The Quest of the Silver Fleece

For a novel steeped in African-American conjure and Southern folk belief, Du Bois's first novel promotes an ambivalence with regards to the conjure tradition. Like his second novel, Dark Princess, it is a romance in which the struggle of black characters against racism is embedded in the trials of the two young lovers. However, without exotic Indian princesses and the theme of the global color line, The Quest of the Silver Fleece focuses on African-American characters and their white counterparts in the struggle against the post-Reconstruction political economy of Alabama, with only a few references to the connections between the oppressed colored masses of the US and colonized peoples elsewhere.

The kingdom of cotton is thoroughly analyzed here, demonstrating precisely how "slavery by another name" persisted after the Civil War in places like the fictional Tooms County, Alabama. The combination of the Southern planter aristocracy and Northern capitalists combining their forces to consolidate the exploitation of black sharecroppers, the denial of education for black children, and the violation of black womanhood due to their rape and sexual exploitation by white men are constants here. Part of the story is set in the nation's capital, where the alliance of Northern capital and the Southern aristocracy asserts itself in the Republican party's opportunistic and limited support of black civil rights. Again, like Dark Princess, Bles Alwyn, akin to Matthew in the later novel, is paired with a light-skinned and cynical black woman, but cannot abandon his ideals too long and eventually returns to the South. 

As a romance novel with some of the socialist themes one can expect from Du Bois (hopes for eventual collaboration of blacks and poor whites against their capitalist exploiters, critiques of industry and monopoly capitalism), Bles and the other protagonist, Zora, build their own kingdom after clearing the swamp in which Zora's mother, Elspeth, resided. They clear the swamp with the help of black tenants, splitting the profits with them to fund the school started by Miss Smith and expand services and settlement-work. Thus, a combination of sorts of black nationalist assertions of self-rule, communal land ownership, and utopian romance come together through the union of a "wild child" of the swamp and Bles, who represents the larger world of knowledge and higher ideals.

This is where the ambivalence with regards to the "half-forgotten heathen cult" comes in. It is through a magic cotton seed of Elspeth that the swamp first produces the "Silver Fleece," a metaphor for black authority and independence in the midst of the planter domination of the Cresswells and other former slaveholders. Zora, although not completely aware of her heritage, hears Elspeth claim descent from an African king, and she witnesses the bizarre world of the swamp, its charm, and the "dreams." As a former child of the swamp, removed from social norms, her quest of knowledge, largely initiated by Bles, culminates in her central leadership of the plan to save the Smith school for black children and clear the swamp for an egalitarian farm. In the course of doing this, she nearly fails and is rejected by the local preacher, Jones, as a child of a "voodoo woman." 

Nonetheless, she believes "the Way" consists of one's actions, not in one's faith, so she takes the initiative and eventually triumphs. She places her faith in human actions and solidarity among the great black masses, not in any Christian God or half-remembered African spirits. In this regard, she brings to mind the eponymous heroine of Scott Joplin's opera, Treemonisha. Like Zora, Treemonisha embodies knowledge and becomes a messianic figure, a black Athena to guide the lost masses ever onward in education, progress, and the realization of their own potential. However, in Joplin's "ragtime opera," conjure and hoodoo are represented as negative influences preying on the superstition and ignorance of the emancipated black masses. Further, whites are nearly absent in Joplin's opera, whereas Du Bois's novel features multiple white characters and the political economy of Jim Crow to show the tremendous obstacles to the agency of African-Americans. 

I would conclude that, for Du Bois, who novel reflects a Greek myth and African-American conjure, the "pagan" past can lay the seeds for a future, but only if they don't lead to a fatalism among the oppressed. One thinks of Jacques Roumain and The Masters of the Dew here, although Du Bois never comes close to celebrating "voodoo" in the manner of Haitian indigénisme. Perhaps The Quest of the Silver Fleece can be construed as a transitional work in which African-derived spirituality was portrayed ambivalently but not denounced, as would be expected within the civilizationist discourse of black nationalist thought prior to the "primitivism" of the interwar years. 

