Some Thoughts On Mr Marcus Garvey

A few days ago I finished reading a collection of writings and speeches by Marcus Garvey. The book I read is this one. If nothing else, Garvey was certainly quite a character. The book has writings and speeches made before, during and after his convictions for mail fraud, and throughout each phase he relentlessly attacks W.E.B. Du Bois and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, often writing out the organisation's name with quotation marks around the word 'colored' as if to mimic it.

Ultimately, however, he comes across as someone who is both scared of, and not interested in, social equality. Indeed, he leaves the advocating of social equality firmly with the NAACP. His 'back to Africa' stance relies upon the unquestioned glorification of Africa by his followers. It's difficult to know just how many people really did back Garvey, as he is known to have exaggerated his following. Many of his attacks on Du Bois are personal, tit-for-tat contributions. There's little substance attacked (seemingly) be either man. Du Bois attacked Garvey because he was from the West Indies and a printer's apprentice; Garvey attacked Du Bois because he was light skinned, had a little Dutch (i.e. European) blood in him and apparently considered himself socially above the average black man.

Regardless of whether you back the UNIA and Garvey or Du Bois and the NAACP, Marcus Garvey's rhetorical brilliance really shines through in this volume. He employs long, eloquent lists of three in his public speaking and uses repartition to excellent affect. The occasional humourous reference is even communicated well. One can easily see why many African Americans chose to support him. Whilst his glorification of Africa and its history is fanciful, he certainly raises some interesting point on ancient Abyssinia.

Of course, the scariest aspect of the book is his alliance with the Ku Klux Klan. Exactly how he can consider himself as being cut from the same cloth as the KKK is quite beyond me. He may have considered it a smart observation to note that the UNIA and the KKK were working towards the same goal (i.e. emptying the United States of America of all Black people), but that doesn't necessarily mean he had to meet with the Acting Imperial Wizard in Atlanta, GA, does it?

The Culture of the Slave Ship: The Middle Passage and Slavery

One of the earliest skills undergraduate candidates of African American history (and other interdisciplinary subjects) have to acquire is the ability to make a distinction between “slavery” and “the slave trade” as different components of US (and Atlantic) history. Whilst this distinction is undoubtedly vitally important, there is a tendency for it to be overemphasised, and it can often serve to mask correlating features between the two subjects. Within the breadth of this essay, it is my intention to demonstrate that there are four characteristics of slave life (in both the Caribbean and the southern United States) which appear frequently within accounts of the slave trade, and these are the ties that bind the two together. These characteristics are, simply put: rebellion and insurrection; the expression of hardships through song and dance; forced removal away from loved ones; and the rape of black women. The fact these four characteristics endure through the slave trade and into slavery gives them a culturally significant place within the realm of African American history. Finally, as a way of bringing these four facets together, I will conclude by illustrating, with the aid of Alexander Falconbridge’s An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (which also serves as a primary text throughout this paper), how the hereditary nature of slavery in the United States made these four characteristics even more dangerous as they became naturalised characteristics and organic occupational qualities of the people they were associated with.

The most enduring image of the slave trade is that of the tightly-packed slave ship. The Brookes’ print, which galvanised support for the abolitionist movement by visualising the inhumane conditions of the slave ship, today inadvertently serves to subvert many of the seedlings of African American culture. When the weather was fair during the Middle Passage, slaves were brought up on deck to exercise, eat, take in some fresh air, and occasionally bath. It is here where we can see the beginnings of African American customs, both in terms of culture and of the modern linguistic descriptions of the people themselves. “African American” implies people or peoples of America, of African origin. The physical connection is made between the “American” and the “African” by the passage of the slave ship: it serves as the bridge across the Atlantic Ocean, and thus it acts as a platform for the birth of an African American cultural standpoint.


Rebellion and Insurrection
Slave rebellions were much feared throughout the South before the civil war, and the same is true aboard slavers during the era of the slave trade. In general terms, the ratio of black slaves to free white men aboard slave ships was similar but not the same as the ratio of white men to black men throughout the West Indies: in each case, the black population was larger than the number of white men. Aboard the Danish slave ship Fredensborg, which sailed from Copenhagen in 1767-8, the ratio of slaves to crewmen was 8.83:1 during the Middle Passage.[i] Robert Harms suggests that the ratio of slaves to European settlers on the French island of Martinique was not quite as extreme: slaves’ outnumbered free people by nearly four to one in 1732.[ii] Aboard the Fredensborg, Captain Ferentz had enough foot irons for 300 slaves, but his decision to carry only 265 could have been made for any one of a multitude of reasons, though a combination of the following motives seems most likely: the desire of the Company that the slaves arrive in as good condition as possible;[iii] the fear that carrying 300 slaves would greatly increase the chance of a successful rebellion; the belief that 300 slaves would be too much of a strain on the ship’s resources;[iv] or the desire of the captain to maintain as humane a ship as possible during the Middle Passage. Whatever his reasoning behind only carrying 265 slaves, the ration of almost nine slaves to each free crewman still posed great danger. Yet with the threat of sickness and disease ever present, it was possible for the ratio of captives to seamen to alter drastically during the Middle Passage. Aboard the Fredensborg, 24 slaves and three crewmen died during the 78-day Atlantic journey, giving an adjusted ratio of 8.93:1. Other ships were far more decimated by sickness, and Falconbridge tells of ships which arrived in the New World with as much as two thirds of their cargo having died during the crossing of the Atlantic.[v] Such a high mortality rate amongst the slaves inevitably reduces the risk of a successful rebellion beginning. The treatment of the ship’s crew was rarely, if at all, better than the treatment of the slaves, and thus the number of seamen could be just as decimated as the number of captives. Falconbridge also writes of a ship belonging to Miles Barber which had lost all its crew except three.[vi]

Resistance to slavery on the plantation was a diverse pursuit, and likewise on the slave ship it took many different guises. The vast majority (if not all) of these forms of resistance aboard a slaver took place whilst on deck: it was in this space that resistance to bondage proved to be most communicative with regard to the slaves’ loss of liberty. When the time to feed the slaves came about, many refused to eat their rations, and Falconbridge details how certain foods which were disliked by the majority of Africans would be thrown into the sea: “most of the slaves have such an aversion to the horse beans that, unless they are narrowly watched, when fed upon deck, they will throw them overboard.”[vii] If the ship was still near the coast, then slaves would often risk their lives to get back to shore by jumping overboard if they were given the chance. The “house” which was erected on deck and kept the sexes apart also served the purpose of stopping the slaves leaping overboard.[viii]

Such issues as these are minor in comparison to an insurrection involving the seizure of guns and weapons by the captives, but such issues were nevertheless problems for the crew to deal with. As Robert Harms has observed, crew members doubled as prison guards, [ix] but they can also be thought of as overseers, essentially serving the same function as an overseer on a plantation. In the case of the plantation, the overseer is accountable to the planter; in the case of the slave ship, the crewmen are answerable to the captain. In each case, a combination of punishment and reward kept the subjects in order. Similarly, if the captives did engage in rebellion by throwing the horse beans overboard, as detailed earlier from the Falconbridge account, then hot coals, Falconbridge also tells us, were often placed near the lips of the insubordinate slaves, “to scorch and burn them. And this has been accompanied with threats, of forcing them to swallow the coals, if they any longer persisted.”[x] Harms’ later observation that the hierarchical command structure on board slave ships meant that a great deal depended upon the will, personality, competence and sanity of the captain can also be applied to the role and functioning of the planter upon the plantation.[xi] One important difference worth noting here, however, is that planters, especially in the West Indies, could be absent from their New World plantations for a considerable period of time; it was not uncommon for West Indian planters to head back to England for ten to twelve months at a time and leave the running of the plantation to either their wives or, more likely, their trusted overseers.[xii] Such an excursion is simply not possible for a captain aboard a slave ship during the crossing of the Atlantic.

The fear of an insurrection aboard a slave ship was so great that preliminary measures were usually taken to make it possible to put down such an uprising quickly, should one occur. Falconbridge informs us, for example, how the partition which kept the male slaves from the female captives had small holes built into it, “wherein blunderbusses are fixed, and sometimes a cannon [because] it is found very convenient for quelling the insurrections that now and then happen.”[xiii] Along with disease and pirates, insurrections were one of the most worrisome aspects of the triangular journey, but exactly how often did slave captains have to put down a rebellion? During the eighteenth century, 284 vessels initially sailing out of either Danish, French or English ports suffered an incident categorised as either “a slave insurrection” or “a planned insurrection was thwarted.”[xiv] As tales of insurrections and attempted insurrections spread amongst slave trading captains, it is almost certain the fear of such events spread with them. Modern statistical studies suggest that about 30% of shipboard rebellions took place on high sea.[xv] How and why is this the case?

Prior to answering these questions directly, let us look again briefly at Falconbridge’s account, as he speaks rather candidly of slave uprisings:

as very few of the negroes can so far brook the loss of their liberty … they are ever upon the watch to take advantage of the least negligence in their oppressors. Insurrections are frequently the consequence; which are seldom suppressed without much bloodshed. Sometimes they are successful and the whole ship’s company is cut off.[xvi]

Whilst below deck, slaves remained shackled together in pairs, making an uprising there very unlikely. Further discouragement would also be garnered from the conditions of their captivity there, which consisted of temperatures of over 100 degrees (especially if the ocean was rough as this would result in the air vents being closed[xvii]), and vomit, mucus, blood and faeces spread across the deck as, in Falconbridge’s words, to make it look like a slaughter house.[xviii]

The only possible opportunity for rebellion amongst the slaves presented itself when they came on deck. Some slave captains, however, did not share a similar view; they considered an uprising unlikely as they thought the Africans realised that they had no way of navigating the ship back to their homeland or to safety. As Robert Harms has written about the French ship the Diligent:

Now that they were on the high seas, the crew of the Diligent became less strict about shackling the men. Many slaving captains believed that the captives were unlikely to rebel on high sea because they would be unable to sail the ship back to land if the rebellion succeeded. Even if the rebellious slaves kept some crew members alive to sail the ship, they could not trust them to actually sail to their desired destination.[xix]

Similarly, Svalesen’s analysis reveals similar difficulties: navigation of the ship would be a severe challenge for the slaves, and would also be compounded by their limited understanding of geography, not to mention their inadequate knowledge of winds, sea currents and weather patterns; should landfall have been reached, however, there was always the risk of falling into the grasp of enemies once more and being sold into bondage again. So whilst riots could break out, the chance of freedom was small.[xx]

Alexander Falconbridge ends his Account with “A Short Description of such Parts of the Coast of Guinea,” within which insurrections and rebellious Africans feature again. When detailing the inhabitants of the Gold Coast, Falconbridge asserts that they are “very bold and resolute, and insurrections happen more frequently among them, when on shipboard, than amongst the negroes of any other part of the coast.”[xxi] What Falconbridge demonstrates here is an understanding of diverse cultural identities amongst the inhabitants to of Africa. Falconbridge does not treat Africans as one generic people, but rather, by ascribing one set of people as being more “bold and resolute” than Africans from other regions, he shows a potential understanding of cultural nuances which would, via the slave trade, be carried over into the southern United States, the Caribbean, and other parts of the New World.

