Ida B. Wells-Barnett and other critical voices

In talking with Dr. Robert Luckett, Director of the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center, he reminded me not to limit the discussion of African American progress in the early 20th century to Du Bois and Washington.  I have already highlighted William Monroe Trotter but there other voices I want to introduce into the conversation.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett


Born of slaves, Ida B. Wells-Barnett fought to stop the lynching of Black Americans, carrying her fight to the White House. In 1898 she was part of a delegation to President McKinley demanding government action in the case of a Black postmaster who had been lynched in South Carolina.

Wells-Barnett's parents, freed from slavery shortly after her birth, died of malaria when she was 14. To support her brother and sisters, she became a school teacher. While she was traveling to a school in Memphis, Tennessee, a train conductor insisted she move from the parlor car to the smoking car, the one reserved for Blacks. She refused; he grabbed her wrist; she bit him, and Wells-Barnett brought a suit against the railroad for their actions, and won. Later, however, the state court overruled the decision of the circuit court.

Her teaching career ended after she wrote a series of articles denouncing the education provided to Black children. She then became part owner of the Memphis Star newspaper. When three of her friends were lynched on false charges, she wrote searing attacks against the practice of lynching. As a result of these and other articles which challenged the actions of whites against blacks, her newspaper was sacked and destroyed. But Wells-Barnett continued the fight, carrying her message to Europe and throughout the country.

She was one of the founders of the NAACP and was active in the Negro Women's Club movement. She opposed Booker T. Washington's philosophy of accommodation. She, along with other black women, marched in suffrage parades, and she worked with Jane Addams to block the segregation of schools in Chicago.



Check out these videos on Ida B. Wells-Barnett
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXZFdGhhMnk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Ngau6zJuI

Du Bois as a Public Intellectual

Check out this blog for commentary on DuBois and tell me you think:
http://dailycensored.com/2010/04/14/the-raise-of-the-modern-day-black-public-intellectual/

Great JSU Community Reading meeting last night

Last night I attended the first meeting of Dr. Leslie B. McLemore's JSU Reading Community last night (09/29) at the Cyber Cafe in JSU's H.T. Sampson Library.  SANKOFA Reading Group members and guests also attended.  Nettie Stowers and Janice Dickens Jackson were among the 10 winners of paperback copies of The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson.  The Mis-Education of the Negro is the next selection of the JSU Reading Community.

Dr. McLemore led the discussion of The Souls of Black, while students, professors and community members offered their input.  The most interesting discussion centered on the 3rd essay in The Souls of Black Folk.  The 3rd essay focuses on Du Bois' criticism of Booker T. Washington.  Discussion leaders took sides, proudly declaring themselves to be either Du Bois supporters or Washington supporters.  But personally I and several other members of the audience argue that it does not have to be an either/or choice.  Both men introduced ideas that if we as a people can synthesize would make us a stronger community.  Listen to what both men have to say and then decide.

Du Bois: Talented Tenth

I would not deny, or for a moment seem to deny, the paramount necessity of teaching the Negro to work, and to work steadily and skillfully; or seem to depreciate in the slightest degree the important part industrial schools must play in the accomplishment of these ends, but I do say, and insist upon it, that it is industrialism drunk with its vision of success, to imagine that its own work can be accomplished without providing for the training of broadly cultured men and women to teach its own teachers, and to teach the teachers of the public schools. . . .

 I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys, too. I believe that next to the founding of Negro colleges the most valuable addition to Negro education since the war, has been industrial training for black boys. Nevertheless, I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men; there are two means of making the carpenter a man, each equally important: the first is to give the group and community in which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and his family what life means; the second is to give him sufficient intelligence and technical skill to make him an efficient workman; the first object demands the Negro college and college-bred men not a quantity of such colleges, but a few of excellent quality; not too many college-bred men, but enough to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to raise the Talented Tenth to leadership; the second object demands a good system of common schools, well-taught, conveniently located and properly equipped.

