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I read this novel in high school, I really enjoyed it. The movie had some missing concepts but overall its a great film. I feel that Halle embodied the character and her notions very well.

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PG version Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

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This album was golden. A classic, but one line that stood out to me was when Drake said, "I'm the light skin Keith Sweat" I am a huge Drake fan and stan but I think if it were a dark skin rapper saying he was light skin that line would not have been taken so lightly.

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This song came out a few years ago. I think in the concept of lyrics they made a few relations to what it may feel like in the music industry for black men versus the contexts of musicians in the homes of slave owners.

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Travis Scott & Quavo- Modern Slavery (Clean)

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This video helped me through high school and now college. I hope it also helps whoever else watches it too.

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EVERYBODY AIN’T YOUR FRIEND | SPOKEN WORD | TRENT SHELTON

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Alice Dunbar Nelson: Poet, Essayist and Activist

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Alice Dunbar Nelson: Poet, Essayist and Activist

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Alice Dunbar Nelson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on July 19th, 1875, and born to parents whose culture was largely that of African American, Anglo, Native American, and Creole heritage. She attended and graduated Dillard University (formerly Straight Univ.) and took up teaching in the public schools in her area. Her unique understanding of gender race and culture comes from her unique heritage and racial background as a multiracial person, and this was often reflected through her writing pieces.

Nelson was a poet, an essayist, a diarist, and an activist and led a very full life. " Violets and Other Tales (1895), was published when she was just 20. Her second collection, The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories (1899) explored the lives of creole and anglicized characters. Works exploring racism and racial oppression were largely rejected by publishers during her lifetime[...]" She was one of the first generations of free people after the civil war and contributed to the thriving of the Harlem renaissance.

She continued to develop her writing and literary skills and became a prolific writer. "Through her career, Alice Moore wrote four novels, two volumes of oratory, dramas, newspaper columns, two collections of essays, poems, short stories, and reviews, many of which drew on her extensive knowledge of Creole culture.

In all of these collections, Alice Moore proved to be a perceptive critic of American society." Even in her younger years, she had directly been involved in social and cultural organizations in her hometown- but after an abusive relationship, and a few unstable marriages- later on, in her teaching profession holding a plethora of positions, she became intimately involved with both women and men.

However, she decided to marry a fellow teacher Robert J. Nelson who was also a journalist and political activist.

"[Nelson] authorial accomplishments only continued to grow in popularity, reaching a wide variety of audiences. She was acclaimed for many of her poems and short stories, with two of the most popular stories being Stones of the Village and Little Miss Sophie.

Both of these works were renowned for their poignancy and realism for their depiction of the confusion and strife that people of mixed-race faced within their communities, and the deeply internalized shame and loneliness felt at not finding acceptance amongst any society of people.

In particular, Stones of the Village was recognized for its exploration of what was referred to as the "Creole condition". The "Creole condition" was defined as the experience that mixed-race people faced as being able to "pass" as white, and therefore [feel] the need to repress their status as half-African American.

Often times, Moore-Dunbar's protagonists were not only marginalized due to gender or race but also for their status as a lower-working class citizen. Her reflections on the state of minorities and the poverty they often faced in the South inspired her to take up activism in hopes of making a true difference with the power she now held as an established author".

Dunbar-Nelson's eager inclusion within the 1910s with the Women's Suffrage Movement set off energetic activism for Black women who were marginalized inside a society that advertised little to no agency for women or individuals of color.

She talked to audiences all over the nation about the issues such as healthcare and education that she believed needed to change for a more equal society to exist, including subjects that ranged from women within the workforce and the unjust lynchings that debilitated the African American populace due to racial pressure post-Civil War.

Dunbar-Nelson's work moved from poetry and short stories to papers and journalistic endeavors that investigated the social issues that she campaigned for. Notable papers such as "N*gro Women in War Work" and "Politics in Delaware" centered intensely on much of what Dunbar-Nelson talked about during her lectures on the rights of both women and African Americans. In spite of Dunbar-Nelson's numerous accomplishments, she later found herself without much money.

In her diary titled Give us each day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, she details her lack of income, "I am so flat broke that it is funny. An epidemic of poverty seems to have struck us all" (328). Dunbar-Nelson depicts how financially troublesome times had become for herself and other activists who devoted their lives to fighting against the Jim Crow laws that had surfaced during Dunbar-Nelson's life.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson is viewed as a kind of 'unsung legacy' for women and women of color during the suffrage movement and the civil rights movement, and this can be seen through much of her works. One of her poetic prose that directly dealt with her place in the world and society as not only a woman but a woman of color. was a piece entitled; I Sit and Sew.

I sit and sew-a useless task it seems,

My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams-

The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,

Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken

Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,

Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath-

But-I must sit and sew.

I sit and sew-my heart aches with desire-

That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire

On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things

Once men. My soul in pity flings

Appealing cries, yearning only to go

There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe-

But-I must sit and sew.

The little useless seam, the idle patch;

Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,

When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,

Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?

You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream

That beckons me-this pretty futile seam,

It stifles me-God, must I sit and sew?

She is directly wondering- pleading if sewing (primarily considered a woman's job at the time, as women weren't accepted fully into the workforce or much of society for that matter, it works itself into the piece as a metaphor for the 'usefulness' of women in society) is all that her life will be worth? It is even stated how she wants to 'leave her world behind' to help the 'men of war'.

This type of inequality towards gender is still prominent today- as many people believe a woman would not make a fit president, CEO, or belong in any real position of power.

Women still don't even make as much as men, and the gender pay gap is more prominent than ever, more so in underprivileged communities and communities with a lot of diversity. And the stakes only get higher if an individual happens to be a woman of color. Racial inequality is still as much of a problem as ever.

Systemic racism is at its worst with the state of the world and the state of politics currently, and it feels like all that hard work that was done to protect certain marginalized people and give them rights that they otherwise would not have has been undone and stripped away little by little.

As a community, people need to do better. They need to be better, so a safe and equitable future will be created for the coming generations. A world of true equal opportunity, a world with equal justice, a world without racial and gender-based persecution.
Works Cited:
"Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson." Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, 2007, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alice-moore-dunbar-nelson.

Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson and Akasha Gloria. Hull, W.W. Norton, 1984, pp. 328-328.

Johnson, Wilma J. "Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)." Welcome to Blackpast *, 4 Feb. 2020, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/dunbar-nelson-alice-ruth-moore-1875-1935/.

Miller, Grace. "An Unsung Legacy: The Work and Activism of Alice Dunbar-Nelson." Smithsonian Libraries / Unbound, 12 Mar. 2020, blog.library.si.edu/blog/2020/03/12/an-unsung-legacy-the-work-and-activism-of-alice-dunbar-nelson/.

"'I Sit and Sew.'" The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, by Alice Moore Nelson, vol. 2, The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers Oxford University Press, 1988.

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Alice Dunbar Nelson: Poet, Essayist and Activist

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Alice Dunbar Nelson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on July 19th, 1875, and born to parents whose culture was largely that of African American, Anglo, Native American, and Creole heritage. She attended and graduated Dillard University (formerly Straight Univ.) and took up teaching in the public schools in her area.

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This black writer penned plantation fiction while passing as white

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I believe this article was insightful to Chestnutt’s experience as an African American writer who can pass as White.

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Charles Chesnutt is remembered as one of the best and earliest African American short story writers, but he didn't reveal his ancestry to the Atlantic Monthly when he submitted his short stories for consideration in the early 1880s. Chesnutt, who estimated his heritage as 1/16 black and 15/16s white, started writing fiction at time when such precise measurements mattered deeply. Though he spent most of his adult life as a pillar of the black community in Cleveland, it was that one act of passing that likely guaranteed his publication.

Chesnutt was born in Ohio in 1858 in and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, where his family moved after the Civil War. He was a product of the new schools established by the Freedmen's Bureau, where he was educated and later taught, eventually becoming a principal at a Fayetteville school when he was 22 years old. Chesnutt, relentlessly ambitious, could not be contained by the South. He returned to Ohio in the early 1880s, studied for and passed the state bar, and launched a successful court stenography business.

Despite his success, and his new wealth, what he truly wanted was to be an author. He was clear about his goal from the beginning. "The object of my writings would not be so much the elevation of the colored people as the elevation of the whites," he mused in his diary, considering the limitations of his own life, and the daily injustice faced by all African Americans in the Jim Crow era. Chesnutt, influenced by the success of novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin, believed that fiction could change perceptions and elicit sympathies like no other form.

He set his sights on publication in the Atlantic Monthly, which had never before published fiction by an African American, and sent his first manuscript in cold, where it ended up in the 19th century equivalent of a slush pile. But the editors accepted Chesnutt's first story, "The Goophered Grapevine," in 1887, and requested that he send more. Eventually four short stories featuring his signature character, Uncle Julius, appeared in the magazine. Houghton Mifflin, which owned the Atlantic at the time, also commissioned a book of Uncle Julius stories. The book was called The Conjure Woman, and was part of a two-book contract, which also included a collection of short stories called "The Wife of His Youth."

Illustration by Clyde O. De Land from Chesnutt's "The Wife of His Youth." (Wikimedia)

The Uncle Julius stories were part of a genre known as plantation fiction, stories told in dialect about life in the Old South. Most plantation fiction was nostalgic, but Chesnutt's work in the form was haunting. There was nothing charming or romantic about the slavery Julius recalls for the new, Northern owners of the plantation where he once worked as a slave. Mostly Julius tells them stories about families that have been sold apart. In one, a wife, Tenie, tries to save her husband, Sandy, from being sold to another owner by turning him into a tree. Tenie eventually decides on a more permanent solution. "[A]tter studyin' de matter ober, en talkin' wid Sandy one ebenin,' she made up her mine fer ter fix up a goopher mixtry wa't would turn herse'f en sandy ter foxes, er sump'n, so dey could run away en go some'rs whar dey could be free and lib lack w'ite folks." Instead, Sandy is milled for lumber while Tenie is working at another plantation. In another, a conjure woman (or sorceress) turns a young boy into a mockingbird so he can visit his mother after she's traded to another plantation. The stories in "The Wife of His Youth" deal with similar themes.

Though he eventually wrote several novels, Chesnutt's stories are still considered his best work. As literary styles became more modern in the early 20th century, Chesnutt's fiction began to seem somewhat melodramatic. And as his subjects became more realistic, and rooted in the present moment rather than the recent past of slavery, his books also became harder for white readers to sympathize with.

American author William Dean Howells, for instance, a vocal supporter of Chesnutt's short stories, was less than thrilled about novels such as The Marrow of Tradition, published in 1901. The book dramatized a 1898 riot in Wilmington, North Carolina, where a white mob assembled and ousted the democratically elected black leaders of the majority black town. After reading the novel, Howells wondered if Chesnutt had lost his way artistically. "The book is, in fact, bitter, bitter," Howells wrote in a review. "There is no reason in history why it should not be so, if wrong is to be repaid with hate, and yet it would be better if it was not so bitter."

Chesnutt had always walked a peculiar line. He identified as black, and his affinity for African American culture was genuine and deeply felt, but he looked white. Moreover, he knew that race wasn't real. That was a sentiment most white people couldn't fathom, and one that eventually turned wider reading audiences away from his fiction.

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This black writer penned plantation fiction while passing as white

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Charles Chesnutt is remembered as one of the best and earliest African American short story writers, but he didn't reveal his ancestry to the Atlantic Monthly when he submitted his short stories for consideration in the early 1880s. Chesnutt, who estimated his heritage as 1/16 black and 15/16s white, started writing fiction at time when such precise measurements mattered deeply.

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Here's a video about Paul Laurence Dunbar

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I thought this video was informative. Shared it with my niece she felt is was enlightening. I 'm glad there are outlets for different age ranges to all comprehend.

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Phillis Wheatley: The First Published African-American Poet | Black Patriots | History

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Paul Laurence Dunbar was a later 19th Century poet and writer. He was one of the first widely known black poets in America. He was born to parents who had been slaves prior to the Civil War. He learned to read and write in his childhood and was educated at Howard University. He began his writing career publishing poems in a local newspaper in Ohio. He published his first poetry book Oak and Ivy  in 1893 and another in 1896. Many of his contemporaries acknowledged his work and came to know him, such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

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Y’all please enjoy this high school year book photo of the great Toni Morrison. Here is a quote from her that inspires me.

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“The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.”

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The Willie Lynch Speech is a speech that was delivered by Lynch in 1712 on the bank of James River in Virginia. In his speech, Lynch proposes to pother slave owners that he has found the 'secret' to keeping slaves under control by setting them up against each other. This method, Lynch said, would keep Africans enslaved for at least 300 years. There has been debate about whether this letter is real or just a hoax since it appeared on the internet. Hoax or not, the contents of this letter is unbelievable and shows how slavery was an immoral institution held up with support from whites. I will provide an excerpt from the speech here:

“I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves; and I take these differences and make them bigger. I use fear, distrust and envy for control purposes. These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies and it will work throughout the South. Take this simple list of differences and think about them. On top of my list is “Age” but it’s only there because it starts with an “a”. The second is “color” or shade. There is intelligence, size, sex, sizes of plantation, status on plantation, attitude of owners, whether the slaves live in the valley, on a hill, East, West, North, South, have fine hair, coarse hair, or is tall or short. Now that you have a list of differences, I shall give you an outline of action, but before that, I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than trust and envy stronger than adulation, respect or admiration. The Black slave receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Don’t forget, you pitch the old Black male vs. the young Black male, and the young Black male against the old Black male. You must use the dark skin slaves vs. the light skin slaves, and the light skin slaves vs. the dark skin slaves. You must use the female vs. the male, and the male vs. the female. You must also have a white overseer who distrusts all Blacks. But it is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us. They must love, respect and trust only us. Gentlemen, these kits are our keys to control. Use them. Have your wives and children use them. Never miss an opportunity. If used intensely for one year, the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful. Thank you gentlemen.”

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Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman": Nkechi at TEDxFiDiWomen

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This was a great interpretation of the “Ain’t I'm a Woman” speech. The speaker embodies her as a character.

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Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman": Nkechi at TEDxFiDiWomen

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Oretha Castle Haley was a major female leader in the Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans. She challenged segregated facilities and pushed for voter registration in New Orleans. Haley came from a working-class background, but she was able to enroll at Southern University at New Orleans and became the center of student activism. Here is a link that talks more about the SUNO alum! https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/voices-progress/oretha-castle-haley

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This has nothing to do with what we're reading now, but I always thought this was good advice.

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Madea - Let Them Go | Life Changing Speech

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It's short but it mentions all the important parts of her life.

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Sojourner Truth - Civil Rights Activist | Mini Bio | BIO

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Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” Performed by Kerry Washington

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Some interesting facts about Sojourner Truth

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Some interesting facts about Sojourner Truth

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Sojourner Truth lived a remarkable life. After spending much of her adolescence and adulthood enslaved, Truth took destiny into her own hands at age 30. She fled to freedom, changed her name, and started life anew as a preacher, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate. Here are six facts you should know about this champion of equality.

1. Sojourner truth was born into slavery and first sold at age 9.

Sojourner Truth (née Isabella Baumfree) was born to enslaved parents in a Dutch community in Ulster County, New York, in 1797. After being separated from her family at age 9, she was sold three times to different people, one of whom beat her for speaking Dutch and not understanding their English commands.

2. Sojourner Truth ran away with her infant daughter.

In 1827, Truth and her infant daughter fled to a nearby abolitionist family's home, but she had to leave her other children behind. The abolitionist couple bought her freedom for $20 and helped her get on her feet.

3. Sojourner Truth was the first Black woman to successfully bring a lawsuit against a white man.

If you paid attention to the February 1, 2019, Google Doodle, you may have noticed there a courthouse in the background. It references the time Truth sued a slaveholder for illegally selling her 5-year-old son, Peter, after the New York Anti-Slavery Law had passed. The legal battle lasted months, but she won her son back.

4. Sojourner Truth became a preacher.

Once she was freed, Truth moved to New York City and started working for a local minister. She became a powerful speaker, preaching about faith, women's rights, and the abolition of slavery. She eventually changed her name to Sojourner Truth, explaining that the holy spirit called upon her to speak the truth. In 1851, she delivered her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at a women's convention in Akron, Ohio. The text of that speech is debated, but in one version she reportedly declared, "I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man."

