Birth of Ida B. Wells: with its joys and sorrows

Ida B. Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16, 1862. Before she was even a year old, however, she was emancipated by Abraham Lincoln. Her parents, who were also freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, encouraged education in their children (her father was a trustee of what is now Rust College). However, her parents died when she was a teenager, and young Ida dropped out of college to became a schoolteacher in order to earn enough money to support her siblings.

Wells eventually moved the family to Tennessee, and there experienced segregation and the effects of racism stronger than before. In September 1883, she refused to move from the first class cabin of the train to the smokers' cabin. Though she won a lawsuit against the company, she lost on a later appeal. She sued again after a similar incident and again won initially but, this time, it was the state's supreme court that overturned the verdict.

The incidents fueled her desire to do something to attack the problem of racism and she soon switched careers from educator to journalist. She wrote for newspapers in Tennessee, New York, Michigan, Illinois, and others, writing directly about racial problems including poor funding for black schools and the horror of lynchings. She was soon labeled a troublemaker; others, however, called her "Princess of the Press." Eventually, she was owner and editor of her own newspaper, Free Speech. Once, in 1892, while away from the office, her building was ransacked by her enemies. She was undeterred, and Ida B. Wells had a lengthy career as a journalist, author, and public speaker.

An entry from her diary on her 25th birthday, July 16, 1887, shows the high standards she set for herself even at that young age:

This morning I stand face to face with twenty five years of life, that ere the day is gone will have passed me by forever. The experiences of a quarter of a century of life are my own, beginning with this, for me, new year... Within the last ten [years] I have suffered more, learned more, lost more than I ever expect to, again. In the last decade, I've only begun to live — to know life as a whole with its joys and sorrows. Today I write these lines with a heart overflowing with thankfulness to My Heavenly Father for His wonderful love & kindness... When I turn to sum up my own accomplishments I am not so well pleased. I have not used the opportunities I had to my best advantage and find myself intellectually lacking... Twenty-five years old today! May another 10 years find me increased in honesty & purity of purpose & motive!

*Information, including the passage above, comes from The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells (1994 edition), edited by Miriam Decosta-Willis.

Thy faith is changed to sight

When Rev. Francis E. Butler, Chaplain of the New Jersey 25th Regiment, died on May 3, 1863, having been fatally wounded at the siege of Suffolk, Virginia, during the Civil War, his acquaintance Alfred Gibbs Campbell was devastated. Campbell, like Butler, was from New Jersey, as well as a published poet. Though he was himself born free in the North, Campbell frequently used his writing to voice his strong abolitionist stance and became vice-president of the American Anti-Slavery Society. His poem to Butler, simply titled "In Memoriam," emphasized the holy role he played as a man of faith and a religious leader for soldiers:

Soldier of Christ, no more!
    Victor—thy warfare's done.
For thee the battle's roar
    Is hushed. Thy crown is won!

Oh! not for thee our tears!
    Happy in fadeless light,
Beyond the reach of fears,
    Thy faith is changed to sight.

Thine eyes with rapture see
    Thy dear Lord face to face,
Whose life of Love in thee
    His own eye loved to trace!

Kind helper of God's poor!
    Friend of the friendless one!
Thy memory shall endure
    While suns their courses run;

And bright thy crown shall be
    With living jewels set!
Souls won to Christ by thee
    Adorn thy coronet!

And yet our tears will flow,
    As we our loss recall:
How can we let thee go,
    Brother and friend of all?

Campbell: Every book ought to have a preface

"My printer says that every book ought to have a preface," wrote Alfred Gibbs Campbell from Newark, New Jersey in his requisite preface dated April 7, 1883. The passage opened his Poems, which was apparently his first (and only) book compilation. Not much is known about the New Jersey born African American poet who also ran a paper mill and edited a newspaper. The book was released shortly before his death. As he states in his preface:

I will therefore simply say that, acting upon the suggestion of personal friends and in accordance with my own inclination, I have here gathered in a volume, (rather promiscuously it must be confessed,) various pieces in verse which I have written during the past thirty years or so. For want of a more distinctive name, I call them "Poems," which possibly, in a minor sense, they may be. I claim for them no literary excellence. If in them there is anything worthy of living, it will live... Should their appearance in this form afford pleasure to my friends, I shall be gratified.