Source: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=174

Booker T. Washington: Industrial Education is the Solution
 I would not confine the race to industrial life, not even to agriculture, for example, although I believe that by far the greater part of the Negro race is best off in the country districts and must and should continue to live there, but I would teach the race that in industry the foundation must be laid that the very best service which any one can render to what is called the higher education is to teach the present generation to provide a material or industrial foundation. On such a foundation as this will grow habits of thrift, a love of work, economy, ownership of property, bank accounts. Out of it in the future will grow practical education, professional education, positions of public responsibility. Out of it will grow moral and religious strength. Out of it will grow wealth from which alone can come leisure and the opportunity for the enjoyment of literature and the fine arts.
 Source: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=62

William Monroe Trotter & The Niagara Movement

The Niagara Movement, Annual Meeting, Boston, 1907


William Monroe Trotter

Harvard-educated newspaper editor William Monroe Trotter spoke out against the racism of the early 20th century. He is well-remembered, too, for publicly and vehemently denouncing educator Booker T. Washington, who believed African Americans should find ways to "get along"with their white oppressors. In 1901, Trotter helped organize the "Boston Literary and Historical Association"--a forum for militant political thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois and Oswald Garrison Villard. The same year, he launched a weekly newspaper on race relations, The Guardian, which was an overnight success. Early editions criticized Booker T. Washington on three counts--first, his "unreal" optimism that intolerable racial conditions were actually improving; second, his alliance with President Theodore Roosevelt; and third, his promotion of manual and industrial training for African Americans over traditional forms of education. In 1903, after he interrupted a speech Washington was delivering, Trotter was arrested and jailed for one month. The incident was branded the "Boston Riot." In 1909 Trotter and Du Bois founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but Trotter objected to the new organization's white financing and leadership, preferring his own alternative "National Equal Rights League." Until his death at age 62, Trotter continued to speak out against racism. He advocated better treatment for World War I black soldiers, tried to get the film Birth of a Nation banned in Boston, protested Marcus Garvey's Back-to-Africa Movement, and petitioned Franklin D. Roosevelt to end segregation in the District of Columbia.     
Source: http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/ma1.htm

John Henrik Clarke on the Booker T. Washington/W.E.B. Du Bois Era

Listen to noted historian John Henrik Clarke talks about the Booker T. Washington/W.E.B. Du Bois era in African American history.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2_pJjQgyto

Listen to John Henrik Clarke's critique of Washington's speech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqESgHMQGkk

Booker T. Washington Delivers the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech

Listen to an excerpt of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise Speech

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZuvQJutHiY

          Link to full-text copy of the Atlanta Compromise Speech

        http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/

III. "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others"

Mr. Booker Taliaferro Washington

1856-1915

From 1895-1915, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was the major African-American spokesman in the United States. Born a slave in what is now West Virginia, Washington was educated at Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia. He began to work at the Tuskegee Institute in 1881 and built it into a center of learning and industrial and agricultural training.

A handsome man and a forceful speaker, Washington was skilled at politics. Powerful and influential in both the black and white communities, Washington was a confidential advisor to presidents. For years, presidential political appointments of African-Americans were cleared through him. He was funded by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, dined at the White House with Theodore Roosevelt and family, and was the guest of the Queen of England at Windsor Castle.

Although Washington was an accommodator, he spoke out against lynchings and worked to make "separate" facilities more "equal." Although he advised African-Americans to abide by segregation codes, he often traveled in private railroad cars and stayed in good hotels.

Source: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aap/bookert.html

III. "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others"

The third essay in The Souls of  Black Folk is a revision of "The Evolution of Negro Leadership", an article Du Bois wrote for the July 16, 1901 issue of the Dial.  Established in 1840 as a transcendentalist magazine edited first by Margaret Fuller and later by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Dial was re-established in 1880 as a "socially humanitarian" fortnightly composed of letters, ideology, and propaganda. The poetry is a brief excerpt from Lord Byron poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" Canto 2 published in 1812.  The musical notation is from the Negro spiritual, "A Great Camp Meeting in the Promised Land".
Check out youtube link of the MetroSingers singing this spiritual:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCv5NaxKOVlI

         

Check out Freedmen's Bureau records online

Below is a link to check Freedmen's Bureau's records online:
http://freedmensbureau.com/

The online records contains Registers of Indentures of Colored Orphans Aug. 1865 - May 1866, notice that children as young as four years old were indentured to guardians until they reached 21 years of age.
Example: Neslin Cooper was indentured to Eliza May Ann Wood of Warren County on March 17, 1866.  
Questions: What does indenture mean?  Why were these children indentured?

