Voice From the South

363 Pages·2014·4.349 MB·English

by  Cooper, Anna Julia

A Voice From the South
THE SCHOMBURG LIBRARY OF
NINETEENTH-CENTURY BLAC K WOMEN WRITERS
General Editor> Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Titles are listed chronologically; collections that include works published over a
span of years are listed according to the publication date of their initial work.
Phillis Wheatley, The Collected Works ofPhillis Wheatley
Six Women's Slave Narratives: M . Prince ; Old Elizabeth; M.J. Jackson ;
L. A. Delaney; K. Drumgoold; A. L. Burton
Spiritual Narratives: M. W. Stewart; J. Lee; J. A. J. Foote; V. W. Broughton
Ann Plato, Essays
Collected Black Women's Narratives: N . Prince; L. Picquet ; B. Veney;
S. K. Taylor
Frances E. W. Harper, Complete Poems of Frances E. W. Harper
Charlotte Forten Grimke, The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke
Mary Seacole, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Collected Black Women's Poetry, Volumes 1-4: M.E . Tucker; A.I. Menken;
M.W. Fordham ; P. J. Thompson ; C. A. Thompson; H.C. Ray ;
L. A. J. Moorer; J. D. Heard; E. Bibb; M. P. Johnson; Mrs. H. Linden
Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes. Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in
the White House
C. W. Larison, M.D., Silvia Dubois, A Biografy o f the Slav Who Whipt Her
Mistres and Gand Her Fredom
Mrs. A. E. Johnson, Clarence andCorinne; or, God's Way
Octavia V. Rogers Albert, The House of Bondage: or Charlotte Brooks and Other
Slaves
Emma Dunham Kelley, Megda
Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From the South
Frances E. W. Harper, lola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted
Amanda Smith, An Autobiography: The Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs.
Amanda Smith the Colored Evangelist
Mrs. A. E. Johnson, The Hazeley Family
Mrs. N. F. Mossell, The Work of the Afro-American Woman
Alice Dunbar-Nelson, The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Volumes 1-3
Emma D. Kelley-Hawkins, Four Girls at Cottage City
Pauline E. Hopkins, Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life
North and South
Pauline Hopkins, The Magazine Novels offhuline Hopkins
Hallie Q. Brown, Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction
A Voic e
From th e Sout h
ANNA JULIA COOPE R
With an Introduction by
MARY HELEN WASHINGTON
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
Oxford Ne w York Toront o
Delhi Bomba y Calcutt a Madra s Karach i
Petaling Jaya Singapor e Hon g Kong Toky o
Nairobi Da r es Salaam Cap e Town
Melbourne Aucklan d
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibada n
Copyright © 1988 by Oxford Universit y Press, Inc.,
First published in 1988 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1990
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cooper, Anna Julia Haywood, 1858-1964.
A voice from the south/by Anna Julia Cooper; introduction by
Mary Helen Washington,
p. cm.—(The Schomburg library of nineteenth-century black
women writers)
Reprint. Originally published: Xenia, Ohio: Aldine Printing
House, 1892.
1. Afro-American women—Southern States—History—19th century.
2. Southern States—Race relations. I . Title. II . Series .
E185.86.C587 198 8 9 7 5'.00496073—del 9 87-2636 4
ISBN 978-0-19-505246-6
Printed in the United States of America
The
Schomburg Library
of
Nineteenth-Century
Black Women Writer s
is
Dedicated
in Memor y
of
PAULINE AUGUSTA COLEMAN GATES
1916-1987
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
Whenever possible, the volumes in this set were reproduced
directly from original materials. When availability, physical
condition of original texts, or other circumstances prohibited this
volumes or portions of volumes were reset.
FOREWORD
In Her Own Write
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
One muffled strain in the Silent South, a jarring chord and a
vague and uncomprehended cadenza has been and still is the
Negro. And of that muffled chord, the one mute and voice-
less note has been the sadly expectant Black Woman,
The "other side" has not been represented by one who "lives
there." And not many can more sensibly realize and more
accurately tell the weight and the fret of the "long 'dull pain"
than the open-eyed but hitherto voiceless Black Woman of
America.
. .. a s our Caucasian barristers are not to blame if they
cannot quite put themselves in the dark man's place, neither
should the dark man be wholly expected fully and adequately
