Please respond to the following three questions in 4 complete pages.
• Times New Roman; size 12 font
• 1 inch margins
BWS 151 Midterm Questions
•
"Yes, and the body has memory. The physical carriage hauls more than its
weight.” On the first day of class we discussed this preceding quote by Claudia
Rankin. How are you thinking about this quote differently midway through the
semester? Cite the readings.
•
The first half of the semester, we discussed schooling as the overarching social
and conditioning strategies that function to reproduce the status quo. Given
this, how has the Black body been schooled across time? Cite at least 3
examples from the readings.
•
Before this class, what was your definition of dignity? How are you rethinking the
concept of dignity as it pertains to Black people in this country? In other words,
given what you have learned, how has citizenship been denied to Black people,
and what would a dignified citizenship look like? Cite the readings.
Grading Rubric:
20 points: Answers the question directly and/ or states and explains a thesis. The argument is
clear, coherent and complete, with a structured analysis and clear explanations of analytic points
along the way.
40 points: Thoughtful use of sources (i.e. assigned reading/ viewing/ listening materials, lecture
notes, class discussions). The evidence used to support the analysis is accurate and appropriate
to the point it is illustrating. Inclusion of proper citations when reference specific authors or
source materials.
40 points: Paper is executed with intellectual rigor. References major course themes; Critical
thinking skills demonstrated at a high level. (The best essays demonstrate mastery of class
themes and materials but go beyond them to readings and knowledge gained elsewhere).
LET
NOBODY
TURN US
AROUND
LET
NOBODY
TURN US
AROUND
Voices of Resistance,
Reform, and Renewal
AN AFRICAN AMERICAN ANTHOLOGY
Second Edition
editors
Manning Marable
Leith Mullings
ROWMAN
&
LITTLEFIELD
P U B L I S H E R S,
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Oxford
I N C.
Every reasonable effort to secure permission and acknowledge copyright owners of
material used in this book has been made. Any copyright owners who have not been
properly identified and acknowledged should contact us so that corrections can be made.
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowmanlittlefield.com
Estover Road
Plymouth PL6 7PY
United Kingdom
Copyright © 2009 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Let nobody turn us around : an African American anthology : voices of resistance,
reform, and renewal / Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, editors. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7425-6056-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-7425-6057-4 (pbk. : alk. paper
ISBN 978-0-7425-6545-6 (electronic)
1. African Americans—History—Sources. 2. African Americans—Civil rights—
History—Sources. 3. African Americans—Social conditions—Sources. I. Marable,
Manning, 1950– II. Mullings, Leith.
E184.6.L48 2009
973'.0496073—dc22
2009005113
Printed in the United States of America
∞™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
⬁
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.
CONTENTS
P R E FA C E T O T H E F I R S T E D I T I O N
xiii
P R E FA C E T O T H E S E C O N D E D I T I O N
xvii
INTRODUCTION
SECTION ONE
Resistance, Reform, and Renewal
in the Black Experience
xxi
F O U N D AT I O N S : S L AV E R Y A N D
ABOLITIONISM, 1768–1861
1
1. “On Being Brought from Africa to America”
Equiano,” Phillis Wheatley, 1768
7
2. “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano,” Olaudah Equiano, 1789
9
3. “Thus Doth Ethiopia Stretch Forth Her Hand from
Slavery, to Freedom and Equality,” Prince Hall, 1797
17
4. The Founding of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, Richard Allen, 1816
20
5. David Walker’s “Appeal,” 1829–1830
24
6. The Statement of Nat Turner, 1831
34
7. Slaves Are Prohibited to Read and Write by Law
39
8. “What If I Am a Woman?” Maria W. Stewart, 1833
40
9. A Slave Denied the Rights to Marry, Letter of
Milo Thompson, Slave, 1834
46
10. The Selling of Slaves, Advertisement, 1835
47
11. Solomon Northrup Describes a New Orleans
Slave Auction, 1841
49
vi
C O N T E N T S
SECTION TWO
12. Cinque and the Amistad Revolt, 1841
51
13. “Let Your Motto Be Resistance!”
Henry Highland Garnet, 1843
56
14. “Slavery as It Is,” William Wells Brown, 1847
63
15. “A’n’t I a Woman?” Sojourner Truth, 1851
66
16. “A Plea for Emigration, or, Notes of Canada West”
Mary Ann Shadd Cary, 1852
68
17. A Black Nationalist Manifesto,
Martin R. Delany, 1852
70
18. “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
Frederick Douglass, 1852
84
19. “No Rights That a White Man Is Bound to Respect”:
The Dred Scott Case and Its Aftermath
88
20. “Whenever the Colored Man Is Elevated, It Will
Be by His Own Exertions,” John S. Rock, 1858
107
21. The Spirituals: “Go Down, Moses” and
“Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel”
111
R E C O N S T R U C T I O N A N D R E A C T I O N : T H E A F T E R M AT H
O F S L AV E R Y A N D T H E D AW N O F S E G R E G AT I O N ,
1861–1915
115
1. “What the Black Man Wants,”
Frederick Douglass, 1865
122
2. Henry McNeal Turner, Black Christian Nationalist
128
3. Black Urban Workers during Reconstruction
132
Anonymous Document on the National Colored Labor Convention, 1869
New York Tribune Article on African-American Workers, 1870
4. “Labor and Capital Are in Deadly Conflict,”
T. Thomas Fortune, 1886
135
5. Edward Wilmot Blyden and the African Diaspora
138
6. “The Democratic Idea Is Humanity,”
Alexander Crummell, 1888
150
C O N T E N T S
vii
7. “A Voice from the South,” Anna Julia Cooper, 1892
159
8. The National Association of Colored Women:
165
Mary Church Terrell and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin
9. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,”
Paul Laurence Dunbar
171
10. Booker T. Washington and the Politics
of Accommodation
174
“Atlanta Exposition Address”
“My View of Segregation Laws”
11. William Monroe Trotter and the Boston Guardian
181
12. Race and the Southern Worker
183
“A Negro Woman Speaks”
“The Race Question a Class Question”
“Negro Workers!”
13. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Crusader for Justice
191
14. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
195
Excerpts from “The Conservation of Races”
Excerpts from The Souls of Black Folk
SECTION THREE
15. The Niagara Movement, 1905
209
16. Hubert Henry Harrison, Black
Revolutionary Nationalist
213
F R O M P L A N TAT I O N T O G H E T T O : T H E G R E AT M I G R AT I O N ,
H A R L E M R E N A I S S A N C E , A N D W O R L D WA R , 1 9 1 5 – 1 9 5 4
217
1. Black Conflict over World War I
224
W. E. B. Du Bois, “Close Ranks”
Hubert H. Harrison, “The Descent of Du Bois”
W. E. B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers”
2. “If We Must Die,” Claude McKay, 1919
227
3. Black Bolsheviks: Cyril V. Briggs and Claude McKay
228
“What the African Blood Brotherhood Stands For”
“Soviet Russia and the Negro”
4. Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro
Improvement Association
241
viii
C O N T E N T S
“Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World”
“An Appeal to the Conscience of the Black Race to See Itself”
5. “Women as Leaders,”
Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey, 1925
251
6. Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance
253
“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”
“My America”
Poems
7. “The Negro Woman and the Ballot,”
Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, 1927
264
8. James Weldon Johnson and Harlem in the 1920s
267
“Harlem: The Culture Capital”
9. Black Workers in the Great Depression
273
10. The Scottsboro Trials, 1930s
279
11. “You Cannot Kill the Working Class,”
Angelo Herndon, 1933
281
“Speech to the Jury, January 17, 1933”
Excerpt from You Cannot Kill the Working Class
12. Hosea Hudson, Black Communist Activist
288
13. “Breaking the Bars to Brotherhood,”
Mary McLeod Bethune, 1935
294
14. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and the Fight for
Black Employment in Harlem
298
15. Black Women Workers during the Great Depression
300
Elaine Ellis, “Women of the Cotton Fields”
Naomi Ward, “I Am a Domestic”
16. Southern Negro Youth Conference, 1939
306
17. A. Philip Randolph and the Negro March on
Washington Movement, 1941
308
18. Charles Hamilton Houston and the War Effort
among African Americans, 1944
314
19. “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the
Negro Woman!” Claudia Jones, 1949
316
C O N T E N T S
SECTION FOUR
ix
20. “The Negro Artist Looks Ahead,”
Paul Robeson, 1951
326
21. Thurgood Marshall: The Brown Decision and
the Struggle for School Desegregation
331
WE SHALL OVERCOME: THE SECOND RECONSTRUCTION,
1954–1975
341
1. Rosa Parks, Jo Ann Robinson, and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956
352
Jo Ann Robinson’s Letter to Mayor of Montgomery
Interview with Rosa Parks
Excerpts from Jo Ann Robinson’s Account of the Boycott
2. Roy Wilkins and the NAACP
362
3. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
1957
367
4. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
and the Sit-In Movement, 1960
371
5. Freedom Songs, 1960s
372
“We Shall Overcome”
“Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round”
6. “We Need Group-Centered Leadership,”
Ella Baker
375
7. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nonviolence
377
Excerpt from “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” 1957
“I Have a Dream,” 1963
8. “The Revolution Is at Hand,” John R. Lewis, 1963
383
9. “The Salvation of American Negroes Lies
in Socialism,” W. E. B. Du Bois
385
10. “The Special Plight and the Role of Black Women,”
Fannie Lou Hamer
395
11. “SNCC Position Paper: Women in the Movement,”
1964
399
12. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam
401
13. Malcolm X and Revolutionary Black Nationalism
404
x
C O N T E N T S
“The Ballot or the Bullet”
“Statement of the Organization of Afro-American Unity”
14. Black Power
418
Stokely Carmichael, “What We Want”
SNCC, “Position Paper on Black Power”
Bayard Rustin, “‘Black Power’ and Coalition Politics”
15. “CORE Endorses Black Power,”
Floyd McKissick, 1967
435
16. “To Atone for Our Sins and Errors in Vietnam,”
Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
438
17. Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party
for Self-Defense
445
18. “The People Have to Have the Power,”
Fred Hampton
456
19. “I Am a Revolutionary Black Woman,”
Angela Y. Davis, 1970
459
20. “Our Thing Is DRUM!” The League of
Revolutionary Black Workers
463
21. Attica: “The Fury of Those Who Are Oppressed,”
1971
466
22. The National Black Political Convention,
Gary, Indiana, March 1972
469
23. “There Is No Revolution Without the People,”
Amiri Baraka, 1972
473
“The Pan-African Party and the Black Nation”
Poem
24. “My Sight Is Gone But My Vision Remains,”
Henry Winston
480
“On Returning to the Struggle”
“A Letter to My Brothers and Sisters”
SECTION FIVE
T H E F U T U R E I N T H E P R E S E N T: C O N T E M P O R A RY A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N T H O U G H T, 1 9 7 5 T O T H E P R E S E N T
1. Black Feminisms: The Combahee River Collective
Statement, 1977
487
501
C O N T E N T S
xi
2. “Women in Prison: How We Are,”
Assata Shakur, 1978
507
3. “It’s Our Turn,” Harold Washington, 1983
513
4. “I Am Your Sister,” Audre Lorde, 1984
515
5. “Shaping Feminist Theory,” bell hooks, 1984
522
6. The Movement against Apartheid:
Jesse Jackson and Randall Robinson
529
Jesse Jackson, “Don’t Adjust to Apartheid”
“State of the U.S. Anti-Apartheid Movement: An Interview
with Randall Robinson”
7. “Keep Hope Alive,” Jesse Jackson, 1988
535
8. “Afrocentricity,” Molefi Asante, 1991
546
9. The Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas Controversy, 1991
552
“African-American Women in Defense of Ourselves”
June Jordan, “Can I Get a Witness?”