The Freedmen's Bureau Part Two (IMAGES)

The Freedmen's Bureau

Law Creating the Freedmen's Bureau

CHAP. XC.–An Act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there is hereby established in the War Department, to continue during the present war of rebellion, and for one year thereafter, a bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, to which shall be committed, as hereinafter provided, the supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from rebel states, or from any district of country within the territory embraced in the operations of the army, under such rules and regulations as may be prescribed by the head of the bureau and approved by the President. The said bureau shall be under the management and control of a commissioner to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, whose compensation shall be three thousand dollars per annum, and such number of clerks as may be assigned to him by the Secretary of War, not exceeding one chief clerk, two of the fourth class, two of the third class, and five of the first class. And the commissioner and all persons appointed under this act, shall, before entering upon their duties, take the oath of office prescribed in an act entitled “An act to prescribe an oath of office, and for other purposes,” approved July second, eighteen hundred and sixty-two, and the commissioner and the chief clerk shall, before entering upon their duties, give bonds to the treasurer of the United States, the former in the sum of fifty thousand dollars, and the latter in the sum of ten thousand dollars, conditioned for the faithful discharge of their duties respectively, with securities to be approved as sufficient by the Attorney-General, which bonds shall be filed in the office of the first comptroller of the treasury, to be by him put in suit for the benefit of any injured party upon any breach of the conditions thereof.
SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That the Secretary of War may direct such issues of provisions, clothing, and fuel, as he may deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children, under such rules and regulations as he may direct.
SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That the President may, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint an assistant commissioner for each of the states declared to be in insurrection, not exceeding ten in number, who shall, under the direction of the commissioner, aid in the execution of the provisions of this act; and he shall give a bond to the Treasurer of the United States, in the sum of twenty thousand dollars, in the form and manner prescribed in the first section of this act. Each of said commissioners shall receive an annual salary of two thousand five hundred dollars in full compensation for all his services. And any military officer may be detailed and assigned to duty under this act without increase of pay or allowances. The commissioner shall, before the commencement of each regular session of congress, make full report of his proceedings with exhibits of the state of his accounts to the President, who shall communicate the same to congress, and shall also make special reports whenever required to do so by the President or either house of congress; and the assistant commissioners shall make quarterly reports of their proceedings to the commissioner, and also such other special reports as from time to time may be required.
SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That the commissioner, under the direction of the President, shall have authority to set apart, for the use of loyal refugees and freedmen, such tracts of land within the insurrectionary states as shall have been abandoned, or to which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or sale, or otherwise, and to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman, as aforesaid, there shall be assigned not more than forty acres of such land, and the person to whom it was so assigned shall be protected in the use and enjoyment of the land for the term of three years at an annual rent not exceeding six per centum upon the value of such land, as it was appraised by the state authorities in the year eighteen hundred and sixty, for the purpose of taxation, and in case no such appraisal can be found, then the rental shall be based upon the estimated value of the land in said year, to be ascertained in such manner as the commissioner may by regulation prescribe. At the end of said term, or at any time during said term, the occupants of any parcels so assigned may purchase the land and receive such title thereto as the United States can convey, upon paying therefor the value of the land, as ascertained and fixed for the purpose of determining the annual rent aforesaid.
SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That all acts and parts of acts inconsistent with the provisions of this act, are hereby repealed.
APPROVED, March 3, 1865.

