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The African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920

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Drawn from the collections of the Ohio Historical Society, The African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920, explores the diversity and complexity of African-American culture in Ohio. Covering the time period 1850-1920, the materials illustrate several major themes: slavery, emancipation, abolition, the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, Reconstruction, African Americans in politics and government, and African-American religion.

Introduction to the Collection
A Selection of Favorites

Expansion and Reform, 1801-1861
The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Development of the Industrial United States, 1876-1915
Emergence of Modern America, 1890-1930

African-American Odyssey
African-American Perspectives, 1818-1907
African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920
Civil War Maps
Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865
Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920
Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920
"We'll Sing to Abe Our Song"

Related Resources

To find items in this collection, search by Keyword or browse by Subject or Source Material.

For help with search strategies, see Finding Items in American Memory.

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1.  Abolitionists

I would be an abolitionist but I think I can do more for the people of color as I am . . . So it is with all their buts, they are opposed to slavery in any sense of the word; still they are not willing to act with a party that has for its object the abolition of slavery . . . Near sixty years has elapsed since the spirit of liberty has been promulgated among this people, still they are butting at the walls of slavery, and continue to but deceitfully until the two hundred and fifty thousand slave holders have managed to get the government into their own hands.

• Who is the target audience of this article?
• How does the piece attempt to support its case with statistics?
• Is this piece persuasive?  Why?

In addition to trying to change citizens’ minds, abolitionists sought to influence legislatures. The State Convention of Colored Men meeting in Columbus, Ohio on January 16-18, 1856 resulted in a pamphlet that includes an address to the state legislature requesting that the word, "white," be struck from the state constitution in all references to suffrage:

We ask you to ponder the danger of circumscribing the great doctrines of human equality . . . to the narrow bounds of races or nations.  All men are by nature equal, and have inalienable rights, or none have.  We beg you to reflect how insecure your own and the liberties of your posterity would be by the admission of such a rule of construing the rights of men. . . .

Page 4 [Transcription]
Proceedings, Held in the City of Columbus, January 16-18, 1856

• What are the implications of a state constitution that refers only to "white men"?
• How does it treat notions of equal rights?
• Does the convention make a convincing argument?
• What points appeal to the emotions of members of the Ohio legislature? What points appeal to their reason?
• How do the agendas of these two abolitionist groups, The Ripley Anti Slavery Society and The State Convention of Colored Men, differ?
• Why did abolitionists appeal for African Americans' right to vote?
• Is it more effective to appeal directly to the legislature that can make such an amendment or to the citizens who appoint the legislature?

2. African-American Soldiers in the Civil War

We drill twice each day . . . They learn very fast and I have no doubt they will make as rapid progress as white soldiers.

As fast as we get them we clothe them from head to foot in precisely the same uniform that "our boys" wear, give them tents, rations, and Blankets and they are highly pleased and hardly know themselves . . . I am happy and think myself . . . fortunate in enjoying as much of the confidence of my country and the President as to be able to assist in this new as I believe successful experiment.

Page 3 [Transcription]
Jacob Bruner’s April 28, 1863 letter

• What does Bruner consider as his role in the Union army?
• Why is the confidence of the country, and particularly the President, important in his effort?
• What are the potential benefits of the success of the "experiment" of using African-American soldiers?

• How do these images portray African-American soldiers?
• What do they imply about the success of this "experiment" of allowing African Americans in the army?
• How do these images reinforce the role of African-American soldiers during the Civil War?
• What do the civilian accomplishments of people such as Trotter and Delany imply about the success of the Emancipation Proclamation? How might their success as army officers have contributed to their other accomplishments?

3.  The Underground Railroad

What were the potential dangers for those using and conducting the Underground Railroad? How did the Underground Railroad affect the relationship between the North and South at the time? What does the language of reward notices for fugitive slaves indicate about the status of slaves and the relationship between slaves and their owners? What do such notices suggest about what a fugitive slave might have had to do to avoid being apprehended? Why would the owner of a fugitive slave offer different rewards depending on where the slave was caught? What might you expect someone to have had to do to obtain such a reward? Why would a slaveholder travel to Ohio to free his slaves, as did the owner of Sam and America Barnett? How do these photographs depict the people associated with the Underground Railroad? Who do you think might have taken these pictures and why?

Phebe Benedict, Underground Railroad Station-Keeper, Alum Creek Friends' Settlement (Marengo), Morrow County, Ohio.

