Narratives of Citizenship and Race By Notable African Americans
This narrative selection has been organized for teachers to find the chronology of sessions and narratives that were studies in the national seminar. Professor Jonathan Holloway arranged each seminar with a specific focus that we researched and discussed in each class. I used the same order for introducing only some narratives that will be new voices for my students. These African American scholars' contributions to the on-going struggle to citizenship rights for African Americans, in particular, and for all people in general, will be noted in this section of the unit. The intellectual abilities and accomplishment of the scholars of these periods are noteworthy, amazing, and extremely inspiring.
Session 1: Freedom
Frederic Douglass (1818-1895), a former slave, was a very influential leader among African Americans. Frederic Douglass escaped from slavery and became a prominent abolitionist who spoke out boldly against the unfair treatment of African Americans. During this time of slavery and abolitionism, he gave speeches about how wrong America was to treat Blacks like brutes, dogs, and to sell them at auctions. He told America that it was inhuman. 48 In 1865, after the Emancipation Proclamation, Douglas wrote that he wanted the "immediate, unconditional, and universal" enfranchisement of the black man. He continued to state that without Freedom, liberty is a mockery. 49
Martin R. Delany (1812 -1885), a Black nationalist, of Mandingo decent, believed in racial separation as a means to gain citizenship for Blacks. He was an educator, physician, African explorer, political candidate, author, and journalist. He opposed the strategies to moralize and speculate blacks' freedom. 50 He believed that if Blacks were to be redeemed, they must move away from whites, their oppressor. He stood firmly for the Blackman lifting himself up and taking responsibility for his family. He felt that the African American would never be given equal rights. He stated, "Until colored men, attain to a position above permitting their mothers sisters, wives, and daughters, to do the drudgery and menial offices of other men's wives and daughters; it is useless, it is nonsense, it is pitiable mockery, to talk about equality and elevation in a society." 51
John Rock (1825 – 1866) an abolitionist, physician, and political analyst. In 1865, he was the first African American to speak before the Supreme Court on racial issues. His appeal was for whites to respect blacks.He had so much race-pride that he did not want White men to help the Negro. His position was, "Whenever a colored man is elevated, it will be by his own exertions." Mr. Rock wanted the doors of equality and citizenship to be opened for the African Americans. He said to his audience, 'hasten the day of general emancipation.' 52
Session 2: Uplift, Accommodation, and Assimilation
Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832 –1912), was the first Negro to support Pan-Africanism, and encouraged blacks to migrate to Liberia in the late 1870s. Blyden felt that the Negro needed to go back to Africa, a place of their fathers, and a place for larger opportunities and greater achievements. 53
Alexander Crummell (1819 -1898) was born in New York, a trained Episcopal priest. He fought for citizenship for Blacks by refusing to join the Diocese of Pennsylvania because of racial issues. He is known for establishing the American Negro Academy in 1897, a first black scholar-society in America. Part of his narrative for the solution to the race problem was amalgamation or absorption.He said that the Jews in America are sufficient for themselves. So are the Germans, the Italians, the Irish, and so are the African Americans sufficient for themselves. 54
Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872 -1906) was a prominent African American Poet in 1895.He used idioms in rural black settings. He wrote the poems, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," "Majors and Minors," and "We Wear the Mask."The last poem mentioned has political and social hints about white racism. 55
Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) was a Black scholar, intellectual, writer, and educator. She taught high school mathematics for thirty-nine years in Washington, D.C. One of the burgeoning feminist thinkers, she was a humanitarian. She said that this is the time for woman- all the departments in the new era are to be hers. She appealed to women to be intelligent and informed about all the movement of their time, because they have a lot to offer this society. She states that the race to fairness is for the hopefulness and elasticity of the youth. All its achievements are before it. 56
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was a crusader for justice, a teacher and journalist. She was born in Mississippi during the Civil War. She co-owned a newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1892, white racists destroyed her printing press.She led campaigns against lynching or mob murder. "No other nation burns its so-called criminals: only under the Stars and Stripes is the human holocaust possible," she shared. 57 She was the co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was self-educated, devised a plan for African Americans. The plan was for them to become be self-sufficient. At that time, he didn't believed in integration. Many White southerners were against integration anyway. He wanted to find a way to teach blacks how to become economically sufficient, but some Black and prominent leaders disagreed with his plan. They felt that what Booker T. Washington asked for wasn't enough. They felt that he was too passive in his approach to receive equal rights and citizenship. His plan, some called the Atlanta Compromise. 58 At twenty-six, Mr. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute in Atlanta, a black vocational and agricultural school.
William E. B. DuBois (1898 – 1963) a black intellectual of the twentieth century disagreed with Booker T. Washington on his plan on civil rights. Mr. DuBois wanted full equality in America, and now. He wanted full rights that the Constitution declared. In 1905, he and several African American intellectual initiated the Niagara movement. It began with the declaration of principles. Among other things, the Niagara movement demanded: access for health care, high quality, all rights that were denied blacks. Riots, lynching, Jim Crow were the order of the day. The principles of the movement, basically said to America, enough is enough. 59
Session 3: Migration and Urbanization
Claude McKay (1889-1948) fought against racial atrocities. By the end of World War l, white racism, lynching, destroying homes, schools and churches ran through the Black neighborhoods like a wild fire out of control. McKay used poetry to express his outrage. His famous poem, "If We Must Die," expressed his rage with the message of fighting back. 60
Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), was an organizer and leader of the Black Nationalist movement, Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The UNIA was a self-help program for people of African descent. He fought for the working class and poor blacks. There were more than seven hundred UNIA programs in the United States and several hundred more in the Caribbean and Africa at that time. Mr. Garvey spread his Pan-Africanism beliefs in the black communities. He helped incorporate the Black Star Line, a shipping vehicle for promoting worldwide commerce among black communities from 1919 to 1922.
