Been in the Storm So Long (117 page)

With every blundering step made by President Johnson, black people came closer to a full recognition of their rights. But the victory, when it came, would be something less than a triumph of democratic principles. That is, Congress would yield to political necessity, not to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence or to black arguments about patriotic service to the country, taxation without representation, and the natural rights of man. Understandably, blacks would celebrate the triumph, while ignoring the mixed motives that made it possible. If they exuded a certain confidence, however, that may have reflected the experience of the past two years, in which they had prepared themselves for this eventuality. Few could contend, at least, that the privileges of voting and holding political office had suddenly been thrust upon a people who had previously given little or no consideration to political matters. By 1867, the issues had been clarified, leaders had emerged, and organizations were being formed to mobilize the mass of blacks who may not have been reached by the convention movement and the black press.

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EARLY A HALF CENTURY
after emancipation, W. E. B. Du Bois grappled with the problem of black identity. The Negro appeared to him as “a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world.” Forced to view himself through the eyes of white men, to calculate his every move and word in terms of their expectations and demands, his vision permitted him no “true self-consciousness” but rather exposed him to a myriad of conflicting images.

The history of the Afro-American, Du Bois contended, revolved around this perennial conflict—“this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.” What seemed essential, however, was that blacks, while seeking admission to white society, not sacrifice their racial heritage and individuality.

Without the advantage of Du Bois’s hindsight on Reconstruction and its tragic aftermath, blacks in the postwar years confronted the paradox of racial identity—how to define themselves as a people and as a race in relation to a society made up largely of whites who viewed themselves superior by virtue of the color of their skin, their Anglo-Saxon heritage, their mental endowments, and their future prospects. Since they aspired to the same rights exercised by white citizens, some blacks thought it imperative to underscore their Americanism, to demonstrate the ardor of their national loyalty, to disprove current theories of racial inferiority, and to show how much more acculturated they were to American ways and values than the recent arrivals from Europe. “We want to understand that we are no longer colored people, but Americans,” John Mercer Langston told a black gathering in 1866.

To affirm their American identity, blacks noted the various cultures that made up the civilizations of the world and the emergence of a new “race” in the United States. Whether descended from Europeans or Africans, they suggested, Americans—white and black—were in the process of developing racial characteristics “as severely individual” as those of Europeans, Asians, and Africans. Surely, the voice of the AME Church would argue, no one could expect black people in the United States to be Africans after their lengthy residence in this land.

If the “negro character” differed in any respect from that of other citizens, the editorial concluded, the reason seemed abundantly apparent—“their character, is not American. Ours, is.”
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So intent were some blacks on demonstrating their identification with American values that they contrasted the advantages they enjoyed by virtue of their long exposure to white Americans with their less fortunate brethren in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Negroes of the Spanish West Indies and Brazil were singled out, in particular, as “the lowest of our race on the American continent,” largely because most of them were African-born and had not yet thrown off “its barbaric usages.” Even the Haitians, although “a noble race” with a proud history, lacked “those elements of order, of cool deliberation, of submission to authority” necessary for good government. But blacks in the United States had learned their lessons from the best possible teachers.

