Been in the Storm So Long (118 page)

To counter the self-debasing images with which their people had been inculcated, black spokesmen needed to confront their cultural and national origins. While almost unanimously rejecting emigration and affirming their American heritage and identity, they might have been expected to harbor ambivalent feelings about their relationship to Africa. To identify with Africa raised the specter of a separate nationality, as well as awkward questions about backwardness and semi-barbarism, and might encourage those whites who still wished to return them there. For some blacks, in fact, the remoteness of Africa, both geographically and culturally, and the effects of race mixing in the United States only served to accentuate their Americanness. “We are not Africans,” one black leader proclaimed, “but a mixed race, mingling Saxon, Indian, and African blood.” Rather than deny the past, however, numerous black spokesmen preferred to embrace it as a source of racial pride. To reject emigration did not require blacks to reject Africa as their ancestral homeland, any more than English, Irish, and German Americans felt compelled to dissociate themselves from their national origins.

Nor did blacks necessarily subscribe to the prevailing image of Africa as a hopelessly backward, semi-barbaric Dark Continent with neither a past nor a future; on the contrary, the impressions conveyed in the black press tended to emphasize the rich and varied cultures and the ancient Negro empires from which they were descended. Africa had been the very cradle of civilization, with the black race acting as “the promoters and the originators of social progress.” The first significant and “brilliant” culture in the world had been founded by the Egyptians, a mulatto people who had been instructed in the rudiments of art and industry by Ethiopians, a pure-black people. If portions of Africa now resembled a Dark Continent, for which the barbaric slave trade conducted by Europeans bore partial responsibility, that same darkness had once engulfed the Caucasian race and vestiges of it still existed among whites. “What should we think of the Caucasian race if we had to judge that race from the wild and naked brutes of Andaman, or even from the ‘lazzaroni’ of Naples?” Scoffing at the notion of African inferiority, a black leader in North Carolina noted that the Anglo-Saxon had once worn a “brass collar on his neck and the name of his Norman master marked on it.” With equal cogency, the
New Orleans Tribune
asked, “Who are you that boast yourselves over the descendants
of Africans? A few centuries ago, your forefathers were savages, in the wilds of Britain, Germany or Gaul; we Americans, of whatever nationality, are all alike descended from barbarians.” The extent to which the black press and leadership reflected the conceptions of Africa that reposed in the great mass of Afro-Americans remains difficult to determine; many exslaves were no doubt too preoccupied with survival in the United States to concern themselves with such matters, while others may have been the subject of a caustic observation by the official voice of the African Methodist Episcopal Church: “It is possible, even now, for a negro to say, ‘What have I to do with Africa?’ and not be frowned down; nay, it is somewhat popular.”
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What admittedly compounded the problem of identity and conceptions of Africa was the extent to which Americans, including many blacks, had been inculcated with the notion that whiteness was not only more acceptable but more beautiful and alluring. The slaves who thought they would turn white with emancipation were very few but those who resorted to artificial devices to approximate white features numbered in the thousands and laid the basis for several commercial fortunes in black cosmetology at the end of the century. Recognizing the importance of developing self-pride and racial consciousness in their people, some black spokesmen thought the aftermath of slavery a propitious time to question the premium placed on white, Western standards of beauty. Rather than view their blackness as a badge of degradation, they should be encouraged to embrace it as a symbol of strength and beauty, superior in many respects to the pale, pasty-complexioned Caucasians. Not only was blackness a color borne by their ancestors in Africa who had erected ancient and noble civilizations but it characterized a majority of the peoples of the world. Through their color, Afro-Americans could thus identify with the mass of mankind, “and who shall dare say that the time will not come, when the idea of wealth, power and intelligence will be associated with a dark skin, as it is now associated with a white one?”

If the call for “Brown earth for brown men!” was as yet premature, the reality of black political power and even black majorities in the South was not. Although blacks remained a numerical minority in all but two of the ex-Confederate states, the acquisition of the ballot converted them instantly into a potent political force. Emboldened at the same time by a growing sense of racial and community identity, blacks prepared to become
full partners in the remaking of southern society—in a reconstruction that promised to broaden the base of political participation and enable even an ex-slave to aspire to the “wealth, power and intelligence” long monopolized by a coterie of white-skinned natives.

