The American Conversation on Race:

The 1850s to the 1930s

Excerpts from the Essays and Speeches of
Frederick Douglass

"We have not as yet secured for ourselves a character--reputation. We are but the immediate descendants of those who have been reared under all manner of depressing influences, in ignorance, in an ignorant section of the country, and Southern plantations; we have not had a fair trial; our position has been a stooping one. We are beginning to feel the necessity of standing erect."

 

"Convention of Colored Citizens," The North Star, April 10, 1851

We claim no affinity with Africa. This is our home. We have beheld no other sun save that piercing the clouds that tip our noble Alleghanies--which glistens on our own rolling Hudson, and gives vegetation and life to the green fields, where our fathers lie--"The land of our forefathers."

What more this to us than to all other Americans? Go ye "home to the places your fathers voluntarily left;our forefathers were forced there; their sons will not be forced away."Further, we do not trace our ancestry to Africa alone. We trace it to Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen; to Frenchmen; to the German; to the Asiatic as well as to Africa. "The best blood of Virginia courses through our veins." We sympathize deeply with poor benighted Africa. We wish her disenthralment from the deep superstition and idolatry in which she is sunk. We would see her regenerated--civilized. "We do not love Caesar less, but Rome more." We have been persecuted. Despite of it--despite of all that has been visited upon us by our fellow countrymen--we "love our country still." We would defend her honor while we mourn our shame. A fair destiny awaits her--a destiny shadowed in the landing of the pilgrim Fathers--our glorious Declaration of Independence--in the present times. We are not to be forced or enticed from our native land.

We have not as yet secured for ourselves a character--reputation. We are but the immediate descendants of those who have been reared under all manner of depressing influences, in ignorance, in an ignorant section of the country, and Southern plantations; we have not had a fair trial; our position has been a stooping one. We are beginning to feel the necessity of standing erect. We have too generally occupied menial positions, which has been urged against us. This must be changed; this is being changed. Our children--the children of those who occupy menial positions--are being educated to a more refined taste. Not however, to discard honorable labor. They will possess all the requisites to success and advancement. They inherit a spirit of endurance, a virtue necessary to success. They are sensitive, which creates perception. They have strength, being the descendants of muscular frames. They are being educated…. They will be respected here socially and politically. Believing this and admiring the principles of our Government; believing that the country is by nature, blest with advantages far beyond those afforded in Africa, or anywhere else, how can anyone expect, even Horace Greeley himself, that the colored man will leave this country?

"The Equality of All Men Before the Law Claimed and Defended," 1865

I look over this country at the present time, and I see Educational Societies, Sanitary Commissions, Freedmen's Associations, and the like, --all very good: but in regard to the colored people there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. (Applause.) The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. Gen. Banks was distressed with solicitude as to what he should do with the negro. Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, "What shall we do with the negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten to the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, --don't disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner-table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot-box, let him alone,--don't disturb him! (Applause.) If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone, --your interference is doing him a positive injury…. Let him fall if he cannot stand alone!

"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."

Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our humble effort at an exhibition of our progress, 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 agricultura limplements, buggies, steam-engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings, the management of drug-stores and banks, has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistlesWhile we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment forget 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 Southern states, but especially from Northern philanthropists, 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 the progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. . . . 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….

I know coloured men who, through the encouragement, help, and advice of Southern white people, have accumulated thousands of dollars worth of property, but who, at the same time, would never think of going to those same persons for advice concerning the casting of their ballots. This, it seems to me, is unwise and unreasonable, and should cease. In saying this I do not mean that the Negro should truckle, or not vote from principle, for the instant he ceases to vote from principle he loses the confidence and respect of the Southern white man even.

NOTE: Washington's discussion in Up From Slavery on "The Secret of Success in Public Speaking" include his own account of this and other speeches and the responses they prompted. He also describes the beginnings of his career as a speaker on issues of race in the chapter entitled "Two Thousand Miles for a Five-Minute Speech."

