Cyril Briggs and the African Blood Brotherhood

Ted Vincent on the African Blood Brotherhood. Essential history from the Pacifica Radio Archives on a key organization grappling with issues of race and class. Issues of the Crusader paper can be found online, too, for additional information Briggs and the ABB. Indeed, one satirical cartoon from their paper hints directly at conflicts with Garvey and the UNIA, bringing to mind similar debates between Marxists and noirists in a Haitian context during the 1930s and 1940s. Other episodes of the series includes a segment on Hubert Harrison and Harry Haywood.

The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925

"Black nationalism assumes the shape of its container and undergoes transformations in accordance with changing intellectual fashions in the white world."

As someone with a casual interest in African-American politics, history, and black nationalist "fringe" organizations such as the Moorish Science Temple, the Five Percenters, the Nation of Islam, and Malachi York's various outfits, and the black women club movement, I have long heard about Wilson Jeremiah Moses and his lauded work on black nationalism. The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 lives up to the hype. Everything that ties together Rastafarianism, Pan-Africanism, the "authoritarian collectivism" of Farrakhan, allegedly fascist tendencies of Garveyism, and black emigrationism is explained quite succinctly by Moses. The Ethiopianism strand of thought in African-American Christianity infuses all forms of black nationalism examined by Moses, and clearly has lived on despite the Islamic veneer of the Moors and Nation of Islam. All of these things, also explained in an interview by Cedric Johnson as black nationalism reflecting dominant trends in European philosophy and science of the time, prove beyond a doubt that black nationalism, black separatism, and notions of black identity cannot be understood as existing in a vacuum. 

Like the Haitian elite intellectuals who turned to folk culture under US Occupation, US African Americans turned to an embrace of the black lower classes around the time of the Harlem Renaissance, both cases indicating how shifting European opinion on the superiority of Western civilization led to primitivist phases and likely pressured Haitian and African-American intellectuals to embrace aspects of the lower classes and their culture, often based on essentialized notions of race and "blackness" in the case of African-Americans. Indeed, Moses book is Pan-African in scope, including West Indian and African black nationalists like Blyden and Garvey in his analysis, although Haiti or Latin American black nationalism is neglected, for the most part. 

More disturbing of an enlightening experience, Moses argues that James Theodore Holly, drawing on messianic and 'Anglo-African' Protestant black nationalism, believed African-Americans were necessary to guide Haiti to progress, much like Crummell, Garvey, and many more US black nationalists espoused a rather condescending vision of Africa and believed in their own role to improve or civilize Africa. These aspects of black nationalism, authoritarian collectivism, imperialism, and elitism, survive in varying forms today, but clearly illustrate some of the inherent problems with transnational black collaboration in the past. For instance, I always viewed Holly as a positive example of African-American solidarity with Haiti, but the religious, ethnic, and class biases of African-American black nationalists who ventured to the Caribbean or West Africa certainly poke holes in Pan-Africanism. Perhaps sentiment and skin color alone cannot forge meaningful politics or solidarity, certainly not any of the black nationalism modalities as defined by Moses. In addition to these problematic aspects of black nationalist projects of the 19th and early 20 centuries, troubling and religious understandings of black poverty and black family structure essentially paved the way for E. Franklin Frazier and Moynihan's troubling conclusions on the black family and black women, another indication that black nationalism is not, as Moses writes, invariably leftist or progressive. 

Hero of Hispaniola: America's Fist Black Diplomat, Ebenezer D. Bassett

Christopher Teal's biography of Ebenezer D. Bassett, a prominent African-American who became the US's first black diplomat, is an interesting case study to examine in light of US-Haiti relations. Although the author is not a historian and the text is lacking in Haitian historical analysis, Teal uses Bassett's career in Haiti to show how African-Americans participated in US foreign relations in ways that both supported and undermined US imperialism. 

Representing the US in Haiti during some politically turbulent years in Haitian history, Basset helped avert a military disaster in Hispaniola multiple times. During the civil war under President Salnave, Bassett helped provide asylum and curb violence, as well as encouraging humane and liberal governance under Saget, who succeeded Salnave. In the early 1870s, when Grant pushed for US annexation of the Dominican Republic, Bassett again helped prevent war with Haiti as President Saget's Haitian forces joined Dominican nationalists (such as Gregorio Luperon) in resisting Dominican president Baez, who wanted annexation. Bassett pushed for peace, went out of his way to maintain consul professionalism and rule of law, socialized and formed relationships with all Haitian presidents, defended Haitian sovereignty, endeavored to avoid gunboat diplomacy, and helped shape US and Haitian history.

Due to Bassett's belief in providing asylum, Boisrond Canal survived the butcherous campaigns of Michel Domingue's presidency, and Bassett later served the Haitian government in New York, where he fought through the US legal system against US citizens selling arms and profiting from Haiti's vicious cycle of coups. Bassett also opposed US attempts to bully Haiti into leasing the Mole St. Nicolas as a naval base and denied racist rumors of cannibalism in the 'Black Republic.'

Lessons of Hayti

A very interesting documentary on the Hayti district of Durham, North Carolina. Named after Haiti, Hayti grew to be one of many self-sufficient, thriving black towns or urban districts across the US. It is fitting that this successful enclave of African-Americans in Durham would name their neighborhood after the first independent black republic, Haiti. Also worth checking out is this interview with the man behind the documentary series, and this historic film on Hayti.