5. Sojourner truth met Abraham Lincoln.

Truth met and worked with plenty of well-known activists in her day, including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. Most famously, though, her efforts to recruit Black Civil War soldiers put her on Abraham Lincoln's radar. She received an invitation to the White House in 1864, during which time President Lincoln showed her a Bible that had been given to him by Black residents of Baltimore.

6. Sojourner Truth was slated to appear on the $10 bill.

In 2016, the U.S. Treasury announced it would unveil new currency designs in 2020 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Sojourner Truth was selected as one of five women to be incorporated on the back of the $10 bill, but in 2018, the new treasury department officials wouldn't commit to going through with the bill designs. The new currency designs were never released in 2020.

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6 Facts About Sojourner Truth, the 19th-Century Abolitionist and Feminist

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Sojourner Truth lived a remarkable life. After spending much of her adolescence and adulthood enslaved, Truth took destiny into her own hands at age 30. She fled to freedom, changed her name, and started life anew as a preacher, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate. Here are six facts you should know about this champion of equality.

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What made James Weldon Johnson so important to the Civil Rights Movement?

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What made James Weldon Johnson so important to the Civil Rights Movement?

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"In 1916, Johnson became field secretary for the NAACP, organizing mass demonstrations against Jim Crow Era laws, racism and violence. He also increased the NAACP's membership rolls in southern states, an action that would set the stage for the Civil Rights Movement decades later."- Femi Lewis

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James Weldon Johnson, an esteemed member of the Harlem Renaissance, was determined to help change lives for African-Americans through his work as a civil rights activist, writer and educator. In the preface of Johnson's autobiography, Along This Way, literary critic Carl Van Doren describes Johnson as "...an alchemist-he transformed baser metals into gold"(X). Throughout his career as a writer and an activist, Johnson consistently proved his ability to uplift and support African-Americans in their quest for equality.

Family at a Glance

Father: James Johnson Sr., - Headwaiter

Mother: Helen Louise Dillet - First female African-American teacher in Florida

Siblings: One sister and a brother, John Rosamond Johnson - Musician and songwriter

Wife: Grace Nail - New Yorker and daughter of wealthy African-American real estate developer

Early Life and Education

Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 17, 1871. At an early age, Johnson showed great interest in reading and music. He graduated from the Stanton School at the age of 16.

While attending Atlanta University, Johnson honed his skills as a public speaker, writer and educator. Johnson taught for two summers in a rural area of Georgia while attending college. These summer experiences helped Johnson realize how poverty and racism affected many African-Americans. Graduating in 1894 at the age of 23, Johnson returned to Jacksonville to become principal of the Stanton School.

Early Career: Educator, Publisher, and Lawyer

While working as a principal, Johnson established the Daily American, a newspaper dedicated to informing African-Americans in Jacksonville of various social and political issues of concern. However, the lack of editorial staff, as well as financial troubles, forced Johnson to stop publishing the newspaper.

Johnson continued in his role as principal of the Stanton School and expanded the institution's academic program to ninth and tenth grades. At the same time, Johnson began studying law. He passed the bar exam in 1897 and became the first African-American to be admitted to the Florida Bar since the Reconstruction.

Songwriter

While spending the summer of 1899 in New York City, Johnson began collaborating with his brother, Rosamond, to write music. The brothers sold their first song, "Louisiana Lize."

The brothers returned to Jacksonville and wrote their most famous song, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," in 1900. Originally written in celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, various African-American groups throughout the country found inspiration in the song's words and used it for special events. By 1915, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) proclaimed that "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was the Negro National Anthem.

The brothers followed their early songwriting successes with "Nobody's Lookin' but de Owl and de Moon" in 1901. By 1902, the brothers officially relocated to New York City and worked with fellow musician and songwriter, Bob Cole. The trio wrote songs such as "Under the Bamboo Tree" in 1902 and 1903's "Congo Love Song."

Diplomat, Writer and Activist

Johnson served as United States counsel to Venezuela from 1906 to 1912. During this time Johnson published his first novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. Johnson published the novel anonymously, but rereleased the novel in 1927 using his name.

Returning to the United States, Johnson became an editorial writer for the African-American newspaper, New York Age. Through his current affairs column, Johnson developed arguments for an end to racism and inequality.

In 1916, Johnson became field secretary for the NAACP, organizing mass demonstrations against Jim Crow Era laws, racism and violence. He also increased the NAACP's membership rolls in southern states, an action that would set the stage for the Civil Rights Movement decades later. Johnson retired from his daily duties with the NAACP in 1930 but remained an active member of the organization.

Throughout his career as a diplomat, journalist and civil rights activist, Johnson continued to use his creativity to explore various themes in African-American culture. In 1917, for instance, he published his first collection of poetry, Fifty Years and Other Poems.

In 1927, he published God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse.

Next, Johnson turned to nonfiction in 1930 with the publication of Black Manhattan, a history of African-American life in New York.

Finally, he published his autobiography, Along This Way, in 1933. The autobiography was the first personal narrative written by an African-American to be reviewed in The New York Times.

Harlem Renaissance Supporter and Anthologist

While working for the NAACP, Johnson realized that an artistic movement was blossoming in Harlem. Johnson published the anthology, The Book of American Negro Poetry, with an Essay on the Negro's Creative Genius in 1922, featuring work by writers such as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes and Claude McKay.

To document the importance of African-American music, Johnson worked with his brother to edit anthologies such as The Book of American Negro Spirituals in 1925 and The Second Book of Negro Spirituals in 1926.

Johnson died on June 26, 1938, in Maine, when a train struck his car.

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James Weldon Johnson: Distinguished Writer and Civil Rights Activist

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James Weldon Johnson, an esteemed member of the Harlem Renaissance, was determined to help change lives for African-Americans through his work as a civil rights activist, writer and educator. In the preface of Johnson's autobiography, Along This Way, literary critic Carl Van Doren describes Johnson as "...an alchemist-he transformed baser metals into gold"(X).

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Phillis Wheatley: The First Published African-American Poet | Black Patriots | History

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The First Published African American Poet Background 

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The First Published African American Poet Background 

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Though it is short it give a little insight at both only the life of Phillis Wheatley, but her contribution to Black literature in America.

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Phillis Wheatley: The First Published African-American Poet | Black Patriots | History

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June Jordan in relation to Phillis Wheatley

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June Jordan in relation to Phillis Wheatley

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"To be worked day up to nightfall: to be three-fifths of a human being at best: to be this valuable/this hated thing among strangers who purchased your life and then cursed it unceasingly: to be a slave: to be a slave." Slaves whether marked or unaccounted for were only usable in that sense.

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What impact did Phillis Wheatley have on the world?

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What impact did Phillis Wheatley have on the world?

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"In addition to making an important contribution to American literature, Wheatley's literary and artistic talents helped show that African Americans were equally capable, creative, intelligent human beings who benefited from an education. In part, this helped the cause of the abolition movement"- Debra Michals

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Phillis Wheatley." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Phillis Wheatley." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/phillis-wheatley.

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Despite spending much of her life enslaved, Phillis Wheatley was the first African American woman to publish a book of poems.

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I liked his poem Art vs. Trade and decided to find more their poems and read those too. I hope y'all like them as much as I did.

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James Weldon Johnson Poems - Poems of James Weldon Johnson - Poem Hunter

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Poem Hunter all poems of by James Weldon Johnson poems. 63 poems of James Weldon Johnson. The Creation, Go Down, Death, Lift Every Voice And Sing

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"In this resemblance to my former happy state I passed about two months; and I now began to think I was to be adopted into the family, and was beginning to be reconciled to my situation, and to forget by degrees my misfortunes, when all at once the delusion vanished; for, without the least previous knowledge." In todays passage reading we discussed several parts from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself . I enjoyed the discussion because it was essentially a blast from the past showing even now we are experiencing different levels of successes'.

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https://youtu.be/NDYCPUXFemI
12 Years a Slave is one of the best movies you'll ever watch. Here's a scene from the movie with Benedict Cumberbatch.

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The passages seen in this video is probably not in the new, updated bibles today, but this was a sad truth of how they justify slavery. By saying it was God's will for them to slaves and nothing more. This was also a scene from 12 Years a Slave.

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Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African

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"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs

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“Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” Reenactment

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“Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” Reenactment

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Though it's only one of the chapters, I feel the acting was terrific and a glimpse of how Harriet Jacobs would express her story.

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"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs

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This is an image of Solomon Northup’s maker on Esplanade Ave. where he was held after his capture before being sold into slavery in the 1840s.

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Of every narrative/excerpt/passages we read this semester James Olney had one of the most interesting reads. I enjoyed the text, it really made me get a sense and feel for the text on a more mental level. I enjoy most reads but specifically had me thinking.

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Harriet Jacobs was a former slave who penned an autobiography detailing her escape from an oppressive master who made sexual advances towards her. Jacobs became a darling of the anti-slavery movement with the publication of her book, Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl, helping other slaves by way of her celebrity.

Jacobs was born into slavery in Edenton, N.C. in 1813. Jacobs wrote in her book that the first six years of her life, she didn't realize she was owned. After the death of her owner, she was given to to a girl too young to be a master and fell under the rule of the girl's father, Dr. James Norcom, at age 12. When Jacobs turned 15, Norcom pursued her sexually though she rebuffed him at every turn.

Norcom's wife was well aware of her husband's insidious actions. He built a cottage four miles away just for Jacobs. She wanted to marry a free Black man but was refused, and instead got pregnant by an unmarried white lawyer. Jacobs thought this meant that Norcom would sell her but he was relentless in his pursuit and even took ownership of her two children.

In the summer of 1835, Jacobs learned that Norcom was going to make her children work as slaves and that motivated her escape. With the help of neighbors both Black and white, she lived for a time in her grandmother's vermin-infested attack. For seven years, Jacobs was a fugitive, separated from her children.

In 1842, she finally boarded a boat and left North Carolina for Philadelphia and then took a train to New York. She was later reunited with her daughter and began working with abolitionists who were associated with Frederick Douglass' paper, The North Star. She eventually purchased her freedom after years as a fugitive, and was convinced by friends to write about her trials.

In 1853, Jacobs began writing anonymous letters to the N ew York Tribune detailing her journey. In the letters, she broached the uncomfortable subject of sexual harassment and what mothers needed to do to protect their children from sexual predators.

In 1860, a year before the start of the Civil War, her memoir was finally published making Jacobs a global figure as the anti-slavery movement began to flourish. She used her fame and money to help other refugee slaves but the book fell into obscurity.

After her death, the book was reprinted twice in 1973 and 1987, becoming an important account of what fugitive female slaves faced. By some historic accounts, Jacobs is considered the first person to create such a narrative.
READ MORE STORIES ON BLACKAMERICAWEB.COM: HEAD TO THE BLACKAMERICAWEB.COM HOMEPAGE

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Little Known Black History Fact: Harriet Jacobs

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Harriet Jacobs was a former slave who penned an autobiography detailing her escape from an oppressive master who made sexual advances towards her. Jacobs became a darling of the anti-slavery movement with the publication of her book, Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl, helping other slaves by way of her celebrity.

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How Britain Glossed Over Their Role In Slavery

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How Britain Glossed Over Their Role In Slavery

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The video is long but it explains how Britain tries to cover up their part in slavery.

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The True History Of Britain's Horrifying Role In Slavery | Britain's Slave Trade | Timeline

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After the video Jasmine posted on the 1811 rebellion, I saw this one under it and found it interesting.

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I Was Born is an interesting text to read in contrast to Ida B. Wells' text. Ida focuses on a more logistic approach while Frederick expresses in notions of first hand horror.

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In chapter two of The Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass the part that stuck out for me was where he wrote, "Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their motherʹs release. He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he was a profane swearer. It was enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to hear him talk." Slave owners had a very harsh manner. Nothing loving, over the course of the chapters the master gets more violent. Owning over 1,000 slaves yet still needing and wanting that power factor. It just shows how sick, disgusting, and wicked their mindsets were.

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Freedom or Death: The Louisiana Slave Revolt of 1811

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I did not know about this revolt until my junior  year Of high school. Though it's not surprising, it shows how American education bypassed slavery as a part of American history.

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Freedom or Death: The Louisiana Slave Revolt of 1811

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In class we talked briefly about Nat Turner (I am a big fan of his work). Nat Turner was a slave who rallied 60 slaves together in rebellion. Turner led the nation's first ever open slave rebellion. His rebellion led to the killing of 60 white people (documented). In response, white people gathered and killed 200 black people in retaliation. Turner's rebellion was sort of a massacre. Turner was able to escape but he was found and hung along with 15 other rebel slaves.
This is the interesting part to me:
After the hanging of Nat Turner's body, the whites then dismembered him and used his body for various things. It was said that his hair was cut and stuffed into things like chairs and sofas. His skin was stripped and used for purses and lamp shades. His bones were distributed as souvenirs. The grease of his flesh was used to make oils, butters, and soaps.
Turner's rebellion was obviously a threat to the structures of America at that time, which is why they used Turner's body as an example to instill fear into the slaves. These souvenirs are still in circulation today, and they are passed down in Southern families. Here is a link that talks about it more in detail
:
https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-xpm-19980902-1998-09-02-9809020063-story.html

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13 Incredible Facts About Frederick Douglass

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13 Incredible Facts About Frederick Douglass

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Some interesting facts on Frederick Douglass

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13 Incredible Facts About Frederick Douglass

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The list of Frederick Douglass’s accomplishments is astonishing.

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Several times in class Dr. Morrison has mentioned how the Reconstruction period is a very important point in time for African-Americans and that it should be expounded upon way more. Well, I definitely agree and upon some quick research, I learned that New Orleans was super lit during this period. It is said that out city had some of the fastest growth in the nation during this time. In the nineteenth century, a lot of Black people were able to prosper in New Orleans. Thomy Lafon, who was a man born into a free family, became a very successful business owner during this time and his business made him the richest Black person in the United States.
Education wise, New Orleans made great progress with opening up institutions to educate our people. Several HBCU's were founded such as Leland University, Straight University, and New Orleans University. Leland closed in 1960, but then Straight and New Orleans university merged to create the school we all know today as Dillard University in 1934. In 1880, the stare proposed another HBCU, Southern University where it stayed until 1913. In 1914, Southern University moved to Baton Rouge. (So, the Original Southern University was founded HERE on our campus!). In 1956, the New Orleans campus of Southern was founded and became the school we all attend now, SUNO.

Here is a link to check out more of the cool things New Orleans has achieved during reconstruction. I would like if everyone added a comment to this thread so we could all learn and appreciate the African-American come up in our city during the Reconstruction period!

http://utno.la.aft.org/new-orleans-black-history/some-new-orleans-black-history-you-should-know

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“The Whitney Museum has commissioned Woodrow Nash to create 63 ceramic heads depicting the revolutionaries, which will be mounted on steel rods along a pond.”

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Dr. Morrison spoke of a slave revolt that I remembered learning about in class on Wednesday.

In January of 1811, the largest slave revolt in the US South occurred across what is now the East bank of territories near New Orleans (Jefferson, St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes). Of the 500 or so slaves, dozens were killed and beheaded. To make an example and mockery of these slaves, their heads were staked on poles. Many others were put to death.

A memorial is available to visit at the Whitney Museum (formerly the Whitney Plantation) in Wallace, LA. (Less than an hour away from New Orleans, just outside of Edgar, LA). Situated on River Rd., this plantation was founded by the German Heidel (Haydel) family and was known for indigo and sugar.

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Its crazy to think that not only could you not have your mind/sanity, but your religion and beliefs were imposed upon. Being conflicted as to should I worship and be convicted or not worship and conform by default. The ideology behind white supremacy and racism. Weird, could you imagine being in that situation?

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After reading Frederick Douglass' speech about whether African Americans should count July 4th as their independence day too; I remembered a holiday that only a small portion of people celebrate called Juneteenth.

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(The Root) - Though President Abraham Lincoln ended slavery with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, slaves in Texas had no knowledge of their freedom until two and a half years later. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston and declared the end of the Civil War, with General Granger reading aloud a special decree that ordered the freeing of some 200,000 slaves in the state.