Campbell also notes his anti-slavery poems in the collection, showing his role in the great "moral warfare," as he calls it, against "the giant crime against human nature and its Divine Author." Certainly, the book includes more than this theme. Throughout the book, Campbell explores man's relationship with God, his role on Earth, his devotion to his country (flawed though it may be), and frequently searches for moral guidance. Most evoke his deep religious beliefs. His poem "Ships at Sea":

All of us have our ships at sea;
   Will they ever reach port, I wonder.
A few may sail in merrily,
   But most will the wild waves sunder.

And some which do reach port, I guess,
   Will discharge only damaged cargoes;
Better had they been kept by stress
   Of weather, or Fate's embargoes.

Trust not thy treasures on the sea,
   Nor idly expect joy to-morrow:
Take what to-day doth offer thee.
  Nor pleasure nor trouble borrow.

Douglass: where the light comes

"It was a meeting long to be remembered," concluded William Cooper Nell in a letter to a colleague. The letter, dated February 15, 1848, described an anti-slavery speech given by Frederick Douglass in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In the "mere sketch," Nell emphasized that, "New Bedford has a widely spread fame as an Anti-Slavery town." The inhabitants of that town of 16,000 had actively helped gain sympathy for the cause, in part because the population included "twelve hundred colored people," 75% of which had come from enslavement. Douglass was one of them for a time.

After running away from enslavement, Douglass temporarily settled in New Bedford (and it was here that he chose his last name). Returning to New Bedford that February, he particularly noted the corruption of the federal government which had just annexed Texas, which he believed was a ploy to enhance slave power in the Senate, not to mention "the spirit of conquest that possesses the American heart," as Nell reported. In his speech, Douglass also broke down the views of Senator Henry Clay, who had been favoring colonization. This plan to remove free blacks and send them to Africa was an injustice, Douglass said. Nell quoted Douglass:

It [e.g. the colonization plan] is our deadly enemy, we shall not obey its wishes, but shall do that which Mr. Clay 'wishes' us not to do; we shall stay here in our country, identified with the slave, laboring to obtain our rights and his, and we shall secure them... The hand of Providence is with, and guides us; crush us to the earth, and we rise again; try to starve us, and we grow strong and vigorous; close up your hearts, legislate against us, and try to make us hate the land of our birth, and we love it the more. You may try to keep us low, ignorant and in the dark; but the light is shining all around; to it, though slowly, yet surely will come... Slavery cannot exist where the light comes.

Nell imagined what it would be like if Douglass and Clay had a public debate over the question in Washington, D.C. "What a spectacle!" he imagined, "A negro, and recently a slave, debating with the 'Demosthenes of the nation.'"

Nell's letter was published several days later in the North Star, an anti-slavery newspaper founded by Douglass and Nell in New York. At the end of it, he reiterated their shared belief that the press would help their cause, and that those who supported the North Star were supporting abolitionism. Douglass's speech, he reported, resulted in 20 new subscribers that day.

Souls of Black Folk: the grain of truth

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.

I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there.

Thus opens the preface (or, as the titled it, "The Forethought") of The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, dated from Atlanta, Georgia on February 1, 1903. The book, a major title in African American writing, offers a series of essays on contemporary concerns for black Americans – or, as Du Bois says it, "I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive." He ends his preface by asking if he needs to be clear that he is one of the "black folk" in question ("bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh").

Portions of the chapters had been previously published in esteemed journals like The Atlantic Monthly, The New World, and the revived Dial. Making it even more literary, Du Bois opens each chapter with a lyrical epigraph quoting, among others, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, William Vaughn Moody, plus Lord Byron, Friederich Schiller, and Elizabeth Barret Browning. Further, each chapter includes music from traditional slave songs, intentionally creating a tension between the high culture art of poetry and the history of repression and enslavement.

In his first chapter, Du Bois says the book is a response to the unasked question, "How does it feel to be a problem?" He argues that black people in America have a long history to overcome before they can be joyful souls. Their struggle did not end with Emancipation, he makes clear. The book ends with a response to his preface, titled "The Afterthought" (italicized here as it was first published):

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest wonderful. Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare. Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed

Birth of Du Bois: to reap the harvest wonderful

He was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on February 23, 1868, and named William Edward Burghardt DuBois, though he is better known as W. E. B. Du Bois. His father left the family when the boy was two; his mother died when he was 15. He was lucky, however, to grow up in a community quite free of racial discrimination. The members of his predominantly white church donated the money that sent him to Harvard. After his graduation (he was first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard), Du Bois went on to become a professor, editor, and author. He advocated particularly for equal rights for blacks, an effort which resulted in his co-founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He also edited their journal, The Crisis (he is pictured above sitting in the office of that publication). He particularly believed that access to education would be a great equalizer and used his own learning and eloquence to empower fellow African Americans.