II. "Of the Dawn of Freedom"

The second essay in The Souls of Black Folk examines the period  of Civil War and Reconstruction in the American South (1861-1872) as it relates to the African American experience.  Du Bois focuses in particular on the history of the Freedmen's Bureau and that organization's work in the Deep South.
This essay is a reworking of the article "The Freedmen's Bureau" published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in March 1901.  Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/01mar/dubois.htm



The poem is an excerpt of James Russell Lowell's longer piece, "The Present Crisis" (1844)
James Russell Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1838. Two years later he was awarded the bachelor of laws degree by Harvard's Law School, but his energies were already dedicated to the profession of letters, and he soon abandoned a legal career. He wanted to be a poet.James Russell Lowell, poet, essayist, diplomatist, and scholar, was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on February 22, 1819, the son of a Unitarian minister. His poem on "The Present Crisis," written in 1844, was his first really notable production, and one that made a deep impression on the public mind. In the twenty years of troubled politics that followed, one finds it constantly quoted.


Du Bois uses the poem as his inspiration for the name of the official organ of the NAACP, The Crisis which Du Bois founded in 1910.

The musical notation is from the Negro spiritual "My Lord, What a Mourning!"

The Civil War Amendments


Listen to the late Ossie Davis read the 13th and 14th amendments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?

Listen to Ruby Dee read the 14th (Sections 4 & 5) and 15th amendments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsGuBq5uFtQ

Souls of Black Folk: II. "Of the Dawn of Freedom"

THE PROBLEM of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

With these prophetic words, Dr. William E. B. Du Bois opens the second essay of The Souls of Black Folk.  How much have we changed in the over 100 years since Du Bois wrote these words?  Since the election of President Barack Obama some people have claimed that we are living in a post-racial America.  Are we really past race in America and the world?

Double Consciousness: Who are we?

Malcolm X explains Black Nationalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO6Co8v2XjY

Kujichagulia-Self-Determination (The 2nd Principle of Kwanzaa)
To define ourselves,  name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.
The broad definition of self-determination embodies the right of all peoples to decide their own economic, social, and cultural development.  It is a fundamental principle of international law.  January 8, 1918, after World War I, United States President Woodrow argued for self-determination in Austria-Hungary and the Balkan states, while denying the right of self-determination to African Americans, women, people of colonial Africa and Asia.  Self-Determination is important because when we do not exercise our right of self-determination as individual we fall prey to negative aspects of double consciousness Du Bois describes in "Of Our Spiritual Strivings".  Malcolm X and other Black nationalists argue that we have to reclaim our African roots to be able to name ourselves and define ourselves.
Who are we as African Africans in the 21st century? 

Double Consciousness

An important concept Du Bois discusses in the first essay is "Double Consciousness", which he describes as "this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity". 

Listen to the passage on "Double Consciousness"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXQq-Gs_Fk4

I. OF OUR SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS

The first essay in THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK is " Of Our Spiritual Strivings".  It is a revision of the article, "Strivings of the Negro People" originally published in Atlantic Monthly (August 1897): 194-98 (you can pull the original article up online at Atlantic Monthly's Atlantic Unbound webpage.  Link to original article: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/black/dubstriv.htm).

The lines introducing the essay are from the poem "The Crying of Waters" by Arthur Symons and  the bar of musical notes is from the Negro Spiritual "Nobody knows the Trouble I've Seen".  

Youtube link of Paul Robeson singing "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EJSkJlh_fg

Du Bois asks in this important essay "How does it feel to be a problem?"
According to Du Bois people do not verbalize this question, but he could sense them framing that unasked question. Du Bois wrote the original article on which this essay is based in 1897 on the brink of a new century in a still influential popular mainstream (white) magazine.  In 1897 the current Mississippi Constitution was seven years old, Jackson State University was twenty years and less than five years away from a permanent move to its current Lynch Street location.  Reconstruction had ended 20 years earlier and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the Mississippi Plan demonstrated how desperately some whites wanted to solve the "Negro Problem".  But amid the violence, terror and repressions African Americans in Mississippi were building institutions, churchs, schools, banks and businesses.  I think of Sterling A. Brown's poem, "Strong Men" when I recall this era.

