W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, pp. 6-7:
"...few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites....At last [Freedom] came, -- suddenly, fearfully, like a dream...
"Years have passed away since then,... and yet the swarthy spectre [sic] sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation's feast...
"The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land."
This captures my sense of the devastation that ensued for black northerners after emancipation was finally realized in the South. Not only was freedom not free for black southerners, but its supposed existence worsened the condition for black northerners. White people seized upon the opportunity to assert that the scourge of America's sin had been, at long last, extirpated from America. For those white people concerned about the immorality of slavery, their guilt was now assuaged. But little had changed in black people's lived experience, and their condition in fact worsened when white allies now turned their attention elsewhere, believing this "problem" to be gone. Over time, black people's continued pursuit of opportunities and justice felt to white people like whining. Thus, black people continued to be "problems" in the white mind, as Du Bois points out at the very beginning of his treatise on the black condition in America early in the twentieth century.
I have not read The Souls of Black Folk since developing my newest research project on the post-emancipation condition of the black population in the North. I had forgotten this specific commentary of his, and it helps remind me of the importance of the study I look to undertake.
"...few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites....At last [Freedom] came, -- suddenly, fearfully, like a dream...
"Years have passed away since then,... and yet the swarthy spectre [sic] sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation's feast...
"The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land."
This captures my sense of the devastation that ensued for black northerners after emancipation was finally realized in the South. Not only was freedom not free for black southerners, but its supposed existence worsened the condition for black northerners. White people seized upon the opportunity to assert that the scourge of America's sin had been, at long last, extirpated from America. For those white people concerned about the immorality of slavery, their guilt was now assuaged. But little had changed in black people's lived experience, and their condition in fact worsened when white allies now turned their attention elsewhere, believing this "problem" to be gone. Over time, black people's continued pursuit of opportunities and justice felt to white people like whining. Thus, black people continued to be "problems" in the white mind, as Du Bois points out at the very beginning of his treatise on the black condition in America early in the twentieth century.
I have not read The Souls of Black Folk since developing my newest research project on the post-emancipation condition of the black population in the North. I had forgotten this specific commentary of his, and it helps remind me of the importance of the study I look to undertake.
I have on my shelf in my office in Albion a large volume on the history of Reconstruction (I don’t remember the author), but I have never been able to get very far into it because it is simply too heartbreaking to see that moment of emancipation turn into what will become a century and more of systematic oppression. I have similar problems confronting other moments in history where a brand new promise of social justice is betrayed (like the Russian revolution in 1917). And in the U.S. that sense of failed promise remains deeply relevant right up to the Civil Rights movement, at least. Didn’t Dr. Martin Luther King talk about the “promissory note” falsely extended to African Americans? I’ve also wondered about what was going on in the mind of abolitionists in the midst of the disaster that is the aftermath of the war. My fellow Quakers were longtime abolitionists. What were *they* doing and saying in the 1870s? Maybe I should get over my horror and find out.
ReplyDeleteYou have Reconstruction, America's Undinished Revolution, by Eric Foner. Many were working in Freedmen's schools, including Quakers. But most were overlooking northern black people altogether. What happened in the South though is a genuine crime.
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