Singing of Hardships
These texts by Falconbridge and Harms reveal the importance of vocal expression and expression through the medium of dance, often with musical accompaniment. Robert Harms informs us that advice was once given to slave captains to purchase musical instruments from the slaves’ homeland, prior to departing Africa.[xxii] What this suggests is a deep understanding of differing cultural tastes between the music of Europe and the music of Africa, although Harms also says that French slavers carried accordion players as standard.[xxiii] Whether these musicians played this or a hurdy-gurdy, they were probably chosen because they could produce a sound akin to that of a one man band, requiring no other accompaniment.

Regardless of the specifics, there appears to be some conception among European traders of what Olaudah Equiano would explain in his narrative, namely that “every great event, such as a triumphant return from battle, or other cause of public rejoicing is celebrated in public dances, which are accompanied with songs and music suited to the occasion.”[xxiv] The ceremonial value of dancing and singing among the majority of African peoples would have been apparent to early European travellers and traders. As Fabre has noted, whether it was “ceremonial or celebratory, dramatic or theatrical, parodic or satiric, [dancing] was pervasive everywhere.”[xxv] Such physical exercise would assume new meanings and fresh significance aboard slave ships.

It appears from Falconbridge’s Account that English slavers paid little attention to elaborate musical instruments such as accordions, employing as they did a single drum to function as musical supplement for the slaves.[xxvi] Both Harms and Falconbridge highlight the significance of dancing as an occupation to maintain the health of the captives. Falconbridge’s eye witness account emphasises that the dancing on deck was for exercise, suggesting it was something which the captives no longer entered into out of their own free will but were rather forced into it by the powers that be: indeed, dancing without sufficient agility would often result in a flogging for the guilty slave.[xxvii] Visually, it is difficult to imagine such dancing appearing as beautiful if the slaves remained shackled together whilst on deck, but even if they were granted the free use of their limbs, it is unlikely they were able to achieve much aesthetically, having been forced to suffer such horrific conditions below deck and being plied with insufficient food and water. In addition to these limitations, the pitching and rolling of the vessel would have made energetic, pleasing dancing difficult, if not impossible, for the fittest and healthiest human beings, let alone enslaved Africans who feared the white people who had captured them would soon eat them once they became fat enough.

We need not consider that the dancing of the slaves on the deck of the slave ship was dancing which was void of significance. Harms and Falconbridge consider the dancing only monocausally (namely that the slaves were forced into dancing to “maintain” their health), and neither man wastes ink musing as to whether or not the movement of the slaves was expressive of their feelings. Fabre expresses ideas about slave ship dancing as communication of personal hardships most succinctly. Dance, she says,

…stages the various moods and moments of the slave ship experience - the temptation to surrender and despair, the suffering and humiliations, the awakening of energies, the call for daring or insurgent acts. Improvised, and yet purposeful, … all moods, emotions and ideas are made physically present through the body in carefully orchestrated gestures that suggest … certain basic African rhythms; the body, that was so central to the lived and felt Middle Passage experience, is entrusted with the task of representation and figuration, just as it also must perform the acts the dance may induce.[xxviii]

Aside from the forced dancing, slaves were also encouraged to sing, though this should also be understood as an activity which was entered into without coercive force by the captives. Whilst Robert Harms tells how singing was supposed to be done by the slaves as they scrubbed the slave deck,[xxix] Alexander Falconbridge informs us that “their songs are generally, as may naturally be expected, melancholy lamentations of their exile from their native country.”[xxx] Between the two, we have the beginnings of one of the features of future plantation fields: African voices singing “sorrow songs”, to borrow Du Bois’s phrase, whilst toiling away under the guise of the white man. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk closes its final paragraph, “Of the Sorrow Songs,” with a few bars of music from a spiritual called “Let Us Cheer the Weary Traveller.” The ability to express feelings and emotions through dance and song aboard slavers would stand African captives in good stead. What the slaves brought with them across the Atlantic was the ability to communicate through song and dance; future generations would use these tools of communication to escape bondage and gain freedom during the life of Harriet Tubman. Actions, which in Africa were expressive of celebrations, festivities and community-orientated “events” such as births, marriages and deaths, were carried over to the New World and passed down to future generations, and became the ways by which slaves could release themselves from captivity.

Forced Removal Away from Loved Ones
What is clear from the connections between the singing aboard the slavers and the singing on the plantations is that traits enforced upon the captives by captains of the slave ships served as precursors to similar future events. Similarly, early on in his account of the slave trade, Alexander Falconbridge notes how a partition was erected on the deck of the slave ship, which served to keep the sexes apart.[xxxi] This physical separation is dehumanising as humanity of course depends upon the mingling of the sexes to prolong. Nevertheless, it bears the same function as what would happen in the coming centuries when slaveholders would sell individual slaves, regardless of the family connections that particular slave might have to persons remaining on his estate. In both cases there is a breaking up of human bonds; on the one hand it is done along lines of sex, and on the other it is done more randomly. Whilst slaves sold out of their family units were often let go by their masters for financial reasons, they were also sold away to avoid potential rebellions, which was part of the logic behind separating male slaves from female slaves on the slave ships. The breaking of ties with loved ones and family members was one of the most painful elements of both slavery and the slave trade, and one which caused the slaves great emotional pain. For most, the Middle Passage followed on from such painful separations, and on initial inspection it may appear to the historian that the deck of the slave ship could not possibly be represented as a site for the sale of slaves. In the coming paragraphs, it will be demonstrated that removal from loved ones was actually associated with the decks of slavers, although admittedly not during the crossing of the Atlantic and only either in the New World or on the West Coast of Africa.

With the latter of these two in mind, Robert Harms depicts how “European traders sometimes kidnapped and enslaved Africans who came to their ships to sell food and supplies. British private traders from Bristol and Liverpool were notorious for doing this, and French ships did it as well.”[xxxii] Men who were trying to support their wives and children by selling goods were procured for sale themselves. Indeed, the Diligent first comes into contact with the slave trade in Africa at the Dutch fort at Axim, as the director of the stronghold offers to Captain Mary a single African boy, but a price could not be agreed upon and the transaction fell through.[xxxiii] Alexander Falconbridge’s An Account correlates with this, as he notes how Africans came on board in small and large groups.[xxxiv] With such ruthless means of procuring their cargo, it is no wonder Falconbridge also tells how the arrival of slave ships destroyed the peace and confidence of coastal villages and settlements.[xxxv] As Olaudah Equiano’s slave narrative testifies, a slave could be bought and sold countless times before arriving at the West Coast. This of course meant that making such a long and uncertain journey across such a large distance of land was very likely to sell the individual slave away from loved ones before ever arriving within sight of the European slave ship.

Once the slave ships docked in the New World, their cargo had to be sold on to buyers, and here again the chaos of such transactions is recorded by Falconbridge. Slaves were often sold by scramble:

On a day appointed, the negroes were landed, and placed together in a large yard, belonging to the merchants to whom the ship was consigned. As soon as the hour agreed on arrived, the doors of the yard were suddenly thrown open, and in rushed a considerable number of purchasers, with all the ferocity of brutes. Some instantly seized such of the negroes as they could conveniently lay hold of with their hands. Others, being prepared with several handkerchiefs tied together, encircled with these as many as they were able … It is scarcely possible to describe the confusion of which this mode of selling is productive. It likewise causes much animosity among the purchasers, who … fall out and quarrel with each other. The poor astonished Negroes were so much terrified by these proceedings, that several of them, through fear, climber over the walls of the court yard, and ran wild about the town.[xxxvi]

The terror of being sold on to another human, to becoming the property of someone else, is usurped by such an unruly method of trade as Falconbridge describes here. In the following paragraph, Falconbridge describes a similar sale by scramble in Kingston, Jamaica, with the only significant difference being that the scramble occurred on the deck of the ship: the sales of the ship were dropped over the captives, so as to stop buyers from picking and choosing which Africans they wanted, and once the signal was given the sales were lifted and the scramble ensued.[xxxvii] In such a situation, the deck of the slave ship assumes another menacing facet to its character. The place where, during the Middle Passage, captives were forced to dance, where they were fed, and where they had opportunities to rebel now became the place where they would be purchased into slavery for the rest of their lives.

The Rape of Black Women
The horrors faced by men aboard slavers were documented in the only account of the Middle Passage which has survived the test of time. Olaudah Equiano’s slave narrative gives us some first hand details of what it was like to cross the Atlantic Ocean as cargo. Nevertheless, even this text offers only subjective descriptions of the horrors faced by the male slaves as Equiano was treated more as a youth slave than an adult male slave (hence the reason his text has not been given prominence in this paper). Equiano’s time on deck is notable for many observations of various goings-on, and serves as to positively cross-reference much that I have extracted so far from the first-hand account of Falconbridge and the contemporary material of Harms’ and Svalesen’s work; what Equiano’s narrative is completely vacant of, however, is any detail regarding the life of female slaves.