4.  Reconstruction Policies

During Reconstruction, the nation struggled with how to assimilate freed slaves into national and local communities while minimizing the resistance from citizens who were not willing to aid African Americans. A search on Reconstruction provides articles discussing various government policies of the era. For example, Charles Sumner’s 1864 Senate speech, "Bridge from Slavery to Freedom" called for the establishment of a Freedmen’s Bureau that would assist recently freed slaves in finding work.  In his address, Sumner claimed, "The curse of slavery is still upon them. Somebody must take them by the hand; not to support them but simply to help them to that work which will support them." One discussion of the efforts of the Freedmen’s Bureau is available in The Freedmen's Bureau reports on the condition of the agency in the Southern States from The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909.

A decade after Sumner’s address, Howard University Professor J.M. Langston discussed the late senator's contributions to the Reconstruction efforts and described the benefits of recent amendments to the Constitution in his speech, "Equality Before the Law."

George Henderson also chronicled the development of federal law during Reconstruction in his January 1899 article, "History of Negro Citizenship."  Here, Henderson is critical of President Andrew Johnson’s efforts--especially when they are compared to those of Abraham Lincoln:

[W]hile President Johnson’s plan was in substantial agreement with his illustrious predecessor’s, the spirit with which it was executed made all the difference in the world . . . Mr. Lincoln hated slavery . . . because of its monstrous injustice and inhumanity. Mr. Johnson hated it mainly because he hated the slaveholders . . . He was not an abolitionist; in fact he probably had less sympathy with the abolition party than with the slaveholders.

Page 9 [Transcription]
History of Negro Citizenship

• What is Henderson's argument against President Johnson? How does he illustrate his argument?
• Did the alleged differences in presidential attitudes influence efforts during Reconstruction?

5.  Lynching

A 1919 news article quoted the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) statistic that more than 3,000 people were lynched between 1889 and 1918.  Since the Reconstruction era, lynching was a common weapon against African Americans seeking to exercise some of the liberties provided by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

A search on lynch offers numerous newspaper articles on lynching (including the lynching of a 15-year-old girl in 1892). Other articles discuss the efforts of the Anti-Lynching League and attempts to pass a federal anti-lynching law. S. Laing Williams’ article, "Frederick Douglass at Springfield, Mo." describes the late orator’s remarks on lynching at the close of Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition:

[T]he address went straight to the conscience of the audience and disturbed those who would claim a sort of immunity from blame because of their distance from the scenes of lawlessness. How accurately did he prophecy that in a few years lynching in the Northern States would be almost as possible as in Arkansas or Mississippi.  How that baleful prophecy has been fulfilled, we can all bear sorrowful testimony.

Page 3 [Transcription]
Frederick Douglass at Springfield, Mo.

The criticism of the mentality that allowed for lynching in America appears in the political cartoons, "When Will He Admit This?" (1905) and "Against Race Prejudice" (1906) whose caption begins: "Say what you will, there will never be an adjustment of the race situation in America as long as lynchings and riots are tolerated and the door of opportunity remains closed."

Cartoon, "When Will He Admit This?"

Cartoon, "Against Race Prejudice."

• What does lynching achieve that other forms of violence do not?
• What does a lynching imply about the person being lynched?
• Should a response to mob violence such as lynchings be active or passive? Which is more effective? Why?
• According to the political cartoons, why is ending racial prejudice essential to stopping a lynching?
• Do the cartoons' messages have any value for contemporary American society?

6.  African Americans and the Republican Party

African Americans finally gained suffrage through the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Aftrican-American vote went to the Republican Party. A search on Republican provides a number of examples of and explanations for this loyalty. In 1892, the African-American press in Ohio supported Republican candidates running for local, state, and national offices.  Editorials called on readers to remember that Republicans had championed a number of Reconstruction policies.  In his essay, "The Negro in the Present Campaign," Frederick Douglass argued against splitting the African-American vote between the two political parties:

In view of the great issues involved and of the dangers impending, it is sad to think that in this campaign any Negro may so act as to endanger the lives and liberties of his brothers in the South, and to also injure in the North the good name of his race. Such would certainly be the case should any support be given by him to the Democratic party--the party which has always endeavored to degrade his race-and should he refuse to support the Republican party--the party which has always endeavored to improve the conditions of his existence.