---

Excerpts from The Souls of Black Folk, 1903,
by W.E.B. Dubois

 

"HEREIN lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line."

...Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.

The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North—her co-partner in guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold.We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy” alone. If worse come to worst, can the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine millions of men?

The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,—a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,—so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,—we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate, -a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds, -so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this, -we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those greatest words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

---

The "Ballad of Booker T."
by Langston Hughes

 

"Sometimes he had/Compromise in his talk-
For a man must crawl/Before he can walk."

Booker T.
Was a practical man.
He said, Till the soil
And learn from the land.
Let down your bucket
Where you are.
Your fate is here
And not afar.
To help yourself
And your fellow man,
Train your head,
Your heart, and your hand.
For smartness alone's
Surely not meet-
If you haven't at the same time
Got something to eat.
Thus at Tuskegee
He built a school
With book-learning there.
And the workman's tool.
He started out
In a simple way-
For yesterday
Was not today.
Sometimes he had
Compromise in his talk-
For a man must crawl
Before he can walk-
And in Alabama in '85
A joker was lucky
To be alive.
But Booker T.
Was nobody's fool;
You may carve a dream
With an humble tool.
The tallest tower
Can tumble down
If it be not rooted
In solid ground,
So, being a far-seeing
Practical man,
He said, Train your head,
Your heart, and your hand.
Your fate is hear
And not afar,
So let down your bucket
Where you are.

NOTE: After reading this poem, be sure to read the first draft and subsequent drafts of "The Ballad of Booker T." at the American Memory Site.

Visit the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Photonegative Collection and search for images of Langston Hughes and you will be rewarded with a wonderful gallery of photographs of Langston alone and in groups with friends and fellow artists. Given the subject of the poem above, you may find it particularly interesting to see item 39002036123264

---

Foreward to the Premier Issue of FIRE!! (1926)
by Wallace Thurmond

 

"Fire, like Mr. Hughes' poetry, was experimental. It was not interested in sociological problems or propaganda. It was purely artistic in intent and conception. Its contributors went to the proletariat rather than to the bourgeois for characters and material. They were interested in people who still retained some individual race qualities and who were not totally white American in every respect save color of skin."

FIRE . . . flaming, burning, searing, and penetrating far beneath the superficial items of the flesh to boil the sluggish blood.

FIRE . . . a cry of conquest in the night, warning those who sleep and revitalizing those who linger in the quiet places dozing.

FIRE . . . melting steel and iron bars, poking livid tongues between stone apertures and burning wooden opposition with a cackling chuckle of contempt.

FIRE . . . weaving vivid, hot designs upon an ebon bordered loom and satisfying pagan thirst for beauty unadorned . . . the flesh is sweet and real . . . the soul an inward flush of fire. . . . Beauty? . . . flesh on fire-on fire in the furnace of life blazing . . . .

"Fy-ah,
Fy-ah, Lawd,
Fy-ah gonna burn ma soul!"

 

NOTE: If you want to browse through the table of contents of FIRE!! A Publication Dedicated to Younger Negro Artists or you can read the whole premier issue.

---

Excerpts from "Enter the New Negro", 1925
by Alain Locke

 

"For the younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology; the new spirit is awake in the masses, and under the very eyes of the professional observers is transforming what has been a perennial problem into the progressive phases of contemporary Negro life."

IN the last decade something beyond the watch and guard of statistics has happened in the life of the American Negro and the three norns who have traditionally presided over the Negro problem have a changeling in their laps. The Sociologist, The Philanthropist, the Race-leader are not unaware of the New Negro but they are at a loss to account for him. He simply cannot be swathed in their formulae. For the younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology; the new spirit is awake in the masses, and under the very eyes of the professional observers is transforming what has been a perennial problem into the progressive phases of contemporary Negro life. Could such a metamorphosis have taken place as suddenly as it has appeared to? The answer is no; not because the New Negro is not here, but because the Old Negro had long become more of a myth than a man.