Du Bois's most famous work is likely his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk. The book collects several essays, including a few previously published, which lay out the author's view on race and how to address what he considers the main problem of the century: "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." Each chapter includes a poem or quote as an epigraph (including ones from James Russell Lowell and John Greenleaf Whittier). As he concluded in the book:

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest wonderful. Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare. Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed

THE END

Ruggles: upon the power of the PRESS

The final installment of David Ruggles's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of New York and Elsewhere in Behalf of the Press was included in the February 17, 1835 issue of The Emancipator. The essay, which was published in installments spread out over a month and four days, urged fellow free African Americans to support the press — even if they could not read. As he wrote, "Every paper that is circulated by your means goes forth as an Ambassador to settle the all important question of Liberty and Slavery."

Ruggles, who identified himself in his byline as "a man of color," believed that even free blacks were "but a short remove from that of two millions of our race who are pining in their bloody chains." The press was a weapon, he wrote, used to fight in the "midst of a moral revolution." In a different analogy, he calls the press an engine and urges blacks to help roll "the car of freedom" and not become "a clog to its wheels." Lest his readers not understand his point, he writes (capitals are original): "OURS is the cause of freedom — OUR CAUSE is sacred; its success depends upon the power of the PRESS under God." Ruggles used language that was sure to incite passion, emphasized further by typographical tricks like capital letters and well-placed italics. The government, reminds Ruggles, "proclaims all men are free and equal."

'Tis proclaimed throughout the world, the "Land of Liberty!" wherever the star spangled banner waves, or the national pennon floats on high; there proudly soars the eagle of liberty, announcing to every land, that America is the birth place of freedom. Why then shall we be slaves and lie down in supineness, with our arms folded, singing the song of degradation? I answer, because we are not united in sustaining the press.

Ruggles himself was a printer and bookstore owner and, as such, knew the potential influence of the printed word. Born free in Connecticut to free parents, he moved to New York as a teenager and became involved with anti-slavery publications like The Liberator in addition to The Emancipator. Among his many works for the abolitionist cause was an essay calling attention to white women that white men were taking black women as mistresses. He worked with the Underground Railroad where he hid a young fugitive slave known as Frederick Douglass. Ruggles's efforts earned many enemies, including a few that set fire to his business. He particularly attempted to stump those who attempted to retrieve escaped slaves. His work "so exasperated the slave hunters," William Lloyd Garrison recalled years later, that "they spared no pains to get him out of the way by foul means, and many and remarkable were his escapes as they hunted him as though he were an outlaw."

Forten: We are thy sisters

As part African American, Sarah Louisa Forten advocated for the abolition of slavery through several poems which she contributed to The Liberator. She used the simple pseudonym "Ada" when she published her "An Appeal to Women" in the February 1, 1834 issue of that newspaper. The poem plays off the 19th-century notion that women were particularly important as a moral compass for society and that all women were sisters, regardless of race:

Oh, woman, woman in thy brightest hour
Of conscious worth, of pride, of conscious power
Oh, nobly dare to act a Christian's part,
That well befits a lovely woman's heart!
Dare to be good, as thou canst dare be great;
Despise the taunts of envy, scorn and hate;
Our "skins may differ," but from thee we claim
A sister's privilege, in a sister's name.

We are thy sisters, Oh, woman, woman in thy brightest hour
Of conscious worth, of pride, of conscious power
Oh, nobly dare to act a Christian's part,
That well befits a lovely woman's heart!
Dare to be good, as thou canst dare be great;
Despise the taunts of envy, scorn and hate;
Our "skins may differ," but from thee we claim
A sister's privilege, in a sister's name.

We are thy sisters, – God has truly said,
That of one blood, the nations he has made.
Oh, Christian woman, in a Christian land,
Canst thou unblushing read this great command?
Suffer the wrongs which wring our inmost heart
To draw one throb of pity on thy part;
Our "skins may differ," but from thee we claim
A sister's privilege, in a sister's name.

Oh, woman! – though upon thy fairer brow
The hues of roses and of lilies grow—
These soon must wither in their kindred earth,
From whence the fair and dark have equal birth.
Let a bright halo o'er thy virtues shed
A lustre, that shall live when thou art dead;
Let coming ages learn to bless thy name
Upon the altar of immortal fame.