"Now That's some Jerry Springer shit!": Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings and American History

Abagond has written about Jefferson's racist thoughts on Blacks, but how about his own likely Jerry Springer-esque relationship with Sally Hemings? Apparently the latter was likely the half-sister of Jefferson's own wife (Abagond's post on Jefferson here)! As Paul Mooney once said, "that's some Jerry Springer shit!" His wife's family's slave, who happened to be his wife's half-sister (meaning that Sally Hemming's mother was likely raped or "willingly accepted" her white master's sexual advances, and this master just happened to be Thomas Jefferson's wife's father!). Abagond does a good job here describing the scholarly debate on the actual relationship between Hemmings and Jefferson, and regardless of what exactly happened between Jefferson and her, a male relative of Jefferson (if not him directly) impregnated Hemings because the descendants of one of Heming's children was linked to the Jefferson family through DNA studies. Thus, Jefferson, despite his writings about Blacks as ugly and opposition to miscegenation, probably "did the nasty" with his mixed-race slave who, as a "quadroon" and "high yellow," who, "in the night looked less African than she really was"(okay, I got this line from The Boondocks). And when Jefferson's relationship likely began with Hemings, she was significantly younger than him, even if they started after the death of Jefferson's wife. Imagine if you were sleeping with your wife's (deceased or alive) half-sister, who was also a slave and of a different race! Jerry Springer moments, I tell you.

Of note, however, is Abagond's references to the fate of Hemings's children who were freed, likely 'becoming white' in the antebellum US. Not too long ago, some genealogist claimed to have linked Obama to  an African slave in colonial Virgina through his white mother, additional proof of how free blacks and people of color could, with money, 'freedom' and, often mixed racial heritage, could escape the growing black/white binary. This reminds me of a book a friend was recommended to by a professor we both had at different times. The book was an examination of a Civil War Confederate general's identity and family past, traced back to his Black ancestry yet by the time of the Civil War, the general was "white" and his identity linked to slaveholding. 

Of potentially greater interest is the notion of Jefferson fathering "octoroon" slave children he later freed entering into the earliest English-language novel by a Black American writer, African-American abolitionist and novelist, William Wells Brown. Some versions of his novel, Clotelle, actually turn the slave woman of a Virginia slaveholding aristocrat into relations of the US president, presumably Thomas Jefferson! Thus, the suspicions of many close to Thomas Jefferson, his political detractors, and abolitionists, of all shades, made reference to and display some familiarity with the belief that Jefferson engaged in sexual relations with an African-descended slave woman (for a review of the novel, check my earlier blog post here). Who knows, perhaps Jefferson's penchant for "high yellas" was a product of his Francophile inclinations, since French Saint-Dominguans who sought exile in the US were noted for, at times, publicly displaying signs of their affection for Black women from the Caribbean (Saint-Dominguan exiles shocked the white community in Philadelphia with behavior like this, as Gary B. Nash has demonstrated in his study of the impact of Saint Dominguan exiles and refugees of color in Philadelphia), a practice with some degree of social acceptance for white males who often married propertied women of color in Saint Domingue (as well as the pernicious mulatta stereotypes promulgated by the likes of Moreau de Saint Mery...). Either way, Jefferson's relations with Hemings marks US history, and history in general, as something one could often find in the likes of an episode of Jerry Springer's television program. That programs such as Springer's exist to continue in the established American practice of pathologizing and laughing at the misfortune of the poor, black, uneducated, and "white trash" elements of American society, obfuscates how production of history and historical knowledge is a product of unequal power relations that, in the end, endeavor to silence the voices of individuals such as Sally Hemings.

Early "Haitian-Americans" in US History

1. Jean-Baptiste Point DuSable, Haitian founder of the city of Chicago. He is venerated by the Haitian and African-American communities of Chicago. Indeed, my favorite Chicago museum is named after him.

2. Pierre Toussaint, currently under consideration for sainthood in the Catholic Church. Born in Saint Domingue, he came to New York with his white French owners. After attaining freedom, he married a woman from Haiti and started one of the first orphanages in NYC, helped with fundraising for the first cathedral, and contributed money for the first Catholic school for blacks on Canal Street.

3. Saint Dominguan refugees, including whites, people of color (gens de couleur) and enslaved blacks going to New Orleans in the 1790s and in 1809 had a tremendous impact on Lousiana culture. Sanite Dede, a free woman of color from Saint Domingue, was a prominent Vodou priestess. In addition, the calindas and bamboula dances of New Orleans in addition to Vodou are likely due to Saint Dominguan influences.

4. Les Citoyens de Couleur de Philadelphie, a political organization initiated by Saint Dominguans, fought for the advancement of African Americans as part of the Saint Dominguan refugee population in the Northeast.

5. In Louisiana in 1795, Jean Etienne Bore revolutionized the sugar industry by designing new methods for its manufacture. In 1803, he became the first mayor of the city o New Orleans. Did I mention he was a man of color?

6. James Pitot, a former refugee from Saint Domingue, succeeded Bore as the city's second mayor.

7. In Baltimore, four colored Saint Dominguan women, Elizabeth Lange, Marie Magdelene Baas, Marie Rose Boegue, and Marie Therese Duchemin, established the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the world's first Black religious community, and founded the School for Colored Girls. After its founding it 1829, the school became a national institution.