Page 2 [Transcription]
The Negro in the Present Campaign

This sentiment is also reflected in William Stewart’s chronicle of the Democratic Party's mistreatment of African Americans in his 1899 "Address to the Afro-Americans of Ohio," and in the Colored American Republican Text Book, which touted the achievements of Republican President William McKinley’s first term in office:

Colored men of intelligence and character have been selected from every section of the country to fill positions of trust and profit under the Administration . . . Indeed, while it is a fact of great significance that the President has within nineteen months appointed fully twice as many Negroes as any previous Administration, developments are now being so shaped by him . . . that the number of Negro officeholders will be increased fourfold.  Not only this, but the constitutional rights of the Negro will continue to be sacredly regarded and his future in the new possessions will be surrounded by every guarantee calculated.

Page 8 [Transcription]
Colored American Republican Text Book

The Colored American Republican Text Book also presents a visual argument in illustrations depicting the distinction between what it’s like for African Americans to vote in Republican and Democratic states. 

"How He Casts His Vote in a Republican State."

"How the Colored Voter is Allowed to Cast his Ballot in a State Where Democrats Control the Election."

Similar themes appeared in political cartoons such as the 1904 Cleveland Journal’s "Real Chore," the 1908 Cleveland Journal’s, "Never Swap Horses While Crossing A Stream," and the 1916 Cleveland Advocate’s "This is the "Bread-Line" of Normal Democratic Times."

• How do the preceding speeches and publications portray the two political parties? Are these characterizations accurate?
• How do the Journal and Advocate's cartoons differ from the illustrations in the Colored American Republican Text Book? Are these cartoons and illustrations effective?
• What is the value of conveying an argument visually?

7.  Labor Movements

Although slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, a search on peonage yields some news articles about African Americans who remained in servitude against their will.  An article from the February 6, 1904 Cleveland Gazette describes six children who were enslaved for six years after their father was killed. Editorials that are critical of other forms of child labor appear in a 1905 Cleveland Journal piece and an essay in the January 1913 edition of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, which notes, "This agitation on behalf of the mill and factory children (all white) is bound to react in favor of the black children of the South."

• According to the African Methodist Episcopal Church Review editorial, why would concern for white children lead to concern for black children? Upon what concepts of the nation and of childhood is this belief based?
• What are the similarities and differences between slavery and child labor?
• Is it surprising that child labor continued after the Emancipation Proclamation?
• How might any of these authors have responded to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company (1922) to invalidate the Federal Child Labor Law of 1916?

Concerns for child labor were just one facet of the late-nineteenth-century movement toward unionization. The Knights of Labor actively recruited African-American workers.  By 1886, approximately 60,000 African Americans had joined the union. A search on Knights of Labor provides some brief newspaper accounts of African-American participation in the union and employers’ concern that this participation would lead to increased expenses. 

• Why did the Knights of Labor appeal directly to African-American workers?
• How would this organization have benefited from such enrollment?
• What are the benefits of joining a union?
• How might African Americans' history of slavery and their experience during Reconstruction have affected their attitudes towards unionization? How might these attitudes have differed from those of white workers?

Speeches, editorials, and photographs in The African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920 capture the attitudes and beliefs of a number of African Americans persevering through the social turmoil of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Newspaper articles allow for an in-depth examination of Jim Crow laws, while materials relating to the colonization movement open the way to considering the issue of how to respond to racism in America. Other items provide the opportunity to practice analyzing text while learning about the Emancipation Proclamation, to create timelines, and to research African-American inventors and the slave trade.

Chronological Thinking

Charles W. Chesnutt’s short article on Frederick Douglass is followed by a chronology covering the years 1817 to 1895 that illustrates Douglass’s influence on pivotal events in American history. A search on Frederick Douglass also yields a number of articles chronicling various speeches and appearances that Douglass made, which can enhance the use of the biographical timeline.

Representative Benjamin W. Arnett, 1886.

A number of surveys from pamphlets and news articles, such as the Reverend George Williams’s Centennial: The American Negro from 1776-1876 offer examples of continuity and change, and of cause and effect relationships that unfold over time. Visual timelines illustrating a variety of topics, including African Americans in the military, the Civil War, ex-slaves, and politicians, can be created using images found through searches that combine photograph with other relevant terms.