10. “Race Matters,” Cornel West, 1991
558
11. “Black Anti-Semitism,” Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 1992
566
12. “Crime—Causes and Cures,” Jarvis Tyner, 1994
571
13. Louis Farrakhan: The Million Man March, 1995
580
14. “A Voice from Death Row,” Mumia Abu-Jamal
584
15. “Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters,”
African-American Prisoners in Sing Sing, 1998
586
“Statement by Sing Sing Prisoners”
Michael J. Love, “The Prison-Industrial Complex: An Investment in Failure”
Willis L. Steele, Jr., “River Hudson”
16. Black Radical Congress, 1998
592
“Principles of Unity”
“The Struggle Continues: Setting a Black Liberation Agenda
for the 21st Century”
“The Freedom Agenda”
17. 2000 Presidential Election
“Letter to Governor Bush from Chairperson Mary Frances Berry,” 2001
600
xii
C O N T E N T S
18. Hip-Hop Activism
603
“What We Want” Statement Hip-Hop Action Summit Network, 2001
“Tookie Protocol for Peace,” 2004
19. World Conference Against Racism—
Durban, South Africa
606
20. African Americans Respond to Terrorism and War
613
“Barbara Lee’s Stand,” 2001
10 Points from Iraq Veterans against the War, 2001
21. The Cosby vs. Dyson Debate, 2004–2005
617
Summary of “Dr. Bill Cosby Speaks at the 50th Anniversary
Commemoration of the Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education
Supreme Court Decision”
Excerpt from “Is Bill Cosby Right?: or Has the Black Middle Class
Lost Its Mind?”
22. U.S. Senate Resolution Against Lynching, 2005
621
23. Hurricane Katrina Crisis, 2005
623
“‘This is Criminal’: Malik Rahim Reports from New Orleans,” 2005
24. Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign, 2007–2008
627
Excerpts from National Democratic Party Convention Speech, 2004
“A More Perfect Union,” 2008
PERMISSIONS
643
INDEX
653
ABOUT
THE EDITORS
677
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
N
early four years ago we jointly taught a graduate seminar offered at both
City University Graduate School and Columbia University that was
called, “Identity, Inequality, and Power.” The basic idea behind the
course was to identify significant and provocative ethnographic, historical, and theoretical articles and sources that explored the complex connections between the imagined communities such as those of race, gender, and
nation, and the structures of social inequality, state power, and economic
exploitation. We wanted to talk about the African-American experience in a
manner that placed black people at the center of the forces of history. We
believed that the greatest weight in the judgments made by social scientists in
researching the black experience should be given to the voices of black people
themselves. In countless ways—from speeches and religious sermons, personal
letters to friends and family, political manifestos and editorials, through the
development of common rituals and ceremonies that convey membership in
kinship networks—African-American people made themselves. Their notions
of identity, of who they were, were constructed over time through their collective struggles and experiences against inequality, as well as from memories and
traditions they had brought from Africa.
We attempted to locate texts or anthologies that were appropriate for the
seminar. We found, of course, a number of excellent social histories and ethnographic studies of different aspects of the experience of black people in the
United States. Many of these works have interwoven the historical narrative with
the voices and insights of black people themselves. That is to say, the authors of
these works attempted to write history from the vantage point of being a participant observer of the culture. To theorize issues of identity, or questions about
how any people understand the institutions of power that circumscribe their
lives, scholars should first listen and learn from the people themselves. However,
we were disappointed to find that in the past decade and more, very few
anthologies designed for classroom usage incorporating this perspective into the
collection and organization of sources have been published. What we wanted
xiv
P R E FA C E
T O
T H E
F I R S T
E D I T I O N
was a collection of primary materials, rare published articles, speeches, and
other sources that told the story of how black people made themselves and interpreted the world in which they lived, in their own words and specifically from
their own point of view.
After teaching the seminar, we decided to collaborate in the writing of two
books on black American history and culture. The first is a long-term project, a
study of the black experience from within, over a series of seven generations.
We would like to develop a text that explores the ways in which African
Americans have perceived themselves as a people, how they understood the
structural barriers that denied them real opportunity, and how through their
culture they found their own imagination, voice, and agency. The book is a
work-in-progress, with the tentative title The African Americans: A People’s
History. The second book was conceived as a comprehensive anthology of
African-American social thought, broadly defined as the bodies of knowledge
through which black people theorized from their experiences and social conditions, and proposed strategies and programs to enhance their power. Politics
begins at the moment when any group recognizes for itself its specific objective
interests and aspirations, and seeks agency to realize those interests. Black
social and political thought is the expression of how people of African descent
articulated and constructed the means to permit their communities to survive,
to resist, and to reform or transform the structures of white power all around
them. That story is what we hope Let Nobody Turn Us Around presents. More
than one hundred documents represent widely different ideological and political perspectives, reflecting an ongoing debate within the black community over
the appropriate strategies and tactics to achieve social change. It is by examining that diversity that we may discern the common ground that the vast majority of African Americans occupy.
O
There were a number of individuals who provided invaluable help in the
research and publication of this anthology. Columbia University doctoral candidates Johanna Fernandez and Devin Fergus assisted in the identification of
primary and secondary sources that were reviewed at the initial stage of preparing the text. Michele Hay, a graduate student at City University of New York,
helped to select important documents and did background research that was
important in the preparation of the biographical profiles and historical notes
that accompanied each text. We would especially like to express our gratitude
for the efforts of John McMillian, a doctoral candidate in history at Columbia
University. Over a period of more than one year, John reviewed and evaluated
the entire list of documents, tracked down hard-to-find biographical details on
a number of subjects, and wrote the first drafts of many biographical profiles.
John’s careful attention to details and his enthusiasm and interest in the project
greatly enhanced the character of the book.
P R E FA C E
T O
T H E
F I R S T
E D T I O N
xv
The book manuscript went through three major revisions and reorganizations during two years. We appreciate the efforts of the secretarial staff of the
Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University—
Diane Tinsley-Hatcher, Jennifer Jones, and Theresa Wilcox—who typed and
revised the book throughout its many stages of development. Jennifer Jones,
Sherell Daniels, and Andrea Queeley were also especially helpful in proofreading the final text and carefully checking for errors.
A major architect of this work is our editor Dean Birkenkamp at Rowman &
Littlefield. When the concept of this book was initially discussed in 1996, Dean
provided strong support for its development. Dean is an author’s ideal editor—
patient but persistent, and always helpful in thinking through problems connected with the technical aspects of putting a book together. Sallie Greenwood
was extraordinarily diligent in identifying and securing permissions for all the
sources—no small accomplishment given the large number of documents she
was asked to review.
Finally and most importantly, we wish to dedicate this anthology to our five
children, Alia, Malaika, Sojourner, Joshua, and Michael. We hope that our
efforts to help rediscover and document the visions of black folk past and present may provide part of that knowledge necessary to assist the next generation
of black children to win that freedom which their foremothers and forefathers
struggled for so long to achieve.