8. John James Audubon, ornithologist, was born in Saint Domingue to a French and Creole woman. He moved to Pennsylvania as a result of the Haitian Revolution and the death of his momther.

9. Homer Plessy, the "octoroon" who sat in a white section of the train, was partially descended from Saint Dominguan refugees in Lousiana.

10. W.E.B. DuBois is a descendant of Haitians through his father, who immigrated in the mid-19th century. One of the leading activists and scholars of African America is a product of the Haitian Revolution. Thank you, Haiti!

Nat Turner

Nat Turner: Hero or Villain?

So we all know that in 1831 Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner, inspired by radical African-American Christian messianism, was inspired to lead the revolt in August that led to deaths of unfortunately, too few Virginia whites. Perhaps 50-60 whites were killed, a disproportionate number of them being women and children. During the actual rebellion, less than a hundred free blacks and slaves joined in the violence, initially using knives, hatchets and blunt instruments to avoid arousing suspicion. They swept through different homes, killing as many whites as possible and liberated the slaves.

Nat Turner himself was literate and believer in the Black Christian anti-slavery movement that inspired slave revolts in Jamaica during the same period (Christmas Uprising or Baptist War, led by Samuel Sharpe, who was a Baptist preacher like Nat Turner). Since he believed he was chosen for a special mission of liberation by God, some may see him as a religious fanatic and see little value in celebrating his life. On the contrary, Turner’s Christian beliefs represent the best of 19th century Christianity by espousing a quick, radicalizing affront to human life to demonstrate the violence and inhumanity of the slave regime. Though he killed supposedly innocent beneficiaries of the slavocracy, Turner represented the best in Christian tradition with a thorough rejection of injustice in the present rather than waiting for a brighter times in the distant future. Without a brutal,dehumanizing assault on white life (including relatively innocent women and children), white abolitionists and moderates in the North would have taken longer to realize the importance of ending slavery sooner rather than later, especially after the brutal white reprisals taken against blacks throughout the South and the toughening of anti-free black laws and harsher penalties further polarized the United States.

In addition, white Americans, at least in the South, would have heard of the Baptist Uprising in Jamaica, a 10-day slave rebellion involving 60,000 of Jamaica’s 300,000 slaves. This enormous revolt, starting peacefully as a strike, quickly showed the importance of emancipation sooner rather than later or face additional widespread revolts and work stoppages. Or to go back even further, the 1816 Bussa Rebellion in Barbados and the successful Haitian Revolution provided frightening possibile futures for Euro-Americans if slavery continued unabated: enormous ‘race wars’ and so-called “savage” black vengeance taken in the form of the feared black rape of white women and all other horrors (which were things actually done by white men against black slaves, particularly sexual abuse and rape of women and girls, and excessive and cruel punishment of course). So the specter of Haiti was always present in the pysche of white Southerners, causing excessively brutal crackdowns on slave conspiracies and actual revolts (including the largest revolt in American history, the 1811 Louisiana revolt led by a slave from Saint Domingue (Haiti) that included 500 slaves) Thus, white Southerners were right to fear the “contamination of American blacks and slaves with the example of Haiti, even in cases where slaves knew little about Haiti. Indeed, free blacks were the African-Americans who often knew the most about Haiti, particularly early black nationalists such as Denmark Vesey and free black communities in northern cities who celebrated Haiti’s day of independence instead of the Fourth of July. Nat Turner, as a literate man influenced by Vesey and presumably knowledgeable about the largest slave revolt in the Atlantic world, would likely have known the importance of violence, including violence against so-called innocent whites as necessary for the success of the Haitian Revolution.

Of course this is morally questionable territory Nat Turner put himself in when he and his followers murdered white women and children. One would assume his Christian preacher background would have deterred violence taken out against children, but remember that the slaveholders also called themselves “Christians” yet held people in bondage. If one focuses on what may be considered moral hypocrisy in the case of Nat Turner and other violent slave rebellions, why not focus on the even larger moral and political hypocrisy of the United States? Besides, the unarmed white women and children were still part of slaveholding families, and although the children did not choose to be members of a repugnant racist class, the murdering of women and children was easier to achieve than armed white militias, who eventually did defeat our heroes Nat Turner and company. And perhaps Fanon had it right; violence as a means of raising consciousness and a rejection of the colonizer/oppressor is a vital step. Unfortunately, the majority of enslaved African-Americans did not rise up in violent revolt, but that would have been unrealistic anyway given the lack of access to weapons and the huge hurdles facing large-scale slave rebellions in the expanse of North America. Raising a revolutionary consciousness of resistance could take multiple forms, including the much easier individual flight, infanticide, work stoppages and a counterculture or resistance in religion.

Ultimately, most African-Americans view Nat Turner as a hero for his valiant effort to overthrow slavery in Southhampton, although it may have seemed as audacious and foolish as John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Another one of the consequences the Virginia Assembly enacted on slave populations was requiring white clergy to be present at black religious gatherings, in a vain attempt to control black Christianity. So Nat Turner was indeed a hero, despite some morally-questionable actions taken by his group. Although something like 200 blacks throughout the South were killed in the retaliation by white mobs and vigilantes, Turner pushed white America and the enslaved population toward the necessary Civil War to end slavery once and for all.