Because of the delay, many African Americans started a tradition of celebrating the actual day slavery ended on June 19 (also known as Juneteenth). But for some, their cheers were short-lived. Thanks to the South's lucrative prison labor system and a deceptive practice called debt peonage, a kind of neo-slavery continued for some blacks long into the 1940s. The question then arises: When did African Americans really claim their freedom?

Chattel slavery in the classic sense ended with the Civil War's close and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Reconstruction followed, creating new opportunities for African Americans who owned and profited from their own land and dug into local politics.

"It's important not to skip over the first part of true freedom," says Douglas Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War ll and co-executive producer of the eponymous documentary film. "Public education as we know it today and the first property rights for women were instituted by African-American elected officials."

But the social achievements were fleeting.

"Put yourself in that place," Blackmon says. "You're enslaved, then liberated for 30 years, and then all of a sudden, a certain group of people begin a campaign to force you back into slavery."

Across the South, laws were instituted that stripped African Americans of their rights, making celebrations like Juneteenth a distant memory. A prison-labor paradigm developed. Jail owners profited from the hard labor of their black inmates who were incarcerated for petty crimes like vagrancy, which carried long sentences.

Prisons sold their workforce to nearby industrial companies to work as coal miners, for example, for as much as 9 dollars a month, and inmates were often worked to death. Elsewhere, whites fabricated debt owed by blacks, forcing them into peonage and trading years of free work for their freedom, a practice that spread across the Bible Belt.

But in 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved against that notion. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II by Japanese troops, Roosevelt signed Circular No. 3591 (pdf), giving teeth to the Anti-Peonage Law of 1867, which criminalized the practice. Dispatching a federal investigation, Roosevelt's team prosecuted guilty whites and effectively ended peonage in 1942.

However, African-American second-class citizenship has reappeared as a result of the war on drugs and draconian laws created during the 1980s. As civil rights litigator and author Michelle Alexander points out in her recent book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, the subjugation of African Americans through criminalization continues through the prison industrial complex.

"Racial caste is alive and well in America," Alexander wrote in the Huffington Post. "Here are a few facts ... There are more African Americans under correctional control today - in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. As of 2004, more African-American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race."

But Blackmon explains that the American economy doesn't rely on prison labor for major financial gain the way the New South did. For that reason, he is hopeful that the prison industrial complex won't evolve into a form of modern-day slavery.

"As the crime rates have dramatically dropped in the last decade, people have begun to feel less threatened," Blackmon offers. "Now they can open their eyes and say, 'Why are these young men who really didn't do much of anything in jail?' "
Hillary Crosley is the New York bureau chief of Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. The Root.

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When Were Blacks Truly Freed From Slavery?

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(The Root) - Though President Abraham Lincoln ended slavery with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, slaves in Texas had no knowledge of their freedom until two and a half years later.

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A national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York and became famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings.

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I love a spoken word session but this one takes the cake!

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I love a spoken word session but this one takes the cake!

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https://www.instagram.com/tv/CUldjMngrKb/?utm_medium=copy_link

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The rarely-told story of how civil rights icon W.E.B. Du Bois became a Ghanaian at age 93

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The rarely-told story of how civil rights icon W.E.B. Du Bois became a Ghanaian at age 93

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I thought this was a interesting read.

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W.E.B. Du Bois. Photo Credit: Jacobinmag.com

What would make a world-famous African-American social scientist, civil rights activist and historian choose to live in 1960s Ghana at the ripe old age of 93?

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois is one of those historical figures who are so widely known that it is easy for individuals to presume there is nothing new about them.

It is a bit like how you think you know Lady Gaga's real name because you know almost all the songs.

W.E.B. Du Bois eventually becoming and dying a Ghanaian is one of the least told stories about the man, partly because it came at the tail end of his life.

Another reason for this murmured period of Du Bois' life might be because he did not successfully complete that task for which he moved to Ghana. Death, by way of old age, did not permit him.

In 1951, the US government seized the passport of Du Bois and other members of the civil rights struggle as well as the Communist Party.

That year, the scholar had turned 83, married his second wife and tried to mobilise funds to support Africans fighting for independence from European colonialists.

Du Bois had also petitioned the US government, asking it not to embark on a path of proliferating nuclear weapons. As history has made abundantly clear, the US government, after World War 2 at least, has never been pleased with people who asked it to calm down on wars and warlike enthusiasm.

1951 was a time when US senator Joe McCarthy had effectively convinced many that there were enemies within America acting on the whims of the Soviet government. Du Bois was branded un-American and accused of being a spy.

Du Bois was arraigned before a court but acquitted as there was a lack of evidence to convict him.

Writing for The Boston Review in 2017, Andrew Lanham said of Du Bois after the trial: "... The trial and the publicity around it ruined his career. He was left scrabbling to earn enough money just to buy groceries."

Things went downhill after that. He was illegally prevented from going to Canada in 1952, and he and others were given back their passports only in 1958.

America had taken exception to the legitimate dissident of a man and he paid dearly for it.

But Du Bois suffered in a different way than others such as fellow renegade and film writer, Dalton Trumbo. They were both suspected of being Soviet agents, but after the storm, Trumbo arguably got his life back.

Du Bois never got back on his feet, and it is not out of the bounds of reason to say he suffered more because of the colour of his skin.

White people had decided by way of war, not moral conviction, that black people deserved better than to be slaves. This was supposed to be progress.

It reminds one of what Du Bois himself spoke of progress in The Souls of Black Folk: "[I]n its place stood Progress; and Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly."

In 1960, Du Bois visited Ghana after failing to honour an invitation to celebrate the country's independence in 1957. Later in 1960, he would visit Nigeria too.

But in 1961, he was convinced by Ghana's president, Kwame Nkrumah, to move to Ghana and embark on a dream intellectual quest. Du Bois long wanted to compile an encyclopedia on Africa and Nkrumah had the means to make it possible.

The two men shared more than a liking for Africa. Du Bois and Nkrumah were self-described leftists focused on the threats white supremacy and imperialism held for people of African descent.

Du Bois also moved because largely, there was not much left for him Stateside.

So with his wife, Lola Shirley, Du Bois settled in Accra. Although he could not finish the encyclopedia, his intentions were clear.

Henry Louis Gates Jr notes that Du Bois wanted to write a scientific and comprehensive collection on African peoples, cultures and environments. The idea was to challenge the racist scholarship that had emerged from the European enlightenment period.

On how much Du Bois gave to the work, Dr. Nkrumah would in 1964 tell an editorial team which continued the project at the University of Ghana: " Dr. Du Bois was happy to come to Ghana in the very evening of his life to embark upon this task; he took Ghanaian citizenship, and immediately plunged headlong into the stupendous work of setting out the general aims of this project and securing the interest and support of eminent scholars throughout Africa for its realisation. To him, this was an exciting state of affairs to produce such an Encyclopaedia".

Du Bois himself did not renounce his American citizenship. The US government simply refused to renew his passport after 1961, effectively leaving him stateless while in Ghana.

Du Bois accepted an offer of Ghanaian citizenship and in 1962, wrote about what Ghana meant to him in the poem, Freedomways:

"I lifted up mine eyes to Ghana

And swept the hills with high Hosanna;

Above the sun my sight took flight

Till from that pinnacle of light

I saw dropped down this earth of crimson, green and gold

Roaring with color, drums and song."

Today, the Encyclopedia Africana, as Du Bois chose to call his dream, is an actuality with the most recent edition publication coming in 2005.

He was buried in Ghana after his death at 95. And this seems only right; Du Bois' was a soul longing for a home that wanted him.

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The rarely-told story of how civil rights icon W.E.B. Du Bois became a Ghanaian at age 93

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What would make a world-famous African-American social scientist, civil rights activist and historian choose to live in 1960s Ghana at the ripe old age of 93? William Edward Burghardt Du Bois is one of those historical figures who are so widely known that it is easy for individuals to presume there is nothing new about...

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Todays class has put a lot of mixed thoughts and emotions on my mind. It was cool to delve a bit deeper, also to explore a females perspective on how black folk were mistreated and misrepresented. Enjoyed the discussion, interested in reading and contrasting between these writers as we carry on the discussion.

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You are now the manager of this memorial.
Thanks for helping with Find a Grave!

Javascript required: We're sorry, but Find a Grave doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. You will need to enable Javascript by changing your browser settings. Learn how to enable it.

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Victor L Estopinal Sr. (1847-1893) - Find A Grave...

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You are now the manager of this memorial. Thanks for helping with Find a Grave! Javascript required: We're sorry, but Find a Grave doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. You will need to enable Javascript by changing your browser settings. Learn how to enable it.

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September 17, 1893
New Orleans, Louisiana
Three men are lynched and another two are flogged because they were related to an accused murderer

The 3 lynched and hanged men were brothers of Roselius Julian who was accused of murdering Judge Victor Estopinal the week before. Roselius had been on trial for beating his wife and, during his trial, he shot the Judge twice in the back after the Judge allegedly insulted Roselius' wife.

The Judge turned and charged at Roselius only to be shot a third time. Roselius' wife walked in as he stood over the Judge firing a fourth shot into the Judge's heart. Roselius escaped the scene and was never found. A mob bent on vigilante justice searched the swamps hoping to find him and burn him alive, and when he could not be found they turned their attention to his family.

The other 3 Julian brothers had been arrested on suspicion of being accessories to the murder. Two of their cousins were also in jail for an undisclosed crime that may or may not have been associated with the Judge's murder.

In the late night of September 16 or the early hours of September 17, the brothers were pulled from their cells by a lynch mob. Two were hanged in a grove while the third was hanged in Camp Parapet. Their cousins were stripped naked, flogged with blacksnake whips until their backs were bloody, and released into the woods with a threat to leave the parish in 20 minutes. I could find no evidence of any of the lynch mob being arrested for the murders.

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Family lynched in place of runaway murderer

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September 17, 1893 New Orleans, Louisiana Three men are lynched and another two are flogged because they were related to an accused murderer The 3 lynched and hanged men were brothers of Roselius Julian who was accused of murdering Judge Victor Estopinal the week before. Roselius had been on trial for beating his wife and,...

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Billie Holiday - "Strange Fruit" Live 1959 [Reelin' In The Years Archives]

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“Strange Fruit” was an anti-lynching song recorded by Billie Holiday. The song lyrics compare the wrongful hanging of African Americans to fruit hanging from a tree. The song echoes many of the same sentiments as Ida B. Wells’ “The Red Report”. The gruesome horror of lynching black people in America can be observed through the lyrics of this song:
Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

The makings of a disgusting, yet true reality. This is America. This is our home. Built on the backs of our ancestors. Yet for all these years, we still feel unheard.

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Billie Holiday - "Strange Fruit" Live 1959 [Reelin' In The Years Archives]

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I thought this was interesting and some more information on Ida B. Wells.

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https://www.instagram.com/tv/CULUIX1qJ04/?utm_medium=copy_link

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So far I have went through and read some of the posts, forums, and heard some of the videos. I'm glad to have joined, I just have to get acclimated with this. Great posts guys!

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Melvin Van Peebles was a filmmaker, actor, writer and composer. Best known for his work in film of the 70s. One of his films, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, is credited with the creation of Blaxploitation film. These films became a topic of great debate amongst the film community and the black community for their portrayal of black individuals and the stereotypes that were found in literature about black people at the time. Although this is literature beyond our semester’s range, the status of race relations in America was in great turmoil as it was in some of our readings.

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In class, we have mentioned several times about how slaves used to rely on music and spirituality to tie themselves to the hope of  being freed people. In "Up from Slavery", Booker T. Washington mentioned the eerie silence that haunted the slave quarters once the mention of freedom was learned by the slaves. He even talks about how some slaves went back to the plantation after slavery. In modern times, we find it crazy that people would chose to work for their masters instead of choosing freedom. Have you ever considered that the slaves were conditioned to love their masters and never leave the plantation? Upon researching, I found that a doctor by the name of Samuel A. Cartwright came up with a name for slaves who desired freedom from their masters or the plantation. Drapetomania is the 'illness' that this doctor came up with and diagnosed slaved with that had the spirit of rebellion or free will. The work of this doctor was published in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal in 1851. Here is en excerpt from his paper titled "Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race":

"Drapetomania is from draptise. A runaway slave is mania mad or crazy. It is unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptoms be absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers. In noticing a disease that, therefore, is hitherto classed among the long list of maladies that man is subject to, it was necessary to have a new term to express it. The cause in most cases that induces the Negro to run away from service is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation, and much more curable as a general rule. With the advantages of proper medical advice strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented, although the slaves are located on the borders of a free state within a stone's throw of abolitionists."

I thought the concept of this 'illness' was interesting. Here is an article that can explain the concept way better than I can: https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2005/november.htm

Also, if you have time, follow the link in the article concerning medical racism. I think some of the issues are concerning even today.

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Question

What is your opinion of drapetomania, the disease that made slaves run away from plantations?
-- Claudia Horn, Parsippany, New Jersey
Answer

In May, 1851, Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, a Louisiana physician, published a paper entitled, "Report On The Diseases and Physical Peculiarities Of The Negro race." The paper appeared in The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, a reputable scholarly publication. Cartwright claimed to have discovered two new diseases peculiar to Blacks that he believed justified enslavement as a therapeutic necessity for the slaves and as a medical and moral responsibility for their White masters. He claimed that Blacks who fled slavery suffered from drapetomania. In his words:

"Drapetomania is from draptise. A runaway slave is mania mad or crazy. It is unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptoms be absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers. In noticing a disease that, therefore, is hitherto classed among the long list of maladies that man is subject to, it was necessary to have a new term to express it. The cause in most cases that induces the Negro to run away from service is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation, and much more curable as a general rule. With the advantages of proper medical advice strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented, although the slaves are located on the borders of a free state within a stone's throw of abolitionists."

It was common in the 1840s and 1850s for proslavery advocates to claim that Blacks benefited from being enslaved to Whites. For Cartwright, and other proslavery defenders, any Black slave who tried to escape must be "crazy." The "uncontrollable urge" to run away was a symptom of the mental disorder. Later, Cartwright would argue that drapetomania could be prevented by "beating the devil out of them." Amputation of the toes was also suggested.

Cartwright also described another mental disorder, Dysaethesia Aethiopica, to explain the apparent lack of work ethic exhibited by many slaves. The diagnosable symptoms included disobedience, insolence, and refusing to work -- and physical lesions. What treatment did Cartwright suggest? "Put the patient to some hard kind of work in the open air and sunshine," under the watchful eye of a White man.

What is my opinion of Drapetomania and Dysaethesia Aethiopica? They were examples of scientific racism: racist propaganda masquerading as objective scientific inquiry. The desire for freedom is not pathology; the unwillingness to work for a slaver is not a disease. The goal of the scientific racist was -- and remains -- the defense of a racial hierarchy. Cartwright was, unfortunately, not the last scholar to use science -- or more correctly, pseudoscience -- to rationalize or justify the subordination of Africans and Americans of African descent. In 1797, for example, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the "father" of American psychiatry, declared that the dark skin of Blacks was caused by a rare, congenital disease called Negritude, which derived from leprosy. The only cure was to turn the skin white. The 19th and 20th Centuries found many White scientists -- craniologists, phrenologists, evolutionists, geneticists, and others -- arguing that dark-skinned peoples were inherently, hence immutably, inferior to light-skinned peoples intellectually, morally, socially, and culturally. American and European scientists have long histories of using scientific methods to intellectualize a racial hierarchy that had Whites at the top, Yellows in the middle, and Reds, Browns, and Blacks at the bottom.

To better understand the history of scientific racism, please read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism.

November 2005 response by

David Pilgrim
Curator
Jim Crow Museum

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Drapetomania - 2005 - Question of the Month - Jim Crow Museum - Ferris State University

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What is your opinion of drapetomania, the disease that made slaves run away from plantations? -- Claudia Horn, Parsippany, New Jersey In May, 1851, Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, a Louisiana physician, published a paper entitled, "Report On The Diseases and Physical Peculiarities Of The Negro race."

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https://youtu.be/sv42AUNgPZY
I think these pretty much sum up the class discussion we had today.

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The Start of Easily Combing out African American Hair

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The Start of Easily Combing out African American Hair

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The hot comb, something that most African Americans use to help straighten out thier hair. But not many people though that a Black woman came up with the idea of a hot comb and was the first to use it in someone's hair. An invention that is still used today was invented by the woman in the picture.