The Old Negro, we must remember, was a creature of moral debate and historical controversy. His has been a stock figure perpetuated as an historical fiction partly in innocent sentimentalism, partly in deliberate reactionism. The Negro himself has contributed his share to this through a sort of protective social mimicry forced upon him by the adverse circumstances of dependence. So for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being --a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be "kept down," or "in his place," or "helped up," to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden. The thinking Negro even has been induced to share this same general attitude, to focus his attention on controversial issues, to see himself in the distorted perspective of a social problem. His shadow, so to speak, has been more real to him than his personality. Through having had to appeal from the unjust stereotypes of his oppressors and traducers to those of his liberators, friends and benefactors he has subscribed to the traditional positions from which his case has been viewed. Little true social or self-understanding has or could come from such a situation....

Recall how suddenly the Negro spirituals revealed themselves; suppressed for generations under the stereotypes of Wesleyan hymn harmony, secretive, half-ashamed, until the courage of being natural brought them out--and behold, there was folk-music. Similarly the mind of the Negro seems suddenly to have slipped from under the tyranny of social intimidation and to be shaking off the psychology of imitation and implied inferiority. By shedding the old chrysalis of the Negro problem we are achieving something like a spiritual emancipation. Until recently, lacking selfunderstanding, we have been almost as much of a problem to ourselves as we still are to others. But the decade that found us with a problem has left us with only a task. The multitude perhaps feels as yet only a strange relief and a new vague urge, but the thinking few know that in the reaction the vital inner grip of prejudice has been broken.

With this renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life of the Negro community is bound to enter a new dynamic phase, the buoyancy from within compensating for whatever pressure there may be of conditions from without. The migrant masses, shifting from countryside to city, hurdle several generations of experience at a leap, but more important, the same thing happens spiritually in the life-attitudes and self-expression of the Young Negro, in his poetry, his art, his education and his new outlook, with the additional advantage, of course, of the poise and greater certainty of knowing what it is all about. From this comes the promise and warrant of a new leadership. As one of them has discerningly put it:

We have tomorrow
Bright before us
Like a flame.

Yesterday, a night-gone thing
A sun-down name.

And dawn today
Broad arch above the road we came.
We march!

This is what, even more than any "most creditable record of fifty years of freedom," requires that the Negro of today be seen through other than the dusty spectacles of past controversy. The day of "aunties," "uncles" and "mammies" is equally gone. Uncle Tom and Sambo have passed on, and even the "Colonel" and "George" play barnstorm roles from which they escape with relief when the public spotlight is off. The popular melodrama has about played itself out, and it is time to scrap the fictions, garret the bogeys and settle down to a realistic facing of facts.

Note: Be sure to see "Enter the New Negro" as it originally appeared in the premier issue of the The Survey Graphic Harlem Number Vol. VI, No. 6 March, 1925.

Questions for Further Thought

How did the American conversation on race evolve in the time between the Reconstruction era following the Civil War and the "New Negro Movement" (now known as the Harlem Rennaisance) that took place just after WWI?

Did the participants in the American "conversation" on race in the twentieth century echo the voices of their 19th century predecessors or develop new voices, new arguments, and new appeals? How would you explain the way this conversation changed over time?

Some focused questions that may provide a means of constructing answer to the larger questions above:

• What national and international events affected the lives of African-Americans during these years, and how are those changes reflected in these texts?

• Who were these speakers and writers addressing, and why? What ideas did they seem to be communicating? What actions do you think these texts might inspire?

• Did the twentieth-century writers continue to use the same kinds of appeals and arguments that had been employed by Frederick Douglass and his contemporaries? What rhetorical strategies did they employ to address the heads' and hearts' of their audiences? What arguments did they offer, for example, d id they appeal to or argue against conventional American values and beliefs?

• What voices did these writers use, and were those voices consistent with the ideas, arguments, and appeals of the texts?

---

Online Resources for Further Research

 

General Background Materials:

Overview of Harlem Renaissance at Africana.Com

The Harlem Renaissance

Professor John McClymer's Harlem Renaissance Page.

