The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers

by Various

  The Catholics are wise in their day and generation. They bid for the children, and we can get the men and women, if we can. The most hopeful evangelization begins with childhood, when the little one is around the mother’s skirts. If we take no care to instruct in christian training, the girls, the future wives and mothers, then we leave our christian young men to marry with heathen women. And if Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, was led astray by his heathen wives, and the strongest man that ever lived was utterly ruined by his fascinating heathen, Delilah, what may be expected of ordinary young men of the present day? Therefore, I am strong in the belief that a great mistake has been made in not preparing native women in this country and on their own soil for the missionary work.

  The W.P.M.M. Society has given a great deal of thought to this subject and they believe that their ideas will commend themselves to the intelligent judgment of workers in the missionary cause both at home and abroad. When the prison doors of slavery were thrown open, and the A.M.E. denomination entered the South, it carried the bible in one hand and the spelling book in the other. Religion without christian instruction is heat without light. Surely when this land is dotted with schools and colleges, we can afford at least one mission school in Hayti, and one in Africa, where some of the most promising of the native young people may be instructed in the bible, in christian principles, and in elementary knowledge and may go forth as allies and coworkers with our missionaries to carry out the light of gospel truth, into the darkest regions of the country.

  “A Plea for Industrial Opportunity” (1879)

  SOURCE: Fannie M. Jackson Coppin, “A Plea for Industrial Opportunity,” Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence. Ed. Alice Moore Dunbar (New York: The Bookery Publishing Company, 1914).

  The great lesson to be taught by this Fair is the value of co-operative effort to make our cents dollars, and to show us what help there is for ourselves in ourselves. That the colored people of this country have enough money to materially alter their financial condition, was clearly demonstrated by the millions of dollars deposited in the Freedmen’s Bank; that they have the good sense, and the unanimity to use this power, are now proved by this industrial exhibition and fair.

  It strikes me that much of the recent talk about the exodus has proceeded upon the high-handed assumption that, owing largely to the credit system of the South, the colored people there are forced to the alternative, to “curse God, and die,” or else “go West.” Not a bit of it. The people of the South, it is true, cannot at this time produce hundreds of dollars, but they have millions of pennies; and millions of pennies make tens of thousands of dollars. By clubbing together and lumping their pennies, a fund might be raised in the cities of the South that the poorer classes might fall back upon while their crops are growing; or else, by the opening of co-operative stores, become their own creditors and so effectually rid themselves of their merciless extortioners. “Oh, they won’t do anything; you can’t get them united on anything!” is frequently expressed. The best way for a man to prove that he can do a thing is to do it, and that is what we have shown we can do. This fair, participated in by twenty four States in the Union, and gotten up for a purpose which is of no pecuniary benefit to those concerned in it, effectually silences all slanders about “we won’t or we can’t do,” and teaches its own instructive and greatly needed lessons of self-help,—the best help that any man can have, next to God’s.

  Those in charge, who have completed the arrangement of the Fair, have studiously avoided preceding it with noisy and demonstrative babblings, which are so often the vapid precursors of promises as empty as those who make them; therefore, in some quarters, our Fair has been overlooked. It is not, we think, a presumptuous interpretation of this great movement, to say, that the voice of God now seems to utter “Speak to the people that they go forward.” “Go forward” in what respect? Teach the millions of poor colored laborers of the South how much power they have in themselves, by co-operation of effort, and by a combination of their small means, to change the despairing poverty which now drives them from their homes, and makes them a mill-stone around the neck of any community, South or West. Secondly, that we shall go forward in asking to enter the same employments which other people enter. Within the past ten years we have made almost no advance in getting our youth into industrial and business occupations. It is just as hard for instance, to get a boy into a printing-office now as it was ten years ago. It is simply astonishing when we consider how many of the common vocations of life colored people are shut out of. Colored men are not admitted to the printers’ trade-union, nor, with very rare exceptions are they employed in any city of the United States in a paid capacity as printers or writers; one of the rare exceptions being the employment of H. Price Williams, on the Sunday Press of this city. We are not employed as salesmen or pharmacists, or saleswomen, or bank clerks, or merchants’ clerks, or tradesmen, or mechanics, or telegraph operators, or to any degree as State or government officials, and I could keep on with the string of “ors” until to-morrow morning, but the patience of an audience has its limit.

  Slavery made us poor, and its gloomy, malicious shadow tends to keep us so. I beg to say, kind hearers, that this is not spoken in a spirit of recrimination. We have no quarrel with our fate, and we leave your Christianity to yourselves. Our faith is firmly fixed in that “Eternal Providence,” that in its own good time will “justify the ways of God to man.” But, believing that to get the right men into the right places is a “consummation most devoutly to be wished,” it is a matter of serious concern to us to see our youth with just as decided diversity of talent as any other people, herded together into but three or four occupations.