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Though it is lengthy I thought it was a interesting. Our discussion of double consciousness made me wonder. How can a black leader establish themselves political in white American and the black community? Is there a way for them to be in both worlds?

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In today's meeting the hot comb was mentioned, and that reminded me of a video I watched for one of the African American Studies classes I took. The video is kind of long, but in it you would learn how Africans, now African Americans, combed their hair before slavery and during slavery.

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In our class discussion Wednesday, rebellions that happened in some southern states were mentioned. So today while watching Crash Course videos, I came across this.

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The Louisiana Rebellion of 1811: Crash Course Black American History #12

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Many of our class discussions have led me back to this lecture by the great Dr. John Henrik Clarke, who devoted his life to studies and accurate preservation of African studies. Here he explains how the introduction of alien ideals and mindsets into Africa was never meant with good intention.

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DR  JOHN HENRIK CLARKE   YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS FULL

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Du Bois at home in New York City, ca. 1948

Poetry, you know, is infinite labor.
W. E. B. Du Bois, 1952 correspondence

From Great Barrington to Ghana, Du Bois penned poems that spoke of his own experience, the time he was living in, and injustices at home and abroad. He also supported younger writers and poets, including Jessie Redmon Fauset and Langston Hughes.

30 Poems from the W. E. B. Du Bois Papers
To celebrate National Poetry Month, we compiled 30 poems from the Du Bois Papers in collaboration with the Special Collections and University Archives. The featured poems include many written by Du Bois himself, both published and unpublished, as well as several poems penned by others and published with Du Bois's support. Each of these is available to view digitally online, and the originals can be found in the Du Bois Library.

Reflections from our Community of Scholars
To accompany the featured poems, we asked our scholarly community to reflect on Du Bois the poet. Included below are reflections by scholars Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Sandra Staton-Taiwo, and Eliza Araújo.

This is a day when most people will not read poetry, which explains a good deal concerning our situation.
W. E. B. Du Bois, 1952 correspondence

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Poetry, you know, is infinite labor. W. E. B. Du Bois, 1952 correspondence From Great Barrington to Ghana, Du Bois penned poems that spoke of his own experience, the time he was living in, and injustices at home and abroad. He also supported younger writers and poets, including Jessie Redmon Fauset and Langston Hughes.

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In this video, a group of black kids recites one of LeRoi Jones aka Amiri Baraka's poems. Let's just say that they did amazing.

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Youth Spirit House Movers (AMAZING KIDS!) - LeRoi Jones aka Amiri Baraka - BED-STUY, BROOKLYN 1968

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Hi Jasmine,
I was introduced to Amiri Baraka and this wonderful poem in my African-American Humanities class. Baraka was a very important person to the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. I consider the Black Arts Movement to be a pivotal point in Black History because some amazing art has come out of this time period. The BAM inspired a lot of Black people to make art and write. A lot of our own traditions and culture as Black Americans came to life during this time period. We owe a lot to the Black Arts Movement!

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It is surprising that the African American History courses that I have had never discuss this movement! Basically the foundation for every African American organizations we have today.

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Niagara Conference participants made a barefooted pilgrimage from Storer College to Murphy Farm - then the temporary site of "John Brown's Fort - during the conference in 1906.
National Parks Conservation Association

Harvard educated William Edward Burghardt Du Bois committed himself to a bolder course, moving well beyond the calculated appeal for limited civil rights. He acted in 1905 by drafting a "Call" to a few select people. The Call had two purposes: "organized determination and aggressive action on the part of men who believed in Negro freedom and growth," and opposition to "present methods of strangling honest criticism."

Du Bois gathered a group of men representing every region of the country except the West. They hoped to meet in Buffalo, New York. When refused accommodation, the members migrated across the border to Canada. Twenty nine men met at the Erie Beach Hotel in Ontario from July 11-14, 1905. The Niagarites adopted a constitution and by-laws, established committees and wrote a "Declaration of Principles," outlining the future for African Americans. After three days, they returned across the border with a renewed sense of resolve in the struggle for freedom and equality.

Thirteen months later, from August 15-19, 1906, the Niagara Movement held its first public meeting in the United States on the campus of Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Harpers Ferry was symbolic for a number of reasons. First and foremost was the connection to John Brown. It was at Harpers Ferry in 1859 that Brown's raid against slavery struck a blow for freedom. Many felt it was John Brown who fired the first shot of the Civil War. By the latter part of the 19th century, John Brown's Fort had become a shrine and a symbol of freedom to African Americans, Union soldiers and the nation's abolitionists. Harpers Ferry was also the home of Storer College. Freewill Baptists opened Storer in 1867 as a mission school to educate former slaves. For 25 years Storer was the only school in West Virginia that offered African Americans an education beyond the primary level.

The Niagarites arrived in Harpers Ferry with passion in their hearts and high hopes that their voices would be heard and action would result. They were now more than 50 strong. Women also attended this historic gathering where, on August 17, 1906, they were granted full and equal membership to the organization.

The week was filled with many inspirational speeches, meetings, special addresses and commemorative ceremonies. Max Barber, editor of The Voice of the Negro said, "A more suitable place for the meeting of the Niagara Movement than Harpers Ferry would have been hard to find. I must confess that I had never yet felt as I felt in Harpers Ferry."

A highlight for those gathered was John Brown's Day. It was a day devoted to honoring the memory of John Brown. At 6 a.m. a silent pilgrimage began to John Brown's Fort. The members removed their shoes and socks as they tread upon the "hallowed ground" where the fort stood. The assemblage then marched single-file around the fort singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "John Brown's Body."

The inspirational morning was followed by an equally stirring afternoon. The Niagarites listened to Henrietta Leary Evans whose brother and nephew fought alongside Brown at Harpers Ferry, then Lewis Douglass, son of Frederick Douglass, and finally Reverdy C. Ransom, pastor of the Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston. Ransom's speech on John Brown was described as a "masterpiece." The late black scholar, Dr. Benjamin Quarles, called the address "the most stirring single episode in the life of the Niagara Movement."

The conference concluded on Sunday, August 19, with the reading of "An Address to the Country," penned by W.E.B. Du Bois. "We will not be satisfied to take one jot or title less than our full manhood rights. We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America. The battle we wage is not for ourselves alone but for all true Americans."

The Niagara Movement laid the cornerstone of the modern civil rights era. A new movement found a voice. The organization continued until 1911, when almost all of its members became the backbone of the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). There, the men and women of the Niagara Movement recommitted themselves to the ongoing call for justice and the struggle for equality.

With thunderous applause, the Harpers Ferry conference drew to a close. Years later recalling this conference, Du Bois referred to it as "...one of the greatest meetings that American Negroes ever held."

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Niagara Movement - Cornerstone of the Modern Civil Rights Movement (U.S. National Park Service)

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Harvard educated William Edward Burghardt Du Bois committed himself to a bolder course, moving well beyond the calculated appeal for limited civil rights. He acted in 1905 by drafting a "Call" to a few select people.

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1. Chronology

1885

Born Arthur Locke September 13 to Pliny Ishmael Locke and Mary Hawkins Locke in Philadelphia, PA.

1902

Graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia during that same year Locke was afflicted by rheumatic fever, which did permanent damage to his heart.

1904

Graduates with Bachelor of Arts degree from Philadelphia School of Pedagogy first in his class. Publishes "Moral Training in Elementary Schools," his first known publication.

Locke attends Harvard University, earning his second Bachelor of Arts degree and graduating magna cum laude. During his time at Harvard Locke was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society and studied under Josiah Royce, George Herbert Palmer, Hugo Münsterberg, and Ralph Barton Perry. Though he was a member of the faculty at the time Locke never actually studied with William James. While at Harvard Locke received the Bowdoin Prize in English for an essay composed on Tennyson entitled "The Prometheus Myth: A Study in Literary Tradition." It was while at Harvard that Locke first met Horace Kallen, who worked as an instructor.

In 1907 Locke was chosen as the first-ever African-American Rhodes Scholar. Even though he held a right to admittance to an Oxford college as a Rhodes Scholar he encountered some difficulty in this regard until he was finally admitted to Hertford College. While at Oxford Locke studied philosophy, Greek, and literature. It was while at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar that Locke first met and became friends with Pixley Ka Isasha Seme. In 1907 and 1908, Horace Kallen was also at Oxford as a Sheldon Scholar.

Following his studies at Oxford University and before returning to Harvard University to complete his PhD, Locke studied at the University of Berlin under the German sociologist Georg Simmel, where he was reacquainted with his Harvard professor Hugo Münsterberg. While at the University of Berlin Locke deepened his interest in value theory, particularly in the work of theorists such as Alexius Meinong, Christian Freiherr von Ehrenfels, and Frantz Brentano.

Appointed as assistant professor of English, philosophy, and education to Teachers College at Howard University.

1915

Gives a series of lectures to the Howard chapter of the NAACP on the scientific study of race and race relations entitled "Race Contacts and Interracial Relations: Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Race."

1917

Doctoral dissertation entitled The Problem of Classification in Theory of Value submitted to adviser Ralph Barton Perry September 17, 1917.

1918

Receives PhD in philosophy from Harvard University.

1925

Fired from Howard University following efforts to achieve pay equity between black and white faculty. December of that year Locke publishes The New Negro: An Interpretation perhaps his most famous work and earns himself recognition as a leading African-American literary critic and aesthete.

1928

Returns to Howard University following the appointment of Mordecai W. Johnson, the university's first African-American president.

1935

Reportedly it was in this year that Locke renewed his interest in writing philosophy as signaled by the publication of "Values and Imperatives," in American Philosophy, Today and Tomorrow edited by Horace M. Kallen and Sidney Hook.

1942

Publishes two edited volumes and an article: When Peoples Meet: A Study in Race and Culture edited with Bernhard J. Stern, Color: The Unfinished Business of Democracy special volume of Survey Graphic and "Who, and What, Is Negro?".

1943

Delivers a series of lectures entitled "The Contribution of the Negro to the Culture of the Americas," under the auspices of the Haitian Ministry of Public Instruction as the Exchange Professor for the Committee for Inter-American Artistic and Intellectual Relations.

1953

Retired from Howard University and moved to New York.

1954

Died June 9 in Mount Sinai Hospital, New York from persistent heart trouble.

2. Axiology/Value Theory

Locke's seminal essay in value theory, "Values and Imperatives" is as ambitious in its aims as it is pioneering. In it Locke states what he takes to be the central problem for axiology; details the reasons for the failure of American philosophy, particularly pragmatism, to make anything more than a minimal contribution to the development of the philosophical study of values; argues that values are primarily rooted in human attitudes; and provides an elaborate theoretical account of value formation and the functional role of values. A value, according to Locke, is "an emotionally mediated form of experience." Locke issues the following warning:

[i]n dethroning our absolutes, we must take care not to exile our imperatives, for after all, we live by them. We must realize more fully that values create these imperatives as well as the more formally super-imposed absolutes, and that norms guide our behavior as well as guide our reasoning. (VI 34)

Values are an important and necessary part of human experience. Values are an essential part of human existence as all human persons are inherently valuing beings. He writes:

[t]he common man, in both his individual and group behavior, perpetuates the problem in a very practical way. He sets up personal and private and group norms as standards and principles, and rightly or wrongly hypothesizes them as universals for all conditions, all times and all men. (VI 35)

Valuations of multiple kinds pervade nearly every aspect of our lives; our aesthetic, moral and religious evaluations and judgments.

On Locke's estimation,

the gravest problem of contemporary philosophy is how to ground some normative principle or criterion of objective validity for values without resort to dogmatism and absolutism on the intellectual plane, and without falling into their corollaries, on the plane of social behavior and action, of intolerance and mass coercion. (VI 36)

This is the central and driving question of Locke's axiology and as such it points to some of the crucial aspects of his overall philosophical view, but his theory of value specifically, and importantly his social and political philosophy. On the axiological plane the question is reformulated as whether or not the fundamental value modes automatically or dispositionally set up their end values prior to evaluative judgment. If value modes automatically or dispositionally set up their own ends, then there would exist a more direct approach to the apprehension of values. Moreover, if a connection can be discovered between certain psychological states and particular valuations then that might yield at least one avenue for an objective assessment of values and valuations. On the social and political plane-the practical plane where persons actually form valuations and act on them in myriad ways-the question is formulated in terms of how best to avoid a theory of value that is static, arbitrary and overly formulaic in ways that impede the theory's ability to provide an adequate understanding of value phenomena. To do this, a functional analysis of value norms is required, and normative principles must be the result of the immediate context of valuation. This we will see in the following sections is the major thrust of Locke's value pluralism and relativism.

2.1 Value-Feelings and Value-Modes

Locke begins by considering what he takes to be the most basic feature of values; their emotional character. He writes

the value-mode establishes for itself, directly through feeling, a qualitative category which, as discriminated by its appropriate feeling-quality, constitutes an emotionally mediated form of experience. (VI 38)

There is a particular feeling or feeling-quality associated with each value-mode. In fact, Locke contends that value-modes differ in virtue of differences in feeling-qualities. The value-mode, or perhaps better, the mode of valuing, refers to the qualitative character of a particular way of experiencing as mediated by a given emotion or attitude which Locke terms the feeling-quality. This has several important implications for the general theory of value: predicating a value to a subject depends on the feeling-quality associated with it; values are immediately recognized through an apprehension of their emotional quality; value-predicates are determined by the affective and volitional influence of the feeling-quality; and the imperatives of a given value are given immediately once the primary feeling-quality has been established.

Locke claims that there is a necessary connection between the feeling-quality and the value-mode with the former determining the later. The value-mode is normally established as the value is being apprehended. If this were not the case, the value-mode would be indeterminate even while its immediate quality is being felt. The basic categories of value are not rational: one cannot simply reason one's way to an understanding of them. In developing and articulating his axiology, Locke looks for the categories of value in the actual valuations of human beings. Rather than predetermining the categories of valuation and attempting to cram experiences of values into them, his theory begins with our concrete valuations and determines which if any features they have in common. It is then on the basis of the commonalities observed to obtain between particular experiences of values that they are classed together as members of the same class. Locke writes,

[f]lesh and blood values may not be as universal or objective as logical truth or schematized judgments, but they are not thereby deprived of some relative objectivity and universality of their own. The basic qualities of values...pertain to psychological categories. They are not grounded in types of realms of value, but are rooted in modes or kinds of valuing. (VI 38)

Locke is aware that it is not easy to demonstrate that the fundamental identity and unity of a value-mode depends on a feeling-quality. It may be that the position thus far articulated is merely hypothetical and speculative and requires an experimental methodology to prove it. Locke notes that the main objections to the position have been addresses by developments in the Gestalt psychology insofar as it has established an empirical basis for a comprehensive perceptual scheme functioning in recognition, comparison and choice. Further circumstantial evidence is offered for the position by the phenomenon of transvaluation (see section 2.3 below).

2.2 A Functional View of Values

On Locke's view, though the value-mode is determined immediately by the affective character of the value, this is not the final determination of the value. Even after the value-mode has been ascertained, the legitimacy of the value may still be in question, its place in the overall value scheme may be unclear, and particular aspects of the context of valuation may be uncertain. This leads Locke to conclude that the primary normative character of value norms is best sought in their functional role as stereotypes of feeling attitudes and as habitual impulses toward certain choices of actions. This would make them culturally specific, as well as temporally and geographically contingent as values can only be habituated and function with any degree of reliability in specific contexts. Moreover, as in the case of apprehending value-modes, the functionality of a given value is to be discovered experientially; rather than, postulated a priori. Values, then, would only become absolutes-should they become absolute at all-because reason and judgment secondarily re-enforce them as such. In their immediate character and quality values are affective, but they are further mediated by reason and judgment. Value predication depends on reason and judgment; but the predicates themselves are determined by the modal quality of the value. So, the judgment that an object is beautiful or ugly involves reason and judgment, but that the object is experienced as aesthetic depends on its affective apprehension; its being experienced aesthetically.