Alexander Falconbridge gives a general idea of what proportion a single shipment of slaves was made up of women: female slaves seldom exceeded one third of the whole number.[xxxviii] The reasons for this are clear: women slaves would not be as useful on labour intensive sugar, cotton and indigo plantations as their male counterparts, and were better suited to domestic servitude. As the demand for house slaves is unlikely to have been as great as the demand for field slaves, captains of slavers tried to supply fewer female slaves to the New World and more field hands.

Domestic servitude on the plantation located the female slave within the master’s own house; some of her daily or weekly tasks would undoubtedly carry her into the master’s bedroom, where his physical, social and hierarchical power, which was unquestionable, could allow him to make whatever perverse sexual advances he wished. As remarkable as it sounds, a strikingly similar difficulty arose on board slavers, countless decades before. Harms tells how female slaves were given the task of cleaning the officers quarters, which made them easy prey for sexual advances, as did the officer’s easy access to the women’s compartment.[xxxix] Harms also illustrates that there was a distinct awareness amongst the outfitters of French slavers of the possibility of sexual relations occurring between white crewmen and black female slaves, as strict instructions were given to captains with regard to who was allowed to enter the female slave quarters and who had to be present. Nevertheless, French documents of the period are almost completely silent on the subject. This is a similar situation as to what would develop in the coming 125 years around master slave sexual relations in the slave states of America: masters would sleep with their slaves, the community would know of it, and yet very few people, if anyone, would openly write or discuss the problem.[xl]

The abolitionists, however, were open to truth-telling. They were keen to tell of the sexual evils within the slave trade which would shock all people of the late eighteenth century, whether they lived in the New World or the Old. Falconbridge, for example, did not mince his words. “On board some ships, the common sailors are allowed to have intercourse with such of the black women whose consent they can procure,” Falconbridge said, whilst “the officers are permitted to indulge their passions among them at pleasure, and sometimes are guilty of such brutal excesses, as disgrace human nature.”[xli]

So what we have here is institutionalised acceptance of, and ambivalence to, the rape of black women. As slavery developed throughout the South, society turned its back on the sexual abuse of black female slaves in order to maintain a “civilised” manifestation. The central obstacle to any meaningful reform was that the black female slaves who were abused were being abused by the people who owned them. And as they were the property of their abusers, external forces were unlikely to be able to help them in their plight. The female slaves aboard slavers during the eighteenth century were soon to be sold on, and it appears from Falconbridge’s shocking observations that the officers made the most of the presence of female slaves during the Middle Passage to fulfil their carnal desires. During both slavery and the slave trade women were sexually abused; and during both periods there was no relief quickly forthcoming. “Violence could also, and often did, assume sexual dimensions,” wrote Paul Lovejoy, with

rape being common. Sexual violence was extended in Islamic lands to castration, but there was essentially no difference in the ways in which women, and boys onboard ship, were treated — the sexual and personal identity of the individual was denied and only existed for the pleasure of the slave owner or his proxy.[xlii]

The horror of rape was essentially the same for the black female slave, whether it happened on the slave ship or the plantation. The only significant difference between the two is that the latter was often geared towards the increase of the slave population if it occurred in the southern United States. Nevertheless, the initial revulsion of the unwanted sexual advance of the overseer, whether a slave captain or a slave master, is clearly understandable in both instances.

Conclusion
And so the parallels of the slave trade and slavery are such. But the nature of the slave trade is different from that of slavery as slavery is a state of existence resulting from the former commercial enterprise. A close look at Alexander Falconbridge’s preconceptions of slavery within Africa underscores why slavery in the United States was to become such a powerful institution.

When Falconbridge sets off to Africa, he carries with him the mistaken preconception that African kings breed slaves for bondage. Once he gets there, Falconbridge finds this is not the case:

Previous to me being in this employ[ment], I entertained a belief as many others have done, that the kings and principal men breed negroes for sale, as we do cattle. During the different times I was in the country, I took no little pains to satisfy myself in this particular; but notwithstanding I made many inquiries, I was not able to obtain the least intelligence of this being the case, which it is more than probable I should have done, had such a practice prevailed. All the information I could procure, confirms me in the belief, that to kidnapping, and to crimes … the slave trade owes its chief support.[xliii] (emphasis original)

Falconbridge goes on to highlight kidnapping as the exclusive mode by which slaves are procured, and he proposes a hypothesis that virtually no slaves are taken by means of wars among the Africans because he, as the surgeon of the slave ship, was responsible for checking the bodily health of the slaves, and not once did he find any men with recent wounds.[xliv]

It is the kidnapping of free Africans which Falconbridge detests so much; kidnapping serves as his motive for publishing his narrative of the slave trade. The implied meaning of this, however, is that if slaves had been bred by kings and “principal men” for sale, as he initially thought they were, then the crimes of the Europeans would not be half so bad. Consider once again Robert Harms’s detailing of how European traders took it upon themselves to kidnap and enslave Africans who ventured out to the European vessels to sell food and supplies. The African is seized by the European and reduced to a state of bondage, and, furthermore, is taken away from the family who he is trying to support by selling goods and supplies to the Europeans. Should that African be fortunate enough to be alive when the slaver reaches the New World, he will be sold again, possibly by the scramble method, to a planter of the New World, and any comrades he has met amongst his fellow slaves during the Middle Passage will be lost to him again. There are differences between the first set of ties which the African has broken in Africa and the second set of ties he has broken in the New World, and it is not my intention to be blind to such differences. Indeed, one variation is clear: the African initially passes from freedom into slavery, whereas with the second altering of his condition he is passing from slavery to slavery, as his master moves from being the captain of a slave ship to the planter of the New World. Yet in the same way that scholars have, in recent years, called for a definition of African American culture that transcends the binary categories of oppressor and victim,[xlv] we should look to the similarities of events such as this to consider the Middle Passage as being a journey of African characteristics and cultures into the new World.

I began this paper with an explanation of how the enduring image of the tightly packed slave ship had grown to dominate the ways in which we as scholars, and popular culture as well for that matter, think about and perceive the Middle Passage. The tight packing of slaves below deck is representative of the savagery of the transatlantic slave trade. This is a point which is, I think, quite rightly beyond the realms of reasonable discussion. The deck itself, however, represents that space in between the savage and the civilised; the fact that it offers the chance of rebellion means that it represents the opportunity to escape from, and fight back against, being held in unreasonable and cruelly savage conditions.

Notes
[i] Leif Svalesen, The Slave Ship Fredensborg, Trans. Pat Shaw and Selena Winsnes, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2000): 102. The figure of 265 includes 9 male slaves who were used as deck slaves, and although they functioned as crew members, they were themselves an added security risk and any successful mutiny amongst the slaves was likely to involve them in some way.

[ii] Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade, (New York: Basic Books, 2002): 328. More thorough research has been done with regard to slave populations of the New World by Philip D. Curtin. Martinique, Curtin suggests, had a slave population of 55,700 just four years later in 1736, which would give a ratio of very nearly five slaves to each European settler. Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969): 78.

[iii] Svalesen, The Slave Ship Fredensborg, 102.

[iv] Ibid., 119.

[v] Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, (London: J Phillips, 1788): 29. All quotations from this text have been orthographically adjusted into contemporary English, so for example <> has been used instead of < ſ >.

[vi] Ibid., 48.

[vii] Ibid., 22.

[viii] Ibid., 7.

[ix] Harms, The Diligent, 300.

[x] Falconbridge, An Account, 23.

[xi] Harms, The Diligent, 303.

[xii] For a good study of absenteeism among planters that is both concise and detailed, see: Lowell Joseph Ragatz, “Absentee Landlordism in the British Caribbean, 1750-1833,” in Agricultural History, 5, 1 (Jan. 1931): 7-24.

[xiii] Falconbridge, An Account, 6.

[xiv] The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database only three of these 284 were categorised as a planned insurrection that was thwarted. A total of 478 incidents of “African resistance” are recorded within the database for these 100 years.

[xv] Harms, The Diligent, 315.

[xvi] Falconbridge, An Account, 30.

[xvii] Ibid., 24.

[xviii] Ibid., 25.

[xix] Harms, The Diligent, 314.

[xx] Svalesen, The Slave Ship Fredensborg, 115.

[xxi] Falconbridge, An Account, 54.

[xxii] Harms, The Diligent, 295.

[xxiii] Harms, The Diligent, 295. This claim is somewhat suspect, as prototype accordions were not invented until the 1820’s, and yet Harms gets his information from a Universal Dictionary of Commerce published (in French) in Paris in 1723. See: “accordion” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Michael Kennedy and Joyce Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Manchester. 7 April 2010 It is, however, plausible that these musicians played the hurdy-gurdy, which, dating from the 12th century was the first stringed instrument to have the keyboard principle applied to it. See: “hurdy-gurdy” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Michael Kennedy and Joyce Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Manchester. 7 April 2010

[xxiv] Olaudah Equiano, The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, (New York: Dover Thrift, 1999): 12.

[xxv] Genevieve Fabre, “The Slave Ship Dance,” in Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates Jr and Carl Pedersen (eds), Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1999): 34. [xxvi] Falconbridge, An Account, 23.

[xxvii] Ibid., 23.

[xxviii] Fabre, “The Slave Ship Dance,” 39.

[xxix] Harms, The Diligent, 310.

[xxx] Falconbridge, An Account, 23.

[xxxi] Falconbridge, An Account, 6.

[xxxii] Harms, The Diligent, 122.

[xxxiii] Ibid., 129.

[xxxiv] Falconbridge, An Account, 8.

[xxxv] Ibid., 9.

[xxxvi] Falconbridge, An Account, 34.

[xxxvii] Ibid., 34-5.

[xxxviii] Ibid., 12.

[xxxix] Harms, The Diligent, 312.