Dark Princess

W.E.B. Du Bois's Dark Princess is not a great novel. It suffers from awkward, sometimes clunky prose and some rather unbelievable characters in this ideologically fascinating tale. As an example of 1920s Harlem Renaissance literature, however, it shares some of the same interests in black internationalism and protest while oscillating between the masses and the elites as the path forward for human redemption. Telling the tale of a frustrated black medical student, Matthew Towns, and an Indian princess eager to see a free India (and a free world for all the "colored" races), the novel shifts in setting between Berlin, New York, Chicago, and Virginia to weave the story of the love and romance of a black descendant of slaves and an "Eastern" monarch, descendant of the 'Black Buddha'  in a dynasty in Bwodpur, India. In accompaniment to the budding romance between Matthew and Kautilya, Matthew works as a Pullman Porter, politician in the corrupt Chicago machine political system, and as a digger or manual laborer for a subway tunnel. Meanwhile, Kautilya struggles as a laborer in the US and experiences first-hand American racism and class exploitation (although experiences with British racism predated the US variant).

In terms of its pairing of black internationalism with Global South anti-imperialism, the novel fittingly combines an interest in socialist critiques of capitalism with anti-racist fervor and collaboration as the path to a renewed world. African Americans, too, through Matthew, are proof of the pivotal role Black American can play in restructuring world politics to undermine European and American imperialism. Like, say, the Haitian Ray in Claude McKay's Home to Harlem, Kautilya and the various Indian, Arab, Japanese, Chinese, and Egyptian characters who appear in Dark Princess represent the oppressed "colored" races in struggle against European/Euro-American hegemony. For Du Bois, however, the spiritual and political union of non-whites is best encapsulated in the union of Matthew and Kautilya, who, despite coming from different worlds, offer the promise in almost messianic tones of a utopian post-colonial world, symbolized by the birth of Madhu. With Kautilya's praise of Soviet Russia and the anti-imperial, anti-racist coalition of Pan-Asia and Pan-Africa, Du Bois is offering a socialist vision for an ideal future (and before he was an avowed Communist!) that combines his seemingly contradictory elitism and democratic inclinations.

One of the interesting aspects of the novel is the pairing of Eastern, Western, and even African American religion and spirituality. Matthew's rendition of the Negro spiritual, for instance, is awe-inspiring for the Asian, Arab, Indian, and Egyptian attendees of his Berlin meeting with Kautilya (now, the "vulgar blues" in Harlem cabarets, on the other hand, did not appeal to Du Bois). Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic allusions abound, even suggesting Krishna, Radha, and Kali as representing respectively Matthew, Kautilya, and Matthew's mother. Furthermore, while visiting Matthew's mother, Kautilya experiences some of the African-derived religious influences through references to Shango and "voodoo." Since Du Bois thought so highly of the Negro spiritual and African American spirituality, perhaps African American religion and spiritual expression is tied to the black gift thesis. Perhaps, part of the African American and black contribution to the liberation of Africa and Asia will lie in this moral element, to paraphrase Blyden. However, Du Bois's vision is all-encompassing, including ancient Asian civilizations as well as modern European technology and arts to arrive at their ideal democratic aristocracy. But this is an ecumenical vision with room for Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and, perhaps, African "traditional" religion.