Campbell: Of Rome's faded Glory

"I claim for them nothing great," James Edwin Campbell once wrote in the preface to his first book of poems, Driftings and Gleanings. Yet, several of the poems in that collection are incredibly ambitious, including his lengthy verse on "The River Tiber." The poem, dated as December 10, 1884 and written from his home town of Pomeroy, Ohio, is a long, densely academic poem on Ancient Rome. If nothing else, the complicated poem is a major accomplishment for the 17-year old Campbell (who lived only to the age of 28). It begins:

Thou chronicle of ages, long, long past!
Thou, who hast seen the seven far-sung hills,
On which proud Rome her foundations still doth hold,
Covered with the flocks of the Latin shepherds of old.
Thou who, long ere Romulus or Remus was born,
Flowed fearlessly, grandly, tranquilly on!
Thou, who sawest, long ere the lofty walls of Rome
Had reared high their battlements and their turrets of stone,
The shepherds of Latinus and their rude huts or homes
                Clustered along thy banks;
Tell me of the things thou hast kept so long,
                Hidden in thy bosom.

Throughout the nearly 120-line poem, Campbell's poem depicts the famed river as a witness. He uses various allusions to Roman history, folklore, and mythology, including Julius Caesar and the empire's enemy Hannibal. Some scholars have been frustrated by poems like "The River Tiber," hoping that Campbell would offer more criticism of contemporary racial concerns. Still, the poem does have its tensions, as the poet notes how the river will outlive temporary empires and dynasties. The poem ends with an awe-filled and respectful reverie for the river's longevity and power:

And as for thee, thou living monument of dust-mouldered nations,
On whose winding brink is stamped the impress of many generations;
Thou, who, at Rome's fall, when the Vandal caused the streets to flow in blood,
Wept a torrent of tears and poured out thy destructive flood,
That by the Vandal the bending grain might not be mown
Which by Rome's unfortunate husbandmen was sown;
Flow on, and ever in thy course, Tiber, do thou tell
Of Rome's faded Glory; Now, Tiber, fare-thee-well.

Tillman: So declares the precious Word

Few biographical details about Katherine Davis Chapman, a black writer born in Illinois. At some point, it is believed she married a pastor named G. M. Tillman. Many of her poems were published in the Christian Recorder, including her first when she was 18. Six years after that, a poem titled "The Pastor" was published in the Christian Recorder on October 18, 1894 with a dedication to Rev. G. M. Tillman:

In a lonely little parish
For a year a man of God
Taught in love the common people
Of the pathway Christ has trod.

Told to them the old, old story
Of the wondrous One who gave
His own life on Calvary's summit
Lost and ruined souls to save.

Sometimes it was told in gladness,
But there, too, were hours of pain.
That they followed not the Savior,
Though besought o'er and again.

Oft he deemed his labor wasted,
Many times discouraged grew,
But, withal, he had resolved that
He would to the cross be true.

But no life that's truly given
To the service of the Lord
E'er is lost but in the seeming,
So declares the precious Word.

Words that months ago he'd spoken
One day quickened into life,
And a soul communed with Jesus
That before had known but strife.

Then the pastor's heart was gladdened
And his Godly faith renewed,
For he'd prove the precious promise.
He had waited on the Lord.

*Recommended reading: The Works of Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman (Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers) (1991), edited by Claudia Tate, the only major scholar of Chapman Tillman that I found.

Birth of Shadd: vice is discountenanced

She was born on October 9, 1823 in Wilmington, Delaware and educated for a time in West Chester, Pennsylvania, but Mary Ann Shadd (later Mrs. Cary) eventually moved to Canada after the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850. She sought full racial integration, allowing all races to co-mingle without repercussion or social disdain. Her earliest writings on the topic was Hints to the Colored People of the North, published in 1849. In it, she argued that black people had to fight for their own rights, not wait for white leaders to act on their behalf (an ideal which her father also advocated as he assisted fugitive slaves along the Underground Railroad).

Shadd soon found that Canadians, though they had banned slavery by 1834, still segregated based on race. Other African-Canadians promoted the creation of a black identity that would allow them to prosper but Shadd became controversial for insisting on full integration with whites. She advocated her ideas through teaching, lecturing, and the establishment of a press and newspaper, The Provincial Freeman. She is considered the first black female publisher in North America. When the Civil War broke out, Shadd returned to the United States and encouraged black men to enlist.