Commenting on his own preference for a functional theory of value Locke writes:

I confess at the outset to a preference for a functional theory of value, but my brief for a functional analysis of value norms is not completely parti pris, but is made rather because a functional approach, even should it lead to a non-functionalist theory of value, of necessity treats the value varieties in terms of their interrelationships, guaranteeing a comparative approach and a more realistic type of value analysis. (FVVU 81)

Moreover, a functional account of value has the theoretical advantages of being able to account for parallels between values, value interchangeability, and transvaluation. It is perhaps in taking a functional view of values and their associated imperatives where Locke's theory of value is most pragmatic. A functional view of values emphasizes the fact that values are an essential feature of our lived-experiences. At its most basic level value functionality aims to provide a way of understanding how particular values operate as coordinating mechanisms for individual and collective action. Some values have a specific social role; a societal aim or goal that they have been modified and adapted over time to help achieve or maintain. Such values are often codified in the customs and traditions of a culture and can sometimes remain ritualized long after their functional role is obsolete. The importance and usefulness of a functional view of values in Locke's social and political philosophy is further explored in section 3.2 below.

2.3 Transvaluation

Transvaluation is a central tenet of Locke's axiology. He writes:

[t]he further we investigate, the more we discover that there is no fixity of content to values, and the more we are bound, then, to infer that their identity as groups must rest on other elements. (VI 40)

The feeling-quality of a given value necessarily establishes the mode of valuation, i.e., the type of value in question (for example, aesthetic, religious, moral etc.) as well as the appropriate value-predicates. However, there is no necessary connection between a given object that serves as the content of a value and any particular emotional response to that object. One and the same object may affect the same person differently at different times, or may at the same time elicit from multiple people different emotional reactions. Transvaluation, then is most simply valuing something in a different way, which requires, at first, having an atypical emotional association with the object of value. There are multifarious potential causes of such transformations in one's affective responses to an object, and those causes can be immediate or unfold over time. "The changed feeling-attitude creates a new value" says Locke "and the type-form of the attitude brings with it its appropriate value category. These modes co-assert their own relevant norms; each sets up a categorical imperative of its own" (VI 41).

Locke treats transvaluation as inevitable; values are dependent upon social and cultural forces that are always in a state of flux and subject to myriad transformative influences at any given time, hence static values are implausible. Value transformation can take place on the individual level or on the level of widespread social or cultural values. Locke's hope is that this analysis will bring us closer to a practical understanding of value and the mechanism of valuation, which he hopes will bring us closer to understanding the grounds for both agreements among values and value conflict.

2.4 Taxonomy of Values

Locke offers a schematization of four traditional values-religious, moral, logical and aesthetic-to demonstrate how his theory classifies values into types according to their characteristic feeling-quality (see the table below) (VI 43). The schema also charts the value-predicates and the positive and negative poles associated with each value-type (type of value). Finally, the schema further divides each value according to its directionality; that is, whether the value is primarily introverted, functioning inwardly on the individual subject, or is extroverted, functioning externally in a social context.

Locke contends that his position has certain advantages over more logical theories of value. In particular, it is better able to explain certain value phenomena that are troubling for the latter type of theories. Phenomena such as transvaluation, value merging, and value conflict are able to be explained in terms of the basic doctrine that the mode of valuation is determined by the character of a subject's affective response in a value context. Locke claims that logical theories of value have historically had difficulty accounting for phenomena such as the aesthetic appraisal of a logical or mathematical proof; moral commitment to aesthetic production; or aesthetic appreciation of religious practice. In particular, logical theories have struggled to make sense of assigning predicates from one value-type to objects that are traditionally the content of a different value-type as when a proof in logic is deemed beautiful or ugly. Traditional theories treat such value predication as merely metaphorical or analogical.

Locke explains value conflict in terms of a more fundamental psychological incompatibility. Not only does the value-feeling determine the qualitative character of a given value, it also establishes broader categories of value by grouping values according to their common affective quality. As he puts it "[c]hange the attitude, and, irrespective of content, you change the value-type; the appropriate new predicates automatically follow" (VI 44).

Value attitudes can be psychologically incompatible, and where they are Locke contends that a hierarchical ranking of values will not resolve the incompatibility. In fact, he suggests that people resolve the incommensurability of their various value attitudes by shifting from one mode of valuation to another. This is why a functional account of values that determines the various value-modes on the basis of underlying psychological states is desirable. Such a theory is better able to achieve a reflective equilibrium with our actual value practices. All values have associated with them a set of imperatives. Locke does not have a great deal to say about how imperatives are formed. Presumably, imperatives are determined, at least in part, by the qualitative character of the value in question. People begin by forming a value-attitude based on one's initial affective response to the object of valuation. As a mediating form of experience a value supplies motivational drives toward acting and refraining from acting in certain ways. Values provide normative direction not only for cognition and psychological drives, but also for action. Imperatives are partially in place as soon as the affective quality of the value is apprehended.

3. Pluralism

Locke's philosophical worldview is pervaded by a concern for diversity. Locke takes pluralism in all its form-religious, cultural, value etc.-as a basic feature of the world. His primary focus then becomes one of understanding the multiplicity of ways in which peoples meet, and providing some normative guidance concerning how best to act when they do. Values organize, coordinate, mediate and direct experience. In so doing, they serve both a valuable epistemic as well as existential function. Values direct and guide our activity, but more than that they color the nature of our encounters with other persons, and frequently function as a source of conflict between individual persons and groups of human beings. The common mistake among valuers that leads to a "totalizing" of values as "absolutes" or "ultimates" is to forget that any given value encompasses only an aspect of reality and ought not to be treated as transcendent or reducible to that reality. This is a fundamental insight of Locke's philosophy of value as it is applied to social theory. And Locke believes that if he is correct in asserting that "[a]s derivative aspects of the same basic reality, value orders cannot reasonably become competitive and rival realities" that he will have provided the necessary theoretical foundation for a more latitudinarian exchange between diverse human collectives (VI 47). Locke's presentation of his pluralist position proceeds as a response to three obstacles or barriers to pluralism: absolutism, (counter) uniformitarianism, and arbitrary dogmatism. If individual valuers or value groups are able to avoid these three pitfalls, then either may possibly develop a pluralistic value orientation.

3.1 Three Barriers to Pluralism

The first barrier to pluralism is absolutism. Values and their associated imperatives are absolute when they are thought to apply to all human beings, at all times irrespective of social or historical conditions. This is because absolutist conceptions of values are derived from, and ultimately justified by something other than the lived-experiences of human beings, be it God, or human rationality. Whereas pluralism is intended to accommodate a wide array of contending values, absolutism countenances one, and only one set of values universally applicable to all human beings. Locke claims that "absolutism has come forward again in new and formidable guise," and he warns us to be on guard for "social and political forms of it, with their associated intellectual tyrannies of authoritarian dogmatism and uniformitarian universality" (PID 53). These newer forms of absolutism, Locke claimed, are the products of older ones. When values are held to be absolute there often results a tendency to discount the legitimacy of rival values. Pluralism avoids conceiving of values in absolutist terms. Setting various value conceptions on equal footing is the aim of Locke's pluralism.

Uniformitarianism, the second obstacle to pluralism, is the view that values ought to be uniform within a given community or group. The experiences of members of a given group are filtered through the same forms of mediation to produce value uniformity. Values are ascribed a single form for all members of a group; rather than allowing for a multiplicity of mediated experiences. Value uniformity can be achieved violently, coercively or peacefully, but in all instances it is an attempt to replace diversity with homogeneity. Locke suspects that it is the desire to defend one's own culture and to create consensus among competing value claims that is at the root of the quest for uniformity. Unfortunately, that motivation can easily lapse into an attempt to force one's own value system onto others without justification. Uniformitarianism is a refusal to accommodate the myriad value forms that are essential to pluralism.

Finally, Locke warns us to avoid the pitfalls of arbitrariness and dogmatism. Value commitments are arbitrary when one forms them-thereby rejecting viable alternatives-in the absence of any justification for choosing them over other available options. One holds her values dogmatically when she takes them to be indisputable and is closed-off to the possibility of taking a critical view of her value commitments that could possibly result in her altering or rejecting them.

3.2 Pluralism as a Functional Base

Locke describes pluralism as a functional base, one that can function as a foundation from which to achieve a rapprochement of conflicting values. Pluralism, as Locke envisions it, has the potential to create agreement among competing and conflicting values, through the recognition of common features of various values and value systems. A closer look at Locke's analysis of values; in particular, the three concepts of basic human values, basic equivalence, and functional constancy will illuminate what it means for pluralism to function in this way.

First, is the concept of basic human values, by which Locke means those values that are common to many, or all value systems; values such as belief in god, commitment to one's cultural community, respect for human life, etc. which though they may have multifarious manifestations, are in a more general way common to most, if not all groups. Of course, value communities differ, and no two value communities will be exactly alike, but there does exist substantial overlap of a subset of values across values communities. Basic human values then, are basic and human in virtue of their common expression in a plurality of value contexts and their pertaining to the lives of human beings, and not as a matter of their universal applicability across all of humanity.

The next two concepts-basic equivalence and functional constancy-are perhaps best understood as two sides of a distinction between formal and functional equivalence. Basic equivalence refers to a similarity of form and functional constancy refers to a similarity in function. Basic equivalence is a formal resemblance owing to a corresponding value-mode. It is a similarity in the type of value, or better, being particular values of the same type. This notion rests on drawing a distinction between the object of valuation and the way the object is valued. The object may differ where the value mode does not. As a consequence a single object can be valued multiple ways, and many different objects can be valued in the same way. Take for example the institution of marriage as the object of valuation. Marriage is valuable in least two senses, first, it may be valued as the religious union of a man and a woman, and secondly, the marriage ceremony itself could be valued as a ritualized aesthetic experience. In both cases one and the same phenomenon is the content of two different value modes. In the first instance, marriage is valued religiously; the characteristic quality of the value, its form, is spiritual. In the second instance, marriage could be valued because of the elegant décor, grandiose ceremony, and beautiful arrangements that characterize the event. The example goes to illustrate the fact that different ways of valuing can be applied to the same object by the same person or by different people. Valuation works the other way as well, that is, different objects can be valued the same way. As for example, a marriage, a baptism, or a christening can all be valued religiously or aesthetically. One can recognize a similarity in the form of competing values even though their objects may differ, or a difference in form where the object stays the same. Basic equivalence then speaks to an identity of form not of content. It is a conceptual tool that enables persons to recognize that their respective value expressions are species of the same genus. Locke speaks of the objective comparison of basic human values which leads one to think that his claim is that different groups may regard different sets of values as basic to human beings though these may not be identical, but rather, formally equivalent values.

The other side of the formal/functional equivalence distinction is the notion of functional constancy. By functional constancy is meant the ability of basic equivalent values to operate as stable features of value processes and activity within various value communities. Locke envisions that what will be found beneath potentially vast differences in content, and beyond a similarity of form, is a comparable utility of various values across contexts. Every value has an attendant function; a role that it plays within a given value community. Values that differ either in form or in content may still be equivalent as regards their function. These functional constants are discovered through comparison of fundamental values found across value groups.

Thus functional equivalence provides a constancy of two sorts: first, the function is constant within a given value community insofar as it plays the same role for different members of the same value group, and second, the function can be a common feature across value groups. Think here again of the example of marriage. Admittedly, there is a wide variety of particular manifestations of such a value, and there can be differences in the form as well as the content of such values. But it is still the case that such variation results in a similar function within a value community. Children are reared, networks of support are maintained, property is held in common and bequeathed to successive generations etc. and these social roles are served by a myriad of expressions of familial ties in the community. Moreover, family values function in this way across cultures. To be sure, there may not be an exact equivalence of function across value communities, or even within them for that matter, but to a large extent this equivalence of function is there to be observed. It may be the case that there exist social functions for a given value in one context that are absent in another: if so, there is no equivalence to be made. All values have a function, but as there is no necessary connection between a given value and a particular function, it does not follow from this that every value function can be found in every culture.

4. Relativism

Relativism, for Locke, begins as a systematic approach to the recognition of the sorts of value equivalence discussed earlier, and is then able to militate against the pernicious forms of valuing that often turn cultural exchanges into intractable problems. The view is termed relativist because it makes a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the values of a given culture dependent-at least in part-on that culture being viewed in relation to other cultures. Moreover, Locke claims that cultural relativism can serve as "a scientifically impartial interpreter of human values, and sometimes even as a referee and mediator among conflicting values" (CRIP 70).

4.1 The Principle of Cultural Equivalence

Relativism, on Locke's view, is not a negative skeptical position that is predicated upon the belief that one is unable to make a satisfactory determination about the relative worth of value communities. Instead, it is a positive and affirmative position concerning the relative worth of distinct value traditions and cultures. Locke formulates his relativism in terms of the three principles of cultural equivalence, cultural reciprocity, and cultural convertibility. He claims that the three principles are derivable from this larger relativist outlook and will enable "a more objective and scientific understanding of human cultures and...more reasonable control of their interrelationships" (CRIP 73).

The first of the three principles is:

The principle of cultural equivalence, under which we would more wisely press the search for functional similarity in our analyses and comparisons of human cultures; thus offsetting our traditional and excessive emphasis upon cultural differences. Such functional equivalences, which we might term 'culture-cognates' or 'culture-correlates,' discovered underneath deceptive but superficial institutional divergence, would provide objective but soundly neutral common denominators for intercultural understanding and cooperation. (CRIP 73)

The effect of the first principle is to lay bare the fact that the seemingly vast differences between cultures is more a matter of our selective preferences; that is, the habits of mind we have cultivated for being more keenly attuned to difference rather than similarity. The first stage of relativism, then, is to reorient our focus in favor of the similarity to be found across value communities. Cultural cognates and correlates are objective because they are discovered to be real features of multiple value systems. They are in an important sense "there" to be discovered both by internal and external observers of the value group. The reason that these value cognates count as neutral is that they do not, in virtue of their being objective, privilege any value-type or value-content over any other. At this stage they are taken as mere facts of the matter about the values that exist within communities.

4.2 The Principle of Cultural Reciprocity

The second principle of cultural relativism is:

The principle of cultural reciprocity, which, by a general recognition of the reciprocal character of all contacts between cultures and of the fact that all modern cultures are highly composite ones, would invalidate the lump estimating of cultures in terms of generalized, en bloc assumptions of superiority and inferiority, substituting scientific, point-by-point comparisons with their correspondingly limited, specific, and objectively verifiable superiorities or inferiorities. (CRIP 73)

This aspect of Locke's relativism requires a "beneficent neutrality between divergent positions" (CRIP 70-71). It begins by fostering a disposition toward cultural toleration in the hope that such toleration will lead to mutual respect, which would in turn serve as a foundation upon which to base reciprocal exchanges between cultures. In the most likely case, these initial exchanges will be centered around specific values that form narrowly defined communities of agreement. In the end, if cultural relativism is able to foster reciprocity between value communities to a sufficient degree, then cultural relativism may well establish a foundation of mutual understanding and appreciation to support active cooperation between value groups. The principle of cultural reciprocity restrains the inferences that we are able to make as a result of the principal of cultural equivalence in at least two ways: first, its emphasis on point-by-point comparisons limits the scope of the value cognates that are discovered, and second, it issues an injunction against identifying or connecting specific values with specific cultures or value communities. Relativism is to borrow from an idealized model of scientific practice; a point of view that does not prejudge the results of a given observation before it is carried out. Moreover, it points out that the discovery of cognates and correlates is not likely to be wholesale, but instead, specific and contextualized.

4.3 The Principle of Cultural Convertibility

Finally, we have the principle of cultural convertibility:

The principle of limited cultural convertibility, that, since culture elements, though widely interchangeable, are so separable, the institutional forms from their values and the values from their institutional forms, the organic selectivity and assimilative capacity of a borrowing culture becomes a limiting criterion for cultural exchange. Conversely, pressure acculturation and the mass transplanting of culture, the stock procedure of groups with traditions of culture 'superiority' and dominance, are counterindicated as against both the interests of cultural efficiency and the natural trends of culture selectivity. (CRIP 73)

All value-types are independent of any given value-content; any given value-type can be joined with any value-content. This fact of valuation is what grounds cross-cultural transformation. The extent to which cultures are modified by their interactions with other cultures, is in part a function of how stringently the cultures in question associate their own value-forms with specific value-content. At a higher level, Locke indicates that associations might even be made between a value and its institutional form, by which he seems to mean the manner in which the value is organized into the social structure of a value community. If specific values are correlated with particular institutional forms, a necessary connection may be assumed to exist between them where it does not.