As a romance involving African Americans and Indians, this Dark Princess is also intriguing as an example of black-Indian relations and literary engagements. South Asians were living in Harlem and marrying black or Puerto Rican women since the 1920s, so Du Bois was perhaps familiar with or knew of Bengali and other South Asians living or working in Harlem. Although most of these South Asians were likely males, Du Bois, may have been inspired by or influenced by actual relationships between South Asians and African Americans in Harlem. The use of India in his romantic imagination, as well as his fanciful construct of a 'Black India' with ancient civilizations and philosophy likely resonated with his own Afrocentric vision of Africa's great past, suggesting a reunion of 'Black India' and Africa as the two wings of a singular bird. For example, Firmin and other black intellectuals before Du Bois also claimed the Buddha as black and imaginatively construed Indian civilizations as part of a wider black history. One also wonders about potential resonances with later literary works involving Black America and India. Ishmael Reed's satire, Conjugating Hindi, similarly offers an alliance between Indians and Black Americans. The film, Mississippi Masala, is even more similar as it involves an Indian woman falling in love with an African American male in the US South. Like the Indian woman in the film, Kautilya faced resistance from her Bwodpur advisers and bodyguards for pursuing Matthew and the American Negro question. 

All in all, Dark Princess is a fascinating and worthwhile read not for its literary value or style. As mentioned previously, it can be awkward and at times read more like a political essay. However, the variety of ideas, themes, and emotions explored across its pages provokes the reader into reconsidering Du Bois as a writer, intellectual, strategist, and man. As an example of interwar literature reflecting "Eastern" characters and ideas, it refreshingly avoids the concept of a utopian India against a decadent West. Du Bois was too sophisticated for that kind of thinking. "Black" Orientalism could not be the same as that of Du Bois's white contemporaries. But in its messianic overtones, the novel is also profoundly spiritual. Maybe, inf one may be so bold, the novel almost predicts a Madhu-like Martin Luther King who will combine the best of the American Negro and that of the "East" (Gandhi, India, nonviolent resistance). 

Creative Conflict in African American Thought

"Douglass may be claimed by nationalists like Molefi K. Asante as a symbol of militant black messianism, or by George Will as a representative of some vaguely imagined, and yet to be glimpsed, color-blind society. Perhaps one reason for our continuing fascination with Douglass is the amorphous quality of his symbolism. He seems to encompass the continuing ambivalence of black men in America with respect to many issues, including separatism, integration, Afrocentrism, Eurocentrism, and male-female relationships."

Wilson Jeremiah Moses is now one of my favorite historians. A specialist on black nationalism and African-American intellectual history, Moses is blessed with a great wit and accessible style that articulates how and why African-American history, black nationalism, and philosophy matters. Both of these two aforementioned strengths are part of Creative Conflict in African American Thought. Indeed, by placing Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Du Bois, and Garvey into a broader realm of US, European, and African thought, one sees the importance and innovative character of their ideas and contradictions. Instead of confining these black historical figures to the intellectual ghetto, Moses excels in depicting their contradictory ideas and relationship with the intellectual waves in Europe and the United States. One cannot understand Du Bois without Hegelian idealism, nor can one understand Crummell without understanding Hamilton and the Cambridge idealists. 

Even Booker T. Washington comes out of this as a far more complex and intriguing figure in black history and thought, possibly predating Weber and other white writers on issues related to religion, Protestantism, and wealth. Moreover, by emphasizing the internal contradictions and competing ideas entertained by these intellectuals at various moments in their lives, the reader gains a deeper understanding of black nationalism and pan-Africanism. In fact, the nuances of their contradictions actually ameliorate some of the rather disturbing trends of black nationalism, such as the authoritarian collectivism mentioned in Moses's Golden Age of Black Nationalism. Seeing the parallels of Christian redemption, Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism, and fundamentally undemocratic political ideals expressed by a variety of writers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Jamaica (Garvey), and the US invalidates quick conclusions on New World black nationalists in relation to Africa. 

As for the above video, it's only relevant to one section of the text, a few chapters on the amazing bundle of contradictions encompassed by Frederick Douglass. Racial spokesman, amalgamationist, abolitionist, opponent of black emigrationism, proponent of Afrocentrism or racial mysticism connecting blacks with Egypt, Frederick Douglass's life is far more engaging than the deified narrative ingrained into our heads through Black History Month specials. In a sense, the decision of Moses to embrace the messy contradictions of these prominent African-Americans is reminiscent of Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, as well as a challenge to some of the easy or misguided interpretations on the left and the right.