Thinking About Dred Scott

"The Negro has no rights which the white man is bound to respect."

This sums up 19th century white American views towards blacks. Chief Justice Roger Taney, who gave the majority opinion in 1857's Dred Scott v. Sanford, ruled that the federal government has no role in slavery's expansion in federal territories or other states. It basically destroyed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (Mason-Dixon Line) and the Compromise of 1850, which had prevented the expansion of slavery in the West and Northwestern territories and states. Taney himself came from a Catholic slaveholding family in Maryland, thus it comes as no surprise he would deny blacks citizenship and declare that the federal government cannot control where slaveholders take their 'property.' This case is obviously well-known in American history for further polarizing the slave and non-slave states of the Union, leading to the inevitable Civil War.

My own interests in the Dred Scott case extend beyond the above. Of course this case was perhaps one of the most important Supreme Court cases in US history because the Supreme Court removed the federal government's power to regulate the expansion of slavery. And the statements about the impossibility of blacks attaining citizenship in this country since it was established for whites only during its inception remains a recurrent them in African-American political thought. My own interests in the case lie more with Dred Scott's life and background, since his own story is usually overlooked because of the enormous ramifications of the Supreme Court ruling, which did forcefully push the United States toward the Civil War.

Dred Scott was born in 1795, and died in 1858, one year after his Supreme Court case. Dred and Harriet Scott, legally slaves in the South, resided with their white master in the Wisconsin Territory (modern Minnesota) for several years. Of course this territory was 'free,' so Dred Scott and his wife should not have had to remain in service to their white man. Of course, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 would've demanded that the authorities of the territory return Dred and his wife to their master, but if they were already established there for years, weren't they technically free?

What I would like to know is why Dred Scott and his wife endeavored to get legal freedom when they had essentially been free the entire time? Perhaps due to advanced age the couple believed they could not run away, but that would not be enough to prevent me from just running away to another Northern territory or state. And since the majority of white folks were opposed to slavery in the North, I doubt it would have been hard for the Scotts to escape or just not return to Missouri. I doubt the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 would have been enforced with enough effort to capture Dred Scott if he had just moved to a different town. However, Scott had sought a legal way for his freedom as early as the 1840s, but each time was shot down by state and a federal court for various reasons.

Perhaps he had really hoped his emancipation would be legally won in court because of the precedent established by previous court cases such as the freedom suit of a slave woman, Rachel, in 1834 (of course freedom suits have a history going all the way back to the colonial period as well). But Rachel v. Walker was won by Rachel since the Supreme Court of Missouri ruled that her master, a Missouri soldier in the Army, wanted to take her with him to Michigan, which was obviously free territory. Since Michigan was free territory, the State Supreme Court ruled that army officer forfeited his property by taking her and her son into Michigan. Interestingly, the courts of Missouri did not consider African American slaves citizens, yet they could file for freedom since they were considered poor persons.  Of course the State Supreme Court ruling that slavery could not be expanded in free states was surprising since Missouri was a slave state, yet the court upheld the Missouri Compromise and a previous precedent of once free, always free for enslaved blacks.

Anyway, the Dred Scott case is even more interesting since blacks have been filing suits for over a century by the time the Supreme Court ruled slaves were not citizens. The fact that blacks had been able to win their freedom legally through state and federal courts previously had established a precedent for black citizenship that the Supreme Court claimed unconstitutional. Thus, the legal status of slaves was never agreed upon in the first place, with some states giving some legal rights to slaves in border states and free states. Perhaps Dred Scott did make a rational decision then when he filed a freedom suit in Missouri for himself, his wife, and children. Unfortunately for him (and African Americans everywhere), the slavery supporters within the Supreme Court and the ideological shift despite legal precedent overruled centuries of freedom suits.

The funny thing about Dred Scott v. Sanford is that Scott and his family were eventually freed three months after the ruling because of pressure from an abolitionist Congressman married to the owner of Scott got her to return Scott to the family that had owned him when he lived in Alabama. By this time, the family that originally owned Scott were abolitionists living in Missouri, so they freed him. In my opinion, Scott should have taken matters in his own hands while living in free territory, but in retrospect, perhaps his pursuit of freedom for his family via legal means was rational, since he first filed for his freedom in the 1840s, before the state of Missouri and the Southern states became more hostile to attempts to limit the expansion of slavery in the 1850s. Moreover, the Scott case exemplifies the ambiguity of African American citizenship/rights in the United States. If blacks could file suits for freedom, and some courts recognized their rights to freedom in free states (at least, prior to the 1850s), then how come African Americans are not citizens? Furthermore, if African Americans are not citizens despite birth in the United States, then what are they? How can 3/5 of the entire slave population be counted for Congressional representation for the South? The ambiguities of black legal status would carry over after the Civil War and during, when some whites such as Lincoln considered black deportations to Haiti or Liberia as the only way to solve the race problem.