Historical Comprehension: Jim Crow Laws

In the late nineteenth century, states established laws to segregate the services that they provided to white and African-American citizens. One of these Jim Crow laws (borrowing their name from a black character on the minstrel stage) was New Orleans’ 1890 legislation that required separate railroad cars for black passengers and white passengers. Homer Plessy, a light-skinned African American, was arrested for refusing to ride in the car designated for blacks. In 1896, Plessy took his case to the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. The court ruled against him and set the precedent that "separate but equal" accommodations for both races were constitutional. This decision led to legalized segregation in a variety of public services and contributed to a growing racial divide, decades after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Negro Drinking at "Colored" Water Cooler in Streetcar Terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1939. FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945.

A search on Jim Crow provides a number of newspaper articles that emphasize the harsh reality that separate services were not always equal. Articles from the 1891 Cleveland Gazette such as "Challenging Jim Crow" and "New Orleans Citizen Committee Fund to Fight Jim Crow Cars" offer a glimpse of the plans that went into the court challenge of the Louisiana separate car law. The 1895 editorial, "The 'Jim Crow' Car" describes a similar situation on rail cars in Georgia:

White men, and Negroes too, come in and smoke, spit, curse and drink whisky in the face of our wives, sisters and mothers, and there is no means of redress. If a self-respecting colored man offers a protest to the conductor against such treatment, that high official tells him: "If you are not satisfied with the accommodation you are getting, just get off and walk." If the Negro says anything more he is likely to be mobbed, put off the train, and possibly lynched. And all of this in the face of the fact that the Negro pays the same fare that the white people pay, and may be as decently dressed and as well behaved as any person in the car.

Page 1

• What is the difference between the expectations of "separate but equal" accommodations and the reality of such a situation?
• Would a conductor have been likely to treat complaints from white passengers by telling them they can get out and walk?
• Where is the threat of being mobbed or lynched coming from?

A 1907 article from the Cleveland Journal entitled, "Inter-State Commerce Commission and Jim Crow" reported that the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that "the railroad ‘has unduly and unjustly discriminated in some particulars against colored passengers’ and orders that . . . similar accommodations shall be provided for Negro passengers paying a similar fare."

• What was the basis for this decision?
• Does this ruling affect the significance of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson?
• The reporter argues "discrimination may be resorted to at any time, anywhere, providing 'just as good' is furnished." What kind of discrimination exists even when equal accomadations are provided?

Historical Analysis and Interpretation: William Allen’s Speech

Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans from the bonds of slavery and called for their enlistment in the Union Army as a means to end the Civil War. Congressman William Allen of Ohio argued against a bill calling for the use of African-American soldiers in his speech to the House of Representatives on February 2, 1863.

"General Grant and African American Soldier," 1892. "The Guard, Being Under Instructions, Would Not Permit Even Grant to Pass Before He Had Thrown Away His Cigar."

Allen claims that this legislation threatens to "destroy the relation of master and slave in the slaveholding States" even though "[i]t was admitted before the war began that Congress had no right to interfere with this institution." The Congressman also argues that Lincoln’s Republican Party "has presented for the admiration of the American people the negro in nearly every attitude which it was thought might win popular favor, and the last act in the great ‘drama’ is the negro playing soldier." (Page 5 [Transcription]) Allen contrasts this last act of the Republican "drama" with its previous acts, which he describes as a committment to the improvement of African Americans at the expense of white soldiers:

It is not probable that commanding officers who permit ambulances and army wagons to be used to aid ‘contrabands’ in their exodus from the South, while weary, exhausted white soldiers march on foot, would place the contrabands in the front ranks of the Army for the purpose stated; or that a department of the Government that feeds, clothes, and provides so amply for fifty or sixty thousand of these persons, who, in the language of the President, ‘do nothing but eat,’ while our white soldiers are frequently on half rations, and their families at home suffering from want, would place the negro in any hazardous position for the purpose of shielding the white man from harm."

Page 6 [Transcription]

• What are Allen’s arguments against the Emancipation Proclamation and the enlistment of African-American soldiers?
• Who is Allen’s audience and what tone does he take in addressing them? How do these factors influence the interpretation of his speech?
• How is Allen’s audience supposed to feel about government provisions of food to African Americans considering the President’s characterization that they "do nothing but eat"?
• What is the effect of Allen quoting Abraham Lincoln in this way?
• How is the audience supposed to feel about the white soldiers and their families "suffering from want"?
• How is the audience supposed to feel about the President who allows this to occur?
• In addition to the Emancipation Proclamation, what else does Allen really seem to be criticizing?
• What does he hope to accomplish by giving this speech?
• How might Lincoln respond to Allen’s speech?