T
HE LARGELY BLACK AUDIENCE
that gathered in Savannah on April 2, 1867, listened as a prominent white Georgian advised them to be skeptical of any politician who tried to win their votes by telling them they were the equals of the white race. “Politicians have been the bane of all people,” he warned, “and they will be your bane if you fail to act wisely and well in your new relations to the race which always has and always will be the predominant race in the world we live in. To fit you for the exercise of political rights you must be politically educated.” If the audience received these remarks with a discernible lack of enthusiasm, they may have been both troubled by the content and anxious to hear the next speaker, James M. Simms, a preacher and former slave. No sooner had the former governor of Georgia introduced him than the Reverend Simms proceeded to set matters straight. White men, he declared, knew nothing of his people. Under slavery, most blacks had learned to dissimulate in the presence of their master, and he claimed to be no exception. But now, “for the first time,” he no longer felt compelled to mask his views. No matter how illiterate or politically uneducated black people might be, he assured the crowd, they were not fools. As prospective voters, they knew enough to cast their ballots for a party which had always advocated principles of liberty and justice. Nor did they need to be “politically educated” to know not to elect “a rebel mayor” who tolerated the presence of “brutal policemen.”

With considerable pride, the Reverend Simms alluded to the notable changes of the last decade. His audience no doubt suspected what lay behind the ardor with which the speaker now underscored his words. Nearly sixteen years earlier, Thomas Simms, his brother, had been returned in chains from Massachusetts as a fugitive slave and dragged through the streets of Savannah to the jail. Not far from that site, James Simms now stood, sharing a platform with white dignitaries and advising an assemblage made up largely of former slaves how to exercise their newly won rights as free men and citizens. The transition in the lives of the Simms brothers was no more extraordinary, however, than the political era which this and scores of similar meetings helped to launch. Neither white nor black spokesmen were oblivious to the implications. “Yes, we will be a power that will be felt in this country for all time to come,” a black newspaper proclaimed, while a former Confederate official admitted as much as he surveyed the dim political scene: “The registration of voters shows that the political power will be in the hands of our late slaves. What
shame! What humiliation for us. Would it not be better to take up arms and defend ourselves to the last against such infamy.”
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With the passage of the Reconstruction Acts in March 1867, what came to be known as Radical or Congressional Reconstruction was under way. Until a popularly elected convention had framed a constitution acceptable to Congress, each of the unreconstructed southern states would remain under military rule. What made this proposed reconstruction “radical” was the stipulation that both races would vote for delegates to the conventions and no constitution would be acceptable unless it provided for black suffrage. Throughout the South, boards of registrars, usually composed of two whites and one black, began the process of enrolling qualified voters. With thousands of whites unable to qualify because of their roles in the Confederacy and still others refusing to register, the results were expected but no less startling. Of the 1,363,000 registered voters in the forthcoming elections, more than half of them—703,000—would be blacks, and they formed a majority of the electorate in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. When these figures were translated into local and county statistics, the results were sufficient to drive whites into even deeper despair. “Registration has closed here placing the negroes in a majority,” a white resident of Savannah informed a business client, who was traveling in Europe. “I hope we shall be able to control them. If not, what a terrible prospect! You will probably find us in the throes of that revolution when you return.”
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While canvassing Georgia and South Carolina for the Republican Party, Henry M. Turner expressed grave concern over how many of his people would exercise their new political power. The problem, as he discerned it, was not so much political apathy as the “foolish idea” that political involvement might compound their already precarious economic situation. Rather than take such risks, they would leave political matters to their “white friends and colored leaders.”

To encourage full participation in the forthcoming elections, the Reverend Turner framed an urgent appeal to the “colored citizens” of Georgia and ordered that it be read in every AME church. More importantly, he proposed that the newly emerging black leadership in the state traverse the countryside in an effort to mobilize and register the thousands of freedmen not reached by urban rallies and newspapers. “What will it avail us for the larger cities to go right if we are to be dragged down to infamy
and shame by the rural districts.” And if the men remained indifferent to these appeals, Turner urged black women, though disfranchised, to organize themselves to help get out the vote.
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From the outset of registration, black leaders had recognized the need to educate their people to the uses of political power. With that objective in mind, black activists canvassed their respective counties and states, discussed with prospective voters the issues that should determine their selection of candidates, warned them that a failure to exercise their newly acquired rights might result in the forfeiture of those rights, and explained to them the mechanics of voter registration. Everywhere he traveled in the interior of South Carolina, Benjamin Franklin Randolph reported, he came across hundreds of his people who were at a loss to know how to register or vote, some of them the victims of “bad advice” and threats from their employers. “A short comprehensive lesson will any where satisfy them,” he added, though local whites often made it difficult if not perilous for him to impart such instruction. (While canvassing these same districts the following year, Randolph was assassinated.) In urging blacks to register, a newspaper in Georgia framed its appeal in terms of black indebtedness to the North and the Republican Party. But the
New Orleans Tribune
, which no doubt would have seriously questioned any such obligations, chose to frame the issues so that few freedmen could afford to ignore them. “The vote is the means to reach the composition of juries, the dispensation of education, the organization of the militia and the police force, in such a manner that the interests of all races be represented and protected.”
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