  It is cruel to make a teacher or a preacher of a man who ought to be a printer or a blacksmith, and that is exactly the condition we are now obliged to submit to. The greatest advance that has been made since the War has been effected by political parties, and it is precisely the political positions that we think it least desirable our youth should fill. We have our choice of the professions, it is true, but, as we have not been endowed with an overwhelming abundance of brains, it is not probable that we can contribute to the bar a great lawyer except once in a great while. The same may be said of medicine; nor are we able to tide over the “starving time,” between the reception of a diploma and the time that a man’s profession becomes a paying one.

  Being determined to know whether this industrial and business ostracism lay in ourselves or “in our stars,” we have from time to time, knocked, shaken, and kicked, at these closed doors of employment. A cold, metallic voice from within replies, “We do not employ colored people.” Ours not to make reply, ours not to question why. Thank heaven, we are not obliged to do and die; having the preference to do or die, we naturally prefer to do.

  But we cannot help wondering if some ignorant or faithless steward of God’s work and God’s money hasn’t blundered. It seems necessary that we should make known to the good men and women who are so solicitous about our souls, and our minds, that we haven’t quite got rid of our bodies yet, and until we do, we must feed and clothe them; and this attitude of keeping us out of work forces us back upon charity.

  That distinguished thinker, Mr. Henry C. Carey, in his valuable works on political economy, has shown by the truthful and forceful logic of history, that the elevation of all peoples to a higher moral and intellectual plane, and to a fuller investiture of their civil rights, has always steadily kept pace with the improvement in their physical condition. Therefore we feel that resolutely and in unmistakable language, yet in the dignity of moderation, we should strive to make known to all men the justice of our claims to the same employments as other’s under the same conditions. We do not ask that anyone of our people shall be put into a position because he is a colored person, but we do most emphatically ask that he shall not be kept out of a position because he is a colored person. “An open field and no favors” is all that is requested. The time was
when to put a colored girl or boy behind a counter would have been to decrease custom; it would have been a tax upon the employer, and a charity that we were too proud to accept; but public sentiment has changed. I am satisfied that the employment of a colored clerk or a colored saleswoman wouldn’t even be a “nine days’ wonder.” It is easy of accomplishment, and yet it is not. To thoughtless and headstrong people who meet duty with impertinent dictation I do not now address myself; but to those who wish the most gracious of all blessings, a fuller enlightment as to their duty,—to those I beg to say, think of what is suggested in this appeal.

  46

  VICTORIA EARLE MATTHEWS

  (1861–1907)

  Victoria Earle Matthews was born into slavery in Fort Valley, Georgia. After escaping to New York and working as a housekeeper, she began a career in journalism and wrote for three New York newspapers, the Times, the Herald, and the Sunday Mercury, and contributed to African American newspapers such as the Boston Advocate and the New York Globe. She also wrote the novel Aunt Lindy and delivered lectures, such as “The Value of Race Literature” and “The Awakening of the Afro-American Woman.” Matthews founded the Woman’s Loyal Union and the National Federation of Afro-American Women and served as the first national organizer of the combined National Colored Women’s League and National Association of Colored Women.

  As Gertrude Mossell writes, “‘Aunt Lindy,’ by (Victoria Earle) Mrs. W. E. Matthews . . . is a beautiful little story and is deserving of careful study, emanating as it does from the pen of a representative of the race, and giving a vivid and truthful aspect of one phase of Negro character. It shows most conclusively the need of the race to produce its own delineators of Negro life.”

  “The Value of Race Literature” (1895)

  SOURCE: Victoria Earle Matthews, “The Value of Race Literature: An Address Delivered at the First Congress of Colored Women of the United States at Boston, Mass., July 30th, 1895.”

  “If the black man carries in his bosom an indispensable element of a new and coming civilization, for the sake of that element, no money, nor strength, nor circumstance can hurt him; he will survive and play his part. . . . If you have man, black or white is an insignificance. The intellect—that is miraculous! who has it, has the talisman. His skin and bones, though they were the color of night, are transparent, and the everlasting stars shine through with attractive beams.”

  —RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

  By Race Literature, we mean ordinarily all the writings emanating from a distinct class—not necessarily race matter; but a general collection of what has been written by the men and women of that Race: History, Biographies, Scientific Treatises, Sermons, Addresses, Novels, Poems, Books of Travel, miscellaneous essays and the contributions to magazines and newspapers.

  Literature, according to Webster, is learning; acquaintance with books or letters: the collective body of literary productions, embracing the entire results of knowledge and fancy, preserved in writing, also the whole body of literature, productions or writings upon any given subject, or in reference to a particular science, a branch of knowledge, as the Literature of Biblical Customs, the Literature of Chemistry, Etc.

  In the light of this definition, many persons may object to the term, Race Literature, questioning seriously the need, doubting if there be any, or indeed whether there can be a Race Literature in a country like ours apart from the general American Literature. Others may question the correctness of the term American Literature, since our civilization in its essential features is a reproduction of all that is most desirable in the civilizations of the Old World. English being the language of America, they argue in favor of the general term, English Literature.