Historical Issue-Analysis and Decision-Making: Responding to Racism in America

The social conditions in the United States after the Reconstruction era prompted some African Americans to form their own communities in the United States and abroad. A search on colonization provides a number of news articles about communities forming in locations such as Mexico and Oklahoma. A 1903 article in the Informer entitled, "Negroes to the Philippines" even reported Alabama Senator John Morgan’s proposal that the Roosevelt administration use the Philippine Islands as an African-American colony:

"Negroes to the Phillipines."

The plan would not deprive them of their protection under the flag of the United States; it would not deprive them of citizenship . . . and it would enable them to become a self-sustaining and prosperous race of people, because the land in the Philippine Island is extremely rich and fertile. The climate is exactly suited to the Negroes physical and industrial character.

Page 2

While some organizations considered relocating in or near the United States, some African-American groups were interested in heading to Africa. Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) emigration society was one of the most famous organizations to embrace the "back to Africa" movement but it certainly wasn’t the first. The 1903 Cleveland Gazette article, "Bishop Turner’s Emigration Society" describes an organization interested in purchasing "a steamship for African emigration and commercial purposes." A search on emigration offers other examples of emigration plans while a search on Liberia provides contemporary articles on the West Coast nation that traces its origin to the American Colonization Society.

"The Negroes of Xenia, Ohio: A Social Study (1830-1900)" provides a detailed examination of one of the oldest towns in Ohio that "has a very well-defined group of Negroes settled almost entirely in one section . . . and these Negroes have among them some of the oldest residents of the city, and also some of the most recent immigrants."

• What does the study imply about the viability of an African-American colony?
• Is emigration a viable solution to racial strife in America?
• Is there any difference between plans for African-American colonies made by African Americans and similar plans developed by whites such as Senator Morgan?

While some African Americans planned on packing their bags, others chose to dig in their heels and fight against contemporary social ills. An 1886 article in the Cleveland Gazette, quotes Frederick Douglass as describing the life he experienced in France while yet committing to staying in America: The absence of colorphobia is as notable as its presence in the land of the free. But, my friend, do not imagine that the absence of prejudice here or the presence of it in America will beguile me or drive me from my home. Though it could be pleasant to remain in this free and highly civilized country, and though I have already earned the right to retire from active service, you may depend upon my return to my old field of labor. Page 2

Illustration of Frederick Douglass from a Cleveland Gazette Article.

Frederick Douglass and other African-American leaders remained committed to changing the attitudes and policies that permitted discrimination in America. This struggle, however, often included competing views within the African-American community. This is evident in the different efforts of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Booker T. Washington developed a set of policies that emphasized industrial educational for African Americans in the South. In his speech at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895 (known as his "Atlanta Compromise" address), Washington offered to accept social segregation and other disenfranchising policies if African Americans were given additional educational and economic opportunities. W.E.B. Du Bois, the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P), and one of Washington’s most adversarial opponents, challenged the established system of segregation.

Compare Washington’s "Atlanta Compromise" speech with "Are You With Us?" a 1918 pamphlet that Du Bois created for The Ohio Federation for Uplift Among Colored People.

• To what extent is Washington’s agenda similar to that of the Ohio Federation?
• How do these agendas differ from W. E. B. Du Bois’s goals?
• How does Du Bois’s pamphlet compare to the claims made in a brief 1903 editorial from Washington that is entitled, "'Are You With Us?' Opportunity for Young Men"?

Compare the strategies of Washington and Du Bois with Bishop Turner's plan for emigration.

• How does each man propose to improve the situation of African Americans? What is each man's response to discrimination?
• What are the potential benefits and hazards of each man's strategy?
• Which plan would you most likely support? Why?

Historical Research: Inventors and The Transatlantic Slave Trade

Print of Granville T. Woods, 1887.