5. Aesthetics

Locke is perhaps best known for his work in aesthetics, in particular, his role as both an intellectual purveyor of Negro art and literary critic. Locke managed to position himself at the forefront of one of the most significant and important artistic rebirths in American history. His seminal work, The New Negro, was ground-breaking in its presentation of Negro art as thoroughly self-expressive of the individual artist, and not as merely representative of aesthetic, cultural and social possibilities. Locke's publication of The New Negro was in many ways in direct defiance and contradiction of the black intellectual elite of his day, most notably W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as being the advance guard of the aesthetic sentiments of the average Negro of his day. There is evidence of his philosophical views, especially in the areas of axiology, culture, race and ethnicity throughout his writings on aesthetics. Major themes in Locke's aesthetics include: universal human appeal and the relationship of universal and particular; the transition from folk art to high art; the centrality of individual expressivity; and cross-cultural communicability through the aesthetic.

5.1 The New Negro

Prior to the period of individual expression characteristic of the Harlem Renaissance, Negro art in Locke's estimation had as its primary function representation of a Negro type that was socially acceptable and laudably ideal. The aim of much Negro art was to advance presentations of the Negro as civilized, cultured, and capable of making a worthwhile contribution to American society, or to portray blacks in America as a progressive people, needing only to be liberated from slavery or Jim Crow segregation to realize their true potential. In discharging this representative function, Negro art was consumed with the promulgation of stereotypes and counter-stereotypes. It had constantly to react against negative portrayals and stifling social pressures; to attempt to make out of Negro life and experience something worthy of respect, a fitting object of honor and emulation. As Locke put it,

for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being-a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be 'kept down,' or 'in his place,' or 'helped up,' to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden. (NN 3-4)

The primary consequence of this social environment on black aesthetics in the United States according to Locke was its Ghettoization. In dealing with this specialized subject matter of social uplift Negro aesthetics segregates itself from the broader American social context and fails to achieve universal human appeal. "The thinking Negro," by whom Locke seems to have Du Bois primarily in mind, "has been induced to share this same general attitude, to focus his attention on controversial issues, to see himself in the distorted perspective of a social problem" (NN 3-4).

Art at its best on Locke's view is not propaganda, and though there may be some initial phase in which art is forced to perform such a function that is not the ultimate goal. "Until recently," Locke comments "lacking self-understanding, we have been almost as much of a problem to ourselves as we still are to others." Yet as "the thinking few know" as that self-understanding is achieved and worked into artistic expression the result is "that in the reaction the vital inner grip of prejudice has been broken" (NN 4). This is the first significant change in the social environment that produces the "New Negro"; namely, the attitude of young Negro artist to racial segregation.

Another change in American society that had a profound impact on the aesthetic advancement of African-Americans at the time of Locke's publication of The New Negro was the Great Migration. One major consequence of "that shifting of the Negro population" was that it "made the Negro problem no longer exclusively or even predominantly Southern" (NN 5). Locke did not however regard the cause of the great migration as chiefly racial; that is, escape from the segregation of the South was not the major motivation behind the mass African-American exodus from the South to the North and Mid-West. Instead,

The tide of Negro migration, northward and city-ward, is not to be fully explained as a blind flood started by the demands of war industry coupled with the shutting off of foreign migration, or by the pressure of poor crops coupled with increased social terrorism in certain sections of the South and Southwest...The wash and rush of this human tide on the beach line of the northern city centers is to be explained primarily in terms of a new vision of opportunity, of social and economic freedom, of a spirit to seize, even in the face of an extortionate and heavy toll, a chance for the improvement of conditions. (NN 6)

The Great Migration brought with it a need for a plurality of social adjustments as the droves of African-Americans flooded into Northern cities. Principal among this was the realization that the Negro was

rapidly in process of class differentiation, [and] if it ever was warrantable to regard and treat the Negro en masse it is becoming with every day less possible, more unjust and more ridiculous. (NN 5-6)

Negro life in America according to Locke is comprised of many diverse elements. The plurality of groups that congregated in places like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and Harlem all with varying motivations and group specific aims constituted some of the largest concentrations of diverse segments of the Negro population. These circumstances coupled with the oppressive effects of prejudice forced myriad sectors of the African-American population to discover and interact with one another. Prior to that Locke claims that

it must be admitted that the American Negroes have been a race more in name than in fact, or to be exact, more in sentiment than in experience. The chief bond between them has been that of a common condition rather than a common consciousness; a problem in common rather than a life in common. (NN 6-7)

Locke explains that in part the artistic endeavors of the Negro have failed to achieve universal resonance because the Negro himself has been so poorly understood. He readily admits that "[i]t does not follow that if the Negro were better known, he would be better liked or better treated[,]" and goes on to note that despite this fact "mutual understanding is basic for any subsequent cooperation and adjustment" predicated upon, or in pursuit of an understanding of the universality of Negro experiences as expressed in art. Moreover,

effort towards this will at least have the effect of remedying in large part what has been the most unsatisfactory feature of our present stage of race relations in America, namely the fact that the more intelligent and representative elements of the two race groups have at so many points got quite out of vital touch with one another (NN 8-9)

And in addressing that crucial fact, such efforts may go a long way towards facilitating an appreciation of Negro art as expressive both of the peculiar racial, ethnic, and cultural experiences of African-Americans, and as expressive of ubiquitous aspects of human experience. It is a mere "fiction...that the life of the races is separate," and a dangerously divisive one at that, "[t]he fact is that they have touched too closely at the unfavorable and too lightly at the favorable levels" (NN 9). Hence, it is not simply a failure of contact, but a failure of the right sort of contact that accounts for the under appreciation of the aesthetic life of black peoples.

For his part, Locke argues, the "New Negro" in recognizing "the necessity for fuller, truer self-expression,...[and] the realization of the unwisdom of allowing discrimination to segregate him mentally, and a counter attitude to cramp and fetter his own living" has played a vital role in demolishing "the 'spite-wall' that the intellectuals built over the 'color-line[.]'" (NN, 9-10). Life for the Negro in the early 1920's was steadily progressing toward the ideals of American democracy. The Negro of the time was also characterized by a new vein; one around which there was a growing consensus primarily of feeling and attitude; rather than opinion or program. As Locke has it:

Up to the present one may adequately describe the Negro's 'inner objectives' as an attempt to repair a damaged group psychology and reshape a warped social perspective. Their realization has acquired a new mentality for the American Negro. And as it matures we begin to see its effects; at first, negative, iconoclastic, and then positive and constructive. In this new group psychology we note the lapse of sentimental appeal, then the development of a more positive self-respect and self-reliance; the repudiation of social dependence, and then the gradual recovery from hyper-sensitiveness and 'touchy' nerves, the repudiation of the double standard of judgment with its special philanthropic allowances and in the sturdier desire for objective and scientific appraisal; and finally the rise from social disillusionment to race pride, from the sense of social debt to the responsibilities of social contribution, and offsetting the necessary working commonsense acceptance of restricted conditions, the belief in ultimate esteem and recognition. Therefore, the Negro today wishes to be known for what he is, even in his faults and shortcomings, and scorns a craven and precarious survival at the price of seeming to be what he is not (NN 11).

Locke ends his exposition of what is characteristic of the New Negro with the observation that the reception of black aesthetic products is an experiment in democracy. As African-American art resists ghettoization and increasingly makes its presence felt in the American artistic mainstream it seeks to establish itself as a subset of American art; rather than, the totality of Negro American art. And since, according to Locke,

[d]emocracy itself is obstructed and stagnated to the extent that any of its channels are closed...the choice is not between one way for the Negro and another way for the rest, but between American institutions frustrated on the one hand and American ideals progressively fulfilled and realized on the other. (NN 12)

The North American Negro artist in being 'new' is a living instantiation of the fact that no culture, people, race, or society is a static one. Such entities are always in process of transformation, and always a composite of myriad cultural, ethnic, racial, and social influences. The emergence of the new is at once a presentation of what has been and an indication of what the future may hold. This is a deeply pragmatic current running through Locke's aesthetic philosophy. Locke is later critical of the Harlem Renaissance because it failed to sustain a cyclical process of rebirth. In the years following the height of the Harlem Renaissance he remarked later that that a new Negro must be born every decade or two.

5.2 The Young Negro

Locke explains that the aesthetic renaissance that took place in Harlem and elsewhere was primarily a movement of young artists. The youth, Locke claims, speak in distinctive overtones, and "out of a unique experience and with particular representativeness" (NN 47). The experiences of young American Negroes is uniquely representative because

[a]ll classes of people under social pressure are permeated with a common experience; they are emotionally welded as others cannot be. With them, even ordinary living has epic depth and lyric intensity, and this, their material handicap, is their spiritual advantage. (NN 47)

Here we find an interesting problem in Lockean exegesis: How is it that the aesthetic contribution is at once characterized by a disavowal of representativeness, while at the same time being uniquely representative? Locke goes on to note that

[r]acial expression as a conscious motive, it is true, is fading out of our latest art, but just as surely the age of truer, finer group expression is coming in-for race expression does not need to be deliberate to be vital. Indeed, at its best it never is. (NN 47)

Locke's resolution of the seeming paradox comes by way of recognizing that "[o]ur poets have now stopped speaking for the Negro[;]" the sort of representativeness characteristic of past aesthetic pursuits and instead now "speak as Negroes" (NN 48). The main difference being that "[w]here formally they spoke to others and tried to interpret," the experiences of African-Americans for white or other nonblack audiences "they now speak to their own and try to express." "They have" he notes "stopped posing, being nearer the attainment of poise" (NN 48). With this change in the mind of the Negro artist the aim of art is no longer the presentation of an ideal type, or an effective counter-stereotype; instead, it is the expression of the universal truth contained in the particularity of Negro experiences.

This is a major theme that runs throughout all of Locke's aesthetic philosophy; the idea that within a particular manifestation of human experience can be found something of universal human significance. Indeed, this is the quintessential marker of "high art" or "classical art". In the case of the young Negro artist Locke claims "[r]ace for them is but an idiom of experience, a sort of added enriching adventure and discipline, giving subtler overtones to life, making it more beautiful and interesting, even if more poignantly so. When viewed from this more objective attitude and "so experienced, it affords a deepening rather than narrowing of social vision" (NN 48).

The youth "constitute a new generation, not because of years only, but because of the new aesthetic and a new philosophy of life" (NN 49). Locke explicates this new aesthetic philosophy by way of comparison to "[t]he elder generation of Negro writers" who were resigned to expressing themselves in "cautious moralism and guarded idealizations" (NN 49). This generation of artists, with

the repercussions of prejudice...heavy on its heart...felt art must fight social battles and compensate social wrongs; "Be representative": put the better foot foremost, was the underlying mood. (NN 50)

This hampered both the individual expressivity of the older generation of artists as well as their ability to communicate cross culturally the truth of black experiences. The artist was not free to speak his heart or mind, but had to remain cognizant of the way he presented the Negro yet again. With the youth of the Harlem Renaissance there came a "newer motive," for the younger generation of American Negro artists the aim "in being racial is to be so purely for the sake of art." (NN 51) The new artist does not take folksy racial types to be emblematic of anything but the individual artist. Locke sees this manifested in the artist's ability to make of "the racial substance something technically distinctive," a method of giving expression to a specific type of experience that allows for full expression of that experience across cultural, racial, or ethnic boundaries. In this way techniques that exist as "an idiom of style may become a contribution to general resources of art"; (NN 51) available in the end, not only to those who created, cultivated and refined them, but to any artist who wished to deal with that particular idiom.

5.3 The Negro Spirituals

In Locke's estimation, the spirituals are the quintessential Negro contribution to American art and culture; manifesting as they do so much, not only about the North American Negro and his aesthetic and cultural heritage and evolution, but also in standing as a paragon of processes of aesthetic transition and development.

The spirituals are really the most characteristic product of the race genius as yet in America. But the very elements which make them uniquely expressive of the Negro make them at the same time deeply representative of the soil that produced them. Thus, as unique spiritual products of American life, they become nationally as well as racially characteristic. It may not be readily conceded now that the song of the Negro is America's folksong; but if the spirituals are what we think them to be, a classical folk expression, then this is their ultimate destiny. Already they give evidence of this classic quality. Through their immediate and compelling universality of appeal, through their untarnishable beauty, they seem assured of the immortality of those great folk expressions that survive not so much through being typical of a group or representative of a period as by virtue of being fundamentally and everlastingly human. (NN 199)

The best evidence, Locke seems to think, in support of the spirituals' claim to universality is that they have withstood the test of time. As an art form they have outlived not only the generations that produced them but the peculiar social environment that enlivened them. Beyond this the spirituals have survived

the contempt of the slave owners, the conventionalizations of formal religion, the repressions of Puritanism, the corruptions of sentimental balladry, and the neglect and disdain of second-generation respectability. (NN 199)

In short, they have successfully made the transition from folk art to formal music.

The spirituals at once exemplify all of the three major themes of Locke's aesthetic philosophy: they are expressive of the individuality of a given artist-think of the distinctiveness of Paul Robeson's baritone renderings of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"; they have universal human appeal; and they epitomize the process of transition from a folk art to high or classical art. "In its disingenuous simplicity, folk art is always despised and rejected at first; but generations after, it flowers again and transcends the level of its origin" (NN 199).

Negro folk music or spirituals contain the raw material for myriad new musical developments. That material was at the time of the publication of The New Negro to Locke's mind underdeveloped, but as Negro artists grew in sophistication and craft Locke saw the potential for them to complete the conversion of so fundamentally American and pedestrian an art form into an avenue for insight into some of the most deeply emotional aspects of humanity.

Locke credits Du Bois with being among the first to give the spirituals "a serious and proper social interpretation," with his chapter in The Souls of Black Folks on the Sorrow Songs. "But underneath the broken words, childish imagery, peasant simplicity, lies" Locke notes

as Dr. Du Bois pointed out, and epic intensity and a tragic profundity of emotional experience, for which the only historical analogy is the spiritual experience of the Jews and the only analogue, the Psalms. (NN 200)

But whatever they may lack in terms of poetic form, they more than compensate for in their ability to embody the religious mood. This North American Negro folk form is replete with the spirit of exaltation. The spirituals are remarkable for their ability to transcend the profound tragedy that gives birth to them and offer up a model of enduring hopefulness in this world or the next. "Their words are colloquial," Locke notes, being the products of unlettered folk "but their mood is epic" giving emotive expression to experiences that exemplify the possibilities of humanity at its best (NN 201). The spirituals "are primitive, but their emotional artistry is perfect" (NN 201).

Historically, Negro colleges were the mechanism through which the spirituals were popularized. The travelling choirs of Negro institutions such as Hampton University, Wilberforce University, Fisk University and Tuskegee University performed the spirituals across the country as a means of raising funds for their respective institutions, all the while bringing to black and white audiences in the United States knowledge and appreciation of this indigenous musical form. Many of these university choirs also recorded compilations of Negro spirituals and published them. It was thus, as Locke has it, that the spirituals were able to avoid simply falling out of fashion and failing to survive "that critical period of disfavor in which any folk product is likely to be snuffed out by the false pride of the second-generation" (NN 202). This, by Locke's lights, is not an uncommon situation for folk arts to face, finding it necessary as they often do to resist being disavowed by subsequent generations wishing to distance themselves from the supposedly deficient quality of the folk expression.