He was under pressure from British and American authorities, and was imprisoned in Atlanta in 1923. Born in Jamaica, he worked as a printer, journalists in different countries for a while. 61
Session 4: Art and the Negro
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) studied at Columbia University and published plays, novels, poetry, essays and an autobiography. Some of his poems were written about the unfair treatment towards the Negro and a cry to America to give them their fair share. The following statements written by Hughes in his essay, My America, gives his clear views on America's treatment of the Negro at that period. 'For Democracy to achieve its meaning, the Negro like other citizens must have the right to work, to learn skilled trades, and to be upgraded 5.'He produced several poems on citizenship and fairness that I will use with my students: 'I, Too Am an American;' 'Harlem;' and 'Jim Crow Sign.' 62
Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935) was educated at both Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania. A teacher, political analyst, and poet, published her first book of poetry at age twenty (1895). She was aware that the rights of Black women to vote were a privilege that they didn't understand. The black women were a disappointment in the handling of the ballot. She would vote as her husband, brother or fathers influenced her to. Dunbar-Nelson wanted her to be independent in exercising this freedom, and should not be just another vote. She wrote that, 'when the Negro woman finds that the future of her children lies in her own hands-if she can be made to see then-she will strike off the political shackles as she has allowed to be hung upon her, and win the economic freedom of her race. 63
James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) was a poet, lyricist, novelist, civil rights leader, diplomat, lawyer, and teacher. He wrote, Lift Every Voice and Sing, known as the 'Negro National Anthem.' The first secretary to the NAACP, Johnson wrote fondly about Harlem comparing it to the South where thousands of Negroes migrated. He wrote that New York was a place that guarantees its Negro citizens the fundamental rights of American citizenship and protects them in the exercises of those rights. 64
Session 5: Class Radicalism
Angelo Herndon (1913 - ) was an African-American Communists organizer who worked passionately for unemployed blacks and whites in Atlanta. He was found guilty for insurrection in 1932, but defended himself in front of an all white jury. In the excerpts from You Cannot Kill the Working Class speech, he wrote in his concluding remarks: You may do what you will with Angelo Herndon. You may indict him, but there will come thousands of Angelo Herndon's. If you really want to do anything about the case, you must go out and indict the social system, he stated. But this you will not do, for your role is to defend the system under which the toiling masses are robbed and oppressed. 65
Asa Philip Randolph (1889–1979) was a labor and civil rights leader 66. The Black-Labor Alliance helped the civil rights movement achieve one of its greatest victories - passage of the Voting Rights Act. Inspired by this success, Randolph and Rustin founded A. Philip Randolph Institutein 1965 to continue the struggle for social, political and economic justice for all working Americans. He was involved in the Organization of Black Trade Unionist to Fight for Racial Equality and Economic Justice. 67 In 1925 he helped organize and became the first president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union for all-black railroad workers of the Pullman Company 41.
Session 7: Civil Right Radicalism
Malcolm X (1925-1968) made radical statements about integration and other topics. He was a revolutionary black nationalist. He shared that there were many strategies to slow down integration in the South. "Just simply prevent votes from ever taking place by not ending the debates on issues. Then, either the government would come to a complete halt, or whatever bill they wanted to prevent from passing would be put aside," were insightful comments from him. 68
James Baldwin (1924–1987) articulates issues of race, citizenship and democracy. An essayist, novelist, poet, James Baldwin was a literary figures of the postwar era. 32 He is known for the classic, 'The Fire Next Time', (1963) an analysis of America's racial division. In the preface to this classic, James Baldwin wrote a compelling letter to his nephew, James. He describes to his nephew how white men don't care about him, and thinks that they are superior human beings. He encourages James to not listen to them, and that he can achieve anything with hard work. 69
Session 11: Public Policy
Harold Washington (1922 -1987) served in the U.S. House of Representatives, studied at Roosevelt University and Northwestern University Law School. In 1983 he became the first Africa-American mayor of Chicago. During his four-year term, the Mayor was aware that Chicago was a city where citizens were treated unequally and unfairly 5. He mentioned that women, Latinos, Blacks, youth and progressive Whites have been left out of the Chicago government. Mr. Washington supported educational excellence where all children will have fair opportunities to receive jobs and contracts. He wanted the people to create a city where every citizen will receive his or her full measure of dignity. Harold Washington advocated for 'Fairness' as the standard for all Chicago citizens. 70
Session 12: Post-Racial Citizenship
Barack Hussein Obama (1961- ) a first term senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, announced his candidacy for the President of the United States of America in 2007. Barack Obama focused on issues that brought people together; and did not focus on the race issue. 71 The questions to be answered were what was the candidate going to do about the realization of racial injustice or 'Freedom,' that remains the central factor behind the African American struggle. Will there be more opportunities for people of color, and fewer inequalities for them. 72 Borrowed from the excerpts from his keynote 2004 Democratic National Convention, on the race issue, Barack Obama states, 'for the African-American community, that path to a more perfect union (the title of his speech), means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past, and to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. 73
In his 2008 Democratic National Convention in regards to his ethnicity, he said that, "I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents' dream live on in my precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American Story. 74 He became the first African American President of the United States of America. He was elected the forty-fourth (44 th) president of the U.S. From humble beginning to Presidency, is a monumental narrative for all students to connect to.
True Citizenship: A Question of Race
Every student should be grateful for the diversity of his/her heritage. They should want their parents' dream of equal opportunities and fair treatment to all people, to live on in them. However, equal opportunities and true citizenship for African Americans lives only in their struggles to attain it, and is still a dream, and not fully a reality. Today, true citizenship is still a question of race.
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