[xl] The silence around mixed race slaves is humorously illustrated in Caroline Lee Hentz, The Planter’s Northern Bride, (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1854). Moreland, a Southern planter, constantly has trusted “mulatto” slave Albert by his side throughout. Albert’s mixed race genealogy is completely ignored by Hentz, as if the subject of mulatto slaves is completely divorced from the subject of white/black sexual relations.

[xli] Falconbridge, An Account, 23-4.

[xlii] Paul E. Lovejoy, “The “Middle Passage”: The Enforced Migration of Africans Across the Atlantic.” : 10.

[xliii] Falconbridge, An Account, 15.

[xliv] Ibid., 15-6.

[xlv] Maria Diedrich, et al, “The Middle Passage between History and Fiction: Introductory Remarks,” in Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, 7.

Bibliography
“accordion” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Michael Kennedy and Joyce Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Manchester. 7 April 2010

Anstey, Roger. The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760 - 1810. London: Macmillan, 1975.

Curtin, Philip D., ed. Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1967.

--- The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.

Diedrich, Maria, Henry Louis Gates, Jr and Carl Pedersen, eds. Black imagination and the Middle Passage. Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1999.

Eltis, David. “A Brief Overview of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,” Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Apr. 29, 2010.

Equiano, Olaudah. The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. New York: Dover Thrift, 1999.

Falconbridge, Alexander. An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa. London: J Phillips, 1788.

Harms, Robert. The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Handler, Jerome S. “Life Histories of Enslaved Africans in Barbados.” Slavery & Abolition. 19.1 (1998): 129 - 40.

---. “Survivors of the Middle Passage: Life Histories of Enslaved Africans in British America.” Slavery & Abolition. 23.1 (2002): 23 - 56.

Hentz, Caroline Lee. The Planter’s Northern Bride. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1854.

“hurdy-gurdy” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Michael Kennedy and Joyce Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Manchester. 7 April 2010

Kiple, Kenneth F, and Brian T. Higgins. “Mortality Caused by Dehydration During the Middle Passage.” Social Science History. 13.4 (Winter 1989): 421 - 37.

Lovejoy, Paul E. “The “Middle Passage”: The Enforced Migration of Africans Across the Atlantic.”

Ragatz, Lowell Joseph. “Absentee Landlordism in the British Caribbean, 1750-1833.” Agricultural History. 5.1 (Jan. 1931): 7-24.

Sheridan, Richard B. “The Guinea Surgeons on the Middle Passage: The Provision of Medical Services in the British Slave Trade.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 14.4 (1981): 601 - 25.

Svalesen, Leif. The Slave Ship Fredensborg. Trans. Pat Shaw and Selena Winsnes. Bloomington, IN: Indiana U.O., 2000.

Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440 - 1870. London: Phoenix, 1997.

On Caroline Lee Hentz's "The Planter's Northern Bride"

Throughout Caroline Lee Hentz’s The Planter’s Northern Bride, nothing is more misunderstood and grossly misrepresented than the history of Africa. “For thousands of years past,” writes Hentz, “the Africans have existed in their own country as a separate people, free, as they came from the hands of God; yet what one solitary step have they taken in the great march of civilisation, beneath whose majestic tramp the universe is resounding?” Here, and elsewhere, Hentz fails to communicate the single most important fact which the history of Africa holds dearest: human civilisation and human existence began there. Archaeological discoveries throughout the Sahara and other parts of Africa predate anywhere else on Earth by thousands of years.

In addition to this, the biggest change Africa ever witnessed was what we might call ‘the coming of the white man.’ True, the European trader did not bring the concept of slavery with him: it had been a common practice throughout Africa for thousands of years, as it had throughout the Arab world. The Arab slave traders were trading in African flesh before the white man had barely conceived of a world beyond the Mediterranean. Quite how Hentz can call Africa “separate” when they traded flesh and other goods with Arab peoples is frankly bewildering.

The earliest Portuguese missionaries and explorers took Christianity with them to what was then the Kingdom of the Kongo. This imperial federation of the fifteenth century had approximately two to three million people, and surprised the white evangelists by how similar its social structure was to social stratification back in Europe. There was a monarch; the monarch was chosen by an assembly of clan leaders; the king had in his possession symbols of royal authority; he reviewed his troops; he sat on a throne; away from the king, distances were measured by marching days; and for longer periods of time the lunar month was used. The Portuguese grudgingly recognised in the kingdom a sophisticated and well-developed state.[1] Since then, “the great march of civilisation” as Hentz uses it has left a scar from east to west and from north to south on the breast of Africa, carved there not by native African implements, but by European revolvers and pistols, and by the financial greed and material desire of ‘men’. If Hentz is unwilling to recognise the sophistication and progress of chiefdoms such as the Kingdom of the Kongo, then her blindness to historical fact renders her manuscript void.

1 Adam Hochschild. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. London: Macmillan, 1998.

On Kara Walker's "Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart"

The last part of Kara Walker’s installation Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart from 1994 shows a black silhouette literally flying away. Under such a title as the one above, this figure encapsulates the leaving of slavery from the South: it rises up and is banished. Apologies for the quality of the following image.


On another level, however, the figure encapsulates the African American myth / folklore of the slave who, without growing wings or feathers, took off and flew back to his spiritual homeland, and out of bondage. This myth acts as the crux of Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel Song of Solomon, and in many ways this section of Walker’s installation acts as a depiction of the final scene from that novel.

The figure in the air represents the character of Milkman, leaping as Shalimar had, to ride the air. On top of the rock, there sits a round object with possibly a rose coming out of it, which can be understood as the bag Pilate had carried the bones in to bury them. The figure in the bottom left hand corner which looks like a head rising out of the water is Guitar, shrouded in mystery as he tries once again to kill Milkman. The large unorthodox protruding stomach of Milkman’s figure represents the weight of his family history, literally the burden of all he has learnt of his eccentric family history.

Hollywood and Historical Fact

Gone With The Wind remains one of the most watched and celebrated films of all time, and its popularity today is encapsulated by a 70th anniversary edition DVD release. The film endures for the same reasons it was an instant success at the box office in 1939 (the romantic love triangle in the face of adversity, nostalgia for a bygone, apparently simpler, era, etc.), and the very fact that it continues to enjoy such popularity is perhaps telling of the United States true inability to fully recover from the civil war. Furthermore, for a film which premiered in Atlanta, GA, and thus barred Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors and actresses from attending its first screening, Gone With The Wind embodies the perpetuating covert racism which will seemingly forever endure in the United States.


As Edward Campbell has noted, the 1960’s and the on-set of the Civil Rights Movement allowed Hollywood to reconsider the plantation film in a more honest light. Yet the fact that a more historically accurate (and honest) portrayal of plantation life for African Americans has not even reached half the heights of Gone With The Wind underscores that, when faced with a choice between the comforting myth and the harsh reality, Americans will almost always sacrifice historical fact.

How Is Transgressing One Boundary Of Identity Inextricably Linked With Transgressing Other Boundaries In Nella Larsen’s Novels Quicksand And Passing?

The debate as to whether Nella Larsen’s work can be rightly tagged as ‘tragic mulatto’ fiction is a complex one. And while this is an important argument to consider, the issue of class in Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing has often been put to one side. It remains, however, a critical factor and a key concern of Helga Crane, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, whether they are conscious of it or not. The factions of race, class and gender are all interwoven and inextricably linked within the texts, and cannot (and should not) be considered in isolation from one another. The issue of class feeds into the racialisation of the novels and is of at least equal significance as to whether or not Quicksand and Passing should be labelled as ‘tragic mulatto’.

It is therefore necessary to first consider the relationship between ‘race’ and ‘class’, bearing in mind the historical period in which Larsen was writing (Quicksand first appeared in 1928, with Passing just a year later). I will then define ‘white America’ in relation to both Quicksand and Passing, and contextualise its stratifying forces with regard to, firstly, African American society as a whole, and secondly, to the smaller communities Helga Crane transgresses into and out of, and I will define where she is placed within that stratification.

Without approaching the issue monocausallly, it has been observed that the strongest and singularly most important bond between the two stratifying forces of race and class is that of skin tone. As Verna Keith and Cedric Herring have observed, “light skin color continued to be a distinctive characteristic of upper-class status and to shape the opportunity structure in the black community well into the 1920s” [1] (emphasis mine). At the close of the Civil War, light skinned African Americans emerged at the top in terms of social stratification in black communities (they held a monopoly in that position for the next 50 years, according to Keith and Herring), and their occupations were one of a small number: the small businessman; the skilled labourer; service workers with white clientele; or a sprinkling of professionals. [2] Larsen’s manipulation of this long and widely understood set of conventions is indisputable: Irene’s husband Brian is a doctor (playing the role of the professional), and Clare, in her younger days, is described as “the daughter of Mr. Bob Kendry, who, it was true, was a janitor, but who also, it seemed, had been in college with some of their fathers.” [3] In some instances the class structure as defined by one’s occupation usurps race in importance, i.e. connections are made across the colour line through ties of class similarities. Larsen utilises this complexity in the minor character of Gertrude, another light skinned African American, who, when she married Fred Martin (a white man), was marrying a man who inherited from his father the local meat market, making him a small businessman. Indeed, on account of its moving to the more lavish sounding Maryland Avenue from the more ordinary Cottage Grove, the meat market appears to be doing an exceptional trade. [4] Nevertheless, the fact that this complexity is of very little significance to the structure, plot and outcome of the story reflects that, in the late 1920’s, such crossings of the colour line based on class (and more specifically occupation) were extremely rare. It is here where the novels of Quicksand and Passing gain their ‘depth’ with regard to class: Larsen manipulates these given understandings of the social fabric in a way which intertwines with, encroaches on, and (more often than not) eventually refutes the white world.

But what is the ‘white world’? And why is it refuted? If one looks at the United States in the 1920’s, one sees the nation becoming indisputably the richest country in the world, with share prices constantly rising and with no sign of them ever falling. Even if one had no money, the ‘hire purchase’ was there to supply the goods instantly, with payment spread across the coming months and years. This was an America based around modern consumerism and unprecedented consumption of material goods. Whether it was refrigerators, wirelesses or Ford Model T automobiles, happiness, it appeared, was quite for sale, even if you did not have the money just at that time.