MANNING MARABLE
LEITH MULLINGS
September 6, 1999
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I
n the past two decades, the African-American community has experienced
profound transformations. For many, the long freedom struggle has significantly recast how “race” is lived. There are African-American millionaires,
politicians, and, most amazingly, Barack Obama, an African American, has
been elected as the forty-fourth president of the United States. Clearly, the
freedom struggle has also substantially modified the public discourse about
race and the meaning of racial difference. Furthermore the immigration of millions of Latinos, Asians, and others since 1980, as well as a biracial president,
has altered the racial and ethnic composition of the United States, undermining the older bipolar categories of white and black.
But simultaneously, African Americans have experience new forms of bound
labor, massive incarceration, and deepening class stratification. Continuing
racial and class inequality is largely masked by a new racial ideology—colorblind racism—the claims that the civil rights struggle has eliminated all forms
of discrimination, and that the United States has successfully been transformed
into a “color-blind society” in which each individual is free to determine her or
his own destiny. In this sense, the U.S. racial system appears to be moving
toward a model that characterized much of Latin America, where racial discrimination is maintained and reproduced, but is not sanctioned by law and
often vigorously denied.
The contours of the freedom movement have consequently shifted.
Electoral political struggles have intensified, but black candidates, especially in
federal and statewide elections, are no longer answerable only to the black
community. In the recent period, much of the freedom movement has not been
waged in the large overarching organizations that characterized the civil rights
struggle, but on the ground—in neighborhood networks and locally-based
organizations concerned with a living wage, tenants’ rights, prisoners’ rights,
environmental racism, education, and health. In many of these grassroots
movements, women not only constitute the great majority of the cadre, but are
also the leaders and theoreticians. As neoliberal capitalism is increasingly
xviii
P R E FA C E
T O
T H E
S E C O N D
E D I T I O N
unable to meet the basic needs of most citizens and residents, calls for transformation from the most oppressed sectors of society have become louder and
more determined.
Four centuries ago, people of African descent were among the first to experience the destructive effects of globalization. The most recent phase of globalized capitalism has had a major and largely negative impact on African
Americans. For many, it has contributed to increased poverty and marginalization. But globalization has also provided new opportunities: new global technologies have facilitated innovative forms of communication, fostering new
transnational networks and promoting mobilizing efforts. As the world has
become smaller, the space for traditional race-based organizing based on older
historical models has become increasingly constricted. Yet paradoxically, racebased movements, often inspired by the history of African-American struggle,
have emerged in many parts of the globe in the past decade. Internationalism
has always been a central feature of the U.S. black freedom struggle, but new
transnational networks make it possible for activists to collectively challenge
“global apartheid.” The emergent discourse of “diaspora” encompasses a broad
range of imagined communities and reframes the context for social change projects led by black people in diverse national contexts.
As we observed at the beginning of the introduction of the first edition, African
Americans are a people who have created themselves under the most difficult
conditions. The sojourn of black people has been at times defined by a crucible
of exploitation. Yet it has also been a triumph of the human spirit, a call for justice in a wasteland of oppression. In this way, people who were not considered
to be citizens with inalienable rights fought to redefine the character of the
nation and how it was run. Through the 240 years of slavery, followed by nearly
a century of Jim Crow segregation and only 45 years of desegregation, black
people learned more than survival skills. They struggled to become trade union
leaders and social workers, doctors and lawyers, engineers and architects.
Only six generations ago, it was forbidden by law to teach slaves to read and
write. Today some of the greatest novelists, playwrights, and poets produced in
the United States are African American. Less than seventy years ago black people were barred from professional athletics; today they dominate them. Black
popular culture, relegated to obscurity as “race music” in the early twentieth
century, now largely defines U.S. popular culture. As late as 1960, the majority
of African Americans had never been permitted to vote in a presidential election, and were largely excluded from the electoral political system in the South.
Today, the U.S. president is African American, there are over 10,000 black
elected officials, and black voters comprise the essential core group for a liberal
and progressive political coalition in national elections. African Americans have
done more than make “contributions”: they have instead largely reshaped and
redefined what U.S. life and society are about. All these gains were the result
of the struggles of ordinary people. Our struggle continues.
P R E FA C E
T O
T H E
S E C O N D
E D I T I O N
xix
The acknowledgments of the second edition of Let Nobody Turn Us Around
reflects these old and new contexts. The bibliographies have been updated
throughout the volume. The final section, section V, has been significantly
revised and expanded, with a new introduction and the addition of readings
that bring the book up-to-date and address the new debates about culture, politics, and possible the directions of the black freedom struggle.
We would like to thank Karen Williams, a graduate student in anthropology
at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, for her invaluable help
with the new edition. She tracked down the new documents and wrote the first
draft of several of the new profiles. We are also grateful to Courtney Teague
and Sara Ingram for their assistance in preparing the manuscript.
MANNING MARABLE
LEITH MULLINGS
November 24, 2008
New York City
INTRODUCTION
Resistance, Reform, and Renewal
in the Black Experience
T
hroughout their entire history as a people, African Americans have created themselves. They did so in the context of the transatlantic slave trade
and two-and-a-half centuries of chattel slavery—a structure of overwhelming inequality and brutality characterized by the sale of human
beings and routine rapes and executions. They constructed their cultural
identity and notions of humanity in a country that denied them citizenship and
basic human dignity for hundreds of years. Beginning as enslaved Africans from
various locations and ethnic and language groups across the continent of Africa,
within several generations they found their voice, meaning, and consciousness
as a special people.
Those captured from Africa were not people without history and culture.
They were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and descendants of ancestors; they were religious specialists and supplicants, chiefs and commoners,
cooks, musicians, metalworkers, scribes, farmers, and grioles; they belonged to
states, clans, lineages, age grades, men’s and women’s associations, artisan
guilds, and secret societies. Their memories of how life should be lived, of
womanhood and manhood, of beauty and aesthetics, of worship and spirituality, were not annihilated by the Middle Passage. But what they could do with
these memories was very much constrained by the conditions in which they
found themselves—the racial and class structure of enslavement. To paraphrase a well-known observation, African Americans created themselves, but
not just as they pleased, not under circumstances chosen by themselves, but
under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the
past. It was in the context of their African history and the prevailing social and
economic relationships that African Americans created culture, religion, family,
art forms, political institutions, and social and political theory.
Social and political theory—bodies of knowledge by which African Americans attempted to analyze and address the social, cultural, and political issues
they confronted—emerged from everyday practices to reform and resist the
structures of oppression, and to renew their community through imagining and
xxii
I N T R O D U C T I O N
enacting its continuity. Attempts to reform, utilizing group and individual
resources to mitigate the worst aspects of the society and to enhance black
interests within the state apparatus, ranged from petitions to the colonial legislatures and federal government for redress, lobbying for the abolition of slavery, and participation in various political parties to influence white liberal opinion on issues of race. Resistance was found in the various degrees of opposition
to institutional racism: from day-to-day sabotage (disruption, noncompliance,
refusals to work, running away) to overt rebellion (the murder of slaveholders,
flight to the North, the underground railroad, joining forces with American
Indian tribes to combat the U.S. army, the creation of maroon communities,
and the slave uprisings of Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and
Cinque). Throughout their history African Americans nurtured and renewed
their emerging community—creating and maintaining cultural forms and
building viable institutions to provide goods, services, and cultural and educational sustenance.
Yet social and political theory is not merely reactive. Though it was a collective effort to address existing social institutions and structures of power, it was
also a search for meaning and voice. Social thought sought to understand who
we are, envision new directions, and imagine a new society. The purpose was
not only to advocate, but to realize our meaning and being.
The themes of reform, resistance, and renewal formed the cultural and
social matrix of black consciousness, community, and public discourse. They
were the foundations for the construction of a black American society that was
self-conscious and motivated to define and achieve its specific interests. It was
within this political culture and this web of increasingly elaborate social institutions—black religious denominations, Masonic lodges, free African societies,
schools, newspapers—that competing strategic visions of how best to achieve
group empowerment and self-organization began to crystallize.
The decisive historical period in the construction of black ideologies was
between 1830 and 1865. The free black community in the North numbered
more than one hundred thousand. The immediate question confronting African
Americans was how to dismantle slavery—the oppression of four million people of African descent. But the larger issue was whether and how black people
could find freedom, in the United States or elsewhere, while preserving what
was valuable and central to their collective identity as a people. Are we
Africans, or are we both Africans and Americans? Is our collective future inextricably linked to the U.S. state and American society? It was in the context of
the national debate about slavery that two overlapping political ideologies
emerged among black Americans, representing two different aspects of the
same racial dilemma: the possibility of black Americans achieving equality
within America’s racialized social body.
What became known in the twentieth century as “integrationism” actually
originated among the free black communities in the North prior to the Civil
I N T R O D U C T I O N
xxiii
War. A core of free black leaders—journalists, teachers, ministers, small entrepreneurs, abolitionists—concluded that the fight to abolish slavery could be
won, but that it would represent only one part of a greater struggle: to expand
the limited boundaries of American democracy to include people of African
descent. The task ahead was to bring Negroes into every profession and to
ensure their full participation in voting, serving on juries, and running for elective office. Black people would have the unalienable right to own property, to
have unfettered access to public accommodation and schools, and the freedom
to hire themselves out for a fair wage. The only limitations on any individual’s
success would be determined by intellect and ambition, not by race.
The goal of integrationists was a society where color was insignificant and
where individual achievement and hard work largely determined the life
chances of most black people. Inherent in this ideological perspective was an
inner paradox. Integrationist reformers often had no choice but to build black
organizations behind the walls of segregation, to mobilize their supporters, and
to appeal to sympathetic whites. At times, race consciousness among African
Americans was used to challenge Jim Crow. A. Philip Randolph’s Negro March
on Washington, D.C., in 1941 and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s construction of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 are two of many examples.