Another of her books, A Plea for Emigration in 1852, helps potential runaway slaves and free blacks who are considering the move to Canada. In the book, she offers information on local climate, agriculture, and cost of living. Though she repeats throughout that she is not necessarily advocating the move, but merely giving enough background to allow an informed decision, she also writes:

The conclusion arrived at in respect to Canada, by an impartial person, is, that no settled country in America offers stronger inducements to colored people. The climate is healthy, and they enjoy as good health as other settlers, or as the natives; the soil is of the first quality; the laws of the country give to them, at first, the same protection and privileges as to other persons not born subjects; and after compliance with Acts of Parliament affecting them, as taking oath, and they may enjoy full "privileges of British birth in the Province." The general tone of society is healthy; vice is discountenanced, and infractions of the law promptly punished; and, added to this, there is an increasing anti-slavery sentiment, and a progressive system of religion.

*Recommended reading: Mary Ann Shadd Car: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century (1999) by Jane Rhodes.

Birth of James Edwin Campbell

James Edwin Campbell was born in Pomeroy, Ohio on September 28, 1867. In his adult years, he went back and forth between journalist and educator, moving to West Virginia and Illinois at different times to pursue work. For a short period in the 1890s, he was the founding president of the West Virginia Colored Institute (now the historically black West Virginia State University).

He met fellow Ohioan poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in Chicago in 1893 and, like Dunbar, published two types of poems: dialect and more traditional poetry. His first book of poems, Driftings and Gleanings, was published in 1887 and used only standard English. His second collection, Echoes from the Cabin and Elsewhere in 1895, gained attention from critics, who praised the poems for their realistic depiction of the speech and spirit of African Americans. That book included many poems using "Gullah" (a dialect known in the coastal area of South Carolina and Georgia). Though comparison with Dunbar is inevitable, some declare Campbell the more authentic dialect poet.

His poem "The Mobile-Buck" was meant to capture "the shuffling, jerky rhythm of the famous negro dance," Campbell wrote. As the poet described, dancers "buck" against each other in a "roustabout" shuffle. Each dancer attempts to outdo the other while "their rude but picturesque audience" cheers and laughs:

   O, come erlong, come erlong,
      Wut's de use er hol'in back;
   O' hit it strong, er hit it strong,
      Mek de ol' flo' ben' an' crack.
O, hoop tee doo, uh, hoop tee doo!
Dat's de way ter knock it froo.
               Right erlong, right erlong,
            Slide de lef' foot right erlong.
               Hoop te doo, O hoop tee doo,
            See, my lub, I dawnce ter you.
                  Ho, boy! Ho, boy!
            Well done, meh lady!

   O, slide erlong, slide erlong—
      Fas'ah wid dat pattin', Sam!
   Dar's music in dis lef' heel's song,
      Mis'ah right foot, doan' you sham!
O, hoop tee doo, oh, hoop tee doo!
Straight erlong I dawnce ter you.
               Slide erlong, slide erlong,
            Mek dat right foot hit it strong.
               Hoop tee do, O, hoop tee doo,
            See, my lub, I dawnce ter you.
               Ho, boy! Ho, boy!
            Well done, meh lady!

Birth of Cooper and the birthright of humanity

She was born on August 10, 1858 in Raleigh, North Carolina and named Anna Julia Haywood; the last name came from George Washington Haywood, who owned hundreds of enslaved people, and may have been Anna Julia's father. After Emancipation and the end of the Civil War, she went to school and shocked her teachers by her interest in math and science (subjects most often reserved for men at the time).

In fact, young Anna was a brilliant student and, by age 8, was already a teacher's assistant. She went on to earn an undergraduate degree from Oberlin College in 1884, a master's degree four years later and, eventually, two PhDs (in French and Philosophy). She taught at various schools, including Wilberforce University and Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Washington, DC. She was appointed principle for a time, until her disagreement with the local school board resulted in her demotion. She later became the president of a university which offered night courses specifically for working African Americans.

Throughout it all, Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (as she was known after her marriage) was an outspoken advocate in particular for black women to seek higher education. Her most famous book, A Voice from the South, criticized the role that African American characters played in literature. However, in her 105 years, she wrote several other books and essays, and offered several public speeches.

