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MARTIN KILSON
DANIEL M. FOX
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KEY
ISSUES
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Afro-American
Experience
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JUL 2
Under the GeneralEditorship of
JOHN MORTON BLUM
Yale University
II
VOLUME SINCE 1865
KEY
ISSUES
the
in
American
Afro-
Experience
Edited by
NATHAN MUGGINS
I. Columbia University
MARTIN KILSON
Harvard University
DANIEL M. FOX
Harvard University
mi
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
New York I Chicago I San Francisco I Atlanta
COVER:
Detail from the painting Ambulance Call by the Afro-American artist Jacob Lawrence.
Courtesy of Dr. Bernard Ronis, Philadelphia. Photo by Robert F. Crandall.
SECTION OPENING PHOTOGRAPHS:
Pages 2 A black family working their farm. Courtesy of the Picture Collection.
NewYork Public Library.
3 A meeting of the South Carolina Legislature of 1873. Courtesy of
Negro HistoryAssociates.
44_45 Black dockworkers unloading freight from a steamboat at DogTooth
Cutoff, near St. Louis. Missouri. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
90 Silent Protest Parade. New York City, 28 July 1917. Courtesy of the
Schomburg Collection, NewYork Public Library.
91 Black Americans boarding a ship in Savannah, Georgia, for voyage to
Liberia. 1 March 1896. Courtesy of Historical Pictures Service, Chi-
cago.
150-51 Song of the Towers, mural by Aaron Douglas. Courtesy of the
Countee Cullen Branch of the New York Public Library.
230 Boy looking through glass ball. Photo by Douglas Harris.
230 Mother and child watching Yoruba wedding ceremony in Douglas
Park, Chicago. Photo by Lloyd E. Sanders.
231 Black student protest. Courtesy of Johnson Publishing Co., Chicago.
©
1971 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublisher.
Paperbound ISBN: 0-15-548372-2
Clothbound ISBN: 0-15-146890-7
Libraryof Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-141607
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
Dedicated to four scholars of the American Negro:
Carter G. Woodson
Horace Mann Bond
Ralph J. Bunche
John Hope Franklin
Preface
New
World Africans, from their first awareness of themselves as Amer-
icans, have wanted to assert the uniqueness and importance of their
experience. They have called on the poetic muse: PhilHs Wheatley,
Jupiter Hammon, and Alberry Alison Whitman were among the early classic
voices that sang the black consciousness in lyric and epic form. Polemicists
and activists like Frederick Douglass, Martin R. Delany, and David Walker
hammeredout prose designed to awaken black men and women to their moral
obligation. And from at least 1841, with J. W. C. Pennington's efforts, black
Americans have had a keen sense that their story needed to be told as part of
the history of America. For most blacks, there has never been any doubt that
their identity is embedded in the general American history, and that they will
never know themselves until they mine and refine that history themselves.
Soitisonly a trick of ego—a sleight of mind—that permits some observers
toimplythatthediscovery of the Negro's place in American history and Amer-
ican studies is a recent event. It is arrogance to ignore or deprecate men who
begantheirwork near the beginning of this century, men like Carter G. Wood-
son and W. E. B. Du Bois. Many important black scholars followed, some of
whom—J. Saunders Redding, John Hope Franklin, Benjamin Quarles—con-
tinue their work into this day. These men labored in a discouraging scholarly
environment; indifference to their work kept the highest honors and acclaim
just beyond their grasp. That they persisted despite the many obstacles was
viii Preface
nothing short of heroic, and we are much the richer for their dedication. Con-
sider, for instance. Carter Woodson's commitment and sense of purpose in
starting, in 1915, and sustaining the Association for the Study of Negro Life
andHistory. Becauseof his effort, we have had ever since theJournalofNegro
History and the Negro History Bulletin, which have welcomed the essays of
black and white scholars often thought too ethnic and too narrow in scope for
the standard journals.
Thus formal and informal study of the Afro-American experience has ex-
istedforalongtime. Nevertheless,thereis something new about contemporary
efforts to study Negro Ufe and history. For the first time, Negro history has
become a central concern of the general academic world. Indeed, concern has
often beenforced on colleges by student pressure. Growing numbers of black
students found that the standard studies of "our" past—Western civiHzation
no less than American history—failed to sound true to their lives and experi-
ence. Many white students, perplexed and annoyed by the disparity between
officially stated ideals and sensed reality, suspected with good reason that a
better perception of the irony and paradox that defined their present might
well be achieved through an understanding of the Afro-American experience.
That experience challenges conventional rhetoric on uninterrupted national
progress and the success of the American Dream and is itself the essence of
irony and paradox. But the new concern goes even beyond students' demands
for relevance. White and black scholars have begun to see study of the Afro-
American experience as a way to illuminate and reconsider perplexing prob-
lems in the American past.
The two volumes of Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience are de-
signed to bring the speciahst's interest and knowledge to the service of stu-
dents, instructors, and general readers. We wanted to direct the energy, in-
telligence, andtrainingofacademicianstothecreationofacollection of sharply
focused essays that would both capture interest and demonstrate disciplined
analysis. We wanted to choose topics that were central and essential to an
understanding of the Afro-American experience. And we wanted the best peo-
ple available to address themselves to those topics. These could not be essays
already printed in scholarly journals—they presume a different audience.
Ofthetwenty-seven essays in these volumes, all but three—those by Philip
Curtin, Kenneth Stampp, and Stanley Elkins—were written expressly for this
collection. All other essays are fresh statements of principal issues by special-
ists in the field. For each essay we have provided a headnote that includes a
brief biographical sketch of the author. For each section of the volumes, we
have supplied a list of suggestions for further reading.
Defining relevance was a major problem in choosing the topics to be
treated. Some issues that seemed urgent also seemed likely to be transformed
by changes in national policy or economic conditions. We tried to make dis-
tinctions between the transient and the enduring. The definition of an Afro-
American history, a black culture; the influence of Africa and the impact of
