Words of Fire

by Beverly Guy-Sheftall

  In the era now about to dawn, her sentiments must strike the keynote and give the dominant tone. And this because of the nature of her contribution to the world.

  Her kingdom is not over physical forces. Not by might, nor by power can she prevail. Her position must ever be inferior where strength of muscle creates leadership. If she follows the instincts of her nature, however, she must always stand for the conservation of those deeper moral forces which make for the happiness of homes and the righteousness of the country. In a reign of moral ideas she is easily queen.

  There is to my mind no grander and surer prophecy of the new era and of woman’s place in it, than the work already begun in the waning years of the nineteenth century by the WCTU [Women’s Christian Temperance Union] in America, an organization which has even now reached not only national but international importance, and seems destined to permeate and purify the whole civilized world. It is the living embodiment of woman’s activities and woman’s ideas, and its extent and strength rightly prefigure her increasing power as a moral factor.

  The colored woman of to-day occupies, one may say, a unique position in this country. In a period of itself transitional and unsettled, her status seems one of the least ascertainable and definitive of all the forces which make for our civilization. She is confronted by both a woman question and a race problem, and is as yet an unknown or an unacknowledged factor in both. While the women of the white race can with calm assurance enter upon the work they feel by nature appointed to do, while their men give loyal support and appreciative countenance to their efforts, recognizing in most avenues of usefulness the propriety and the need of woman’s distinctive cooperation, the colored woman too often finds herself hampered and shamed by a less liberal sentiment and a more conservative attitude on the part of those for whose opinion she cares most. That this is not universally true I am glad to admit. There are to be found both intensely conservative white men and exceedingly liberal colored men. But as far as my experience goes the average man of our race is less frequently ready to admit the actual need among the sturdier forces of the world for woman’s help or influence. That great social and economic questions await her interference, that she could throw any light on problems of national import, that her intermeddling could improve the management of school systems, or elevate the tone of public institutions, or humanize and sanctify the far-reaching influence of prisons and reformatories and improve the treatment of lunatics and imbeciles—that she has a word worth hearing on mooted questions in political economy, that she could contribute a suggestion on the relations of labor and capital, or offer a thought on honest money and honorable trade, I fear the majority of “Americans of the colored variety” are not yet prepared to concede. It may be that they do not yet see these questions in their right perspective, being absorbed in the immediate needs of their own political complications. A good deal depends on where we put the emphasis in this world; and our men are not perhaps to blame if they see everything colored by the light of those agitations in the midst of which they live and move and have their being. The part they have had to play in American history during the last twenty-five or thirty years has tended rather to exaggerate the importance of mere political advantage, as well as to set a fictitious valuation on those able to secure such advantage. It is the astute politician, the manager who can gain preferment for himself and his favorites, the demagogue known to stand in with the powers at the White House and consulted on the bestowal of government plums, whom we set in high places and denominate great. It is they who receive the hosannas of the multitude and are regarded as leaders of the people. The thinker and the doer, the man who solves the problem by enriching his country with an invention worth thousands or by a thought inestimable and precious is given neither bread nor a stone. He is too often left to die in obscurity and neglect even if spared in his life the bitterness of fanatical jealousies and detraction.

  And yet politics, and surely American politics, is hardly a school for great minds. Sharpening rather than deepening, it develops the faculty of taking advantage of present emergencies rather than the insight to distinguish between the true and the false, the lasting and the ephemeral advantage. Highly cultivated selfishness rather than consecrated benevolence is its passport to success. Its votaries are never seers. At best they are but manipulators—often only jugglers. It is conducive neither to profound statesmanship nor to the higher type of manhood. Altruism is its mauvais succès and naturally enough it is indifferent to any factor which cannot be worked into its own immediate aims and purposes. As woman’s influence as a political element is as yet nil in most of the commonwealths of our republic, it is not surprising that with those who place the emphasis on mere political capital she may yet seem almost a nonentity so far as it concerns the solution of great national or even racial perplexities.

  There are those, however, who value the calm elevation of the thoughtful spectator who stands aloof from the heated scramble; and, above the turmoil and din of corruption and selfishness, can listen to the teachings of eternal truth and righteousness. There are even those who feel that the black man’s unjust and unlawful exclusion temporarily from participation in the elective franchise in certain states is after all but a lesson “in the desert” fitted to develop in him insight and discrimination against the day of his own appointed time. One needs occasionally to stand aside from the hum and rush of human interests and passions to hear the voices of God. And it not unfrequently happens that the All-loving gives a great push to certain souls to thrust them out, as it were, from the distracting current for awhile to promote their discipline and growth, or to enrich them by communion and reflection. And similarly it may be woman’s privilege from her peculiar coigne of vantage as a quiet observer, to whisper just the needed suggestion or the almost forgotten truth. The colored woman, then, should not be ignored because her bark is resting in the silent waters of the sheltered cove. She is watching the movements of the contestants none the less and is all the better qualified, perhaps, to weigh and judge and advise because not herself in the excitement of the race. Her voice, too, has always been heard in clear, unfaltering tones, ringing the changes on those deeper interests which make for permanent good. She is always sound and orthodox on questions affecting the well-being of her race. You do not find the colored woman selling her birthright for a mess of pottage. Nay, even after reason has retired from the contest, she has been known to cling blindly with the instinct of a turtle dove to those principles and policies which to her mind promise hope and safety for children yet unborn. It is notorious that ignorant black women in the South have actually left their husbands’ homes and repudiated their support for what was understood by the wife to be race disloyalty, or “voting away,” as she expresses it, the privileges of herself and little ones.