Emotions and attitudes form the very foundation of Locke's philosophy of value: undoubtedly, one reason that Locke was so enamored with the spirituals was that as he understood them their primary artistic virtue was their deeply emotive character. "Emotionally," he points out, "these songs are far from simple" (NN 205). There is to be found in the spiritual folk music of the American Negro the entire range of human moods and emotions, and within a given spiritual there can be a drastic change in mood from the deepest sorrow to glorious praise, as each and every song is infused with religious sentiment. Surprisingly, when it comes to the problem of classification of the spirituals, Locke does not insist upon the primary mode of classification being the feeling-quality of the song as his value theory might suggest. In fact, Locke argues that

[i]nteresting and intriguing as was Dr. Du Bois's analysis of their emotional themes, modern interpretation must break with that mode of analysis, and relate these songs to the folk activity that they motivated, classifying them by their respective song-types. (NN 205)

In the case of the spirituals Locke is in favor of a different method of classification because contemporary interpreters of the Negro's music tend to mischaracterize, or characterize in a way that is not true to the folk that produced it, the music of the Negro. Locke laments the fact that "at present many a half secularized ballad is mistaken for a 'spiritual,' and many a camp-meeting shout for a folk hymn" (NN 205). He believed the folk music of the Negro is best categorized according to the sort of activity they inspired. "From this point of view" Locke claims

we have essentially four classes, the almost ritualistic prayer songs for pure spirituals, the freer and more unrestrained evangelical shouts or Meeting songs, the folk ballad so overlaid with the tradition of the spirituals proper that the distinctive type quality has almost been unnoticed until late, and the work and labor songs of strictly secular character. (NN 205)

However, discriminating Negro folk music into types on the basis of the folk activity that underlies them is not necessarily to exclude the emotive content of the song. In fact, it seems that what is really being discriminated is the active expression of the underlying emotional content, i.e., the activity that is most commonly associated with a particular emotion or mood. And here we see perhaps the most direct effect that Locke's axiology has on his assessment of spirituals discriminating them as he does into types in terms of their feeling-quality, but also linking each form with a set of imperatives in this case, a practical imperative understood by the type of activity that each song is used to motivate.

Locke sees as a major problem with the scholarship on Negro folk music in his day the tendency to overemphasize one of the various distinctive elements of the music over the others. The result was a jaundiced view of Negro music. "Strain out and emphasize the melodic element" Locke informs

and you get only the sentimental ballad; emphasize the harmonic idiom, and you get a cloying sentimental glee; overemphasize the rhythmic idiom and instantly you secularize the product into syncopated dance elements. (NN 206)

5.4 Who, and What, is "Negro"?

Lurking in the background of all of this talk of the "New Negro" is the assumption that there is something distinctively Negro about at least some American art. As to what that is, or could be, answers are sometimes extremely hard to come by. But, Locke warns

[s]ooner or later the critic must face the basic issues involved in his use of risky and perhaps untenable terms like 'Negro art' and 'Negro literature' and answer the much-evaded question unequivocally,-who and what is Negro? (WWN 209)

Beyond this Locke thinks it a meaningful query to ask whether the racial concept has any place in art at all. Perhaps it would be better to understand art as a cultural or social mode of production that cuts across racial and ethnic divisions.

5.4.1 Who is Negro?

In answering the question "Who is Negro?" Locke begins by exposing a common misguided assumption in such queries:

[t]he fallacy of the 'new' as of the 'older' thinking is that there is a type Negro who, either qualitatively or quantitatively, is the type symbol of the entire group. (WWN 210)

Locke sees this as the unfortunate consequence of the past need to proffer counter-stereotypes to combat demeaning stereotypes of Negro persons. Counter-stereotypes may well contain some element of truth, but they fail to convey the whole truth about as diverse a population of human beings as Negroes in the United States, let alone the Americas or Negroes the World over. There is no distinctive singular Negro type. The answer then to the question posed "who is Negro?" is no Negro in particular. The Negro is a dynamic and multifaceted population admitting of myriad cultural and social forms characterized as those are by variegated linguistic, religious and artistic elements. This is important for Locke to note as the Negro of his day was thought to be classless, undifferentiated, and ethnically homogeneous. In fact, Locke himself thought it possible (and actual) for human beings biologically similar in the way that American race thinking presupposes to be members of different races. A full and accurate artistic portrayal of who is Negro would, Locke argued, have to picture the many diverse Negro strands in their own right, weaving together from these diverse threads a multifaceted presentation of Negro experiences.

5.4.2 What is Negro?

"Turning to the other basic question,-what is Negro," Locke begins by narrowing the question to "what makes a work of art Negro, if indeed any such nomenclature is proper,-its authorship, its theme or its idiom?" (WWN 211). In other words, what gives a particular work of art its distinctive, if any, racial character: the racial identity of its author, its treatment of themes characteristic of a particular racial experience in a particular place, or its use of styles and modes of expression peculiar to a given people? Of these three candidates for the foundation of Negro art Locke claims each has had its day depending on the social environment that was prevalent at the time. Locke dismisses nearly out of hand the first option remarking that many a Negro artist has produced the most amateurish works of art due primarily to their poor mastery of Negro idioms, and inadequate treatment of Negro themes. What is more, some white (or at least non-Negro) artist have been quite adept in either their use of characteristically Negro styles, or their dealings with Negro motifs. Of course, it stands to reason that artist steeped in the cultural, ethnic and racial environments that give rise to these idioms and themes are most likely to master their use and expression, and that persons who do so are most likely to be members of these communities, having the same racial, ethnic or cultural identities as other members. However, such communal membership is not a necessary condition for the work of a particular artist to count amongst the works that comprise a racially distinctive body of art such as might be called "Negro art."

6. Philosophy of Race

Locke understood race as primarily a product of social culture. Locke denies as do nearly all contemporary race theorists that races are biologically distinct categories of human beings. Locke maintained that culture and race were distinct, but often overlapping categories. There is no tight causal or otherwise necessary connection between race and culture. The two are mutually exclusive even though they do sometimes vary together or otherwise correspond. Race, for Locke, is not determinative of culture or civilization. Locke's position on race does not deny, as some of his contemporaries concerned with the notion of race and culture did, that there ever is a significant connection between racial and cultural factors, nor does it deny that "race stands for significant social characters and culture-traits or represents in given historical contexts characteristic differentiations of culture-type" (CRASC 188). This is primarily a cautionary observation on Locke's part seeing as how

[i]t is too early to assume that there is no significant relationship between race and culture because of the manifestly false and arbitrary linkage which has previously been asserted. (CRASC 189)

Locke has some hesitation about the prudence and possibility of completely eradicating racial categories. He states,

[i]n some revised and reconstructed form, we may anticipate the continued even if restricted use of these terms as more or less necessary and basic concepts that cannot be eliminated altogether, but that must nevertheless be so safe-guarded in this continued use as not to give further currency to the invalidated assumption concerning them. (CRASC 189)

Locke attributes the original idea that race is a primary determining factor in culture to the work of Arthur de Gobineau, though he thinks the main scientific justification for the view has been offered by those who seek to interpret culture in evolutionary terms such as the social evolutionism of Herbert Spencer. Positing a fixed link between race and culture was useful for such theorists in developing a step-by-step account of the development of cultures. But even in Locke's day, the supposed scientific foundations of such theoretical positions faced challenges. In light of that Locke thinks it understandable for some to want to correct this misinterpretation of the facts by insisting that there is no connection at all between race and culture. We see here again perhaps some of the influence that pragmatist thinkers, in this case Dewey, may have had on Locke, as Dewey was apt to point out on numerous occasions the shortcomings of Spencer's social Darwinism, and chiefly its attempt to offer a universal account of all aspects of human development. Locke worried that extreme cultural relativism

leaves an open question as to the association of certain ethnic groups with definite culture traits and culture types under circumstances where there is evidently a greater persistence of certain strains and characteristics in their culture than of other factors.

It is "[t]he stability of such factors and their resistance to direct historical modification" Locke thought, which

marks out the province of that aspect of the problem of race which is distinctly ethnological and which the revised notion of ethnic race must cover. (CRASC 190)

6.1 Theoretical and Scientific Conceptions of Race

Locke postulates three conceptions of race: theoretical or scientific, political, and social or cultural. Scientific conceptions posit race as natural biological kinds. The existence of race and racial differentiation are explained in terms of biological or ethnological features of human populations. Scientific theories frequently assert a natural biological hierarchy between races and aim to explain divergent cultural characteristics of groups though biological factors. Locke argues that genetic inheritance varies both within and between human populations and cannot be the basis for the sociological concept of race. The factors that create genetic subdivisions of the human species such as physical and social reproductive isolation produce various consequences (Locke, 1989, 190 - 92 see also Locke, 1992, 4-6) that may not vary conterminously with the group's social history. Genetic subdivisions produce population variances that may not track the social distinctions that a given society deems salient in terms of group identity.

Locke argues that biological race is an ethnic fiction. (Locke, 1992, 11 - 12). Putative biological races do not necessarily correspond with the racialized social identities operative in a given society. One way race can be an ethnic fiction is when non-biologically determined ethnic or cultural groups are presumed to be real biological populations, when in fact they are not. Locke does not seem to think that this fictitious conception of race undermines the social reality of the phenomenon. On Locke's view race amounts to something significant even if many common conceptions of it are mistaken. Racialized populations can be comprised from various genetic, cultural and ethnic intermixtures throughout its history. Isolating any one of the plurality of factors around which a population is racialized as the single factor constituting the race can cause a significant divergence between one's conception of racial groups and any underlying reality. Such divergence can inform a whole host of mistaken beliefs and misguided racial practices. Locke writes: "[a]s I pointed out, these groups, from the point of view of anthropology, are ethnic fictions. This does not mean that they do not exist, but it can be shown [that these groups do] not have as [permanent] designations those very factors upon which they pride themselves. (Locke, 1992, 11)

Locke's understanding of race is influenced by the ethnology of his time. The notion that racial types are not permanent he derives from Frantz Boas. (Locke, 1992, 75-76) Locke's belief that race and culture vary independently of each and are thus not causally linked stems from the work of R. H. Lowie. (Locke, 1989, 189-90) Locke agreed with Sapir that unique cultural or ethnic traits are best explained historically; rather than, biologically or psychologically. (Locke, 1989, 190) His reading of Flinders-Petrie's account of assimilative processes initially informed his view of social race, and racial differentiation, though these are latter most influenced by his concept of cultural pluralism. (Locke, 1989, 191-92) Finally, he derives the view that race practices are deeply rooted in imperialism from Lord Cromer. (Locke, 1992, 64)

6.2 Political Conceptions of Race

Political conceptions of race reject two basic assumptions of scientific theories, they reject that races are distinct biologically determined populations, and secondarily reject that biological differences of race account for cultural variation, or establish the relative inferiority or superiority of putative race groups. Political conceptions of race contend that racism is constitutive of races. Racial groups result from political, economic, and social mechanisms that create relative group advantage or disadvantage. Racial differentiation and hierarchy are the consequences of group exercise of political power.

Political race, for Locke, is merely favorable or unfavorable social inheritance masquerading as genetic ethnic inheritance. Racial differences and inequalities are caused by these factors, and so, will not account for the duration or amelioration of inequalities and differentiations. The permanence of racial groups, if it is to be promoted, must be based on something other than metaphysical realist notions of race. Conversely, if racial inequalities are to be eradicated, that too will likely require attention to, and control of, factors and elements of putatively racial groups other than their supposed biological or anthropological similarity.

Characteristically racial modes of living are wrongly regarded as biologically, rather than, socially inherited. This social inheritance can be either favorable or unfavorable. Locke observes that cultures are often racially diverse. Multiple races may share some larger cultural elements. (Locke, 1989, 193-94) Races are regarded as "concrete culture-types," according to Locke, which are "composite racially speaking, and have only an artificial ethnic unity, of historical derivation and manufacture." (Locke, 1989, 194) Race is a learned epistemic mode of being. A sense of race membership is enculturated and socialized, and once acquired, the race sense partly conditions how one perceives and understands the world.

6.3 Social or Cultural Conceptions of Race

Locke's social conception of race is a proto-social constructionist account of race. Race, for him, is a cultural-historical phenomenon and not a natural kind distinction. Race, for Locke, is culture; or conversely, culture is race. The cultural conception views race as a learned socially inherited phenomenon. Culturally conceived, a race is a transactionally constituted, and inherently transformational, subcultural variant, not fixed by biological determinants. Race for Locke is the characteristic differentiation of culture-type perpetuated through social heredity. Locke states that "[r]ace in the vital and basic sense is simply and primarily the culture-heredity, and that in its blendings and differentiations is properly analyzed on the basis of conformity to or variance from culture-type." (Locke, 1989, 192) Locke's view of social race implies that there are further distinctions to make within current racial categories. Many groups commonly regarded as one race constitute several different races.

Locke held that race was in point of fact a social and cultural category rather than a biological one. For this reason he developed the notion of ethnic race or culture group. By ethnic race, I take Locke to mean a peculiar set of psychological and affective responsive dispositions, expressed or manifested as cultural traits, socially inherited and able to be attributed through historical contextualization to a specifiable group of people. The concept of ethnic race is a way of preserving the demonstrated distinctiveness of various groupings of human beings in terms of characteristic traits, lifestyles, forms of expression; without resulting to the scientifically invalidated notion of biological race. "Race," Locke argues "would have been regarded as primarily a matter of social [as opposed to biological] heredity," if only the science of his day had reached a more tenable understanding of the relationship of race to culture which would likely have resulted from focusing more on the ethnic; rather than, anthropological factors. The distinctiveness of a given race would be understood as the result of "the selective psychological "set" of established cultural reactions" (CRASC 191).

The notion of ethnic race is better able to capture the myriad differences between culture groups in terms of the actual social, cultural and historical conditions that give rise to such variation, and without the scientifically indefensible reliance on biological factors. On this view, race is no longer thought to be the progenitor of culture; instead race is understood to be a cultural product. Locke held that the more objective analysis of culture he advocated would likely result in the development over time of distinctive culture-types for which it may prove possible to work out some principle of development or evolution. This he thought might eventually make it possible to develop "a standard of value for relative culture grading" (CRASC 194).

Nearly every culture is highly composite; consisting as most due in the union of various social and historical influences; moreover, every ethnic group in the unique outcome of a specific social history. A more scientific understanding of man replaces the abstract artifice of biological race, and requires that we deal with concrete culture-types which are frequently complex amalgamations of supposed races united principally by entrenchment of customary reactions, standardized practices, traditional forms of expression and interaction, in sum, the specific history of a given people in a particular place. It is noteworthy and perhaps illuminating of Locke's conception of ethnic or social race that the groupings of human persons formerly thought to constitute "races" in the biological sense such as "Negro," "Caucasian," or "Asian" are in fact each composed of several different social or ethnic races. On Locke's view there are many so-called "Negro," "Caucasian," or "Asian" races. This revised understanding of culture constitutes in Locke's estimation a fundamental paradigm shift in the study of human cultures "[s]o considerable...[in] emphasis and meaning that at times it does seem that the best procedure would be to substitute the term race the term culture group " (CRASC 194).

Locke quickly notes while the notion of race has been invalidated as an explanation of culture groups understood as totalities, race does help to explain various cultural components within a given culture. "Race operates as tradition," Locke noted, "as preferred traits and values," changes in these aspects of culture in a distinctive way by a subset of a culture group constitutes "ethnic remoulding" (CRASC 195). Race becomes a term that designates the specific outcome of the "peculiar selective preferences" in favor of some, and against other, culture-traits of a given group. "Such facts" Locke observed

nullify two of the most prevalent popular and scientific fallacies, the ascription of a total culture to any one ethnic strain, and the interpretation of culture in terms of the intrinsic rather than the fusion of its various constituent elements. (CRASC 195)

To illustrate Locke's view consider African Americans, they share a common culture with white Americans in terms of language, religion, aesthetic sense, and many other cultural elements. Even with these cultural elements in common there are characteristic, qualitatively distinct, and phenomenologically unique forms that common language, religion, and aesthetic sense have among African Americans that are not characteristic of white Americans. Characteristic differences such as have produced the musical styles, literary techniques, humor, oratorical idioms, mannerisms, forms of worship and religious expression, hair styles etc. and many other elements of culture that are the frequent objects of appropriation.

A sense of kinship among members of a subcultural group which yields an understanding that "different practices [operate in] their society from those which [operate in other societies and therefore] determine their treatment of other groups," Locke argues is a key element in racial differentiation. (Locke, 1992, 20) Racial consciousness is not itself pernicious, but a group's sense of itself and its difference from other social races can be based on the domination and oppression of other groups. (Locke, 1992, 20)

A social group's sense of itself as a distinctive subculture yields the formation of peculiar values and beliefs, alongside specific practices and forms of living. These produce over time distinguishing qualities of the subculture in terms of elements that are noticeably present in one, or lacking from other groups. (Locke, 1989, 194-96) Culture-traits-ways of acting, speaking, interrelating, worshipping, eating, expressing etc.-establishes a dominant and characteristic pattern in a population. This pattern consists of social norms toward which members of the group conform. With sufficient conformity around those norms a culture-type is eventually established. (Locke, 1989, 194-95) Some people self-identify in racial terms, but the core elements with which they identify may be illusory. Such identification can benefit a racialized group. Observing that some racial conceptions are ethnic fictions does not lead Locke to deny the practical utility of racial identification.