Building on a racial base could be useful, but only for the long-term goal of
eradicating all racial classifications and caste privileges that penalized Negroes
simply because of the color of their skin. In other words, the struggle for integration often had to be waged from within the boundaries of racial identity.
This strategy also implied that what was “wrong” with the United States could
be made right, if restrictions on the basis of race could be eliminated and if
blacks and other disadvantaged groups could be more fully represented in the
structures of civil and political authority.
In contrast, the black nationalist tradition was built on a no-nonsense set of
assumptions about the relative permanence of white supremacy. Blacks would
have to place their energies in building economic and social institutions that
would provide goods and services to other black people. By hiring blacks, they
could utilize racial segregation as a barrier to create a black consumer market.
Some nationalists also saw these steps as stopgap measures. Only when a significant number of African Americans established their own separate geopolitical space—perhaps a territory, a group or state, or resettlement to another
country or continent—could ultimate security and the integrity of black people
be achieved. The nationalists often saw themselves as accidental Americans, or
Africans-in-exile. They frequently distrusted white liberals and reformers who
expressed sympathy toward blacks even more than they distrusted white
supremacist groups, because they felt the latter represented the true feelings of
the white majority. Some felt that race war inside the United States, and indeed
globally, was probably inevitable, and the best thing African Americans could
do was to prepare for it. In 1852, Martin R. Delany called upon African
xxiv
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Americans to emigrate because “we love our country, dearly love her, but she
doesn’t love us—she despises us, and bids us begone, driving us from her
embraces; but we shall not go where she desires us; but when we do go, whatever love we have for her, we shall love the country none the less that receives
us as her adopted children” (section 1, document 17). Similarly, the first point
in Marcus Garvey’s 1920 “Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the
World” reads: “. . . nowhere in the world, with few exceptions, are black men
accorded equal treatment with white men, although in the same situation and
circumstances, but, on the contrary, are discriminated against and denied the
common rights due to human beings for no other reason than their race and
color” (section 3, document 4). Almost fifty years later, Malcolm X observed,
“. . . it is not necessary to change the white man’s mind. We have to change our
own mind. You can’t change his mind about us” (section 4, document 13).
These were the most extreme positions of the integrationist–nationalist ideological axis, but most African Americans during the century between the Civil
War and the Civil Rights movement oscillated somewhere in between these
two poles of racial opinion. In periods of political optimism, when the bar of
institutional racism seemed to be in retreat, the integrationist perspective was
usually dominant. But in times of white reaction and retrenchment from racial
justice—such as the 1850s, 1920s, late 1960s, and early 1970s—black nationalism resurfaced.
A third strategic vision subsequently emerged, with the developing consciousness of the black working class and the growing intensity of labor struggles in the United States. This perspective neither accepted the structure of the
contemporary society nor called for a separate black society, but rather advocated a radical transformation of the United States based on a fundamental
redistribution of resources. This perspective did not merely push for the expansion of democracy but challenged the basic inequality of the economic structure. The objective here was to dismantle all forms of class hierarchy and social
privilege. For T. Thomas Fortune, a printer who was born a slave, the working
people’s struggles of the 1880s underscored the importance of class in understanding and transforming society: “The iniquity of privileged class and concentrated wealth . . . does not admit of the argument that every man born into
the world is justly entitled to so much of the produce of nature as will satisfy his
physical necessities . . .” (section 2, document 4). In 1912 Hubert Henry Harrison declared that “socialism stands for the emancipation of the wage slaves”
(section 2, document 16).
This perspective coalesces in the period from 1915 to 1954, with the consolidation of the black working class and its struggle for jobs and for access to
employment at an equitable wage. It became a social force in the emergence of
the African Blood Brotherhood in 1922 (section 3, document 3); the “Don’t Buy
Where You Can’t Work” campaign in Harlem during the Great Depression (section 3, document 14); and the organization of the Sleeping Car Porters (section
I N T R O D U C T I O N
xxv
3, document 17). The rise of working-class “organic intellectuals”—many of
whom were associated with the Communist Party, such as southern organizers
Angelo Herndon (section 3, document 11) and Hosea Hudson (section 3, document 12)—was particularly notable during this period. However, white racism,
including that of white workers, continued to be a major obstacle.
These social visions—integration, nationalism, and transformation—are not
mutually exclusive but are in fact broad, overlapping traditions. Throughout the
twentieth century, these tendencies have been present, to varying degrees, in
virtually every major mass movement in which black people have been
engaged, from the desegregationist campaigns of the 1950s to the antiapartheid mobilization of the 1980s. Though some organizations and individuals may have exemplified one tendency or the other, organizations and movements usually displayed a spectrum of views. Individuals often began their
activist careers with one set of perspectives and moved to another as they perceive limitations of that paradigm. This was the case with Hubert Henry Harrison, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X.
These three competing paradigms continue to underlie the Black Freedom
movement. The broad range of forces in the desegregation struggle included the
Urban League, which conceptualized civil rights as an expression of extending
rights to black people, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
which had “the basic aim of achieving full citizenship rights, equality, and the
integration of the Negro in all aspects of American life” (section 4, document 3).
On the other hand, the left wing of the Civil Rights movement envisioned the
necessity of a more far-reaching change. In 1963 John Lewis declared, “[t]he
revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and
economic slavery” (section 4, document 8).
Similarly the Black Power movement—a move toward nationalism that arose
when the weaknesses of integrationism become evident—encompassed competing visions of the meaning of political power. Floyd McKissick, in his endorsement of Black Power, established the black capitalist venture of Soul City. On the
other hand, the Black Panthers embraced a Marxist analysis of capitalism. Black
Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton observed that “[t]he Black Panther Party
bases its ideology and philosophy on a concrete analysis of concrete conditions,
using dialectical materialism as our analytical method” (section 4, document 17).
Fred Hampton called for class struggle, observing that “[w]e have to understand
very clearly that there is a man in our community called a capitalist” (section 4,
document 18). Angela Davis, a member of the Che-Lumumba Club of the Communist Party, explained why she is a Communist: “I am a Communist because I
am convinced that the reason we have been forcefully compelled to eke out an
existence at the lowest level of American society has to do with the nature of capitalism. . . . I am a Communist because I believe that black people, with whose
labor and blood this country was built, have a right to a great deal of the wealth
that has been hoarded in the hands of the Hughes, the Rockefellers, the
xxvi
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Kennedys, the DuPonts, all the super-powerful white capitalists of America” (section 4, document 19). During this period of Black Power, the militant tradition of
black workers found expression in the creation of the Dodge Revolutionary
Union Movement (DRUM) in Detroit, and in the more moderate Coalition of
Black Trade Unionists.
Race, and to a lesser extent class, have been central to theorizing AfricanAmerican liberation. But since its inception, African-American social theory
has also included a lively discussion about gender, though this has received little attention until relatively recently. The unusual position of African-American
women has made the issue of gender critical—both in practice and for the
development of theory. The denial of “the protections of private patriarchy”
throughout their history has made the situation of African-American women
exceptional in American life. Often doing the same work as men during slavery,
after Reconstruction they worked both outside and inside the home. Exploited
as labor, but also oppressed on the basis of gender and race, their history has
created an experience distinct from that of both black men and white women.
Though triply oppressed, they also occupy a creative space from which to critique U.S. social structure from multiple sites. As Anna Julia Cooper noted in
1892, to be an African-American woman was “to have a heritage . . . unique in
all the ages” (section 2, document 7).
Given the significance of black women in the slave community, in the struggle for abolition and emancipation, and as workers and activists, it may be that
many African-American men were more open to issues of gender than white
men—advocating access to education for women and other nontraditional gendered roles—though often in terms of the optimal requirements for motherhood. Martin Delany, who called for the emigration of black people from the
United States in 1852, declared: “Let our young women have an education; let
their minds be well informed; well stored with useful information and practical
proficiency. . . . Our females must be qualified, because they are to be the
mothers of our children” (section 1, document 17). Frederick Douglass and
W. E. B. Du Bois were among the most consistent and vocal advocates for the
rights of women.
But it is also true that, in subtle ways, the struggle for freedom was often
framed in masculine terms. Abolitionist leader William Wells Brown
lamented: “If I wish to stand up and say, ‘I am a man,’ I must leave the land
that gave me birth” (section 1, document 14). Upon being expelled from the
Georgia legislature in 1868, Henry McNeal Turner declared: “Am I a man? If
I am such, I claim the rights of a man . . .” (section 2, document 2); and
Frederick Douglass equates “what the black man wants” with the interests of
the race as a whole (section 2, document 1). While clearly these formulations
have to do with the semantic use of “man” for humankind, it is also true that
they embodied often-unstated assumptions about the masculine privileges
that nationhood entails. During Reconstruction, the demand for the hierar-
I N T R O D U C T I O N
xxvii
chical gender roles of the dominant society became integrally connected with
the demand for freedom.
But black women have not had the luxury of defining freedom in patriarchal
terms, and early on created an analysis of race, class, and gender that emerged
from their experiences. While fully supporting the struggle for freedom, black
women have addressed the issues of both gender and race. In 1851 Sojourner
Truth declared “I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and
can do as much work as any man” (section 1, document 15). Anticipating the
feminist theorizing of the 1980s and 1990s, in 1892 Anna Julia Cooper wrote
that the African-American woman is “confronted by both a woman question
and a race problem, and is as yet an unknown or an unacknowledged factor in
both” (section 2, document 7).