Tulsa Race Riot

Black Militancy and Nationalism and The Tulsa Race Riot

Black self-defense in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s infamous race riot of 1921 was part of a wider trend in black America. Armed veterans and other African American men rushed to defend Dick Rowland, a man accused of assaulting a white woman in an elevator. As all blacks living in the South quickly learned, any black man accused of touching a white woman was fair game for lynching. This form of resistance, armed self-defense against white lynch mobs, resulted from significant changes in African American racial consciousness and attitude that developed after World War I, Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanist message and his Universal Negro Improvement Association’s emphasis on black pride and unity. As blacks throughout the nation returned from service in the Great War and heard the militant and proud rhetoric of Marcus Garvey, the African Blood Brothers, and other black organizations, it became inevitable that they would choose armed self-defense to protect themselves from white violence.

Returning home from military service during World War I was part of the reason for militant black defense of Dick Rowland. In fact, most of the armed black men who came to the courthouse where a white mob initially gathered were veterans, with some who served in France.# The wartime experience these men gained undoubtedly played a role in their preparedness and willingness to fight against the racist white mobs that outnumbered them. These men risked their lives to fight for a nation that denied them civil and human rights, and were therefore radicalized by their experiences abroad. Black men in uniform were treated with respect in France, which expanded their worldview.# After knowing that there alternatives to living in the Jim Crow South or even segregated northern cities, it comes as no surprise that black men would aggressively push for ending racial discrimination. In addition, African Americans were well aware of the obvious contradiction of fighting for a country that deprived them of the rights of American citizenship. Though most blacks in the war were used as labor battalions and perceived as unfit soldiers, some like the Harlem Hellfighters were actually deployed in battle.# Furthermore, while in France, African American soldiers met African soldiers from France’s colonial possessions, which helped form the transnational form of black nationalism and anticolonialism that would emerge with the New Negro and the Negro Renaissance.# 

In addition, the first Pan-African Conference of 1919, organized by W.E.B. Du Bois would be hosted in Paris, and sought colonial reform through ending forced labor, high taxes, providing education and using the profits of colonialism to benefit colonized subjects.# This willingness to meet and cooperate against European exploitation of African colonies exemplifies the strength of international black nationalism. After the War, blacks became more vigilant throughout the South, in order to prevent lynching. Indeed, “black radicalism exploded on the national and international scenes in the forms of the UNIA, Pan-African Congresses, and the African Blood Brotherhood,” which all supported black militancy.#

Another main factor of the rise of black militant self-defense in Tulsa is the Negro Renaissance of the 1920s and the Great Migration. African Americans moved west and north in search of better work with higher wages in industrial jobs, political freedom, employment diversity, and access to information.# Tulsa’s black population did not become significant until 1905, when early black residents came to the oil town from diverse areas of the South and bought property along Greenwood Avenue.# By 1921, the year of the race riot, Black Tulsa had a population of nearly 11, 000, two schools, a hospital, two newspapers, and several successful black businesses, making Greenwood the “Negro Wall Street.”# Black migration to Tulsa in search of work in the booming oil industry also found work as domestics and other service jobs for white employers. Unfortunately, Negro Wall Street’s prosperity was dependent on white employers who hired black workers and whites owned a large portion of the land in Black Tulsa, effectively limiting the prosperity and spread of the black middle-class in the city.# As prosperous and wealthy some of the black businesses were, they were mostly service-oriented and could not provide employment for most African American residents. 

Thus, the migration to the city that began with the oil boom created a small black middle-class and a larger working-class majority. In spite of the class differences, Tulsa’s Jim Crow laws facilitated the creation of a united black population that supported black businesses and organizations. In fact, Tulsa was one of Oklahoma’s strongest Ku Klux Klan centers, blacks were expected to remain in their place, and violence against blacks and lynching had occurred in Oklahoma as recently as 1920.# Therefore, African Americans already radicalized by serving in World War I and becoming an urban population with more opportunities and access to information from national and international organizations, were more likely to choose militant defense. The Negro Renaissance’s emphasis on self-awareness and consciousness of African-American culture promoted black militancy and pride throughout urban Black America at the time.

The new form of racial consciousness that evolved in the early 1920s also defined the New Negro in terms of masculinity.# One’s manhood was measured by the extent of protection they could afford black women, possession of military training, and racial pride. Thus, black veterans of the war, seeing another black person in danger, probably felt compelled to defend another black man since their masculinity was defined by racial pride, solidarity, and dignity. The Negro Renaissance also had international connections, mostly through the black expatriate community in Paris, Caribbean immigrants in New York and other northeastern cities.# These writers, leaders, and artists contributed to the birth of a self-conscious black Atlantic culture opposed to imperialism and racism, and exemplified by Negritude, the Negro Renaissance, and the spread of the UNIA’s membership and pan-Africanist messages. 