6.4 Race Creeds, Race Practices, Racial Difference and Prejudice

Political and social conceptions of race are more useful in explaining racial domination and cultural assimilation and pluralism than scientific theories of race, which have been thoroughly undermined as the cause of cultural variation. Moreover, the distinctions made, the very populations designated by, anthropological race, rarely if ever coincide with those of ethnic race. The three conceptions carve up the world differently, and of them, Locke finds the political analysis and social or ethnic conception of race more accurate historically and sociologically. This is a matter of some debate in recent work in the philosophy of race. Also, advances in recent decades have raised important questions about the viability and usefulness of treating genetically discernable populations of human beings as races. Locke provides us further reason to doubt the viability of such projects. Moreover, he was adept enough to envision that even in the light of such advances it is a separate question whether the genetic populations of evolutionary biologists track closely the social populations putatively taken to be races.

Putatively biological conceptions of race, Locke argues, are social fictions. This aligns his thinking with fictionalist, or antirealist accounts of race, and inclines him in the direction of racial eliminativism. He argues that theoretical and scientific conceptions of race are misguided and ought to be eliminated for metaphysical, epistemological and normative reasons. Despite this he regards race as a fundamental category for understanding human social interactions. This informs his view that political conceptions of race are useful for understanding the way a society's race creeds can rest on false beliefs, race practices are misguided and effectuate oppression, and understanding of the role of race in advancing imperialism and colonialism. In good pragmatist fashion, Locke is careful not to interpret political conceptions of race as postulating race as a metaphysical reality. His political conception of race offers a model for interpreting and analyzing a society's racial creeds and race practices, it does not establish that race is a real biological or cultural factor of human populations or of individual persons. Locke argues that the only viable meaning of race is social. The conception of social race is for Locke the only plausible meaning of race. This aligns him with contemporary social constructionist. Locke endorses a form of substitutionism by contending that metaphysically realist conceptions of race should be abandoned in favor of ethnic or social race. His view is reconstructionist in that it aims to correct classical racialist views as well as the prevailing metaphysically realist views of his day.

Locke distinguishes between racial conceptions and a society's race practices. The social differentiations that produce various social groupings including races, result on his analysis from social, political, and economic causes. Locke does not deny that racial differences or racial prejudices exist. Racial differences, he thought, often parallel racial inequalities. (Locke, 1992, 1-14) Locke claims that "[w]e should expect naturally that race theory should be a philosophy of the dominant group." (Locke, 1992, 3) As it was in the United States and other European colonial powers whose members proffered racial theories that privileged dominant groups. This leads Locke to argue that much of what has passed for race theory in Western civilizations is "bad science." Specious justifications of exploitive and oppressive race practices abound, and such theories, Locke observes are resistant to correction by more accurate scientific investigation, or social scientific or historical facts.

Locke is doubtful of the prospects of a thorough-going racial eliminativism. He writes: "I believe that a word and an idea covering so indispensable, useful, and necessary a grouping in human society will never vanish, never be eradicated, and that the only possible way in which a change will come about will be through a substitution of better meanings for the meanings which are now so current under the term." (Locke, 1992, 84-85) This is a clear articulation of Locke's racial substitutionism. He rejects eliminativism as the appropriate response to problematic conceptions of race or pernicious race practices and creeds. But Locke, unlike Du Bois, is not clearly a racial conservationist. He argues that prevailing conceptions of race are illegitimate, present race practices are pernicious, and contemporary race creeds unjust.

Locke is arguably a qualified or partial eliminativist as he advocates a radical redefinition of race in terms of culture, the elimination of certain race practices, race creeds, and race prejudices. Race prejudices, Locke claims, are ultimately based on cultural differences and differences in the type of civilization. Racial difference is at base a difference in the social consciousness of groups. Race prejudice erroneously assigns that variation to biological and anthropological factors that are unrelated to racial groups. This leaves racial prejudice in the paradoxical situation of being "an almost instinctive aberration in favor of anthropological factors erected into social distinctions" without any scientific warrant for so doing. (Locke, 1992, 10)

Race prejudices, Locke claims, result from aberrant psychological predispositions and tendencies. These habits often function unconsciously, but are not exempt from control and amelioration. Moreover, race creeds are for Locke distorted conceptual schemes and at the root of our notions of racial superiority and inferiority. Race prejudice and race creeds can and should be eliminated as features of race practice. His racial eliminativism is partial or qualified because he advocates jettisoning the more pernicious forms of our race practice, and is adamant about substituting current racial conceptions for the view of race as social culture.

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1885 Born Arthur Locke September 13 to Pliny Ishmael Locke and Mary Hawkins Locke in Philadelphia, PA. 1902 Graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia during that same year Locke was afflicted by rheumatic fever, which did permanent damage to his heart. 1904 Graduates with Bachelor of Arts degree from Philadelphia School of Pedagogy first in his class.

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Speaking on the gross caricatures of Black people, I found out recently that the most famous caricature is Aunt Jemima. The Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup bottles both have a picture of a Black woman dressed in minstrel attire, satisfying the 'mammy' stereotype that was created to disrespect the Black Woman. Quaker Oats announced back in 2020 that they are fully aware of the negative racial stereotype that Aunt Jemima has portrayed for years, and they decided to change the breakfast brand name and logo to Pearl Milling Company. By the end of 2020, Aunt Jemima's name and face was fully replaced. Even though this was the righteous thing to do on behalf of the company, the years of public embarrassment of Black women cannot be undone. (Here is the full article for read. Also in the article are some vintage images of the character.
https://www.today.com/food/aunt-jemima-remove-image-packaging-rename-brand-t184441

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The New Negro movement refers to a period of artistic creation that intended to reconstruct the image of blacks in the minds of blacks and whites alike. At the movement's inception, American art was oversaturated with racially charged and caricature-like images of individuals of African descent. Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes on this, stating that at the time that the New Negro was pioneered, "everywhere he or she saw a black image, that image would be negative."[1] Common negative representations included images of blacks being lynched, depicted as coons with exaggerated features, and engaged in primitive actions such as wild dancing [fig. 1].

Arising slightly more than three decades after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the New Negro movement sought to rename and reframe the image of blacks in the American imagination. Individuals such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglas emphasized the importance of renaming themselves in the act of reclaiming their identities once out of slavery. This process of re-invention provides us with a helpful framing for the New Negro movement. In an 1895 editorial on the New Negro in The Cleveland Gazette, the author describes the New Negroes as 'a class of colored people [...] who have arisen since the war, with education, refinement, and money."[2]

This new, primarily upper class of blacks stood in sharp contrast to the conditions of blacks while under enslavement. This contrast can be visualized in a series of photographs by W.E.B. DuBois. In A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. Du Bois & African American Portraits of Progress [fig. 2] , DuBois created a series of individual and group portraits to visually represent the birth of the New Negro identity. This is achieved primarily in the gestures of the subject. They are posed in self-assured manners that speak to the confidence associated with the New Negro identity. In addition, the shoulders of the subjects are generally broad and strong, demonstrating not only a sense of confidence, but a sense of belonging. The direct eye contact of some of the subjects with the viewer shows a self-awareness of being looked at. Those not looking into the camera seem to display a rebelliousness that indicates their refusal to acknowledge that they are being watched by an audience. This allows the subjects to present authentic sides of themselves without bearing others' expectations of who they are supposed to be. In other words, it provides a mechanism to avoid engaging in a perception of self that is crafted by others. Instead, these subjects are able to relish in the confidence of their self-representation that is shaped by the New Negro identity.

Another attribute of the portraits that alluded to the New Negro identity is the style in which the women and men were dressed. It was a sophisticated style that demonstrates wealth, and a value in self-care and presentation. This arose from the clothing's designs as well as the extravagant nature of the accentuated pieces, such as hats, ruffles, feathers, and other ornamentation [fig. 3]. The genderization of the clothing also showed the settlement of Negro men and women into their gender roles as perpetuated by American bourgeois society. This quality and style of clothing allowed black men and women to assimilate into middle and upper-class American culture.

The New Negro was envisioned to be cultured and refined. However, as Henry Tanner's experience shows, there were many obstacles that African-Americans - or more specifically, African-American artists - had to overcome to find success in the fields of art and culture. For instance, Tanner had difficulty finding a long-term mentor and access to instruction in Philadelphia due to racial prejudices. In France, however, where Tanner travelled with the generosity of his friends, he was able to access greater resources as an art student at the Académie Julian. He had weekly drawing sessions with models, and he received critiques from professional artists on his work.[3] While Tanner painted a few works during his career that portrayed the African-American experience, such as The Thankful Poor or The Banjo Lesson [fig. 4], his early works focused on French genre scenes and his later works were religious and oriental in nature.

However, Tanner became a role model for African American artists during the 1920s and beyond. Richard J. Powell suggests that despite Tanner's disinterest in black subject matters, he solidified a place among the most celebrated African-American artists because he was able to achieve transcendental success.[4] He became representative of the New Negro because he personified a successful, culturally refined, and artistically talented artist working in Europe. His works became celebrated for their technical mastery and subject matter in Europe as well as in America - his success, in other words, was not restricted to particular political, racial, or geographic confines. African American artists looked to Tanner as a role model for universality. At the same time, however, there was a desire to move away from European standards and establish a common black aesthetic within African American arts. This became significant during the Harlem Renaissance.

[1] Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black," Representations no. 24, Special Issue: America Reconstructed, 1840-1940 (Autumn, 1988), 150.

[2] Ibid. The quote was originally taken from an editorial from an 1895 issue of the Cleveland Gazette.

[3] Anna O. Marley, "Introduction," in Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit, ed. Anna O. Marley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 21.

[4] Richard J. Powell, "Tanner and Transcendence," Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit, ed. Anna O. Marley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 57.

Bibliography

Gates, Jr., Henry Louis. "The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black." Representations no. 24, Special Issue: America Reconstructed, 1840-1940 (Autumn, 1988), 129-155.

Marley, Anna O. "Introduction." In Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit, edited by Anna O. Marley, 17-47. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2012.

Powell, Richard J. "Tanner and Transcendence."In Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit, edited by Anna O. Marley, 56-69. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2012.

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The New Negro movement refers to a period of artistic creation that intended to reconstruct the image of blacks in the minds of blacks and whites alike. At the movement's inception, American art was oversaturated with racially charged and caricature-like images of individuals of African descent. Henry Louis Gates Jr.

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In 1893, Ida B. Wells published a pamphlet titled " The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition." The expo, which lasted for six months, was held in Chicago and was meant to chart the trajectory of the Americas in the four hundred years since Columbus had arrived. Though a handful of African-Americans had individual exhibits at the fair, there was none specifically dedicated to the history or the accomplishments of African-Americans as a people. Wells secured contributions for the pamphlet from Frederick Douglass, the educator and journalist Irvine Garland Penn, and the lawyer and activist Ferdinand Lee Barnett. Together with Wells, they wrote about the ways in which black life could enrich the fair's official version of American history, which, as Wells noted in the pamphlet's introduction, had rendered invisible the contributions of black people to the American might that the fair was intended to celebrate. "The wealth created by their industry has afforded to the white people of this country the leisure essential to their great progress in education, art, science, industry and invention," she wrote. Wells and Douglass distributed the pamphlet at the fair's popular Haitian Pavilion, and, eventually, the expo's organizers held a "Negro Day." Wells declined to participate.

Seven years later, another World's Fair was held, in Paris. This time, the African-American lawyer Thomas Calloway worked with the expo's American delegation, and he invited W. E. B. Du Bois to oversee an exhibition on black life. Du Bois was teaching sociology at Atlanta University, which later became Clark Atlanta University; in four months, he and his curatorial team put together a multimedia presentation that testified to the eclecticism and resilience of their community. They conceived the exhibit as a sort of cabinet of curiosities, full of juxtapositions and visual echoes, in which you could wander and drift, zeroing in on whatever caught your eye: a small statue of Frederick Douglass; a bibliography of African-American writings, containing fourteen hundred titles; four bound volumes of more than three hundred and fifty patents secured by African-American inventors. All of these items orbited an argument about the capacity of African-Americans to withstand, and fight, injustice, with pride, dignity, and joy.

" Black Lives 1900: W. E. B. Du Bois at the Paris Exposition," a new book edited by Julian Rothenstein and out in November, from Redstone Press, reprints selections from more than three hundred and fifty photographs and around thirty statistical graphics that Du Bois and his curators assembled for what was called the "Exhibition of American Negroes." Like Wells, who had used photography to force Americans into confronting the horrors of lynching, Du Bois understood the role that visual culture could play in anti-racist organizing. For the "Exhibition of American Negroes," he wanted images that conveyed the everyday integrity of black life: a sewing class at Howard University, a corner in the home of African-American teachers, decorated with a flag, a bookshelf, and two rifles. There are photos of baseball teams, soldiers, farmers, shopkeepers, people working in laboratories. The pictures are deliberately ordinary, even banal.

The most arresting visuals in the exhibition were handmade charts and graphics that illustrated the evolution of black life since emancipation. They featured facts and figures about population growth and political participation, educational attainment and financial clout. A line depicting the urban and rural populations of Georgia in 1890 breaks into a sudden spiral, resembling an elegant snake. Simple bar graphs are presented askew. There's a surprising amount of open space, as though viewers are being asked to fill in the history and context that hasn't been spelled out for them. The color schemes-predominantly red, green, yellow, and blue, with the occasional pink or purple-convey a kind of playful optimism.

Du Bois described the materials that he had selected as "an honest straightforward exhibit of a small nation of people, picturing their life and development without apology or gloss, and above all made by themselves." He added, "In a way, this marks an era in the history of the Negroes of America." The exhibition won awards in Paris, and it then toured the United States, where Americans were beginning to regard the decades since the Civil War as a discrete epoch.

Du Bois's charts and graphics return to the public consciousness every few years, in part because there's something so unexpected about them. Just last year, the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Princeton Architectural Press published " W.E.B. Du Bois' Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America." As the design scholar Jason Forrest has argued, in a series of essays on the data visualizations' craft and design, one of the reasons for their enduring appeal is the contemporary viewer's surprise that they look so modern. It's easy to assume that Du Bois and his team aspired to make art; the graphics suggest the front page of USA Today, if it were reimagined by the Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich. But the informational graphics that Du Bois and his team crafted followed early-twentieth-century approaches to visualizing data. The results display resourcefulness, creativity, and a commitment to communicating their truths clearly and directly.

In "Black Lives 1900," Rothenstein seeks to emphasize the relevance of Du Bois's work through juxtaposition: materials from the original exhibition are interspersed with excerpts from Du Bois's own writings and more recent remarks from writers including Maya Angelou and Ta-Nehisi Coates. These interstitial selections seem intended to conjure a continuum of black voices, or perhaps to argue that the insurmountable prejudices of Du Bois's day linger in the present. The connections can feel heavy-handed; the book is best when it leaves room for the reader to reflect on what Du Bois and his spectators might have seen or thought in their own time.

Thirty-five years after the Paris Exposition, Du Bois published " Black Reconstruction in America." In it, he imagines what might have been had the ruling class not exploited the racial divisions between poor whites and former slaves after the Civil War. Sifting through the Paris materials, one can find the seeds for this later project. The missed opportunity of Reconstruction, Du Bois argues, was that these two dispossessed groups had failed to recognize their common plight. Something else was possible. For a spell, black life had flourished, and he had the evidence: a portrait of a young woman grinning to herself, and radiant charts that indicated a growing slice of the pie.

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What W. E. B. Du Bois Conveyed in His Captivating Infographics

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In 1893, Ida B. Wells published a pamphlet titled " The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition." The expo, which lasted for six months, was held in Chicago and was meant to chart the trajectory of the Americas in the four hundred years since Columbus had arrived.

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When W. E. B. Du Bois Made a Laughingstock of a White Supremacist

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From 2019: Ian Frazier on why the Jim Crow-era debate between the African American leader and a ridiculous, Nazi-loving racist isn’t as famous as Lincoln-Douglas.