The consolidation of a black working-class perspective enhanced the development of a race- and class-based feminism. Domestic workers and women toiling in the cotton fields spoke out about their own conditions and created the
context for a feminism grounded in the experiences of working women. A
description of women workers in the cotton fields published in Crisis in 1938
laid the foundation for a sophisticated analysis of these issues, which were rediscovered by scholars in the 1980s, such as the double day and the unpaid labor of
women. The following passage presents an analysis of the relationships between
production and reproduction that is valid today (section 3, document 15):
In the past, this woman was compelled to reproduce a large number of children
because a large labor supply was in demand. Large families also mean a cheaper
form of labor, for children, as well as women, generally represent labor that does
not have to be paid. Consequently, the “overhead” falls upon the family instead of
the landlord. The landlord himself has enforced this monopoly by letting his farm
go to the tenant or cropper having the largest family. . . . Now the tenantcroppers are charged with “over-population” by the economists and agriculturalists who disregard the unwholesome economic factors that have caused an
increase in farm tenancy. . . . As one solution to the “over-population,” proponents
of the sterilization racket are endeavoring to work up an agitation for sterilization
of these cotton workers.
In 1949, Claudia Jones, a leader in the Communist Party, argued for a classand race-based feminism. Her remarkable historical analysis, clearly articulating the triple oppression of race, class, and gender, anticipated the race, class,
and gender theorists of the 1980s and 1990s. She analyzed the important role
of negative representations of African-American women, presented an early
formulation of “the personal is political,” and called for the organization of
domestic workers.
As women activists took militant and leading roles in the Civil Rights and
Black Power movements—in SCLC, SNCC, and the Black Panther Party—
they confronted real problems of how to deal in practice with the dilemmas of
race, class, and gender. Activists such as Fannie Lou Hamer spoke eloquently
xxviii
I N T R O D U C T I O N
of the solidarities of race and the contradictions of gender and class: “. . . we are
here to work side by side with this black man in trying to bring liberation to all
people” (section 4, document 10). In the 1980s there was a proliferation of
work on gender that seriously attends to the centrality of race and racism in the
lives of African-American women, and critiques the essentialist view put forward by Euro-American feminists. But divergent perspectives also emerged
that reflect the differences in strategic social visions among the AfricanAmerican people as a whole. While most feminist theorists now write of the
integration of race, class, and gender, there are clear differences in how women
of diverse class backgrounds and experiences understand these relationships,
their visions of a new society, and their notions of how to get there.
This book is an attempt to compile a representative sample of a range of
writings that reflect the political thought of black Americans in the United
States from colonial times to the end of the twentieth century. We have
attempted to include varied opinions from women and men, workers, and the
intelligentsia.
As in any anthology, there are limitations. This is not a typical encyclopedia
of African-American thought. We wanted the book to reflect the full range of
African-American thought, but as extensive as the scope of this volume is, there
are some obvious omissions. In several cases copyright problems limited our
access to certain materials. In another instance, one prominent black conservative economist refused to permit his published work to appear in this volume.
Because it is a collection of social theory, the focus on thought, to some extent,
abstracts it from practice. The purpose of this book is not to assess social and
political movements, but rather to present the theories that informed them.
Furthermore, the emphasis on available written sources omits a body of popular reflections that might tell us much about “organic” social theory.
Section 1 begins with the period from 1768 to 1861. This was the era of slavery and the issue motivating African Americans was abolitionism and efforts at
reform, resistance, and revolt against slavery. It was also the time of the birth of
African-American culture and society. Section 2 covers 1861 to 1915. The Civil
War, Reconstruction, and the establishment of Jim Crow segregation defined
the politics of this period. African Americans were overwhelmingly rural and
the majority continued to live in the South, as two generations of African
Americans coped with the aftermath of slavery and the War.
Section 3 concerns the years 1915 to 1954, which marks the period of the
“great migration,” when African Americans in large numbers migrated from the
rural South to the urban North. Two world wars, the “Red Summer” of 1919, the
consolidation of the modern black working-class, the rise of black radicalism,
and the emergence of the Civil Rights movement are also part of this era.
During the period covered by section 4—1954 to 1975—the Black Freedom
movement flourishes through the Civil Rights struggle and the Black Power
movement.
I N T R O D U C T I O N
xxix
The years since 1975, treated in section 5, have been described as the second post-Reconstruction era. A time of rapidly developing class stratification
both globally and within the United States, it has been characterized by new
divisions and ideological debates among African Americans.
Whatever the site or political perspective from which African Americans
theorize and struggle for freedom, resistance has had real consequences. In
these pages you will read the words of people who, from different ideological
vantage points, have fought for freedom. For those who have opposed the dominant society, taking a stand has often exacted a price: Marcus Garvey and
Claudia Jones were exiled; W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson were severely
harassed and denied passports; Henry Winston, Angela Davis, and Angelo
Herndon spent years in jail; Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis were brutally
beaten. From the mysterious death of David Walker to the executions and/or
assassinations of Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton,
the Attica Brothers, and countless known and unknown others, freedom for
black people has always been won at a dear price. To these brave women and
men we dedicate this book.
New York City
September 1999
–
S E C T I O N
O N E
–
FOUNDATIONS:
SLAVERY AND ABOLITIONISM,
1768–1861
INTRODUCTION
A
frican Americans created themselves through a series of vast historical
events and social forces that greatly transformed the global political
economy over half a millennium. Chief among these were the development of the transatlantic slave trade, beginning at the dawn of the sixteenth century, which transported at least fifteen million Africans
against their will into the Americas and the Caribbean; the subsequent institutionalization and expansion of monocrop agricultural production relying on
forced labor; and, with these, the establishment of the new world settler societies based on the extermination of indigenous populations. These broad historical forces were the context for the development of the British colonies in
North America, which in 1787 would become the United States. Within these
states about 650,000 Africans were resettled as slaves between 1619 and the eve
of the Civil War.
The Africans were immediately confronted with the harsh realities of chattel
enslavement, the brutal domination of their bodies and labor power for the
benefit of others. Within this stratified social order, people of African descent
were explicitly denied access to the courts, excluded from participation in public life, and legally categorized as private property. A process of racial stigmatization developed in which people of African descent were penalized for their
physical appearance and phenotype, and Europeans began transforming themselves into the privileged racial category of whiteness. By the middle of the
eighteenth century, the innate inferiority of black people was generally
accepted by white Americans, including even most white critics of the slave
trade, such as the Quakers. The relative permanence of physical markers combined with institutions of coercion helped to construct a social universe that in
most respects confined African Americans to the most oppressive conditions
within society.
Several of the documents in section 1 present in moving detail the inhumanity
of life as a slave in the American South. Approximately three-fourths of all slaves
4
F O U N D AT I O N S :
S L AV E RY
A N D
A B O L I T I O N I S M ,
1 7 6 8 – 1 8 6 1
worked in the fields, with the remainder assigned to household tasks, or laboring
as mechanics and skilled workmen. Regardless of their tasks, all were expected to
work without compensation. The slave was a commodity, and it was rare that a
black person did not experience the loss of spouse, parents, children, or friends
through sale. Document 10, “The Selling of Slaves,” is drawn from an advertisement posted in New Orleans in 1835, presenting individuals from the same family for sale to the highest bidder. On the auction block were Chole, thirty-six years
old, with her daughter Fanny, age sixteen, who was described as bilingual, “a good
seamstress and ladies’ maid . . . smart, intelligent and a first rate character.”
Dandridge, a twenty-six-year-old carpenter and servant, was offered for sale along
with his wife, Nancy, twenty-four years of age, and their seven-year-old daughter
Mary Ann, who was termed “smart, active and intelligent.” The terms of this business transaction were straightforward: one-half cash, the rest paid within six
months, “with special mortgage on the Slaves until final payment.” As indicated
in document 7, slaveholders recognized the potential dangers of teaching African
Americans to read and write, which created “a tendency to excite dissatisfaction
in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion.” In 1831 North
Carolina law mandated that slaves who were caught instructing other slaves in
reading and writing “receive thirty-nine lashes on his or her bare back.” Whites
who violated this prohibition against slave literacy were instead to be fined or
imprisoned.
How did African Americans respond to this structure of oppression? Resistance always assumed many forms. As the narrative of Equiano (document 2)
suggests, it began aboard the slave ships as enslaved Africans attempted to
starve themselves or jump overboard. Perhaps the most common manifestation
of protest is what many historians have called “day-to-day resistance.” There is
a large body of evidence from slaves’ narratives and other literature suggesting
that most black people fought in ways that would not openly communicate hostility or anger against their masters. Instead of violent confrontations, many
used other tactics to harm and disrupt the normal business of daily life. Slaves
engaged in deliberate work slowdowns; the destruction of farming implements, tools, and other property; the burning of crops or food supplies; and the
refusal to carry out commands. Slaves routinely pretended to be ill or physically incapacitated. Enslaved women practiced contraception and sometimes
infanticide in order to control their fertility. Some slaves ran off to wooded
areas outside whites’ settlements, in some instances creating maroon, or runaway slave, communities. Occasionally, black resistance took the form of outright revolt or rebellion. “The Statement of Nat Turner” (document 6) illustrates that slaves fully comprehended their exploitation and looked forward to
the time “when the first should be last and the last should be first.” When
asked whether he regretted his bloody actions against whites, Turner bluntly
replied, “Was not Christ crucified?”