HARLEM RENAISSANCE: An exhibit in San Francisco explores the artistic and cultural legacies of the 1920s and 30s. February 20, 1998: This PBS Online Forum that was organized as a response to the Rhapsodies in Black Exhibit of Harlem Renaissance art offers brief but insightful analyses by scholars of the evolution, significance, and end of the New Negro Movement.

Resources on Specific Historical/Political Issues of the Era

The African-American Odyssey Exhibit: The Booker T. Washington Era and WWI and the Depression

"Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America"

Just the Artifacts: Striving for Justice: An exhibit at the Chicago Public Library on the Unionization of Pullman Porters in the 1920's.

The Progress of a People: An exhibit of materials from the Library of Congress on mob violence and racial issues in the post-Civil War period and early 20th century. It includes a commentary on the problem of lynching, and of the role played by Ida B. Wells in addressing that issue.

Just the Artifacts: Ida B. Wells: An exhibit at the Chicago Public Library on an African-American educator, journalist and reformer who was one of the leaders of the campaign against lynching in America. Another brief profile of Wells and her contributions to reform can be found at Tennessee State University Library's Ida B. Wells Page) A somewhat longer essay can be found on the Ida B. Wells Page of A Celebration of Women Writers at the University of Pennsylvania; the site includes digitized versions of some of Wells' work.(Note: Ida B. Wells is sometimes also listed as Ida B. Wells-Barnett.)

The Trials of the Scottsborough Boys: A collection of resources documenting the events surrounding the prosecution of four African-American young men who were falsely accused of raping two young white women.

Africans, Darkies and Negroes: Black Faces at the Pan American Exposition of 1901, Buffalo, New York
The introduction to this site explains the "descriptions in this title were utilized during the turn of the century to describe members of the African family at various phases in their European experience. They are intended not as an offense but rather to preserve/respect the need for historical accuracy.] The above is the title of an upcoming book that explores the presence and depiction of Africans and African descendants in the Pan American Exposition of 1901. It also examines the African American response to the depiction of African people at the Exposition."

Primary texts on this topic from the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries:

THE AWAKENING OF THE NEGRO by Booker T. Washington, 1896

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, by James Weldon Johnson, 1912

Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro, A Hypermedia Edition of the Survey Graphic Harlem Number, 1925

Reviews of the Harlem Survey Graphic, 1925

Fire!!! A Publication Dedicated to Younger Negro Artists, 1926

"The Equal Rights League," from Crusade for Justice by Ida B. Wells-Barnett--a commentary on a meeting between Marcus Garvey and the author concerning the best means of responding to segregation.

Literature:

Poetry and Prose of the Harlem Renaissance

Role of Crisis Magazine in the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance: Life, Movement, Creativity, Revolution (includes painters)

Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance--a biography courtesy of the Smithsonian

The Harlem Renaissance - English Literature--courtesy of the Mining Co.

A brief description of The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Faces, 1910

Music and Art:

Harlem Renaissance Art

Harlem Renaissance Artists at Arcyclopedia

Le Tumulte Noir: Paul Colin's Jazz Age Portfolio, Smithsonian Exhibit

Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance

Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Literature of the Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance Music Resources

Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy (Exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery)

Bibliographical Resources on Harlem Renaissance Writers:

An Annotated Bibliography of the Rhetoric of the New Negro, by Andy Cline

Resources on African-American Writing After the Harlem Renaissance:

An Exhibit at the Chicago Public Library on The Chicago Renaissance: 1932-1950: A Flowering of Afro-American Culture . The "Chicago Rennaissance" included some of the same figures who participated in what is now called the Harlem Renaissance.

Some Recent Commentaries on the Ongoing Conversation on Race in America:

Black Creativity: On the Cutting Edge, by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"The Black Canon:" by Joyce A. Joyce, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Houston Baker

Return to Menu of Web Resources for Dr. Lucia Knoles