  It is largely our women in the South to-day who keep the black men solid in the Republican party. The latter as they increase in intelligence and power of discrimination would be more apt to divide on local issues at any rate. They begin to see that the Grand Old Party regards the Negro’s cause as an outgrown issue, and on Southern soil at least finds a too intimate acquaintanceship with him a somewhat unsavory recommendation. Then, too, their political wits have been sharpened to appreciate the fact that it is good policy to cultivate one’s neighbors and not depend too much on a distant friend to fight one’s home battles. But the black woman can never forget—however lukewarm the party may to-day appear—that it was a Republican president who struck the manacles from her own wrists and gave the possibilities of manhood to her helpless little ones; and to her mind a Democratic Negro is a traitor and a time-server. Talk as much as you like of venality and manipulation in the South, there are not many men, I can tell you, who would dare face a wife quivering in every fiber with the consciousness that her husband is a coward who could be paid to desert her deepest and dearest interests.

  Not unfelt, then, if unproclaimed has been the work and influence of the colored women of Ameri
ca. Our list of chieftains in the service, though not long, is not inferior in strength and excellence, I dare believe, to any similar list which this country can produce.

  Among the pioneers, Frances Watkins Harper could sing with prophetic exaltation in the darkest days, when as yet there was not a rift in the clouds overhanging her people:“Yes, Ethiopia shall stretch

  Her bleeding hands abroad;

  Her cry of agony shall reach the burning throne of God.

  Redeemed from dust and freed from chains,

  Her sons shall lift their eyes,

  From cloud-capt hills and verdant plains

  Shall shouts of triumph rise.”

  Among preachers of righteousness, an unanswerable silencer of cavilers and objectors, was Sojourner Truth, that unique and rugged genius who seemed carved out without hand or chisel from the solid mountain mass; and in pleasing contrast, Amanda Smith, sweetest of natural singers and pleaders in dulcet tones for the things of God and of His Christ.

  Sarah Woodson Early and Martha Briggs, planting and watering in the school room, and giving off from their matchless and irresistible personality an impetus and inspiration which can never die so long as there lives and breathes a remote descendant of their disciples and friends.

  Charlotte Forten Grimke, the gentle spirit whose verses and life link her so beautifully with America’s great Quaker poet and loving reformer.

  Hallie Quinn Brown, charming reader, earnest, effective lecturer and devoted worker of unflagging zeal and unquestioned power.

  Fannie Jackson Coppin, the teacher and organizer, preeminent among women of whatever country or race in constructive and executive force.

  These women represent all shades of belief and as many departments of activity; but they have one thing in common—their sympathy with the oppressed race in America and the consecration of their several talents in whatever line to the work of its deliverance and development.

  Fifty years ago woman’s activity according to orthodox definitions was on a pretty clearly cut “sphere,” including primarily the kitchen and the nursery, and rescued from the barrenness of prison bars by the womanly mania for adorning every discoverable bit of china or canvass with forlorn looking cranes balanced idiotically on one foot. The woman of to-day finds herself in the presence of responsibilities which ramify through the profoundest and most varied interests of her country and race. Not one of the issues of this plodding, toiling, sinning, repenting, falling, aspiring humanity can afford to shut her out, or can deny the reality of her influence. No plan for renovating society, no scheme for purifying politics, no reform in church or in state, no moral, social, or economic question, no movement upward or downward in the human plane is lost on her. A man once said when told his house was afire: “Go tell my wife; I never meddle with household affairs.” But no woman can possibly put herself or her sex outside any of the interests that affect humanity. All departments in the new era are to be hers, in the sense that her interests are in all and through all; and it is incumbent on her to keep intelligently and sympathetically en rapport with all the great movements of her time, that she may know on which side to throw the weight of her influence. She stands now at the gateway of this new era of American civilization. In her hands must be moulded the strength, the wit, the statesmanship, the morality, all the psychic force, the social and economic intercourse of that era. To be alive at such an epoch is a privilege, to be a woman then is sublime.

  In this last decade of our century, changes of such moment are in progress, such new and alluring vistas are opening out before us, such original and radical suggestions for the adjustment of labor and capital, of government and the governed, of the family, the church, and the state, that to be a possible factor though an infinitesimal one in such a movement is pregnant with hope and weighty with responsibility. To be a woman in such an age carries with it a privilege and an opportunity never implied before. But to be a woman of the Negro race in America, and to be able to grasp the deep significance of the possibilities of the crisis, is to have a heritage, it seems to me, unique in the ages. In the first place, the race is young and full of the elasticity and hopefulness of youth. All its achievements are before it. It does not look on the masterly triumphs of nineteenth-century civilization with that blasé world-weary look which characterizes the old washed-out and worn-out races which have already, so to speak, seen their best days....