I N T R O D U C T I O N
5
Resistance to slavery among the free black community in the North took the
form of vigilance committees—networks that provided safe shelter, food, and
transportation to runaway slaves. Even free blacks were always in danger of being
arrested, claimed as property by whites, and transported back to the South. The
free black community in the North also organized a series of regional and national
conferences bringing together the leading voices of African-American public
opinion. The documents and speeches from these “Negro Conventions” provide
excellent insights into the political and social thought of antebellum black
America. The famous speech by Henry Highland Garnet (document 13) at the
1843 Negro convention for example, emphasizes the right of the oppressed to
“use every means, both moral, intellectual and physical, that promises success.”
African Americans in the North and South alike were exhorted to use their power
“to torment the God-cursed slaveholders, that they will be glad to let you go
free. . . . Let your motto be resistance! resistance! RESISTANCE! No oppressed
people have ever secured their liberty without resistance.” Garnet’s militant
rhetoric in many ways prefigures the protest language of Malcolm X and Huey P.
Newton a century later.
While resistance was essential, African Americans also understood that they
would have to utilize any means at their disposal to modify the restrictions of
white authority over the lives of black people. In other words, free blacks had to
agitate for fundamentals that materially benefited African Americans within the
existing political, economic, and social structure. The abolition of slavery could
not be achieved by black people alone, and early on there was an awareness that
a segment of the white population could be won to emancipation. The slave narratives, beginning with the classical 1789 account of Olaudah Equiano (document
2), were primarily designed to educate and inform European and white American
audiences about the lives and perspectives of black people. African-American
women were particularly effective in linking the struggles of black people with
other reform movements, such as the pursuit of equality for women. Maria W.
Stewart, a prominent public speaker in the 1830s, frequently linked the struggles
of black people with other reform movements, such as temperance and women’s
rights. Similarly, Sojourner Truth, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Mary Ann
Shadd Cary spoke powerfully for the rights of African-American women.
The long-term goal of black reform was the redefinition of American democracy
itself: the elimination of all restrictions to the full participation of African Americans
in the larger society. David Walker’s “Appeal” (document 5) carries this thesis to its
logical conclusion: that blacks, because of their experiences of suffering and struggle in this country, were more American than whites: “Will any of us leave our
homes and go to Africa? I hope not. . . . Let no man of us budge one step, and let
slaveholders come to beat us from our country. America is more our country, than
it is the whites—we have enriched it with our blood and tears.” Making a similar
point, Frederick Douglass’s well-known 1852 address, “What to the Slave Is the
6
F O U N D AT I O N S :
S L AV E RY
A N D
A B O L I T I O N I S M ,
1 7 6 8 – 1 8 6 1
Fourth of July?,” challenges white Americans to recognize their political hypocrisy
by celebrating its democratic institution in a country filled with four million slaves
(document 18). To the slave, Douglass declares, the national holiday “is a sham;
your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your
sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brassfronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery. . . .” The
righteous anger in Douglass’s words should not obscure his real objective: to convince his white audience that “the great principle of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence,” should be extended
to African Americans. To some extent, the struggle had to be waged within the paradigm and boundaries of debate set by the larger society. Slaveholders argued that
enslaved people were an inferior species—African Americans asserted their
humanity. Whites insisted that African Americans were not capable of voting—
Frederick Douglass argued that they would develop the capabilities.
Black survival in an aggressively racist society also depended on the ability of
African Americans to create, preserve, and renew their communities. Enslaved
Africans who were forced into servitude in the western hemisphere were not
blank slates, but brought with them memories and cultural values. As Equiano’s
account (document 2) demonstrates, his particularly detailed recollections ranged
from family and religion to notions of beauty: “[I]deas of beauty are wholly relative. I remember while in Africa to have seen three Negro children who were
tawny, and another quite white, who were universally regarded by myself and the
natives in general, as far as related to their complexions, as deformed.” But it is
within the structural constraints of slavery and discrimination that they must create a culture—utilizing, transforming, and giving new meanings to cultural material from Africa and the Americas as they seek to imagine and invent the institutions that would ensure their survival. For example, though nowhere did the
enslaved people have the right to marry, they continued to affirm their bonds of
family, community, and humanity (document 9). During slavery, the church was
the only legal institution through which enslaved people could congregate and
exchange information as well as worship. Throughout African-American history,
the church continued to be a major site of political organizing, and charismatic
leadership was a hallmark of black politics.
In practical terms, this meant the constructing of socioeconomic institutions
that provided goods, services, and resources to the black people. By the late eighteenth century, free blacks in several northern cities had established mutualbenefit associations—social organizations that helped black families in need. Free
women of color were particularly active in organizing activities that would contribute to the abolition of slavery and black self-help. In April 1816, Richard Allen
founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (document 4), thereby laying
the foundations of the black church, which to this day remains the largest and
most influential force inside the black community. To a great extent it reshaped
Christianity within the context of the needs of the African-American community.
Prince Hall’s Masonic lodge for African Americans (document 3) would also grow
P H I L L I S
W H E AT L E Y,
“ O N
B E I N G
B R O U G H T
F R O M
A F R I C A
.
.
. ”
7
into a massive social network that was actively involved in all aspects of black civic
and cultural life. From these early social institutions would ultimately derive the
black press, schools and colleges, hospitals, insurance companies, banks, and
commercial enterprises of all kinds.
What is particularly interesting is that the construction of this elaborate internal black world of which most whites were ignorant was achieved
through conscious appeals to black solidarity and collective self-help. It was necessary for African Americans to become the keepers of their own history. In his
call for resistance, Henry Highland Garnet (document 13) recounts the stories of
the leaders of slave rebellions: Denmark Vessey, Nat Turner, Joseph Cinque, and
Madison Washington. Similarly, as we shall see in the next section (section 2, document 8), Mary Church Terrell recounted the successes of black women.
There were boundaries of blackness: the expectations that African Americans
should remain loyal to their race, that they should support the goals and values
generally accepted as the cultural norm for their communities. One of the earliest expressions of the boundaries of blackness is by David Walker (document 5).
He condemns some of his “brethren” who were “in league with tyrants, and who
receive a great portion of their daily bread, of the moneys which they acquire
from the blood and tears of their more miserable brethren, whom they scandalously delivered into the hands of our natural enemies!” An aspect of Walker’s
exhortation was a frank belief in the innate superiority of black people over
whites: “[G]lory, honour and praise to Heaven’s King . . . the sons and daughters
of Africa, will, in spite of all the opposition of their enemies, stand forth in all the
dignity and glory that is granted by the Lord to his creature man.” In a society so
grounded and permeated with white-supremacist ideology, African Americans
such as Walker—and later figures such as Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad,
and Louis Farrakhan—emphasized the mental and physical superiority of black
people in order to counter the allegations of inferiority.
The outbreak of the Civil War led to the destruction of one form of racial
domination—slavery—but would ultimately be replaced by another: Jim Crow
segregation. Over 180,000 African Americans fought in the Union army to liberate their people. This section presents some of the key ideas and leaders who
contributed to the black struggle for freedom.
O1O
“On Being Brought from Africa to America,”
Phillis Wheatley, 1768
Phillis Wheatley (1753?–1784) was born in Gambia, West Africa, and is recognized as the first African American to publish a book. Transported to the
8
F O U N D AT I O N S :
S L AV E RY
A N D
A B O L I T I O N I S M ,
1 7 6 8 – 1 8 6 1
United States when she was about seven, Wheatley was an enslaved domestic
servant in the household of John and Susanna Wheatley, who taught her to
read and write and supported her interests in poetry. The public, however,
could not believe that a domestic slave had the artistic and intellectual capabilities to create poetry. In 1772, Wheatley was brought before a courtroom in
Boston to determine if she indeed could craft literature. The judges produced
a written document that stated that “the poems specified . . . were . . . written
by Phillis, a young Negro Girl.” This statement was instrumental in Wheatley’s
ability to secure publication of her first book, Poems on Various Subjects,
Religious and Moral. Controversy surrounding Wheatley’s poetry continues to
this day. Though it has been criticized for its weak stance on slavery, recent
interpretations are more sympathetic, pointing out that Wheatley was a product of her times. Wheatley’s second manuscript was lost, but in the past
decade, remnants of this manuscript have surfaced. Despite her acclaim in
both the United States and Britain, Wheatley died in abject poverty.
O
‘TWAS mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their colour is a diabolic die.”
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train
Source: Phillis Wheatley, Complete Writings, ed. by Vincent Carretta (New York: Penguin
Books, 2001), pg. 13.
B I B L I O G R A P H I C
R E S O U R C E S :
Mukhtar Ali Isani, “‘Gambia on My Soul’: Africa and the African in the Writings of Phillis
Wheatley,” MELUS 6, no. 1 (Spring 1979), pp. 64–72.
Helen Burke, “Problematizing American Dissent: The Subject of Phillis Wheatley,” in
Cohesion and Dissent in America, ed. by Carol Colatrella and Joseph Alkana (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 193–209.
Helen M. Burke, “The Rhetoric and Politics of Marginality: The Subject of Phillis Wheatley,”
Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 10, no. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 31–45.
Henry Louis Gates, “Phillis Wheatley on Trial,” The New Yorker (January 20, 2003).
———, The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with
the Founding Fathers (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003).
John C. Shields, ed., The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989).
O L A U D A H
E Q U I A N O ,
“ T H E
I N T E R E S T I N G
N A R R AT I V E
.
.
