A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond (15 page)

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
, I
NC
.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

November 8, 2002

Barton,

Atlantic City?

Juniper

Interoffice Memo

Percival—This OK?

DRAFT

November 9, 2002

Dear Martin,

I enclose here material received from Wilkes.

What in God’s name are we to make of it? I mean, he says we are to work it up. What the hell does “work it up” mean? Here we are waiting patiently for real material FROM THURMOND and we get what are apparently writing exercises from this Barton person. Who is he? How are we to deal with him?

Is he mad? Are you?

The material also. For fuck’s sake, it leans toward the most absurd apologetic I’ve ever seen. We supposed to say that all was peachy for Southern darkies, that the only ones suffering were those who went North? It gets worse, as you will see.

We are serious writers, Snell, and we sure as Christ cannot proceed without knowing what it is we are to be doing. I can tell you what we won’t do:

—write some cockeyed history designed to make salmon-head look like a friend to man

—sit around for months playing hide-the-hankie with Wilkes

—put up with much more crowshit from you

So, with all respect, do clarify things for us. We don’t mean to cause difficulties. We mean to work. We are dying to work. We work well, you’ll see. Let us work!

Cordially yours,

Percival and Jim

F
ROM THE
D
ESK OF
P
ERCIVAL
E
VERETT

November 10, 2002

Jim:

I altered the tone a little and sent it on.

Percival

Office of Senator Strom Thurmond
217 Russell Senate Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

November 10, 2002

Juniper:

Atlantic City is fine by me. Good suggestion. Next weekend?

How was Halloween? Strange you didn’t mention it. Did you get to feed from anyone’s breast? Was Mother there in the flesh? Big Sis?

Barton

O
FFICE OF
S
ENATOR
S
TROM
T
HURMOND
217 R
USSELL
S
ENATE
B
UILDING
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C. 20515

November 10, 2002

Dear Percival and Jim,

Should it be “Jim and Percival”? Or should I alternate? You let me know, if you would, as I cannot be expected to guess and do not want to hear, somewhere down the road, “Barton, you have caused a rift.” But why put it negatively? I wish not to avoid disharmony so much as to conjure concord.

Enough of that, though you must understand that I have no wish to be impersonal. Tell me more about yourselves. Which one is black? Forgive me if you’ve already said this, but I sometimes forget some things in the rush of doing other things. Only one of you is black, right? Neither name is much of a giveaway, is it? But then they seldom are. Jackson, perhaps, or Johnson, but then you can get into serious troubles by making such assumptions, believe you me. Now, if one of you were named Shumoonunu Ackabawka, then I wouldn’t have to ask. But neither of you is, so I must.

Anything else you’d care to add in the personal line, do.

I think the reason you haven’t sent me anything is that I haven’t given you enough to chew on and work up properly. So here’s some more. Part of it is a little lengthy, but just take a deep breath and go at it, working it up.

First comes an excerpt from a little-known speech by the greatest Negro of his time and probably any other time, Booker Taliaferro Washington. This is a speech given in 1884. This is not the celebrated speech he gave later. That was in 1895. Don’t confuse the two, as I will give you some of the latter later in this message. But they are different.

“Any movement for the elevation of the Southern Negro, in order to be successful, must have to a certain extent the cooperation of the Southern whites…. The best course to pursue in regard to the civil rights bill in the South is to let it alone; let it alone and it will settle itself. Good schoolteachers and plenty of money to pay them will be more potent in settling the race question than many civil rights bills and investigating committees.”

Let me just add here that it is common for certain historians (all from guess where?) to dismiss Washington as an “Uncle Tom,” a leader who would sell his people for the humiliation of vocational education and some patronizing. I know this, but I will warn you two that history is never so simple. Neither are men. Neither is Stowe’s Uncle Tom, for that matter. He’s actually a tough old bird and resists to the death. That’s another issue, though. Don’t confuse me.

Note this. In the crucial year of 1904, just twenty years later you will note, Washington published in the important magazine, The Outlook, an essay, “Cruelty in the Congo Country.” I can send it to you if you like. In it, Washington brilliantly shows how the United States government, having established Liberia as what it regarded as an African showcase, then cooperated with Belgium to ensure the existence of the Congo under Leopold’s vile rule. Moreover, our government had done nothing to halt the abuses in the Congo, abuses that Washington outlines with grisly clarity and with his wonderful, judicious acumen. He was no dummy. He showed how King Leopold of Belgium worked by using one tribe to police another, taking a small portion of the “tributes” he was collecting to pay off those he was inciting to acts of horror. King Leopold, Washington says, is not really
capitalizing
on the native savagery and brutality; he is
instilling
these qualities,
importing
them from Europe. The heart of darkness (cf. Conrad) beats not in the African but in the European who transplants it there—with the blithe cooperation of the United States of America.

Mix that in with your liberal acid and shoot it up.

Second is a short bit from M. Edward Bryant of Alabama, writing in
The Christian Recorder
(Philadelphia), January 19, 1888. Now M. Edward Bryant was a well-known Selma radical, both an editor and a minister. He was a firebrand, you might say, capable of such Malcolm X-like outbursts as “Let the world know that we prefer death to such liberty as we have today.” But here’s what he really intends to say:

“The Negro needs to learn how to use his power wisely. We want to live in peace with all mankind, and especially with the whites of the South. Our interests are identical. But we do not want the peace of the lamb with the lion. Give us our rights, not social equality, and we will die by you, for you, and with you.”

I don’t want to presume to guide you much, but do note that, apart from all that flapdoodle about dying, these sentiments echo the Senator’s historic position.

Two short pieces follow.

First from the North Carolina [Negro] Teacher’s Association report, 1886, offered without comment. You’ll see for yourself the significance here and the representative quality of these two sentences. (The second sentence is curtailed, but nothing of importance is left out, you have my word.)

“To have separate schools seems to be a part of the political organism of the South; and we would not have it otherwise, but there should not be any wide disparagement in favor of or against either race. This would be out of harmony with the genius of American institutions….”

And then from the Virginia Readjuster Party statement in 1883. I confess I do not know a lot about this Party. To be candid, I know nothing at all, though I’m sure the following statement, once again, represents the good sense even of what we would call, anachronistically but inescapably, THE FAR LEFT of Negro sentiment IN THE SOUTH:

“We are not as intelligent, nor as strong, financially, as any other people. We are just out of slavery; we are struggling upward, we need friends.”

I don’t know what you make of that remark about inferior intelligence. I can speak for the Senator in saying that he (nor I) never supposed anything of the kind. Why they said that is something for you to work out.

Finally, the Atlanta Cotton Exposition speech of September 18, 1895 by, of course, Booker T. I wonder why so many things happen in September? Apart from the days dwindling down to a precious few, I mean. Is it so with you? I know it is for me. In early September I met _______________, who has, despite some recent idiocies, meant almost everything. Almost but not—well, you know. Also in September I learned to have a good personality, as we called it then. I set myself a rigorous course of training, all through the month. When done—well, you know the result. Or rather, you don’t yet. Not really.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrre’s Booker!

“It is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world…. You can be sure in the future, as you have been in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has ever seen…. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress…. The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle, rather than of artificial forcing.”

If you are not familiar with the striking metaphor of the bucket Washington uses in this speech, do look at it. I can supply it, but I find it a little long to reproduce here. Perhaps, as one of you—the black?—is a researcher, you can find it yourself.

Well, ta ta for now.

Do either of you have a sister, younger?

Go Diamondbacks!

Bisto