They dragged you from homeland, They chained you In coffles, They huddled you spoon-fashion in filthy hatches,  They sold you to give a few gentlemen ease.  They broke you in like oxen, They scourged you,  They branded you,  They made your women breeders, They swelled your numbers with bastards. . . .  They taught you the religion they disgraced. You sang:      Keep a-inchin' along      Lak a po' inch worm. . . . You sang:      Bye and bye      I'm gonna lay down dis heaby bad . . . You sang:      Walk togedder, chillen,      Dontcha git weary. . . .           The strong men keep a-comin' on            The strong men git stronger. They point with pride to the roads you built for them  They ride in comfort over the rails you laid for them  They put hammers in your hands  And said — Drive so much before sundown. You sang:      Ain't no hammah      In dis lan',      Strikes lak mine, bebby,      Strikes lak mine. They cooped you in their kitchens, They penned you in their factories, They gave you the jobs that they were too good for, They tried to guarantee happiness to themselves By shunting dirt and misery to you. You sang:      Me an' muh baby gonna shine, shine      Me an' muh baby gonna shine.                The strong men keep a-comin' on                The strong men git stronger. . . . They bought off some of your leaders You stumbled, as blind men will. . . . They coaxed you, unwontedly soft-voiced. . . . You followed a way. Then laughed as usual. They heard the laugh and wondered; Uncomfortable; Unadmitting a deeper terror. . . .                The strong men keep a-comin' on                Gittin' stronger. . . . What, from the slums  Where they have hemmed you  What, from the tiny huts  They could not keep from you — What reaches them  Making them ill at ease, fearful?  Today they shout prohibition at you  "Thou shalt not this." "Thou shalt not that."  "Reserved for whites only"  You laugh. One thing they cannot prohibit —                The strong men . . . coming on                The strong' men gittin' stronger.                Strong men. . . .                Stronger. . . .

What does it mean to be African American in the 21st Century?

In the opening lines of  "The  Forethought" to  The Souls of Black Folk Du Bois wrote:

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

Question: What does it mean to be African American at the dawning of the 21st Century?

The Souls of Black Folk by William E. B. Du Bois

Who was William Edward Burghardt Du Bois?

Check out  these brief youtube videos and let's talk about Du Bois.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_C37uBjLoM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBi_rCGKqFs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfsY2y7xrXo

Welcome to SANKOFA Reading Group's blog on The Souls of Black Folk by William E. B. DuBois

Where do we begin?
Preliminary Questions

How do we access online copies of  The Souls of Black Folk?

SANKOFA Reading Group is joining Dr. Leslie B. McLemore and the JSU community in reading The Souls of Black Folk.  The Campus Reading Community Book Club first meeting will be held on September 29th. To join the Campus Reading Community Book Club, send an email with your name, class (if you're a student), and email address to publicrelations@jsums.edu. Let the Reading Begin!

The book, The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. DuBois, can be accessed electronically-1.     http://sampson.jsums.edu/screens/OPAC.html (for the JSU Community)
2.   http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/408 (through Project Gutenberg)

If you prefer a hard copy of the book, most bookstores sell copies of the book ranging in cost from $1-$5 for a Dover Thrift edition to over $15 for a Norton Critical Edition copy of The Souls of Black Folk.

Why should we read The Souls of Black Folk?

The Souls of Black Folk is one of the most controversial books in print, and has been since its first printing. The Souls of Black Folk is Du Bois's effort to show the humanity of black people by appealing to the audience's intellect through social science and plain ol' common sense. A few of the primary reasons The Souls of Black Folk has stood the test of time is the beauty of its lyrical, graceful prose, and the fact that Du Bois's assessments were numerous, truthful, and attainable. He had the gift of a seer, the tongue of a poet, and unblinking observations, all of which came together to create a literary masterpiece. Many consider The Souls of Black Folk to be America's greatest contribution to the literary world.

Source: http://aalbc.com/reviews/reconsideringthesouls.htm

Let the reading begin!