Key issues in the afro-american experience PDF
Preview Key issues in the afro-american experience
'^.Wm KEY r^ ISSUES Edited by 'ATHAIM HUl I. MARTIN KILSON DANIEL M. FOX VOLUME sium -"imPj^ ^:-./afcfc^ Digitized by the Internet Archive 2010 in http://www.archive.org/details/keyissuesinafroa02hugg KEY ISSUES the in Afro-American Experience — ^OV '.-AVE SAVuD •rry PURCHASING THfS USED BOOX ^ JUL 2 Under the GeneralEditorship of JOHN MORTON BLUM Yale University II VOLUME SINCE 1865 KEY ISSUES the in American Afro- Experience Edited by NATHAN MUGGINS I. Columbia University MARTIN KILSON Harvard University DANIEL M. FOX Harvard University mi Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. New York I Chicago I San Francisco I Atlanta COVER: Detail from the painting Ambulance Call by the Afro-American artist Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Dr. Bernard Ronis, Philadelphia. Photo by Robert F. Crandall. SECTION OPENING PHOTOGRAPHS: Pages 2 A black family working their farm. Courtesy of the Picture Collection. NewYork Public Library. 3 A meeting of the South Carolina Legislature of 1873. Courtesy of Negro HistoryAssociates. 44_45 Black dockworkers unloading freight from a steamboat at DogTooth Cutoff, near St. Louis. Missouri. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. 90 Silent Protest Parade. New York City, 28 July 1917. Courtesy of the Schomburg Collection, NewYork Public Library. 91 Black Americans boarding a ship in Savannah, Georgia, for voyage to Liberia. 1 March 1896. Courtesy of Historical Pictures Service, Chi- cago. 150-51 Song of the Towers, mural by Aaron Douglas. Courtesy of the Countee Cullen Branch of the New York Public Library. 230 Boy looking through glass ball. Photo by Douglas Harris. 230 Mother and child watching Yoruba wedding ceremony in Douglas Park, Chicago. Photo by Lloyd E. Sanders. 231 Black student protest. Courtesy of Johnson Publishing Co., Chicago. © 1971 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublisher. Paperbound ISBN: 0-15-548372-2 Clothbound ISBN: 0-15-146890-7 Libraryof Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-141607 Printed in the United States ofAmerica Dedicated to four scholars of the American Negro: Carter G. Woodson Horace Mann Bond Ralph J. Bunche John Hope Franklin Preface New World Africans, from their first awareness of themselves as Amer- icans, have wanted to assert the uniqueness and importance of their experience. They have called on the poetic muse: PhilHs Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon, and Alberry Alison Whitman were among the early classic voices that sang the black consciousness in lyric and epic form. Polemicists and activists like Frederick Douglass, Martin R. Delany, and David Walker hammeredout prose designed to awaken black men and women to their moral obligation. And from at least 1841, with J. W. C. Pennington's efforts, black Americans have had a keen sense that their story needed to be told as part of the history of America. For most blacks, there has never been any doubt that their identity is embedded in the general American history, and that they will never know themselves until they mine and refine that history themselves. Soitisonly a trick of ego—a sleight of mind—that permits some observers toimplythatthediscovery of the Negro's place in American history and Amer- ican studies is a recent event. It is arrogance to ignore or deprecate men who begantheirwork near the beginning of this century, men like Carter G. Wood- son and W. E. B. Du Bois. Many important black scholars followed, some of whom—J. Saunders Redding, John Hope Franklin, Benjamin Quarles—con- tinue their work into this day. These men labored in a discouraging scholarly environment; indifference to their work kept the highest honors and acclaim just beyond their grasp. That they persisted despite the many obstacles was viii Preface nothing short of heroic, and we are much the richer for their dedication. Con- sider, for instance. Carter Woodson's commitment and sense of purpose in starting, in 1915, and sustaining the Association for the Study of Negro Life andHistory. Becauseof his effort, we have had ever since theJournalofNegro History and the Negro History Bulletin, which have welcomed the essays of black and white scholars often thought too ethnic and too narrow in scope for the standard journals. Thus formal and informal study of the Afro-American experience has ex- istedforalongtime. Nevertheless,thereis something new about contemporary efforts to study Negro Ufe and history. For the first time, Negro history has become a central concern of the general academic world. Indeed, concern has often beenforced on colleges by student pressure. Growing numbers of black students found that the standard studies of "our" past—Western civiHzation no less than American history—failed to sound true to their lives and experi- ence. Many white students, perplexed and annoyed by the disparity between officially stated ideals and sensed reality, suspected with good reason that a better perception of the irony and paradox that defined their present might well be achieved through an understanding of the Afro-American experience. That experience challenges conventional rhetoric on uninterrupted national progress and the success of the American Dream and is itself the essence of irony and paradox. But the new concern goes even beyond students' demands for relevance. White and black scholars have begun to see study of the Afro- American experience as a way to illuminate and reconsider perplexing prob- lems in the American past. The two volumes of Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience are de- signed to bring the speciahst's interest and knowledge to the service of stu- dents, instructors, and general readers. We wanted to direct the energy, in- telligence, andtrainingofacademicianstothecreationofacollection of sharply focused essays that would both capture interest and demonstrate disciplined analysis. We wanted to choose topics that were central and essential to an understanding of the Afro-American experience. And we wanted the best peo- ple available to address themselves to those topics. These could not be essays already printed in scholarly journals—they presume a different audience. Ofthetwenty-seven essays in these volumes, all but three—those by Philip Curtin, Kenneth Stampp, and Stanley Elkins—were written expressly for this collection. All other essays are fresh statements of principal issues by special- ists in the field. For each essay we have provided a headnote that includes a brief biographical sketch of the author. For each section of the volumes, we have supplied a list of suggestions for further reading. Defining relevance was a major problem in choosing the topics to be treated. Some issues that seemed urgent also seemed likely to be transformed by changes in national policy or economic conditions. We tried to make dis- tinctions between the transient and the enduring. The definition of an Afro- American history, a black culture; the influence of Africa and the impact of
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