Having resided by the side of their white brethren, blacks had imbibed the principles of republican government and Protestantism. “And being the most imitative of men, as saith his enemies, he bids fair to rival his great teacher.”
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Even as blacks emphasized their American roots, they could not agree on whether they were Negro, colored, black, or African Americans. The ongoing debate over how they should be addressed revealed at the same time differences over how they conceptualized themselves as a race and a regard for how whites employed the various terms. The objections to “negro,” for example, rested partly on its association with slavery and the tendency of whites to use it as a term of reproach. “We call each other colored people, black people, but not negro because we used that word in secesh times,” a South Carolina freedman testified in 1863. Both “negro” and “black” also suggested unmixed ancestry and hence excluded large numbers of colored people. “Is your Chairman a negro?” James Lynch asked the delegates to a Convention of the Colored People of Tennessee. “Or your Secretary, or any of your officers, or your other members or those sergeants sitting over there? They are all mixed blood. We are not ashamed of the term ‘negro,’ but to call it a ‘negro convention’ is a lie.… It is very hard to tell whether there is any pure blood or not, because white men used to love colored women very much.” Nor did “African” fare very well, particularly at a time when black leaders sought to educate their people to their Americanness. Henry M. Turner, a leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, agreed with several of his ministerial colleagues that the term “African” should be stricken from the title, if only because it
suggested exclusion; on the other hand, “unlike the most of my race,” he claimed pride in being called a Negro. “When I am walking the streets of a city, and hear some one say, there goes a negro preacher, or a negro chaplain, I feel a peculiar exaltedness.” By the 1870s, the issue was far from settled, though “colored” seemed the most acceptable term, and a Louisiana newspaper indicated a willingness to accept “Negro” as long as it was capitalized, like any other nationality. “The French, German, Irish, Dutch, Japanese and other nationalities, are honored with a capital letter but the poor sons of Ham must bear the burden of a small n.”
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Whatever terminology they used to describe themselves, some blacks preferred to look, act, and sound as little Negro, colored, or black as possible. By adopting the fashions, the life styles, the manners, and even the color of white society, they would be absorbed into the dominant society that much sooner. The advertisements appearing in black newspapers, for example, not only acknowledged the premium placed on whiteness but sought to place that aspiration within everyone’s reach; if they could not turn white, they could purchase various devices calculated to bring them to the threshold of whiteness.

Still other advertisements promised scientific treatments that would enable black women to excel “the famed beauty of the Caucasians.”
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What they could not achieve with skin whiteners or hair treatments, some blacks hoped to attain by modeling their social functions and attire on white society. If they could not be absorbed into that society, they would establish their own society within a society—a replica of that from which they were excluded. Such pretentiousness, however, particularly when it manifested itself in lavish expenditures, provoked bitter responses in the black community. William J. Whipper, a northern-born black who settled in South Carolina after the war, berated the “worshippers of false gods” he found among his own people.
“Fashion
rules the hour,” he wrote in 1866, “and, like menial slaves, we do its bidding.… The street, the church, and the ball-room are the theatres for its display of presumptive impudence.” It simply made no sense. To obscure their lowly station in life, blacks were expending money on luxuries which they could ill afford, thereby compounding their poverty in a vain effort to hide it.

In their attempts to emulate whites, Whipper concluded, black people were totally ignoring the system of economy and industry that would ultimately enable them to achieve that objective. Making that point even more explicit, a black newspaper in Louisiana suggested that only the ownership of land would bring to blacks the respectability they now sought by indulging themselves in the white man’s fashions and follies.

And yet this same newspaper that scorned lavish dress and entertainments featured articles describing fancy balls of colored people, the finery of their clothes, and the excellence of their repasts; indeed, in the very same issue and on the same page as the editorial on “Extravagance Among Colored People” appeared “The Fashion Department,” with tips on “Summer Styles and Novelties.” Similarly, the same newspapers that extolled the virtues of blackness and eloquently appealed to race pride often included advertisements on how black people could make themselves more white.
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The paradox did not lend itself to any easy or immediate resolution. But the frank discussion of such questions did force blacks to examine critically who they were and the nature of their relationship to white society. If some were naturally drawn toward the models and values of that society, still others thought the loss of racial distinctiveness too heavy a price to pay for admission. To ape the ways of a people who mocked, degraded, and ostracized them, moreover, in the expectation they could gain the respect of such people, would most likely be an exercise in futility and reinforce their feelings of inferiority. To shed their Negroness, whitewash their culture, and deny their ancestral homeland would result in still more self-hatred and self-deprecation. “They seemed to think that by repudiating the word ‘colored’ they would become white,” a veteran black abolitionist observed; “that though they were as black a man as I, they, by rejecting that word colored would directly become as white as the natives of this country.” James Lynch, before embarking on his political career in Mississippi, thought he understood the type all too well—those who placed no value on the ability of men of their own race, who adopted the opinions respecting them that most whites held, who preferred white men as religious instructors, teachers, physicians, and lawyers because they were white, who disparaged their own color and thereby paid homage to the
alleged superiority of the Anglo-Saxon. And invariably, if such individuals should be flattered, feted, or rewarded by whites, “they will kiss the hands of the oppressor and ally themselves with the enemies or disparagers of their race.”
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