to reproduce the exact Voice of the Black Woman.
—ANNA JULIA COOPER, A Voice From the South (1892)
The birth of the Afro-American literary tradition occurre d
in 1773, when Phillis Wheatley published a book of poetry.
Despite the fact that her book garnered for her a remarkable
amount of attention, Wheatley's journey to the printer had
been a most arduous one. Sometime in 1772, a young Afri-
can girl walked demurely into a room in Boston to undergo
an oral examination, the results of which would determin e
the direction of her life and work. Perhaps she was shocked
upon entering the appointed room. For there, perhaps gath-
vii
viii Foreword
ered in a semicircle, sa t eighteen of Boston's most notabl e
citizens. Among them were John Erving, a prominent Bos-
ton merchant; the Reverend Charle s Chauncy, pastor of the
Tenth Congregational Church; and John Hancock, who would
later gain fame for his signature on the Declaration of Inde-
pendence. At the center of this group was His Excellency ,
Thomas Hutchinson , governo r o f Massachusetts, wit h An-
drew Oliver, his lieutenant governor, clos e by his side.
Why had this august group bee n assembled? Why had it
seen fit to summon this young African girl, scarcely eighteen
years old, befor e it ? This group o f "the mos t respectabl e
Characters in Boston," as it would later define itself, had as-
sembled t o questio n closel y the Africa n adolescen t o n th e
slender sheaf of poems that she claimed to have "written by
herself." We can only speculate on the nature of the questions
posed to the fledgling poet. Perhaps they asked her to iden-
tify and explain—for all to hear—exactly who were the Greek
and Latin god s and poet s allude d t o so frequently i n he r
work. Perhap s the y asked her to conjugate a verb in Latin
or even to translate randomly selected passages from the Latin,
which she and her master, John Wheatley, claimed that she
"had made some Progress in." Or perhaps they asked her to
recite from memory key passages from the texts of John Mil -
ton and Alexander Pope, the two poets by whom the African
claimed to be most directly influenced. We do not know.
We do know, however, tha t the African poet's response s
were mor e tha n sufficien t t o promp t th e eightee n augus t
gentlemen t o compose, sign , an d publis h a two-paragrap h
"Attestation," an open letter "To the Publick" that prefaces
Phillis Wheatley's book and that reads in part:
We whose Names are under-written, do assure the World,
that the Poems specified in the following Page, were (as we
Foreword i x
verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who
was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian
from Africa, an d has ever since been, and now is, under the
Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a Family in this Town.
She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is
thought qualified to write them.
So important was this document in securing a publisher for
Wheatley Js poems that i t form s the signa l elemen t i n th e
prefatory matter preceding her Poems on Various Subjects, Re-
ligious and Moral, published in London in 1773.
Without the published "Attestation," Wheatley's publisher
claimed, fe w would believe that an African coul d possibly
have written poetry all by herself. A s the eighteen put the
matter clearly in their letter, "Number s would be ready to
suspect they were not really the Writings of Phillis." Wheat-
ley and her master, John Wheatley, had attempted to publish
a similar volume in 177 2 in Boston, but Boston publishers
had been incredulous. One year later, "Attestation" in hand,
Phillis Wheatley and her master's son, Nathaniel Wheatley,
sailed for England, where they completed arrangement s fo r
the publication of a volume of her poems with the aid of the
Countess of Huntington and the Earl of Dartmouth.
This curious anecdote, surely one of the oddest oral ex-
aminations on record, i s only a tiny part of a larger, an d
even more curious, episode in the Enlightenment. Since the
beginning o f th e sixteent h century, European s ha d won -
dered aloud whether or not the African "species of men," as
they were most commonly called, could ever create formal
literature, could ever master "the arts and sciences." If they
could, the argument ran, then the African variety of human-
ity was fundamentally related to the European variety. If not,
then it seemed clear that the African was destined by nature