At least, this is what the high school history learning resources say. [5] For those with the blood of former slaves running through their veins, reality often afforded no such pleasures. With the repealing of reconstruction came disfranchisement. Second class citizenship became the norm through Jim Crow legislation, and extremely limited access to the nation’s growing wealth was thus part of the raw deal for African Americans. Added to which, the fear of lynching and the rule of the mob in many southern states cemented African Americans as being less than whites, and very often less than human. Those of mixed heritage, however, were, as has been described previous, closer to the white standing in the stratification of the social order of the United States as a whole than darker skinned African Americans. Their ‘passing’ into and out of the ‘white world’ gave them more access to (or at the very least a better glimpse of) ‘white privilege’ and ‘wages of whiteness’ (to use David Roediger’s phrase), than their darker skinned brothers.

The life of Helga Crane in Quicksand is one mixed with varying degrees of contact with white values, standards, and norms. By the time the novel comes to a close, she has limited contact with whiteness. Whilst Helga was portrayed as somewhat apprehensive about returning to the United States from Denmark, she has a sudden revelation on the streets of Harlem once she was there: “these were her people” [6] (Larsen’s emphasis). From then on, she heads along a confused path, culminating in her residing in rural Alabama as the wife of Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green. Her physical move to the south is an authentic journey away from white economic superiority in New York City, which provides the financial underpinning of white values and beliefs. She literally turns her back on these and walks in the opposite direction. From early on in the story, her lack of concern for financial wellbeing sets her apart from a lot of her fellow instructors at Naxos:

She hated to admit that money was the most serious difficulty. Knowing full well that it was important, she nevertheless rebelled at the unalterable truth that it could influence her actions block her desires. A sordid necessity to be grappled with. With Helga it was almost a superstition that to concede to money its importance magnified its power. Still, in spite of her reluctance and distaste, her financial situation would have to be faced, and plans made, if she were to get away from Naxos with anything like the haste she now so ardently desired. [7]

Helga’s journey can therefore be seen as one of refutation of consumerism, economic power, white power structures, and white values and beliefs: she heads back into the heart of what used to be the black belt, where the white man built an uncivilised society on the foundation of slavery.

The journey in Quicksand is one through distinctly different locations, and the novel observes her closely in each. Naxos, Chicago, New York, Copenhagen in Denmark, New York again, and finally a small village in the depths of Alabama each act as a different canvas and backdrop to put Helga Crane in different places within the social stratification. [8] Helga’s overall journey, when viewed in terms of her standing within the social stratification in relation to class, is one down the social order, regardless of the fact she illustrates an immense capacity of mobility throughout the story which would almost certainly have been beyond the possibilities of most African Americans in the United States. This journey down the social order sets Quicksand at odds with Passing, as no such clear cut path is travelled in that narrative by either Irene or Clare. Indeed, on the face of it, Passing offers a journey-ending conclusion far more destructive than Quicksand, but I will return to this confused resolution later in the paper.

Nevertheless, if we consider Helga in each of the different settings as a separate entity, then another, radically different picture becomes clear. At the start, she lives the life of yet another English teacher at a southern institution geared towards the uplift of a race. I would suggest that her desire for material possessions, which is emphasised very clearly at this point, acts as a signifier of Helga’s inability to completely separate herself from whiteness. She acts as just another instructor at Naxos through her materialism: “[m]ost of her earnings had gone into clothes, into books, into the furnishings of the room which held her.” [9] The fact that they hold her, as well, places her in the palm of a ‘white world’: Helga no longer holds the goods: they hold her in conjunction with the room, which has become an imitation of ‘white’ life.

Helga’s escape from this leads her to Chicago, where it is spelled out to the reader in breathtaking clarity exactly how alone she is: she has no father and her mother is deceased. The reader is given reason to believe that she has only one relative alive in the United States, one Uncle Peter. When his new wife turns Helga away, she literally has no family left (in America at least). As Helga has no siblings, and no parents, and whilst this may not be by choice, it is in stark contrast to the white nuclear family. At this point she is further away from white America and its beliefs and values than at any time she was at Naxos. And, “oddly enough, she felt, too, that she had come home. She, Helga Crane, who had no home.” [10] A new sense of belonging holds Helga in its grip, even though she has apparently never ‘belonged’ anywhere before in her life. Significance rests, also, on the start of this utterance. What comes ‘oddly enough’, is this new sense of an ‘Other’, and this ‘Other’ is her and her life in Chicago: a sensation unique to the African American and absolutely foreign to anybody white. It’s ‘oddly enough’ arrival is made stark to her by the time she was at Naxos, which masked her form such a sensation.

Her nomadacy, of course, continues as the story progresses, as she soon ends up in New York, transfixed by the community in Harlem. The Harlem Larsen describes, and Helga’s relationship to it, is one built outside economic fundamentalism. As Cheryl A. Wall has observed, “for black artists [like Larsen] coming of age in the 1920's the unprecedented urban migrations and the increased freedom of city life provided the background for a spiritual awakening which celebrated the glories of a rediscovered African past and the unique lifestyle of Negro Americans.” [11] The vitality which is bound up and centred around this rediscovered spirituality creates a new America, with new beliefs, goals and dreams, separate from main America where one president declared in the 1920’s that “the chief business of the American people is business.” [12] Harlem is thus set as a black space in the heart of modern economic potency, seemingly hollow due to a strange rejection of money which enthrals Helga: ““But,” said Helga Crane, “what of it? Money isn’t everything. It isn’t even the half of everything. And here we have so much else - and by ourselves. It’s only outside of Harlem among those others that money really counts for everything.”” [13] Helga suddenly shows an awareness of a community which, through its lack of caring about money, distinguishes itself from the white community: it is not specifically a black community; it is explicitly not white. There is no mention of Helga craving for material goods in New York, as she sees a large African American population existing on a deeper level than white consumerism. The shallowness of white consumption is made clear to Helga as she grapples with “a sense of freedom, a release from the feeling of smallness which had hedged her in,” first in Chicago as a child, and later in Naxos. [14] The bonds which tie the fabric of Harlem together as a community are not drawn from wealth and financial power, and hence the stratification of the community in terms of a class structure is drastically altered, though Larsen gives no explicit description of this. Helga appears on the edge of certified classification, and this is something which broadens as a theme once she reaches Copenhagen.

Her expectation of life in Copenhagen is of an even greater freedom. When we see her heading across the Atlantic, we meet her “revelling like a released bird in her returned feeling of happiness and freedom, that blessed sense of belonging to herself alone and not to a race.” [15] The lure of Copenhagen is its ability to make her unclassifiable within the given social stratification while she is there. The status she entertained whilst she was in the United States simply cannot be transferred to Danish society. When Helga tells one old Copenhagener lady she is an African American, Helga notices that the old lady had “become indignant, retorting angrily that, just because she was old and a countrywoman she could not be so easily fooled, for she knew as well as everyone else that Negroes were black and had woolly hair.” [16] If this old lady’s portrayal of Copenhageners’ views towards African Americans is anything close to accurate, Helga’s skin tone twists their racialised understanding so much so that it shatters into pieces: their comprehension of what an African American looks like is destroyed; her racial appearance, centred around the light colour of her skin, makes her unplacable in relation to Danish social order. Her race takes precedent over her class in that it manages to put her outside and beyond the comprehension of the standard organising forces in Denmark. Helga’s race made her unclassifiable. And whilst Danish society in the 1920’s could classify everybody else, it allowed them to gaze out upon this new Other, and Helga does not feel, in the beginning, at least, any resentment about being exhibited. Helga’s position outside the social order gives her more freedom than she has ever had before in her life, and she becomes “incited to make an impression, a voluptuous impression … and after a little while she gave herself up wholly to the fascinating business of being seen, gaped at, desired.” [17] She comprehends the gazing of Copenhageners differently to the gazing of white Americans: the gazes of the former are not, to Helga, inherently abusive, whereas the gazes of the latter are bound up in connotations of ‘keeping one in one’s place’, and thus reinforcing the social structure.

The influence of Copenhagen, an overwhelmingly white European city, plays itself out on the character of Helga. Her transition from the white desire of goods at Naxos to life in Harlem which gave her no such cravings is played out in reverse: “[a]lways she had wanted, not money, but the things which money could give, leisure, attention, beautiful surroundings. Things. Things. Things.” [18] It is important that this remembering of material desires occurs in Copenhagen, and not while Helga is still in Harlem. She is no longer protected from rediscovering her white desires and cravings for consumerism, and the Danes soon set about adorning her physical body with emblems of financial wealth and (white) sophistication. Helga has barely been in Denmark a number of hours before her hosts are telephoning Garborg’s, the local jewellers, and purchasing earrings and bracelets for her. [19]

When the novel ends, Helga is, in terms of location, in a place similar to Naxos: back in the south of the United States. Her residence in a small rural Alabama village places her in another (apparently) entirely black community, yet it is wholly unlike Harlem in terms of landscape, culture and social stratification. Helga’s position is a privileged one, as the private resentment of the other townswomen shows. [20] In this sense, it differs from Naxos. Whilst she may no longer be striving towards ‘racial uplift’ at Naxos, she is very close to the top of the social order within this small community, and garners the face-to-face respect of the washerwomen who are clearly subservient to her. If we consider this position with regard to the stratification of the entire African American population in the late 1920’s, it is safe to say it is one below where she was when we first joined her story: she no longer shows signs of higher education (her life, now, does not require such a liberal education); she no longer shows any concern whatsoever for ‘racial uplift’; and she resides in a small rural village in the deep south still reeling from the abolition of slavery.

Adam Meyer speaks for a number of scholars when he comments that “writers more often than not castigate the very characters who try to cross the line, either killing them off … or having them return to their "proper" place on the "Black side".” [21] Such an observation does not suffice with regard to Helga’s position at the conclusion of Quicksand, though. Whilst it is accurate to state that our protagonist moves from a black community (Naxos) to a white one (Copenhagen) and then back to a black community (rural Alabama), the two black communities are not equal in terms of their positions within the social fabric, and so a fundamental transition has occurred.