This collection provides the opportunity to learn about African-American inventors. Searches on scientists and inventors yield a number of documents including an 1884 Cleveland Gazette biography of Benjamin Banneker, an eighteenth-century astronomer and inventor. Also available is a print of Granville T. Woods, an electrical and mechanical engineer who had more than sixty patents and was known as the "Black Edison." Searches of names such as George Washington Carver and Garrett Morgan also provide a variety of articles. The collection can also be used to study the transatlantic slave trade from several vantage points. A search on slave trade provides a number of documents including an article, "Among Old Books" based on The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African, describing the life of a slave born on board a slave ship bound for the Spanish West Indies in 1729. Thomas Clarkson’s 1815 account of an interview with Czar Alexander I of Russia discusses the imperial's opposition to the transatlantic slave trade:

[H]e had been always an Enemy to the Slave trade, tho' he . . . knew only that the Africans were taken from their Country against their wills and . . . they were made to work under a System commonly reputed cruel; but this he considered as an outrage against human nature . . . and when he had seen the print of the Slave Ship he felt he sho'd be unworthy of the high situation he held if he had not done his utmost . . . to wipe away such a pestilence from the face of the Earth.

Page 5 [Transcription]

• How did Czar Alexander I find African slavery intolerable, yet find it easy to countenance serfdom in Russia?

A two-part article entitled "Horrors of the Slave Trade" in the May 1844 edition of the Palladium of Liberty, described the capture of a Portuguese ship that was transporting slaves:

The deck was crowded to the utmost with naked Negroes . . . in almost riotous confusion, having revolted before our arrival against their late masters . . . . The Negroes, a meager, famished looking throng—having broken through all control, had seized everything to which they had a fancy in the vessel; some with handsful of ‘farinha,’ . . . others with large pieces of pork and beef, having broken open the casks, and some had taken fowls from the coops, which they devoured raw.

Page 6

Reverend George Williams shed light on the nature of the slave traders in his 1876 oration, "The American Negro from 1776-1876." As he provides a brief history of African Americans from the slave trade through the Civil War, he explains:

The prisons of Europe were emptied of the worst elements of society, to be employed in the slave trade, while every unseaworthy vessel was immediately brought into requisition. The vilest, most ignorant elements of France, Spain, and Portugal engaged in the trade. And before 1650 the seas were covered with the greatest curse that ever afflicted the earth. The southern colonies were populated rapidly, and slavery spread through all the settlements, both North and South.

Page 11 [Transcription]

In addition, the collection provides information about the conditions of American plantations in W.P.A. narratives and documents such as the Eustatia Plantation, Mississippi, Account Book, which provides an opportunity to investigate the daily workings of a plantation in 1861.

• What were the motives, attitudes, and practices of slave traders?
• How do these compare to the motives, attitudes, and practices of slave owners on plantations?
• What kinds of conditions did the captive Africans live in while aboard slave ships?
• What were living conditions like for slaves on American plantations?
• What are the different objections people have had to slavery?
• What does the seizure of a slave ship in the two-part article in Palladium of Liberty convey about the efforts to outlaw the slave trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century?

Slave Narratives and Biographies

Photograph of Charles Garlick From His Biography.

Pamphlets such as Reverend Charles Thompson’s Biography of a Slave (1875) and Charles Garlick’s Life, Including His Escape and Struggle for Liberty (1902) provide first-hand accounts of life during slavery. Both authors target a general audience and offer a conversational style that Thompson describes as "being much better suited to the tastes and capacities of my colored readers." Compare the experiences of Thompson and Garlick. How are they similar? How do they differ? What may have prompted each to write of his experiences? What conclusions can you make about the institution of slavery based on these accounts?

Additional conversational narratives are available in twenty-seven interviews of former slaves that were collected by members of the W.P.A. Federal Writers’ Project. A search on ex-slave narrative provides the text while a search on ex-slave photograph yields a number of accompanying portraits. Additional material from the W.P.A. is available in the American Memory collections, Born in Slavery, 1936-1938 and American Life Histories, 1936-1940.

What are similarities and differences within these twenty-seven W.P.A. narratives? What do these narratives reveal about the individuals being interviewed? What might the narratives indicate about the interviewers and their intentions? Can facts mentioned in these pieces be verified? How? How do these oral histories compare to the works of Thompson and Garlick? Why might a former slave have thought it important to record his or her experience in either a biography or an interview? What concerns might an ex-slave have about being interviewed? How might the identity of the interviewer contribute to these concerns? How might being illiterate effect the interview itself or one's feelings about it?

Angelina Lester, an Ex-Slave, 1937.