In her later life, she reflected, for example, on the importance of her home, which she built "like the proverbial beaver." She noted it must be "not merely a house to shelter the body, but a home to sustain and refresh the mind, a home where friends foregather for interchange of ideas and agreeable association of sympathetic spirits." Cooper's words are today published on American passports in the form of a quote: "The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class — it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity."

*I am indebted to the encyclopedic African-American Writers (part of the "A to Z of African Americans" series), compiled by Philip Bader and revised and republished in 2010.

Whitfield: song of the unfettered slave

From an early publication,
courtesy of The Classroom Electric

On August 1, 1834, Great Britain abolished slavery in the West Indies. The anniversary of that event made August 1 a day of celebration for African American abolitionists in the United States — one which was more meaningful than the Fourth of July. On August 1, 1849, an anti-slavery gathering in Buffalo, New York included a presentation by James Monroe Whitfield — a free born African American who was a barber by trade — who read his poem "Stanzas for the First of August":

From bright West Indies' sunny seas,
     Comes, borne upon the balmy breeze,
The joyous shout, the gladsome tone,
     Long in those bloody isles unknown;
Bearing across the heaving wave
The song of the unfettered slave.

No charging squadrons shook the ground,
     When freedom here her claims obtained;
No cannon, with tremendous sound,
     The noble patriot's cause maintained:
No furious battle-charger neighed,
No brother fell by brother's blade.

None of those desperate scenes of strife,
     Which mark the warrior's proud career,
The awful waste of human life,
     Have ever been enacted here;
But truth and justice spoke from heaven,
And slavery's galling chain was riven.

'Twas moral force which broke the chain,
     That bound eight hundred thousand men;
And when we see it snapped in twain,
     Shall we not join in praises then? —
And prayers unto Almighty God,
Who smote to earth the tyrant's rod?

And from those islands of the sea,
     The scenes of blood and crime and wrong,
The glorious anthem of the free,
     Now swells in mighty chorus strong;
Telling th' oppressed, where'er they roam,
Those islands now are freedom's home.

*Further reading: The Works of James Monroe Whitfield: 'America' and Other Writings by a Ninteenth-Century African American Poet, edited by Robert S. Levine and Ivy Wilson (2011).

Birth of Olivia Ward Bush-Banks

Olivia Ward was born in Sag Harbor, New York on May 23, 1869. Less than a year later, her mother died and, when her father remarried, she was sent to Providence, Rhode Island to live with an aunt. In high school, she began writing poetry, often exploring her biracial identity (African American and Native American). She married Frank Bush in 1889, with whom she had two daughters, though they divorced. She published her first book of poems just before the turn of the century (earning the praise of Paul Laurence Dunbar). A few years later, she married Anthony Banks and moved to Chicago.

Original Poems, published in 1899, was dedicated "with proud reverence and respect" to the African American race. It included only 10 poems, concluding with "Voices":

I stand upon the haunted plain
    Of vanished day and year,
And ever o'er its gloomy waste
    Some strange, sad voice I hear.
Some voice from out the shadowed Past;
    And one I call Regret,
And one I know is Misspent Hours,
    Whose memory lingers yet.

Then Failure speaks in bitter tones,
    And Grief, with all its woes;
Remorse, whose deep and cruel stings
    My painful thoughts disclose.
Thus do these voices speak to me,
    And flit like shadows past;
My spirit falters in despair,
    And tears flow thick and fast.

But when, within the wide domain
    Of Future Day and Year
I stand, and o'er its sunlit Plain
    A sweeter Voice I hear,
Which bids me leave the darkened Past
    And crush its memory,–
I'll listen gladly, and obey
    The Voice of Opportunity.

Birth of Whitfield: foul persecutions

Little is known about the early life of James Monroe Whitfield, who was born in Exeter, New Hampshire on April 10, 1822. Eventually, he moved to Buffalo, New York and became a barber by profession, and a poet by passion. His work was published in the North Star by Frederick Douglass and The Liberator by William Lloyd Garrison. Though born free, he was understandably concerned about enslaved members of his fellow race and much of his poetry is for the cause of emancipation. In fact, for a time he believed in colonization of a new country for blacks and moved to South America to consider the prospects. He later became an important member of the Freemasons and moved to Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada before settling in California, where he died in 1872.