So the searching of Helga Crane is one borne out of rebellion against white values and white standards of ‘civilised’ and ‘respectable’ life. When we first join the novel, Helga is an uninspired teacher at the fictional Black southern college of Naxos, although the institution bares strong resemblance to Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. Like Tuskegee, it is described as having “grown into a machine. It was now a show place in the black belt, exemplification of the white man’s magnanimity, refutation of the blackman’s inefficiency. Life had died out of it. It was … a big knife with cruelly sharp edges ruthlessly cutting all to pattern, the white man’s pattern.” [22] As Anna Brickhouse has noted, “the prevailing ideology of whiteness in the literary territory of Naxos (an anagram of Saxon, as critics have observed) is inseparable from its aesthetic priorities.” [23] Helga’s desire to leave her job as a teacher in the English department (a professional position) even though she consciously realises she will almost certainly be unable to get another teaching job, is one with implications as regards her class status. While it is worth remembering again that one’s class is certainly not entirely dependent upon one’s occupation, it is one of the main markers of social standing. The ease with which Helga puts her position within the social stratification in the balance highlights a disdain for social order pertaining to class. As the novel proceeds, the reader is painted a picture of how she takes the same stance with regard to the social order in terms of race.

Helga’s desire to leave Naxos is a consequence of her frustration with the school’s teaching methods and its stifling curriculum -- a desire to avoid being cut to the white man’s pattern. Indeed, with the strict enforcement of some of its regulations, Naxos appears to adhere more formerly to white standards than a great many white people do. Helga’s love of clothes catches “the hawk eyes of dean and matrons,” as she adorns the correct attire with “old laces, strange embroideries [and] dim brocades.” The authority figures, narrates Helga, “felt that the colors were queer; dark purples, royal blues, rich greens, deep reds, in soft, luxurious woolens, or heavy, clinging silks.” [24] Larsen manipulates Helga’s desire for bright, flamboyant clothing as a vehicle for emphasising the character’s uneasiness with this potential assimilation with white standards: Helga is understood through this passage to not find white middle class values -- the values which Naxos (and Tuskegee) teaches and holds dear -- as being in any way desirable. Helga Crane encapsulates what the Harlem Renaissance was about for a lot of African Americans: finding a new ‘Africanness’ attractive, and finding it enviable and uplifting in a way which the assimilation of whiteness could not offer. In essence, the Harlem Renaissance offered a higher class existence equal to what the white world could offer for those who cared to ‘pass’, yet it did so in a way which did not cast the ‘African consciousness’ into any subservient position.

During the brief period Nella Larsen was a central figure on the Harlem literary scene, W.E.B. Du Bois was known to hold her in extremely high regard;[25] without putting words into Dr. Du Bois’s mouth, I would suggest that this is partly due to Larsen’s ability to work Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness into her fiction, as she does here. Helga Crane explicitly steps outside Washingtonian uplift and actively searches for her place in the Talented Tenth, a group Du Bois always saw as separate and apart from the Black middle class. [26]

Nella Larsen’s second novel Passing has two main characters whose lives are very different (though not completely polarised), but each lives life in a way that Helga cannot. As Wall puts it, “each assumes a role Helga Crane rejects: Irene is the perfect lady, and Clare, the exotic Other.” [27] Irene’s lifestyle is one centred on her family life. She has a loving husband with a respectable profession, and a young child whom she puts most of her time and effort into caring for. In essence, Irene manages to maintain a white pattern of family life, and her attitudes and behaviour adhere to the white middle class pattern. [28] Furthermore, the transformation into a white structure of life is one which is so complete for Irene that race is, for the majority of the story, of little significance. Indeed, Claudia Tate writes:

The work’s central conflict develops from Irene’s jealousy of Clare and not from racial issues which are at best peripheral to the story. The only time Irene is aware that race even remotely impinges on her world occurs when the impending exposure of Clare’s racial identity threatens to hasten the disruption of Irene’s domestic security. Race, therefore, is not the novel’s foremost concern, but is merely a mechanism for setting the story in motion, sustaining suspense, and bringing about the external circumstances for the story’s conclusion. [29]

Nevertheless, Tate goes too far in her analysis and ends up understating the role race plays in Larsen’s work. After all, it is the transgression of the racial line which gives the novel its thrust and is the reason for the dramatic scene at the end of the book. Whilst it is not the novel’s foremost concern, it is a mechanism for setting the story in motion, it remains an ever-present undercurrent influenced by class, gender and sexuality.

The differing reactions to ‘passing’ from Black people and whites have often a profound effect upon how the person ‘passing’ becomes to be understood. In Passing, the minor character of Felise, who struggles to ‘pass’ is with Irene when she bumps into Clare’s white racist husband Bellew in the street. The racial identity of Irene and Clare is laid bare by the presence of Felise; her reaction once Bellew has gone is one of ambivalence: “Aha! Been ‘passing’ have you? Well, I’ve queered that.” [30] Her reaction is not one of striking judgement and condemnation. Why is this? The white reaction is certainly one borne out of fear, in that it becomes an expression of danger based upon a shift in social culture and challenges social norms: the rationality of such a fear is questionable, though, as whites have no firsthand experience of the phenomenon, and thus their reactions are based on distortions and stereotypes. [31]

In contrast, it is important to consider the depiction of Felise’s reaction as speaking solely on behalf of herself and not for all African Americans. Being careful that we do not generalise, we can read a sense of surprise (“aha!”) quickly followed by the verbalisation of a common deed (“Been ‘passing’, have you?”).The ending of the utterance leaves space for broad interpretation (“Well, I’ve queered that”). From the following conversation, Felise is apologetic for any insult she has made towards Irene. She is not angry at her for ‘passing’, and she shows no sign of bitterness that Irene should ‘pass’ while she is unable to. Ultimately, Felise offers no criticism that she should ‘pass’ into the white world and then out of it once more. The final utterance is loaded with shared knowledge between Irene and Felise: the understanding that this ‘passing’ has happened before in history, that it is happening again now, and that it will undoubtedly happen again in the future. On one level, it is communicated as a shared sin, but it can also be understood as a prideful thing to do, that the transgression and queering of the colour line which Irene (and also Clare) is able to undertake is a gesture of race pride in that some African Americans can achieve it, benefit from it (benefit according to white standards, though), and then cross back into the Black world and be Black and proud once more.

That much, for sure, is revealed through the contextualisation of ‘queer’ here. [32] On one level, Felise’s reaction seems to reinforce Adrian Piper’s generalised observation that African Americans “do not ‘out’ people who are passing as white in the European American community.” [33] Piper’s pitying remark that those who ‘pass’ are “already in so much pain that it's just not possible to do something that you know is going to cause [them] any more” [34] is misguided with regard to Larsen’s portrayal of Felise here. There is no acknowledgment from Felise of weakness and neediness on the part of her light skinned companion(s), and the crux of this is built around a notion of rebellion against the system. ‘Passing’ becomes, for some African American observers, including Felise, an act of rebellion not against whiteness, the Othering effect of whiteness or even white America as a whole, but against the system because the system is a white one. The system is made white because it is white people who held a monopoly with regard to the power structures which set the boundaries, whether those boundaries were concerned with the ‘one drop’ rule, or the drawing up and enforcement of Jim Crow legislation.

Furthermore, the “I’ve queered that” relies entirely upon the vagueness of the definition of ‘queer’ for its ambiguity. The Oxford English Dictionary offers no set explanation as to what ‘queer’ means: as an adjective, it means “[s]trange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character; suspicious, dubious.” The same entry further down offers “[o]ut of sorts; unwell; faint, giddy” as another definition. [35] To further complicate matters, ‘queer’ has a second entry in the OED, offering “[b]ad; contemptible, worthless; untrustworthy; disreputable” as a definition. [36] Larsen manipulates the distinct lack of clarity afforded to the word ‘queer’ and uses it consistently throughout both Quicksand and Passing a total of twenty three times. Judith Butler’s observation that it “did not yet mean homosexual, but it did encompass an array of meanings associated with the deviation from normalcy which might well include the sexual” is one useful explanation. [37] Therefore the lack of clarity based upon meanings associated with deviations from normalcy serves conjunctively between the transgression of both racial and sexual boundaries. It is upon this one word which these boundaries become confused. Examples of this are not hard to find, and in Passing they often share adjoining pages, and yet the contextualisation of ‘queer’ alters its meaning from one to do with race to one linked with sexual desire. [38]

But what about boundaries of class? Does class even apply to the dynamic described above? Rosemary Hennessy has written that, “[l]ending a new elasticity to the categories “lesbian” and “gay”, “queer” embraces a proliferation of sexualities … and the compounding of outcast positions along racial, ethnic, and class, as well as sexual lines - none of which is acknowledged by the neat binary division between hetero- and homosexual.” [39] Although Hennessy deals with ‘queer’ in an explicitly sexualised way (which, it would appear, is now the norm), even Larsen’s employment of the word breeds new elasticity into concepts of race and sexual desire. This newfound flexibility impacts upon how class works in conjunction with (and against) the two. An ‘outcast position’ along class lines undoubtedly means a lower status in terms of that stratifying force. From the beginning through the end of Larsen’s Passing, this is not yet the case: the sexual desire remains spoken / is not discovered by surrounding characters, thus class status is in no way compromised.