  Julia A. J. Footle (1823—1900)

  Julia Foote, born in Schenectady, New York, to an African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church family, was among a small group of women evangelists (“sisters of the spirit,” according to William Andrews) in the nineteenth century who defied gender conventions by insisting on their right to preach. In 1894, against the wishes of her parents, husband, and minister, she became the first ordained deacon in the A.M.E. Church and the second woman to become an ordained elder in the church. Her spiritual autobiography, A Brand Plucked from the Fire (1879), like Jarena Lee’s Religious Experience and Journal (1849) and Virginia W. Broughton’s Twenty Year’s Experience of a Missionary (1907), makes a feminist argument for Christianity’s embrace of women evangelists like herself.

  Later, the black church would continue to be a site of resistance on the part of feminist women. Nannie Burroughs (1879—1961), born in Virginia to former slaves, was a prominent clubwoman, educator, orator, religious, and women’s rights leader, who devoted her life to various self-help initiatives for the race. One of the founders in 1900 of the Women’s Convention Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention, she delivered her inaugural speech in Richmond on “How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping.” An insightful analysis by historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham [in Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880—1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993)] of the feminist theology of black Baptist women includes a discussion of Burrough’s campaign for gender equality within the Baptist church. She also discusses their indebtedness to Maria Stewart and disdain for black male sexism. Foote and Burroughs are important foremothers for a cadre of contemporary womanist theologians.

  WOMEN IN THE GOSPEL

  Thirty years ago there could scarcely a person be found, in the churches, to sympathize with anyone who talked of Holiness. But, in my simplicity, I did think that a body of Christian ministers would understand my case and judge righteously. I was, however, disappointed.

  It is no little thing to feel that every man’s hand is against us, and ours against every man, as seemed to be the case with me at this time; yet how precious, if Jesus but be with us. In this severe trial I had constant access to God, and a clear consciousness that he heard me; yet I did not seem to have that plenitude of the Spirit that I had before.

  Though I did not wish to pain anyone, neither could I please anyone only as I was led by the Holy Spirit. I saw, as never before, that the best men were liable to err, and that the only safe way was to fall on Christ, even though censure and reproach fell upon me for obeying His voice. Man’s opinion weighed nothing with me, for my commission was from heaven, and my reward was with the Most High.

  I could not believe that it was a short-lived impulse or spasmodic influence that impelled me to preach. I read that on the day of Pentecost was the Scripture fulfilled as found in Joel ii. 28, 29; and it certainly will not be denied that women as well as men were at that time filled with the Holy Ghost, because it is expressly stated that women were among those who continued in prayer and supplication, waiting for the fulfillment of the promise. Women and men are classed together, and if the power to preach the Gospel is short-lived and spasmodic in the case of women, it must be equally so in that of men; and if women have lost the gift of prophecy, so have men.

  We are sometimes told that if a woman pretends to a Divine call, and thereon grounds the right to plead the cause of a crucified Redeemer in public, she will be believed when she shows credentials from heaven; that is, when she works a miracle. If it be necessary to prove one’s right t
o preach the Gospel, I ask of my brethren to show me their credentials, or I can not believe in the propriety of their ministry.

  But the bible puts an end to this strife when it says: “There is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus.” Philip had four daughters that prophesied, or preached. Paul called Priscilla, as well as Aquila, his “helper,” or, as in the Greek, his ” fellow-laborer.” Rom. xv. 3; 2 Cor. viii. 23; Phil. ii. 5; 1 thess. iii. 2. The same word, which, in our common translation, is now rendered a “servant of the church,” in speaking of Phebe (Rom. xix. I.), is rendered “minister” when applied to Tychicus. Eph. vi. 21. When Paul said, “Help those women who labor with me in the Gospel,” he certainly meant that they did more than to pour out tea. In the eleventh chapter of First Corinthians Paul gives directions, to men and women, how they should appear when they prophesy or pray in public assemblies; and he defines prophesying to be speaking to edification, exhortation, and comfort.

  I may further remark that the conduct of holy women is recorded in Scripture, as an example to others of their sex. And in the early ages of Christianity many women were happy and glorious in martyrdom. How nobly, how heroically, too, in later ages, have women suffered persecution and death for the name of the Lord Jesus.

  In looking over these facts, I could see no miracle wrought for those women more than in myself.

  Though opposed, I went forth laboring for God, and He owned and blessed my labors, and has done so wherever I have been until this day. And while I walk obediently, I know He will, though hell may rage and vent its spite.

  Gertrude Bustill Mossell (1855—1948)

  Gertrude Bustill Mossell, born in Philadelphia to a prominent free Quaker family, was an influential journalist and women’s rights crusader. Her career as a journalist was influenced by her politically active abolitionist/feminist family which included Grace Bustill Douglass and her daughter Sarah Mapps Douglass, members of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. She was also the cousin of political activist Paul Robeson.