. ”
9
O2O
“The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,”
Olaudah Equiano, 1789
There are questions about the birthplace and the life story of Olaudah Equiano
(1745–1797). Recent scholarship suggests that Equiano was born not on the
African continent but in South Carolina, and did not personally endure the
Middle Passage. Nevertheless, he created a public persona rooted in an African
past and slavery that was presented in his autobiography, The Interesting
Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vasa, the African, Written
by Himself, first published in 1789. Equiano claimed that he was born in the
African village of Essaka (now part of eastern Nigeria), and was captured and sold
into slavery at the age of eleven. He was first owned by a lieutenant in the English
navy, who gave him the name Gustavus Vasa, and was later purchased by a
Philadelphia merchant and Quaker. In 1766, he was finally able to buy his own
freedom. Over the years Equiano traveled extensively and established several
successful business ventures. Notwithstanding the debates about his origins and
experience of the Middle Passage, his autobiography represented an influential
text in the abolitionist movement, going through thirty-six editions between 1789
and 1857. Equiano died in London in 1797.
O
That part of Africa known by the name of Guinea to which the trade of slaves is
carried on extends along the coast above 3,400 miles, from the Senegal to Angola,
and includes a variety of kingdoms. Of these the most considerable is the kingdom of Benin, both as to extent and wealth, the richness and cultivation of the
soil, the power of its king, and the number and warlike disposition of the inhabitants. It is situated nearly under the line and extends along the coast about 170
miles, but runs back into the interior part of Africa to a distance hitherto I believe
unexplored by any traveller, and seems only terminated at length by the empire
of Abyssinia, near 1,500 miles from its beginning. This kingdom is divided into
many provinces or districts, in one of the most remote and fertile of which, called
Eboe, I was born in the year 1745, situated in a charming fruitful vale, named
Essaka. The distance of this province from the capital of Benin and the sea coast
must be very considerable, for I had never heard of white men or Europeans, nor
of the sea, and our subjection to the king of Benin was little more than nominal;
for every transaction of the government, as far as my slender observation
extended, was conducted by the chiefs or elders of the place. The manners and
government of a people who have little commerce with other countries are generally very simple, and the history of what passes in one family or village may
serve as a specimen of a nation. My father was one of those elders or chiefs I have
10
F O U N D AT I O N S :
S L AV E RY
A N D
A B O L I T I O N I S M ,
1 7 6 8 – 1 8 6 1
spoken of and was styled Embrenché, a term as I remember importing the highest distinction, and signifying in our language a mark of grandeur. This mark is
conferred on the person entitled to it by cutting the skin across at the top of the
forehead and drawing it down to the eyebrows, and while it is in this situation
applying a warm hand and rubbing it until it shrinks up into a thick weal across
the lower part of the forehead. Most of the judges and senators were thus
marked; my father had long borne it. I had seen it conferred on one of my brothers, and I was also destined to receive it by my parents. . . .
We are almost a nation of dancers, musicians, and poets. Thus every great event
such as a triumphant return from battle or other cause of public rejoicing is celebrated in public dances, which are accompanied with songs and music suited to
the occasion. The assembly is separated into four divisions, which dance either
apart or in succession, and each with a character peculiar to itself. The first division contains the married men, who in their dances frequently exhibit feats of
arms and the representation of a battle. To these succeed the married women,
who dance in the second division. The young men occupy the third and the maidens the fourth. Each represents some interesting scene of real life, such as a great
achievement, domestic employment, a pathetic story, or some rural sport, and as
the subject is generally founded on some recent event it is therefore ever new.
This gives our dances a spirit and variety which I have scarcely seen elsewhere.
We have many musical instruments, particularly drums of different kinds, a piece
of music which resembles a guitar, and another much like a stickado. These last
are chiefly used by betrothed virgins who play on them on all grand festivals.
As our manners are simple, our luxuries are few. The dress of both sexes is
nearly the same. It generally consists of a long piece of calico or muslin, wrapped
loosely round the body somewhat in the form of a highland plaid. This is usually
dyed blue, which is our favourite colour. It is extracted from a berry and is
brighter and richer than any I have seen in Europe. Besides this our women of
distinction wear golden ornaments, which they dispose with some profusion on
their arms and legs. When our women are not employed with the men in tillage,
their usual occupation is spinning and weaving cotton, which they afterwards dye
and make into garments. They also manufacture earthen vessels, of which we
have many kinds. Among the rest tobacco pipes, made after the same fashion and
used in the same manner, as those in Turkey.
Our manner of living is entirely plain, for as yet the natives are unacquainted
with those refinements in cookery which debauch the taste: bullocks, goats, and
poultry, supply the greatest part of their food. These constitute likewise the principal wealth of the country and the chief articles of its commerce. The flesh is
usually stewed in a pan; to make it savoury we sometimes use also pepper and
other spices, and we have salt made of wood ashes. Our vegetables are mostly
plantains, eadas, yams, beans, and Indian corn. The head of the family usually eats
alone; his wives and slaves have also their separate tables. Before we taste food
we always wash our hands: indeed our cleanliness on all occasions is extreme, but
on this it is an indispensable ceremony. After washing, libation is made by pour-
O L A U D A H
E Q U I A N O ,
“ T H E
I N T E R E S T I N G
N A R R AT I V E
.
.
. ”
11
ing out a small portion of the drink on the floor, and tossing a small quantity of
the food in a certain place for the spirits of departed relations, which the natives
suppose to preside over their conduct and guard them from evil. They are totally
unacquainted with strong or spirituous liquors, and their principal beverage is
palm wine. This is got from a tree of that name by tapping it at the top and fastening a large gourd to it, and sometimes one tree will yield three or four gallons
in a night. When just drawn it is of a most delicious sweetness, but in a few days
it acquires a tartish and more spirituous flavour, though I never saw anyone intoxicated by it. The same tree also produces nuts and oil. Our principal luxury is in
perfumes; one sort of these is an odoriferous wood of delicious fragrance, the
other a kind of earth, a small portion of which thrown into the fire diffuses a more
powerful odour. We beat this wood into powder and mix it with palm oil, with
which both men and women perfume themselves.
In our buildings we study convenience rather than ornament. Each master of a
family has a large square piece of ground, surrounded with a moat or fence or
enclosed with a wall made of red earth tempered, which when dry is as hard as
brick. Within this are his houses to accommodate his family and slaves which if
numerous frequently present the appearance of a village. In the middle stands the
principal building, appropriated to the sole use of the master and consisting of two
apartments, in one of which he sits in the day with his family. The other is left apart
for the reception of his friends. He has besides these a distinct apartment in which
he sleeps, together with his male children. On each side are the apartments of his
wives, who have also their separate day and night houses. The habitations of the
slaves and their families are distributed throughout the rest of the enclosure. These
houses never exceed one story in height: they are always built of wood or stakes driven into the ground, crossed with wattles, and neatly plastered within and without.
The roof is thatched with reeds. Our day-houses are left open at the sides, but those
in which we sleep are always covered, and plastered in the inside with a composition mixed with cow-dung to keep off the different insects which annoy us during
the night. The walls and floors also of these are generally covered with mats. Our
beds consist of a platform raised three or four feet from the ground, on which are
laid skins and different parts of a spungy tree called plantain. Our covering is calico
or muslin, the same as our dress. The usual seats are a few logs of wood, but we have
benches, which are generally perfumed to accommodate strangers: these compose
the greater part of our household furniture. Houses so constructed and furnished
require but little skill to erect them. Every man is a sufficient architect for the purpose. The whole neighborhood afford their unanimous assistance in building them
and in return receive and expect no other recompense than a feast.
As we live in a country where nature is prodigal of her favours, our wants are
few and easily supplied; of course we have few manufactures. They consist for the
most part of calicoes, earthenware, ornaments, and instruments of war and husbandry. But these make no part of our commerce, the principal articles of which,
as I have observed, are provisions. In such a state money is of little use; however
we have some small pieces of coin, if I may call them such. They are made something like an anchor, but I do not remember either their value or denomination.
12
F O U N D AT I O N S :
S L AV E RY
A N D
A B O L I T I O N I S M ,
1 7 6 8 – 1 8 6 1
We have also markets, at which I have been frequently with my mother. These are
sometimes visited by stout mahogany-coloured men from the southwest of us: we
call them Oye-Eboe, which term signifies red men living at a distance. They generally bring us firearms, gunpowder, hats, beads, and dried fish. The last we
esteemed a great rarity as our waters were only brooks and springs. These articles
they barter with us for odoriferous woods and earth, and our salt of wood ashes.
They always carry slaves through our land, but the strictest account is exacted of
their manner of procuring them before they are suffered to pass. Some times
indeed we sold slaves to them, but they were only prisoners of war, or such among
us as had been convicted of kidnapping, or adultery, and some other crimes which
we esteemed heinous. This practice of kidnapping induces me to think that,
notwithstanding all our strictness, their principal business among us was to trepan
our people. I remember too they carried great sacks along with them, which not
long after I had an opportunity of fatally seeing applied to that infamous purpose.