In addition, Marcus Garvey, UNIA, the African Blood Brotherhood, and other radical leftist groups also contributed to the militancy of blacks in Tulsa. Though in the course of the riot they soon realized they could not stop the white mobs that looted black homes and black businesses, ultimately destroying 1,115 residences, looting 314 homes, and being helped by Tulsa police during the riot.# Black veterans and other men who approached the white mob and inadvertently discharged a gun when a white tried to disarm one of them ignited the spark. However, blacks fought back throughout the riots by sniping white invaders into black Tulsa and gathering for an “invasion” of the white section of town.# Of course black men and women lost their homes, were held in detention centers, and were mistreated by National Guardsmen and police who used excessive force and epithets when escorting blacks to detention centers. But black militant responses to the white mob’s wanton destruction of the black district were partly influenced and motivated by some of the more radical and leftist organizations. For example, Marcus Garvey’s UNIA urged blacks to defend themselves from lynching when possible.# Other black groups, such as the African Blood Brotherhood, which had a local group, also influenced Tulsa’s black population since it encouraged unionization, cooperatively owned businesses, and creating paramilitary units to safeguard the community, along with black separatist views.# Of course the blame for the riots was placed on blacks and these radical black organizations, but its important to remember that white mobs and their intention to lynch Rowland precipitated the riot in the first place. Even the more liberal NAACP supported black self-defense against lynching in its journal, The Crisis.#

Likewise, the cooperation of the police, court system and government with the white mobs because of perceived threat to the racialized sexual and social order also encouraged black militancy. By assuming Rowland raped or assaulted a white woman and preparing to lynch him, whites in the city who surrounded the courthouse, could have easily endeavored to capture him and take justice into their own hands. The courts could not be relied on for ensuring Rowland was not executed by mob violence or the judicial system since all-white juries and racist judges often pushed for the death penalty. The police also mishandled the situation by allowing whites who were part of the mob and who volunteered their services to work with them in preventing blacks from leaving the black section of town.# The police, during the mob’s looting, burning, and murder of African Americans aided these men in the destruction of Tulsa’s black community. The city government and governor of Oklahoma also delayed calling in the National Guard, which could have prevented the riot by disarming and preventing the white mobs.# The use of airplanes to monitor the locations of blacks who were resisting the white mobs and the possible use of planes for bombing Greenwood illustrates how little the government cared about protecting black lives. Blacks would rationally want to protect themselves since they knew from other lynching mobs and race riots that the government would not protect black men.

The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was part of a larger trend in African American racial consciousness. Black militancy became more pronounced after many men had served in World War I, made connections with the African diaspora in Africa and the Caribbean, experienced life without Jim Crow while fighting abroad in France, and the beginning of the Negro Renaissance propelled black transnational consciousness. Not surprisingly, blacks in Tulsa, at the news of a large gathering of whites outside of the courthouse while a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman was there would catch black veterans’ attention. They understood the importance of protecting themselves from white violence since the government would do little, if anything at all, to protect their lives in court or in the presence of a white mob. Thus, choosing self-defense and protecting another black man made perfect sense to blacks. As one can imagine, whites blamed it on blacks for taking the law into their own hands and challenging white supremacy in the aftermath of the riot.

Bibliography

Brophy, Alfred L.. Reconstructing the Dreamland:  the Tulsa riot of 1921 : race, reparations, and reconcilation. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2002.

Ellsworth, Scott. Death in a promised land:  the Tulsa race riot of 1921. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.

Halliburton, Jr., R. "The Tulsa Race War of 1921." Journal of Black Studies 2, no. 3 (1972): 333-357.

Pratt Guterl, Mattehew. "The New Race Consciousness: Race, Nation and Empire in American Culture, 1910-1925." Journal of World History 10, no. 2 (1999): 307-352.

Watson, Steven. The Harlem renaissance: hub of African-American culture, 1920-1930. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.

Strange Fruit

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, two victims accused of killing a white man and raping his girlfriend in Marion, Indiana. There was no evidence of rape, and the woman herself said she wasn't raped. According to James Cameron, the only survivor of this lynching, and who would later found America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, the two men were robbing a white man but Cameron himself fled the scene before he died during the struggle. While Shipp and Smith were forced outside of the jailhouse and lynched, someone miraculously saved Cameron's life by announcing he had nothing to do with the crime. 

This powerful photograph likely influenced the writer of "Strange Fruit," a Jewish Communist. It also shows how lynchings were not a strictly southern phenomenon. It's also important to remember that his lynching occurred in 1930, only 81 years ago. 

"Strange Fruit" remains one of the most poetic anti-lynching/protest songs in American history. Though associated with Billie Holiday, the song's composer was a Jewish radical who penned it during the 1930s. Abel Meeropel would later set it to music under the name Lewis Allen and perform in New York City with is wife. Holiday only sang it for the first time at the Cafe Society, an integrated nightclub in Greenwich Village some years later. Then she recorded the song in 1939 for Commodore, a label company that was known for supporting alternative jazz.

The interesting thing about Holiday's recording is the lack of jazz or blues influences. Furthermore, many at the time only believed the record sold well because Holiday's amazing blues, "Fine and Mellow," was increasing sales. Needless to say, her record sold well and the song has forever been equated with Billie Holiday's powerful vocals (she recorded this song again for Verve and performed it live). I suppose the best way to describe her 1939 recording would be something akin to folk and hymns.

Josh White, a folk musician who had worked with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and other early folk revivalists, would also record the song, accompanying himself on guitar. As one would expect, as a folk and blues musician, White's recording has more in common with those traditions than Holiday's version.

http://grooveshark.com/s/Strange+Fruit/3VC6TZ?src=5

Nina Simone also performed "Strange Fruit" with a very sparse arrangement (rather similar to her take on Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair).