Fictional accounts of ‘passing’, whilst just that (fictional), remain of great value to historians and also contemporary cultural critics. Berzon is quite correct to establish a firm link between fiction and reality: “fictional accounts of the black bourgeoisie … have a corresponding historical reality.” [40] Helga Crane’s encapsulation of the African essence of the Harlem Renaissance and its capacity for ‘uplift’ is symbolic of what was happening within the African American community during the 1920’s, and the problems of ‘passing’ so forthrightly dealt with in Larsen’s second novel are the markers of a then-emerging new black culture -- one with class distinctions built on and around racial pride. At the time, this new black culture may have been a response to hegemonic (and repressive) white society, but it soon became a movement on its own, thanks in part to the dynamic fiction of writers such as Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson and countless others. Larsen’s portrayal of Helga Crane as a chameleon-like person who could be one thing in one setting and another in entirely new surroundings -- this in itself cannot be achieved in the fullness Larsen describes by simply crossing one single boundary. Moreover, the boundary of race is blurred by Helga on so many occasions and in so many different ways that it relies upon and impacts upon her social stratification in terms of her class. Larsen’s sharp use of language, like the word ‘queer’ in both her works, confound an elasticity amongst all ontological categories that they almost always grow malleable together.

Notes
1 Verna M. Keith and Cedric Herring, “Skin Tone and Stratification in the Black Community”, in The American Journal of Sociology, 97, 3 (Nov., 1991): 764.
2 Ibid., 763.
3 Nella Larsen, Quicksand & Passing (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2001): 154
4 Ibid., 166-7.
5 . Accessed December 30, 2009.
6 Larsen, 95.
7 Ibid., 6.
8 Larsen was not reinventing the genre of the passing narrative by manipulating the use of different locations. Quicksand is set partially in Europe, something which bears great similarity not only to Larsen’s own life, but to the narrative of James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (London: Dover Thrift, 1995). Johnson is considered to be the first writer to seriously employ Europe as a space for change in this genre.
9 Larsen, 6.
10 Ibid., 30.
11 Cheryl A. Wall, “Paris and Harlem: Two Culture Capitals”, in Phylon, 35, 1 (1st Qtr., 1974): 64.
12 This statement by Calvin Coolidge is very often mis-quoted as “the business of the government is business.” The following two sentences of this speech given before a group of national newspaper editors in 1925 further emphasise white America’s love affair with consurism and fiscal wealth: “[t]hey are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are moving impulses of our life.” Calvin Coolidge, “The Press Under a Free Government.” Jan 17, 1925. Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. January 11, 2010. _under_a_free_governm.html>
13 Larsen, 46.
14 Ibid., 46.
15 Ibid., 64.
16 Ibid., 76.
17 Ibid., 74.
18 Ibid., 67.
19 Ibid., 69.
20 Ibid., 119.
21 Adam Meyer, “Not Entirely Strange, but Not Entirely Friendly Either: Images of Jews in African American Passing Novels through the Harlem Renaissance”, in African American Review, 38, 3 (Autumn 2004): 442.
22 Larsen, 4.
23 Anna Brickhouse, “Nella Larsen and the Intertextual Geography of Quicksand”, in African American Review, 35, 4 (Winter 2001): 539.
24 Larsen, 18.
25 W.E.B. Du Bois is quoted as saying Larsen produced “on the whole, the best piece of fiction that Negro America has produced since the heyday of Chestnutt.”
26 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth,” in The Negro Problem.
27 Cheryl Wall, “Passing for What? Aspects of Identity in Nella Larsen’s Novels”, in Black American Literature Forum, 20, 1/2 (Spring - Summer 1986): 105.
28 Judith Berzon, Neither White Nor Black: The Mulatto Character in American Fiction (New York: New York U.P., 1978): 168.
29 Claudia Tate, “Nella Larsen’s Passing: A Problem of Interpretation”, in Black American Literature Forum, 14, 4 (Winter 1980): 143.
30 Larsen, 227.
31 Berzon, 145.
32 This is a case-in-point of Butler’s observation that queering works as the exposure within language of both sexuality and race, in Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (London: Routledge, 1993): 176.
33 Adrian Piper, “Passing for White, Passing for Black”, in Transition, 58 (1992): 14.
34 Ibid., 14-5.
35 “queer, adj.1” OED Online. Sept. 2009. Oxford University Press. Dec. 29, 2009. .
36 “queer, adj.2 and n.1” OED Online. Sept. 2009. Oxford University Press. Dec. 29, 2009. .
37 Butler, 176.
38 On page 171 of the Serpent’s Tail edition, ‘queer’ is used to express possible hidden sexual desire, as Larsen writes “[i]n Claire’s eyes … was a queer gleam, a jeer it might be. Irene couldn’t define it.” On the very next page, Larsen uses it as an expression to do with racial etiquette: “[f]rom Gertrude’s direction came a queer little suppressed sound…”
39 Rosemary Hennessy, “Queer Visibility in Commodity Culture”, in Cultural Critique, 29 (Winter 1994-5): 34.
40 Berzon, 163.

Bibliography
Berzon, Judith R. Neither Black Nor White: The Mulatto Character in American Fiction. New York: New York U.P., 1978.

Brickhouse, Anna. “Nella Larsen and the Intertextual Geography of Quicksand.” African American Review. 35.4 (Winter 2001): 533 - 560.

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London: Routledge, 1993.

Coolidge, Calvin. “The Press Under a Free Government.” Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. Jan 17, 1925. Jan. 11, 2010.

Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. London: Dover Thrift, 1994.

Frazier, E. Franklin. Black Bourgeoisie. London: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Goellnicht, Donald C. “Passing as Autobiography: James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man.” African American Review. 30.1 (Spring 1996): 17 - 33.

Hennessy, Rosemary. “Queer Visibility in Commodity Culture.” Cultural Critique. 29 (Winter 1994-5): 31 - 76.

Hutchinson, George. “Nella Larsen and the Veil of Race.” American Literary History. 9.2 (Summer 1997): 329 - 349.

Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. London: Dover Thrift, 1995.

Keith, Verna M. and Cedric Herring. “Skin Tone and Stratification in the Black Community.” The American Journal of Sociology. 97. 3 (Nov., 1991): 760 - 778.

Landry, Bart. “A Reinterpretation of the Writings of Frazier on the Black Middle Class.” Social Problems. 26.2 (Dec. 1978): 211 - 222.

Larsen, Nella. Quicksand & Passing. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2001.

Meyer, Adam. “Not Entirely Strange, but Not Entirely Friendly Either: Images of Jews in African American Passing Novels through the Harlem Renaissance.” African American Review. 38.3 (Autumn 2004): 441 - 450.

Piper, Adrian. “Passing for White, Passing for Black.” Transition. 58 (1992): 4 - 32.

“queer, adj.1” OED Online. Sept. 2009. Oxford University Press. Dec. 29, 2009. .

“queer, adj.2 and n.1” OED Online. Sept. 2009. Oxford University Press. Dec. 29, 2009. .

Reuter, Edward B. The Mulatto in the United States. New York: Negro U.P., 1969.

Somerville, Siobhan. Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. London: Duke U.P., 2000.

Sullivan, Nell. “Nella Larsen's Passing and the Fading Subject.” African American Review. 32.3 (Autumn 1998): 373 - 386.

Tate, Claudia. “Nella Larsen’s Passing: A Problem of Interpretation.” Black American Literature Forum. 14.4 (Winter 1980): 142 - 146.

Truman, Chris. “America in the 1920’s.” History Learning Site. Dec. 30, 2009.

Twombly, Robert C. Blacks in White America Since 1865: Issues and Interpretations. New York: McKay Company, INC., 1971.

Wald, Gayle. Crossing the Line: Racial Passing in Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture. London: Duke U.P., 2000.

Wall, Cheryl A. “Paris and Harlem: Two Culture Capitals.” Phylon. 35.1 (1st Qtr., 1974): 64 - 73.

---. “Passing for What? Aspects of Identity in Nella Larsen’s Novels.” Black American Literature Forum. 20.1/2 (Spring - Summer 1986): 97 - 111.

Washington, Booker T., et al. The Negro Problem. New York: James Pott and Company, 1903.

Zack, Naomi. Race and Mixed Race. Philadelphia: Temple U.P., 1993.

(c) Daniel C. Wright, 2009. All Rights Reserved.

The Leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois and the N.A.A.C.P.

The concept of leadership and more specifically racial leadership is similar to the concept of race itself: it is widely spoken of and is debated in many varying arenas, but a precise definition is rarely given. Leaders, it should be remembered, very seldom emerge prior to the movement which they then speak on behalf of. In the overwhelming majority of historical examples, it is the case that ‘leaders’, whether they be social, political, economic or cultural leaders, emerge from movements which they later go on to represent in some capacity.

If we consider this in relation to the life of W.E.B. Du Bois between 1899 and 1934[1], then it is plain to see that an analysis of the general feeling of the time must be conducted, in order to successfully characterise Du Bois’s “leadership” of African Americans[2]. In Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois concerns himself in the third chapter entirely with the leadership epistemology of Booker T. Washington, who at the time was the foremost African American contributor on the race issue. There is an underlying sense early on in “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” that a new style of leadership is urgently required -- one which is more representative of the African American community than the Washingtonian epistemology, which is commonly referred to as accomodationist today. Du Bois identifies tensions within the African American community which cannot be expressed or communicated to the larger American world; the tension exists because, according to Du Bois, there was never any whole-hearted support among African Americans for Booker T. Washington. As Du Bois noted, “it startled to hear a Negro advocating such a programme … it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes themselves.[3]” The silence, Du Bois argued, was doing untold damage to the plight of the African in America. One can only speculate as to the personal reasons why Du Bois went on in the coming years to speak on behalf of these people (and in opposition to Washington), but the fact that he did suggests that the development of his leadership grew out of a feeling of contempt for the status quo of the time.

Kilson (2000) outlines the theoretical differences between Washington’s leadership and Du Bois’s leadership: he classifies Washington as favouring a social organisation type leadership model and refers to Du Bois’s leadership as guidance type or mobilisation type leadership[4]. Kilson interprets Booker T.’s address to the 1895 Atlanta Exposition as a clear rejection of the mobilisation type leadership which would later characterise Du Bois’s leadership, and he is certainly right to do so. By insisting that citizens of the South of both races should “cast down [their] buckets where they are[5]” and stating that “in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential[6]”, Washington devotes himself to the acceptance of the present conditions of the South and is happy to accept gradual progress.