Our land is uncommonly rich and fruitful, and produces all kinds of vegetables
in great abundance. We have plenty of Indian corn, and vast quantities of cotton
and tobacco. Our pineapples grow without culture; they are about the size of the
largest sugar-loaf and finely flavoured. We have also spices of different kinds, particularly pepper, and a variety of delicious fruits which I have never seen in
Europe, together with gums of various kinds and honey in abundance. All our
industry is exerted to improve those blessings of nature. Agriculture is our chief
employment, and everyone, even the children and women, are engaged in it. Thus
we are all habituated to labour from our earliest years. Everyone contributes something to the common stock, and as we are unacquainted with idleness we have no
beggars. The benefits of such a mode of living are obvious. The West India
planters prefer the slaves of Benin or Eboe to those of any other part of Guinea
for their hardiness, intelligence, integrity, and zeal. Those benefits are felt by us in
the general healthiness of the people, and in their vigour and activity; I might have
added too in their comeliness. Deformity is indeed unknown amongst us, I mean
that of shape. Numbers of the natives of Eboe now in London might be brought
in support of this assertion, for in regard to complexion, ideas of beauty are wholly
relative. I remember while in Africa to have seen three negro children who were
tawny, and another quite white, who were universally regarded by myself and the
natives in general, as far as related to their complexions, as deformed. Our women
too were in my eyes at least uncommonly graceful, alert, and modest to a degree
of bashfulness; nor do I remember to have ever heard of an instance of incontinence amongst them before marriage. They are also remarkably cheerful. Indeed
cheerfulness and affability are two of the leading characteristics of our nation.
Our tillage is exercised in a large plain or common, some hours walk from our
dwellings, and all the neighbours resort thither in a body. They use no beasts of
husbandry, and their only instruments are hoes, axes, shovels, and beaks, or
pointed iron to dig with. Sometimes we are visited by locusts, which come in large
clouds so as to darken the air and destroy our harvest. This however happens
rarely, but when it does a famine is produced by it. I remember an instance or two
wherein this happened. This common is often the theatre of war, and therefore
O L A U D A H
E Q U I A N O ,
“ T H E
I N T E R E S T I N G
N A R R AT I V E
.
.
. ”
13
when our people go out to till their land they not only go in a body but generally
take their arms with them for fear of a surprise, and when they apprehend an
invasion they guard the avenues to their dwellings by driving sticks into the
ground, which are so sharp at one end as to pierce the foot and are generally
dipped in poison. From what I can recollect of these battles, they appear to have
been irruptions of one little state or district on the other to obtain prisoners or
booty. Perhaps they were incited to this by those traders who brought the
European goods I mentioned amongst us. Such a mode of obtaining slaves in
Africa is common, and I believe more are procured this way and by kidnapping
than any other. When a trader wants slaves he applies to a chief for them and
tempts him with his wares. It is not extraordinary if on this occasion he yields to
the temptation with as little firmness, and accepts the price of his fellow creatures
liberty with as little reluctance as the enlightened merchant. Accordingly he falls
on his neighbours and a desperate battle ensues. If he prevails and takes prisoners, he gratifies his avarice by selling them; but if his party be vanquished and he
falls into the hands of the enemy, he is put to death: for as he has been known to
foment their quarrels it is thought dangerous to let him survive, and no ransom
can save him, though all other prisoners may be redeemed. . . .
O
The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and
a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled
me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror, when I was carried on
board I was immediately handled, and tossed up, to see if I were sound, by some of
the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had got into a world of bad spirits, and that
they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their
long hair, and the language they spoke (which was very different from any I had ever
heard) united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed such were the horrors of my views
and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would
have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the
meanest slave in my own country. When I looked round the ship too and saw a large
furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description
chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow,
I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I
fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little I found some black
people about me, who I believed were some of those who had brought me on board,
and had been receiving their pay; they talked to me in order to cheer me, but all in
vain. I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks,
red faces, and long hair. They told me I was not; and one of the crew brought me a
small portion of spirituous liquor in a wine-glass; but being afraid of him, I would not
take it out of his hand. One of the blacks therefore took it from him and gave it to
me, and I took a little down my palate, which, instead of reviving me, as they thought
it would, threw me into the greatest consternation at the strange feeling it produced,
having never tasted any such liquor before. Soon after this the blacks who brought
14
F O U N D AT I O N S :
S L AV E RY
A N D
A B O L I T I O N I S M ,
1 7 6 8 – 1 8 6 1
me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived
of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of
gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of
every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long
suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I
received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that
with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low
that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished
for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men
offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the
hands, and laid me across, I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other
flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before: and,
although not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I
saw it, yet, nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped
over the side, but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely
who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water: and I
have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to
do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself.
In a little time after, amongst the poor chained men, I found some of my own nation,
which in a small degree gave ease to my mind. I inquired of these what was to be
done with us? they gave me to understand we were to be carried to these white people’s country to work for them. I then was a little revived, and thought, if it were no
worse than working, my situation was not so desperate: but still I feared I should be
put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this
not only shown towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves. One
white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so
unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast, that he died in consequence of it;
and they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute. This made me
fear these people the more; and I expected nothing less than to be treated in the
same manner. I could not help expressing my fears and apprehensions to some of my
countrymen: I asked them if these people had no country, but lived in this hollow
place (the ship)? they told me they did not, but came from a distant one, “Then,” said
I, “how comes it in all our country we never heard of them!” They told me, because
they lived so very far off. I then asked where were their women? had they any like
themselves? I was told they had: “And why,” said I, “do we not see them?” they
answered, because they were left behind. I asked how the vessel could go? they told
me they could not tell; but that there were cloth put upon the masts by the help of
the ropes I saw, and then the vessel went on; and the white men had some spell or
magic they put in the water when they liked in order to stop the vessel, I was exceedingly amazed at this account, and really thought they were spirits. I therefore wished
much to be from amongst them, for I expected they would sacrifice me: but my
wishes were vain; for we were so quartered that it was impossible for any of us to
make our escape. While we stayed on the coast I was mostly on deck; and one day,
O L A U D A H
E Q U I A N O ,
“ T H E
I N T E R E S T I N G
N A R R AT I V E
.
.
. ”
15
to my great astonishment, I saw one of these vessels coming in with the sails up. As
soon as the whites saw it, they gave a great shout, at which we were amazed: and the
more so as the vessel appeared larger by approaching nearer. At last she came to an
anchor in my sight, and when the anchor was let go I and my countrymen who saw
it were lost in astonishment to observe the vessel stop; and were now convinced it
was done by magic. Soon after this the other ship got her boats out, and they came
on board of us, and the people of both ships seemed very glad to see each other.
Several of the strangers also shook hands with us black people, and made motions
with their hands, signifying I suppose, we were to go to their country; but we did not
understand them. At last, when the ship we were in, had got in all her cargo, they
made ready with many fearful noises, and we were all put under deck, so that we
could not see how they managed the vessel. But this disappointment was the least of
my sorrow. The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably
loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had
been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship’s
cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the
place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so
crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from
a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness amongst the slaves, of which
many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their
purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains,
now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the
groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.
Happily perhaps for myself I was soon reduced so low here that it was thought necessary to keep me almost always on deck; and from my extreme youth I was not put
in fetters. In this situation I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions,
some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, which I
began to hope would soon put an end to my miseries. Often did I think many of the
inhabitants of the deep much more happy than myself, I envied them the freedom
they enjoyed, and as often wished I could change my condition for theirs. Every circumstance I met with served only to render my state more painful, and heightened
my apprehensions and my opinion of the cruelty of the whites. One day they had
taken a number of fishes; and when they had killed and satisfied themselves with as
many as they thought fit, to our astonishment who were on the deck, rather than give
any of them to us to eat, as we expected, they tossed the remaining fish into the sea
again, although we begged and prayed for some as well as we could, but in vain; and
some of my countrymen, being pressed by hunger, took an opportunity, when they
thought no one saw them, of trying to get a little privately; but they were discovered,
and the attempt procured them some very severe floggings. One day, when we had
a smooth sea and moderate wind, two of my wearied countrymen who were chained
together (I was near them at the time), preferring death to such a life of misery,
somehow made through the nettings and jumped into the sea: immediately another
quite dejected fellow, who on account of his illness, was suffered to be out of irons,
16
F O U N D AT I O N S :
S L AV E RY
A N D
A B O L I T I O N I S M ,
1 7 6 8 – 1 8 6 1
also followed their example; and I believe many more would very soon have done the
same if they had not been prevented by the ship’s crew who were instantly alarmed.
Those of us that were the most active were in a moment put down under the deck,
and there was such a noise and confusion amongst the people of the ship as I never
heard before, to stop her, and get the boat out to go after the slaves. However two of
the wretches were drowned, but they got the other, and afterwards flogged him
unmercifully for thus attempting to prefer death to slavery. In this manner we continued to undergo more hardships than I can now relate, hardships which are inseparable from this accursed trade. Many a time we were near suffocation from the
want of fresh air, which we were often without for whole days together. This, and the
stench of the necessary tubs, carried off many. During our passage I first saw flying
fishes, which surprised me very much: they used frequently to fly across the ship, and
many of them fell on the deck. I also now first saw the use of the quadrant; I had
often with astonishment seen the mariners make observations with it, and I could not
think what it meant. They at last took notice of my surprise: and one of them, willing to increase it, as well as to gratify my curiosity, made me one day look through it.
The clouds appeared to me to be land, which disappeared as they passed along. This
heightened my wonder; and I was now more persuaded than ever that I was in
another world, and that every thing about me was magic. At last we came in sight of
the island of Barbadoes, at which the whites on board gave a great shout, and made
many signs of joy to us. We did not know what to think of this; but as the vessel drew
nearer, we plainly saw the harbour, and other ships of different kinds and sizes; and
we soon anchored amongst them off Bridge-Town. Many merchants and planters
now came on board, though it was in the evening. They put us in separate parcels,
and examined us attentively. They also made us jump, and pointed to the land, signifying we were to go there. We thought by this we should be eaten by these ugly
men, as they appeared to us; a...
Purchase answer to see full
attachment