Here is Billie Holiday's 1939 studio recording of "Fine and Mellow." This is probably her best blues.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/feb2002/frut-f08.shtml A good article on the history of the "Strange Fruit"

Comments on The Souls of Black Folk

Du Bois's great work, The Souls of Black Folk, is quite an interesting read. Like most books written by blacks in the 19th-early 20th century, it uses the language of that era and shares the Western world's general dismissals of African and 'uncultured' African-Americans. Since DuBois was far more progressive than Booker T. Washington and advocated a more radical approach to combating Jim Crow and American racism instead of accommodation, and because Du Bois adroitly pointed out the triple paradox of Booker T. Washington's philosophy of submission, I still love and respect this Haitian brotha (his father was a Haitian mulatto). The triple paradox is posted below. How could blacks do anything that Booker T. Washington claims without the political rights, higher education, and overt resistance to entrenched institutionalized and personal racism?

1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans, businessmen and property-owners; but it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.

DuBois would later redeem himself and learn to appreciate more of African history and cultures later on in the 1940s when he published his Africa and the World. In addition to his constant references to the 'savagery' of African negroes and the re-enslaved blacks of the post-Reconstruction South, he also seems to fail to appreciate the importance and revolutionary impact of the Haitian Revolution. In Souls of Black Folk, he refers to one of the most revolutionary periods in history as a 'Terror' and, inadvertently or not, undermines its importance and legitimacy.

Moreover, there are periods in which he appears to support the institution of slavery by arguing for it's civilizing effect on Africans and the belilef that American slavery, immoral and destructive, was still relatively benign compared to other forms of slavery in the Americas and the rest of the world. What difference does that make? American slavery may have taken fewer lives than slavery in, say, 19th century Cuba, Brazil, and the Caribbean, but that obviously doesn't justify slavery in the United States. There are other occasions where Du Bois continually refers to the 'savagery' of African-Americans, inherited from their African ancestors, demonstrating that Du Bois, like Booker T. Washington and most African-American leaders and intellectuals of that era, were at least ambivalent if not supportive of European imperialism in Africa.

On the other hand, Du Bois uses most of the chapters to analyze reasons for African-American poverty in the Black Belt (region of the South where the majority of the population is black), focusing on the county of Dougherty, GA. He goes out of his way to explain the vices of Black Americans and the problem of the color line (he refers to it many times as "The Veil") as a product of both color prejudice and Jim Crow from the white majority and faults of African-Americans themselves, so as to avoid completely "blaming the white man" for all of the problems facing black folks. Of course, in reality almost all the problems facing blacks in the South are due to the white man. In the beginning of the book (really, all of it) Du Bois explains how Reconstruction failed to give the Negro his 40 acres and a mule and provide education. He examines the Freedmen's Bureau and the positive aspects of Reconstruction in terms of building common schools and sending teachers, etc.

Du Bois goes on to elucidate how the Compromise of 1877, government mismanagement prior to that, and the South's institutionalization of sharecropping, Jim Crow segregation, and relinquishing blacks of suffrage and political rights created the terrible living conditions for blacks immediately after the departure of federal armies. Although Reconstruction was a step in the right direction in terms of providing some African-Americans with land and education, establishing schools and whatnot, but the federal government's willingness to abandon the freed population while it was still vulnerable to white reversals of the Reconstruction constitutional amendments left blacks between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Soon they couldn't vote, it was nearly impossible for them to purchase their own land, they were exploiting by the landowners and Northern merchants and carpetbaggers who migrated South after the Civil War, and blacks were forced into patronage relationships with 'respectable, upper-class whites who would provide them employment as tenant farmers and vouch for them in cases involving other whites.

This period also included the beginning of mass incarceration for blacks (regardless of their innocence, their labor was exploited in chain gangs as another source of cheap labor for Southern states) who fought these customs and laws. Exemplified by vagrancy laws and the stereotypes of lazy black slaves, any African-American who didn't work or appear to have employment (usually employment from a white landowner or businessman) they could be arrested and forced to work on public works or agriculture for the state (like the pre-French Revolutionary practice of corvee, which required French peasants to dedicate some period every year to working on public projects, etc. for the 1st estate.

Du Bois gained first-hand experience of the lives of southern blacks through his travels and work as a teacher at Negro schools in Georgia. Born in Massachusetts and highly educated, Bu Bois occasionally takes time to show off his classical education (use of Latin, references to Greek mythology and erudite literary allusions and metaphors) and uses this to measure the level of 'civilization' he saw whilst in the South. Though I agree with Du Bois about the importance of college-educated blacks and some aspects of the Talented Tenth theory, his definition of education is very Eurocentric and patriarchal (women are not worthy of higher education, it would appear). Nevertheless, as he astutely observes, Booker T. Washington is wrong (Washington is right about blacks not needing to know Greek and Latin, though) about blacks not pursuing higher education if they're capable and have the option since these talented blacks (the so-called Talented Tenth of ministers, doctors, lawyers, businessman and teachers, especially teachers) will become the teachers at Negro common schools and colleges such as Tuskeegee, Washington's famous school established to teach African-Americans agricultural and mechanical labor. However, Du Bois, due to his incredibly high education (he studied at Harvard and abroad in Europe) is unrealistic and his classical education does seem out of touch of reality for most Americans in general in the early 20th century (who could afford to study at Harvard, learn Latin and Greek, and multiple other languages in that era?)