Moore (2003) characterises Washington’s Atlanta Compromise speech as being conclusive of Washington’s overall political ideology. Her observation that “Washington stress[ed] conservative themes about how blacks could use the [Atlanta] exposition to showcase their accomplishments rather than push for political rights[7]” underscores the lack of forethought in Washington’s stance. His concern was about showing what the black man had achieved in the past, in the belief that the white man would benevolently bestow full human and civil rights on both black men and women, without explicit political pressure from black America.

The power of the Tuskegee machine made it difficult if not wholly impossible for any other African American to challenge Washington’s accomodationist policy. As a result, without any contest Washington’s epistemology became the white status quo interpretation of the race problem from the African American point of view. In the period building up to the establishment of the Niagara Movement, which would lay the basis for the NAACP, Du Bois touches upon a frustration which marked the first decade of the new century: “usually … criticism has not found open expression.[8]”

What Washington failed to take into account was that by accepting the present social conditions of the South, he was asking the African American to remain a second class citizen for as long as the white race felt it necessary to ‘keep them in their place’, to use a popular phrase of the time. This fact did not escape the notice of Du Bois: “Mr. Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races.[9]” When we therefore consider this explicit disfranchisement of the African American (especially in the South) in 1895, Washington’s speech to the Atlanta Exposition reads almost as a preface to the ruling in the U.S Supreme Court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson of 1896, which of course made segregation constitutional as long as facilities for both races were ‘separate but equal’.

Kilson neglects to suggest a reason as to why Washington so explicitly abandoned a mobilisation type leadership model, and why he so eagerly embraced a leadership style built around social organisation. His well-publicised involvement with white philanthropists is, I think, only one of the reasons. Another contributing factor can be found in Washington’s upbringing[10].

Booker T. Washington was born a slave, who, once freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, spent his life searching for an education. Naturally, he became principle of a new school at Tuskegee when the opportunity arose, and from there he sought to help people of his own race. He spent his life teaching essentially manual labour skills, believing they were the best skills to help African Americans prove their worth to white America. In short, Washington rose up from the lowest class (what in today’s society would be the working class), and I would suggest that this left him unable to envision a society where pure equality equated to an absolute meritocracy. To offer guidance, it is necessary to be able to see the road ahead and to see where you are going; Washington probably felt himself unable to offer such guidance because the United States at that time was not a classless meritocracy.

In contrast to this, the growth of W.E.B. Du Bois as a leader begins with him being brought up in the heart of New England, and enjoying privileges Washington could have only dreamed of when he was a slave child. His experiences in Massachusetts showed him in essence how good life could be, though not completely void of racial discrimination[11]. When he studied at Fisk University, however, he soon learned that some citizens could not live like he had done when growing up because of the colour of their skin. As a consequence, Du Bois was steered by his life experiences towards a guidance type or mobilisation type leadership model because of his class, and how his better than average upbringing meant little or nothing in the South, where his skin colour was the only thing that mattered to white America.

Nevertheless, the drawback for Du Bois was that he was an exception to most people of his race. As White notes: “Unlike Booker T. Washington, Du Bois always felt himself apart from the mass of Negroes and, for significant periods of his life was definitely out of step with orthodox black responses to such issues as socialism, Marxism, and Pan-Africanism.[12]” While Du Bois’s upbringing meant he had the power to vividly convey to them a distinctly better life, it also distanced him from them on the basis of intra-racial class politics. I would suggest that this is the primary reason for Du Bois holding the power to his leadership in his pen[13], and not in stirring orations, as Martin Luther King would become famous for.

In conjunction with this, it can be said that the ideological differences between Du Bois and Washington reflect the personal differences between the two men, and in particular their contrasting upbringings. Early on in his life, Du Bois erred on the side of protest rather than leaning towards accomodationism. As Moore explains: “[Du Bois] wrote stirring calls to arms against racial discrimination in local politics.[14]” Her observation that “Du Bois’s articles for the [New York] Globe reflected what would be the basis of his own philosophy in years to come.[15]” reinforces the idea that a protest movement against racial injustice had been building from as far back as the time of Du Bois’s birth in the 1860’s.

It is possible to read “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” as a Du Boisian manifesto. The style of the essay and the way it is written contributes to this, as Du Bois lists on three separate lines the three things Washington “distinctly asks that the black people give up, at least for the present[16]”; shortly after this, Du Bois lists, in the same way, three unsatisfactory things which have occurred as direct or indirect results of the Washingtonian policy; a triple paradox of Washington’s career is then listed by Du Bois not long after, and then Du Bois lists three things he demands: “Such men feel bound in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:
1. The right to vote.
2. Civic equality.
3. The education of youth according to ability.[17]”
Du Bois does this so as to polarise himself as the direct opposite to Booker T. Washington. The polarisation is spelt out unmistakably to the reader.

Once Washington had passed away in 1915, the accomodationist leadership of African Americans was usurped as the mainstream ideology, though in truth it had begun to die away once the NAACP was born. With Washington’s death, no one stood up and continued to speak on behalf of black conservatives. The growth of Crisis, the journal of the NAACP under the editorship of Du Bois’ had been phenomenal. In November 1910 it had a circulation of 1,000 copies; less than twelve months later it was selling 16,000 copies a month[18]. The Tuskegee machine was finally breached by Du Bois’s charismatic and elegant editorials which stirred the black men who read them.

The philosophy which Crisis embodied stemmed from the Niagara Movement which came into being in July 1905. As General Secretary, Du Bois strongly insisted direct action was a political necessity if the African American race was going to achieve anything, any time soon. As Moore notes, “the focus of the Niagara Movement was to encourage action and open protest to challenge racism and discrimination.[19]” Five years later, Crisis -- the main organ of the NAACP -- was setting out with the same principles of the former movement, indicating only subtle changes in Du Bois’s leadership between 1905 and 1910.

With Crisis and the NAACP now front and centre with regard to the race problem in the United States, Du Bois was free to practice his mobilisation type leadership which would bridge the gap between Washington’s accomodationist leadership and Martin Luther King’s civil rights leadership. Indeed, many of the sentiments Du Bois expressed so forcefully would have not looked out of place in the 1960’s. His plainly spoken attacks on discrimination, lynchings and social disfranchisement elevated Crisis to new heights, as it grew into the best-known black journal in the United States[20]. It was more successful that the poorly-named The Moon, the journal of the Niagara Movement, for two main reasons: first, it had more substantial financial backing. The main characters of the Niagara Movement (John Hope, William Monroe Trotter, F.H.M. Murray et al) had been joined by people who left the Washington camp between 1905 and 1910 (Kelly Miller, Mary Church Terrell, Archibald Grimké[21]). The combination of the two groups into the amalgamation of the NAACP made for a more viable economic organisation.

The second reason was Du Bois’s editorship. His ability to simplify the racial issues made the journal popular among people of his own race, whilst at the same time it made white America sit up and take notice. As Paul Robeson put it: “We Negro students joined the NAACP which Dr. Du Bois helped to organise and build; we read religiously Crisis of which he was editor for so many years, and in which he wrote clearly, constructively and militantly on the complex problems of the American scene.[22]” Without such innovative militantism, the financial clout would not have been able to achieve as much. But with Du Bois at the helm, the journal practically paid for itself by the time of the Great War[23].

Education remained an important concept for Du Bois, and in 1920’s Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil he once more expressed its civilising qualities: “We would say, "No civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government," and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it.[24]” Du Bois’s emphasis on the importance of education was similar though not the same to Washington’s, as is mentioned in the next chapter. The difference, however, lies in Du Bois speaking of education as a stepping stone to political involvement and political inclusion, in a country where the black man had been hitherto exiled from the political arena.

Ultimately, however, a leader is not a leader unless he had men following him. The great tragedy of Du Bois’s time as editor of Crisis is that is influence failed to spread further than it did. He was almost always at odds with the NAACP executives, and when he very publicly resigned the editorship of the journal in 1934, in the hope that prominent African Americans would rally around him, he realised he had erred in not attempting to influence the organization more directly[25]. The power of his leadership was expressed in the presentation and clarification of issues from a certain point of view, but ultimately he had no direct say over NAACP policy. His intellectual capacity was never transformed into institutionalised social power through the organisation[26].

Notes

[1] These should be considered as rough bookends only
[2] That is not to say, however, that Du Bois spoke solely on behalf of African Americans. While Du Bois was, to a large degree, “muzzled” by white philanthropists (see chapter three), white liberals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were essential in the founding of the NAACP. Though no study has successfully characterised the role of white men in the formative years of the NAACP, it is sadly beyond the scope of this investigation to do so.
[3] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover. [1903] 1994. p 26
[4] Kilson, Martin. “The Washington and Du Bois Paradigms Reconsidered.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 568. (March 2000): p 301-2
[5] Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. New York: Dover [1901] 1995. p 107
[6] Ibid. p 109
[7] Moore, Jacqueline M. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift. London: S.R. Books. 2003. p 32
[8] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. p 27
[9] Ibid. p 30
[10] This might be a little exaggerated in Washington’s autobiography Up From Slavery. As Moore notes, he was probably not quite the country bumpkin he later portrayed himself to have been. (p23)
[11] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 40
[12] White, John. Black leadership in America: From Booker T. Washington to Jesse Jackson. London: Longman. 1990. p 70
[13] Yancy, Dorothy Couser. “William Edward Burghardt Du Bois’ Atlanta Years: The Human Side – A Study Based upon Oral Sources.” The Journal of Negro History. 63:1. (January 1978): p 65
[14] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 40
[15] Ibid. p 40
[16] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. p 30
[17] Ibid. p 32
[18] White, John. p 55
[19] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 78
[20] Ibid. p 85
[21] As listed in Moore, Jacqueline M. p 84
[22] Foner, Philip S. Ed. Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews, 1918-74. New York: Citadel Press [1978] 1987. p 474
[23] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 85
[24] Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. New York: Prometheus Books. [1920] 2003. p 151
[25] Rudwick, Elliot M. “W.E.B. Du Bois in the Role of Crisis Editor.” The Journal of Negro History. 43:3. (July 1958): p 239
[26] Ibid. p 239