is an issue that I believe this nation can-

not afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it

distorts reality. The fact is that the comments that have been made

and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through-a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners,

we will never be able to come together and solve chal- lenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past."' We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the dispari- ties that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools;

we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive

achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination-where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning prop- erty, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments-meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persist in so many of today's urban and rural commu- nities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families--a problem that wel- fare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods-parks for kids to play in, police walk- ing the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement-all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and

opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of dis- crimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way

out of no way for those like me who would come after

them. But for all those who scratched and clawed their

way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were

many who didn't make it-those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations- those young men and increasingly young women who

1. White American politician and attorney (b. 1935) who became the first woman on a major party national ticket when Democratic

presidential nominee Walter Mondale selected her as his vicepresidential running mate in 1984; in 2oo8, during the Democratic

presidential primaries, Ferraro's controversial comments about Obama's candidacy fueled debate about race and gender: "If Obama

was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He hap-

pens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept," she told a reporter.

2. Paraphrase of quote from Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun (1951): "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

878 = Part Six THE CONTEMPORARY ERA (1980 TO THE PRESENT)

we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fun- damental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it dis- tracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condi- tion, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to sim- ply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunder- standing that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle- class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experi- ence is the immigrant experience-as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped over- seas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because

of an injustice that they themselves never commit- ted; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resent- ment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite com- pany. But they have helped shape the political land- scape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discus- sions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterpro- ductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze-a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and spe- cial interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legit- imate concerns-this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stale- mate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy-particularly a candidacy as imper- fect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction-a convic- tion rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people-that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particu-

BARACK OBAMA A More Perfect Union --------- 879

lar grievances-for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs-to the larger aspirations of all Americans-the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means tak- ing full responsibility for own lives-by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with

our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimina- tion in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American-and yes, conservative-notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what

my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's ser- mons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no

progress has been made; as if this country-a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coali-

tion of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and

poor, young and old-is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know-what we have seen-is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope-the audacity to hope-for what we can and must

achieve tomorrow. In the white community, the path to a more perfect

union means acknowledging that what ails the African-

American community does not just exist in the minds

of black people; that the legacy of discrimination-and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past-are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds-by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous genera- tions. It requires all Americans to realize that your

3. See debate on the Simpson murder trial, pp. 961-80.

dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and educa- tion of black and brown and white children will ulti-

mately help all of America prosper. In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more,

and nothing less, than what all the world's great reli- gions demand-that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle-as we did in the OJ triaP-or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina-or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by

a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election,

we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic chil- dren and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of Amer- ica are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

88o Part Six THE CONTEMPORARY ERA (1980 TO THE PRESENT)

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and IIispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like= you might take your job; it's that the corpora- tion you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for president if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority ofAmericans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation-the 'young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particular that I'd like to leave you with today-a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American com- munity since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where every- one went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expen- sive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the rea- son she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different sto- ries and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two hundred and twenty-one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the per- fection begins.

IN THE HEADLINES:

The Million Man March

The Million Man March ------ 881

CORNEL WEST: Why I'm Marching in Washington [1995]

A. LEON HIGGINBOTHAM JR.: Why I Didn't March [I99S]

AFRO.COM WEI3SITE COMMENTATORS: Reactions to the Million Man March [1996]

"We, as students and followers of the Honourable Elijah Muhammad, are calling on all able-bodied Black men to set aside a day, October 16, 1995, for an historic March on Washington to declare to the Government of Amer- ica and the world, that we are ready to take our place as the head of our families and our communities and that we, as Black men, are ready to shoulder the responsi- bility of being the maintainers of our women and chil- dren and the builders of our communities," proclaimed a December 14, 1994, article in The Final Call, the news- paper of the Nation of Islam. From the time of this first announcement, the Million Man March, promoted as "a Holy Day of Atonement, Reconciliation, and Responsi- bility," was a source of heated debate, largely due to controversy surrounding its main organizer, Louis Farra- khan (p. 861). Early debates centered on Farrakhan's religious affiliation with the Nation of Islam, his reputa- tion for anti-Semitism and homophobia, his patriarchal ideology, and the organization of the march itself.

Farrakhan's position as head of the Nation of Islam made his spearheading of the march problematic for religious leaders. (The National Baptist Convention, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and the minis- try of Imam W. Deen Mohammed, one of the largest Muslim groups in America, refused to endorse the march.) Black women, gay leaders, and other oppo- nents stressed Farrakhan's history of divisive statements in their critiques of the march. Furthermore, the struc- ture of the march itself appeared to some to enact Far- rakhan's beliefs: women were requested to remain at home with the children (albeit with a "study guide" out- lining their supporting role) while men marched, and homosexuality was presented as one of the sins requir-

ing atonement. But for many other African Americans, the march

struck a chord. They were inspired by the idea of black men coming together to accept responsibility for their families and communities, to atone for past mistakes,

and to make a commitment to positive change. As more people responded positively and the march grew larger, conversation shifted from Farrakhan's beliefs to the question of whether Farrakhan was still centrally impor- tant. In many people's minds, particularly in the months leading up to the march, the march was larger than any individual. The shift was notable in changes of opinion among prominent leaders. For example, Jesse Jackson, who had been criticized both for discussing the march with Jewish leaders early on and for his subsequent decision not to participate, changed his mind and decided to play an active role in the event. Still, some remained concerned that participation might be viewed as tacit support of Farrakhan's views and of his position as a leader of African Americans. The two op-ed pieces reprinted here-"Why I'm Marching on Washington" by the philosophy professor Cornel West (b. 1953) and "Why I Didn't March" by the federal appellate judge and legal scholar A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. (1928- 1998)- reveal the complexity of opinions regarding the march and Farrakhan's role as leader.

Commentary after the march--including the com- ments reprinted here, which were posted on Afro.com, the website of the Afro-American newspaper chain- continued to focus on how issues of sexism, homopho- bia, and anti-Semitism affected the march. There was also an outpouring of tremendously positive statements about the experience from those who marched. A com- mon theme among participants was the feeling of sup- port and inclusion, which inverted the central theme of critics who felt they had not been fully welcomed by the group. The website comments underscore the impor- tance of the march as a cultural event and the diversity of opinions about its meaning and legacy. In addition, the range of voices demonstrates how the Internet has pro- pelled the development of debate in the contemporary era by allowing any computer user to publish his or her

views in an open forum.