However, I must point out some flaws with Du Bois's Talented Tenth theory. Although middle class and professional African-Americans undoubtedly play a vital role in black communities and help uplift the remaining 9/10ths because of their skills, services, and influence in the community, but to believe that all 'talented' blacks would do such a thing is naive. Many will ignore or distance themselves from poor and lower-class blacks and live in their own neighborhood aristocracies, which Du Bois observed himself in Northern cities and some Southern cities. Indeed, while describing Southern urban blacks, Du Bois points out how the Talented Tenth often lived apart from other blacks. For example, a lower-class white neighborhood may divide the prosperous and poor black communities or the Talented Tenth tend to live in cities while the majority of the black population at the time (1903, before the Great Migration in the 20s and 30s) resided in rural areas and would only come into contact with Talented Tenth only through the substandard Negro common schools in the country. Furthermore, the idea of the Talented Tenth saving the black majority is elitist and denies the importance of subaltern leadership developing from the bottom. Lower class and upper class blacks should obviously cooperate as they did during the Civil Rights Movement but to argue that everything should occur under the Talented Tenth's 'civilizing' effects and influences seems undemocratic and very dangerous.

As for other interesting things in the book? I was touched by the death of Du Bois' infant son, vividly described in one of the later chapters of the text. I also appreciated his praise for Negro spirituals as the foundation of American music and the importance of the Negro in American folk music. His chapter on Negro religion and African influences on the African-American Christianity also emphasize the significance of the Church in Black America, which essentially provides moral education, a community center, and religious salvation. Like an expert sociologist, Du Bois' time in Dougherty County and the various inhabitants he encountered are flawlessly analyzed.

He explains how the sharecropping system forced most of the black inhabitants into debt because they were required to grow cotton and would often get their supplies and food for exorbitant amounts from the whites and Russian Jews who immigrated to the South (they purchased land and operated stores where blacks were sold seed, food, etc. at high prices and would only accept cotton as payment after the harvest. Of course this prevented most African-American farmers from growing their own food and diversifying their crops, which meant the fall in the price of cotton in 1898 and other fluctuations in the price of cotton sent many a black family spiraling into debt. And of course there were many instances of whites cheating blacks out of pay, using the threat of lynching and the police to intimidate blacks, and the white government's underfunding of black schools and exploitation of black workers usually required their children to also toil in the field instead of staying in school.

So the combination of the aforementioned factors explain the low living standards of blacks, not intellecual inferiority or laziness, as many whites of the time believed. The few that could purchase land or pursue a profession in the cities, did as soon as possible. But the system was designed to limit success for African-Americans in every conceivable way, which according to Du Bois inculcated feelings of doubt, humiliation, and despair among African Americans which contribute to criminality, laziness (why would poor black farmers in debt work harder when they'll still be in debt slavery?) and in some cases, radicalism. Interestingly, Du Bois argues that the Negro in the North was more radical than those of the South due to their anger from being forced to leave their homes and relatives due to white prejudice and the fact that they had greater access to education and political rights. Southern blacks, on the other hand, tended to choose hypocritical compromise, best exemplified by Booker T. Washington and devotees of his 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech. Northern blacks, such as Ida B. Wells and Du Bois worked on anti-lynching campaigns, helped establish the NAACP, etc. Now I don't entirely agree with Du Bois's assertion though.

His theory of double consciousness for Black Americans is excellent though. Blacks have to live as Negroes and Americans. They're incessantly perceived as inferior and facing closed doors of opportunity for being black, and always looking at themselves through the eyes of others. Blacks internalize the contempt and perceptions of others for them through this double consciousness. As Du Bois explains, "The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self...He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and and American without being spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face." I agree one hundred percent with this as one of the main themes of African-American identity and history, this struggle to be accepted without losing one's African heritage. Indeed, African-Americans best exemplify the American 'spirit' of liberty since they have experienced the worst in the process of pursuing life, liberty and happiness throughout American history.

I must also add his chapter on Alexander Crummell to the list of interesting and positive parts of the book. I had never heard of this important figure in African-American religious history and his encounter with the racist Episcopalian bishop of Philadelphia in the antebellum period is priceless. Sent to Philadelphia to start another church among that city's black population, Bishop Onderdonk tells him, "I will receive you into this diocese on one condition: no Negro priest can sit in my church convention, and no Negro church must ask for representation there." Crummell refuses to accept those conditions and starts works at a chapel in New York instead. This is truly an admirable move on the part of Crummell, who refused to accommodate racism from his own denomination.

In conclusion, Du Bois's oft-cited 'masterpiece' is a nuanced affair and contains many of the intellectual flaws associated with academic racism and the age of European imperialism in Africa and Asia. His skills as a sociologist and historian are displayed in every chapter as he writes on the economic, social, religious, and historical obstacles to black achievement in the United States   in the early 20th century. However, as I stated before, I found him too Eurocentric, elitist, and too willing to place blame on African-Americans for the terrible social conditions in which they live. Resistance has always been a cornerstone of African-Americans and I don't particularly agree with his characterization of Southern blacks as submissive and compromising, although many were. All in all, Du Bois wrote a fascinating collection of essays on African Americans that correctly predicted that the problem of the 20th century would be the color line. The Negro problem played an undeniable role in nearly every circumstance imaginable in US foreign policy with Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, domestic social and economic policies, the Civil Rights Movement, and defining the supposed essence of American nationhood, freedom.