Among his most well-known and most-anthologized poems is the 236-line "How Long," in which he demands an answer from the deity for "how long" people will be "trampled by the strong." From his 1853 book America and Other Poems, here is the shorter "Prayer of the Oppressed":

Oh great Jehovah! God of love,
  Thou monarch of the earth and sky,
Canst thou from thy great throne above
  Look down with an unpitying eye? —

See Afric’s sons and daughters toil,
  Day after day, year after year,
Upon this blood-bemoistened soil,
  And to their cries turn a deaf ear?

Canst thou the white oppressor bless
  With verdant hills and fruitful plains,
Regardless of the slave’s distress,
  Unmindful of the black man’s chains.

How long, oh Lord! ere thou wilt speak
  In thy Almighty thundering voice,
To bid the oppressor’s fetters break,
  And Ethiopia’s sons rejoice.

How long shall Slavery’s iron grip,
  And Prejudice’s guilty hand,
Send forth, like blood-hounds from the slip,
  Foul persecutions o’er the land?

How long shall puny mortals dare
   To violate thy just decree,
And force their fellow-men to wear
  The galling chain on land and sea?

Hasten, oh Lord! the glorious time
  When everywhere beneath the skies,
From every land and every clime,
  Peans to Liberty shall rise!

When the bright sun of liberty
  Shall shine o’er each despotic land,
And all mankind, from bondage free,
  Adore the wonders of thy hand.

Birth of Wilson: the same God

Harriet E. Wilson was not particularly prolific as a writer, but her 1859 book Our Nig is considered the first novel by an African American woman. She was born Harriet Adams in Milford, New Hampshire on March 15, 1825 (the town boasts a statue of her, dedicated in 2006). In addition to her book, the major accomplishment in her life was the production of hair care products purported to restore gray hairs to their original color. Perhaps most interestingly, she celebrated her birthday in 1876 with a seance.

As the spiritualist newspaper Banner of Light reported, "Hattie E. Wilson (trance lecturer)" hosted a group of friends to celebrate her birthday at her home in Boston. The event included refreshments, several speeches, songs, and an original poem presented by a fellow spiritualist. By the 1860s, Wilson had come to be known as "the colored medium" and was available for seances and readings. The newspaper reported her lecturing on the topic throughout New England, including the towns of Lynn, Stoughton, Stoneham, and Worcester, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut. One report counts an audience of 2,500 at one of these gatherings. The 1860s saw a significant shift towards spiritualism, largely due to the Civil War. In the case of Wilson, however, the trigger was the death of her son George at seven years old.

Faith was clearly important to Wilson. In Our Nig, the black female protagonist Frado is an indentured servant to a white family. The boys in the family befriend her, including James, who converses with her in chapter four. In the section, James tells Frado to be a good girl, but she says she is whipped regardless because she is untrusted due to her race. "Who made me so?" she asks in desperation:

"God," answered James.
"Did God make you?"
"Yes."
"Who made Aunt Abby?"
"God."
"Who made your mother?"
"God."
"Did the same God that made her make me?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, I don't like him."
"Why not?"
"Because he made her white, and me black. Why didn't he make us BOTH white?"
"I don't know; try to go to sleep, and you will feel better in the morning," was all the reply he could make to her knotty queries. It was a long time before she fell asleep; and a number of days before James felt in a mood to visit and entertain old associates and friends.

Tillman: A perfect heart be thine

A poem by Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman was published in the Christian Recorder for March 12, 1896. The poem references her husband, a preacher, who inspired the poem:

"Heart-Keeping"
Thoughts suggested by a sermon on "Heart-Cultivation,"
delivered by Rev. G. M. Tillman, at Davenport, Iowa.

Thy heart so prone to waywardness,
   Thy heart so fond of sin,
Oh keep thy heart with diligence;
   Let every thought be clean.

Let evil books whose impure thoughts
   Would soil thy heart's fair page
Be resolutely thrust aside,
   By youth as well as age.

Ask God for strength when morn's
   First rays, across thy pathway shine;
At eve when stars shine overhead,
   Thy heart to God incline.

Let every impulse of thy soul
   Upward to God incline;
So shall from morn, till setting sun,
   A perfect heart be thine.

For, from thy heart in living streams,
   Life's issues ever flow,
A stream of evil or of good.
   Of blessing or of woe.

For more on Tillman (there is very little), see the previous entry on her here.

*This poem is also collected in The Works of Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman (1991), edited by Claudia Tate.

Death of Anna Julia Haywood Cooper

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper spent her career as an essayist and educator making sure the women's movement in the late 19th-century included the rights of black women. When many other activists focused exclusively on the rights of white women, she wrote her seminal book A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892) to expand their definition of women's rights.