  While I have great respect for the projectors of this theory, yet it is a limited definition; it does not express the idea in terms sufficiently clear.

  The conditions which govern the people of African descent in the United States have been and still are, such as create a very marked difference in the limitations, characteristics, aspirations and ambitions of this class of people, in decidedly strong contrast with the more or less powerful races which dominate it.

  Laws were enacted denying and restricting their mental development in such pursuits, which engendered servility and begot ox-like endurance; and though statutes were carefully, painstakingly prepared by the most advanced and learned American jurists to perpetuate ignorance, yet they were powerless to keep all the race out from the Temple of Learning. Many though in chains mastered the common rudiments and others possessing talent of higher order—like the gifted Phyllis Wheatley, who dared to express her meditations in poetic elegance which won recognition in England and America, from persons distinguished in letters and statesmanship—dared to seek the sources of knowledge and wield a pen.

  While oppressive legislation, aided by grossly inhuman customs, successfully retarded all general efforts toward improvement, the race suffered physically and mentally under a great wrong, an appalling evil, in contrast with which the religious caste prejudice of India appears as a glimmering torch to a vast consuming flame.

  The prejudice of color! Not condition, not character, not capacity for artistic development, not the possibility of emerging from savagery into Christianity, not these, but the “Prejudice of Color.” Washington Irving’s Life of Columbus contains a translation from the contemporaries of Las Casas, in which this prejudice is plainly evident. Since our reception on this continent, men have cried out against this inhuman prejudice; granting that, a man may improve his condition, accumulate wealth, become wise and upright, merciful and just as an infidel or Christian, but they despair because he can not change his color, as if it were possible for the victim to change his organic structure, and impossible for the oppressor to change his wicked heart.

  But all this impious wrong has made a Race Literature a possibility, even a necessity to dissipate the odium conjured up by the term “colored” persons, not originally perhaps designed to humiliate, but unfortunately still used to express not only an inferior order, but to accentuate and call unfavorable attention to the most ineradicable difference between the races.

  So well was this understood and deplored by liberal minded men, regardless of affiliation, that the editor of “Freedom’s Journal,” published in New York City in 1827, the first paper published in this country by Americans of African descent, calls special attention to this prejudice by quoting from the great Clarkson, where he speaks of a master not only looking with disdain upon a slave’s features, but hating his very color.

  The effect of this unchristian disposition was like the merciless scalpel about the very heart of the people, a sword of Damocles, at all times hanging above and threatening all that makes life worth living. Why they should not develop and transmit stealthy, vicious and barbaric natures under such conditions, is a question that able metaphysicians, ethnologists and scientists will, most probably in the future, investigate with a view of solving what to-day is considered in all quarters a profound mystery, the Negro’s many-sided, happy, hopeful, enduring character.

  Future investigations may lead to the discovery of what to-day seems lacking, what has deformed the manhood and womanhood in the Negro. What is bright, hopeful and encouraging is in reality the source of an original school of race literature, of racial psychology, of potent possibilities, an amalgam needed for this great American race of the future.

  Dr. Dvorak claims this for the original Negro melodies of the South, as every student of music is well aware. On this subject he says, “I am now satisfied that the future music of this continent must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies. This can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.

  “When I first came here, I was impressed with this idea, and it has developed into a settled conviction. The beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are American, they are the folk songs of
America, and our composers must turn to them. All of the great musicians have borrowed from the songs of the common people.

  “Beethoven’s most charming scherzo is based upon what might now be considered a skillfully handled Negro melody. I have myself gone to the simple half-forgotten tunes of the Bohemian peasants for hints in my most serious work. Only in this way can a musician express the true sentiment of a people. He gets into touch with common humanity of the country.

  “In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. They are pathetic, tender, passionate and melancholy, solemn, religious, bold, merry, gay, gracious, or what you will. It is music that suits itself to any work or any purpose. There is nothing in the whole range of composition that cannot find a themetic source here.”

  When the literature of our race is developed, it will of necessity be different in all essential points of greatness, true heroism and real Christianity from what we may at the present time, for convenience, call American Literature. When some master hand writes the stories as Dr. Dvorak has caught the melodies, when, amid the hearts of the people, there shall live a George Eliot, moving this human world by the simple portrayal of the scenes of our ordinary existence; or when the pure, ennobling touch of a black Hannah More shall rightly interpret our unappreciated contribution to Christianity and make it into universal literature, such writers will attain and hold imperishable fame.

  The novelists most read at the present time in this country find a remunerative source for their doubtful literary productions based upon the wrongly interpreted and too often grossly exaggerated frailties. This is patent to all intelligent people. The Negro need not envy such reputation, nor feel lost at not reveling in its ill-gotten wealth or repute. We are the only people most distinctive from those who have civilized and governed this country, who have become typical Americans, and we rank next to the Indians in originality of soil, and yet remain a distinct people.