Born in North Carolina, likely the daughter of her mother's enslaver (the source of her last name Haywood), she was able to attend school as a young girl and later married George Cooper, who died only a couple years into their marriage. She went on to graduate from Oberlin College in 1884; four years later, she earned a master's degree in mathematics. She eventually earned a PhD in French literature, too. Much of her professional career was spent as a teacher at a school in Washington, D.C., soon renamed after Paul Laurence Dunbar. Her career as an educator and as an advocate for the rights and education of black women was a long one; she died at the age of 105 on February 27, 1964.

In her book A Voice from the South, Cooper criticizes the role that black characters play in American literature. Often relegated to caricature or comic relief, black characters are too often presented as villainous or subservient, she writes. Though, as William Dean Howells once noted, all men can "range from angel to devil," her concern is that these villains are meant to represent authentically the race as a whole based on an inaccurate understanding by white writers who do not know better:

Our grievance then is not that we are not painted as angels of light or as goody-goody Sunday-school developments; but we do claim that a man whose acquaintanceship is so slight that he cannot even discern diversities of individuality, has no right or authority to hawk "the only true and authentic" pictures of a race of human beings. Mr. Howells' point of view is precisely that of a white man who sees colored people at long range or only in certain capacities. [A reader] will see colored persons only as boot-blacks and hotel waiters, grinning from ear to ear and bowing and courtesying for the extra tips... He has not seen, and therefore cannot be convinced that there exists a quiet, self-respecting, dignified class of easy life and manners (save only where it crosses the roughness of their white fellow countrymen's barbarity) of cultivated tastes and habits, and with no more in common with the class of his acquaintance than the accident of complexion.

Cooper identifies as a major exception Albion Tourgee, "foremost among the champions of the black man's cause through the medium of fiction." She also notes that Joel Chandler Harris has made himself famous for simply writing down the stories he hears black people tell. In response, Cooper says: "What I hope to see before I die is a black man honestly and appreciatively portraying both the Negro as he is, and the white man, occasionally, as seen from the Negro's standpoint."

Douglass, Nell, and The North Star

With the publication of his autobiography about his own escape from enslavement, Frederick Douglass dedicated himself to speaking out against slavery. He also established an abolitionist newspaper in New York called The North Star in December 1847. Soon after, however, his lecture duties took him to Massachusetts and he left his newspaper in the capable hands of William Cooper Nell (who was born free in Boston). In a letter to Nell dated February 5, 1848 (also meant for publication in The North Star), Douglass apologized for his absence:

I very much regret the necessity which just at this time requires me to be absent from my editorial duties: for though the North Star should grow brighter as the night grows older and darker, I deem it of considerable importance that it appear bright at its very dawn. At this time more than at any other period of our enterprise, the Star will be subject to unfriendly as well as friendly criticism. I however feel confident that with the friendly aid which surrounds you, the paper will lack nothing of interest during my unavoidable absence.

The newspaper was then only about a month old and Douglass took the opportunity to add subscribers during his travels. He particularly hoped to "interest and enlist the energies of our colored fellow countrymen" to sustain the newspaper for their "improvement and elevation." As editor and publisher, he was particularly proud to note that The North Star was "the only permanently established periodical in the hands of the oppressed and enslaved of this land." Even so, Douglass noted, white subscribers outnumbered blacks five to one. "Though this fact indicates a most gratifying interest in our enterprise by our white friends," he wrote, "it reveals a palpable deficiency of interest on the part of our colored friends."

One black supporter was Henry Highland Garnet, a man born enslaved in Maryland. In his letter to Nell, Douglass notes that Garnet attended one of his lectures and expressed an interest in their newspaper. Garnet particularly praised the publication's lack of affiliations; most newspapers at the time were connected either to political parties or religious sects. The North Star, however, was separate from both "slaveholding government" and "slaveholding church."

Douglass's anti-slavery lecture tour took him from Springfield to Lynn to Fall River in Massachusetts. He was disappointed by his varying amounts of success. Even so, he looked forward to his upcoming stop in New Bedford. There, he noted, was "the only town in which I have felt myself really at home since I left the South." New Bedford was where Douglass settled after freeing his enslavers and he proudly and fondly recalled it as the place of his first freedom and where he earned his first dollar. It also is where he assumed his name "Douglass."