Cultural Context and Language

Many newspaper articles and other materials in this collection feature the candid use of terms such as colored, negro, and nigger. These terms may be objectionable today, but an 1897 article in the Cleveland Gazette entitled, "Offensive Term ‘Nigger’" provides a starting point for discussions concerning these words:

Strange as it may seem, nigger, as [a British writer] uses it . . . is not slang at all, but is simply the ordinary English way of describing a person of color . . . It lacks the excuse of traditions of race contempt which one might find for it in a southern writer . . . And probably it is not a case of color prejudice; but only a case of not knowing when one is offensive. . . .

• How is the meaning of a word dependent upon its cultural context? In other words, why does the author make a distinction between the use of the word nigger by American and British writers?
• Is this a fair and logical distinction? Do you agree with it? Explain.
• How does such a distinction play out in a comparison of authors such as Mark Twain (Huckleberry Finn) and Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness, Nigger of Narcissus)?
• What are the connotations of these words when African-American writers use them?
• What are the connotations when these terms are used in contemporary culture in such media as rap music and movies? How do these contexts affect the meaning of the words?

Humorous Writing

A search on humor provides a number of jokes and stories such as a Fable of a sparrow and a hawk and the article, "Soldier Has Rather Novel Idea" in which an officer sells insurance to army soldiers by arguing that it would make it too expensive for the government to put them into dangerous situations. More topical satire is available in pieces such as "Humour Like This is the Spice of Life" in which the author suggests that repealing the Fifteenth Amendment and replacing it with an amendment that allows only one out of every ten African Americans to vote. A search on cartoon also provides examples of political humor including, "Real Chore" and "History Repeats Itself" (1921).

"Real Chore."

• How effective is wit and humor in conveying a message?
• How does "Humor Like This is the Spice of Life" use humor to discuss serious social issues? Try writing a definition of satire.
• What contemporary issues might be effectively discussed through humor and satire?
• Use the examples above as a basis for writing a fable, satire, or humorous essay of your own.

Literature and Literary Reviews

In the 1893 article, "Literature as a Pillar of Strength," John Hawkins discusses the importance of literature to earlier civilizations and he calls on African Americans to create their own great works:

America’s greatness is already measured more by the ability of her statesmen and the profound thought, the sublimity, grandeur and purity of her scholars, than by the number of her cities or the strength of her army. And the general verdict is that a country, a nation, a people, without a high standard of literature, is yet void of one of the strongest pillars on which to build a character.

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A search on literary reviews provides newspaper and magazine critiques as well as advertisements for some of Hawkins’s most esteemed contemporaries while a general survey of African-American writers including Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Banneker, and Frederick Douglass, is available in T.G. Steward’s 1913 article, "Some Glimpses of Ante Bellum Negro Literature."

• Why does Hawkins feel that it is important for African Americans to have their own literature?
• Which African-American authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries might agree with Hawkins?
• Did literature become "a Pillar of Strength" among African Americans during the twentieth century? Discuss.
• Can literature actually have a tangible effect upon people's lives? Why or why not?

Poetry

A search on poem yields a number of pieces on subjects such as temperance ("Don't Send Your Child For Beer"), war (a "shape poem" entitled, "Beneath the Cross"), and civil rights ("The Negro as He Is").  Katherine Davis Tillman’s 1898 essay, "Afro-American Poets and Their Verse" provides a comprehensive survey of African-American poets and includes some examples of their work as she makes the case for the value of the art: Let no man who loves the Negro race then decry poetry, for it is by this and other proofs of genius that our race will be enabled to take its place among the nations of the earth. Then, let the poem of rudest construction not pass unnoticed, lest we throw away a diamond of precious thought . . . For poets thrive rapidly in a congenial atmosphere, and if we wish the best of which our poets are capable, we must inspire them to greater efforts by our appreciation of what they have already accomplished. . . . Page 2 [Transcription]

"Beneath the Cross."

Phillis Wheatley, an eighteenth century slave and writer is considered the first major African-American poet, and is well represented in this collection. A search on Wheatley yields a number of newspaper articles, and poems. For example, the discovery of Phillis Wheatley’s copy of Paradise Lost in the Harvard Library prompted an 1893 biographical piece in the Cleveland Gazette.

• Why was Phillis Wheatley so highly regarded?
• Who was Wheatley’s audience?
• What emotions do her poems convey?
• How does her work compare to that of poets who followed her?
• In a 1974 essay, entitled "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens," Alice Walker discusses the influence of Phillis Wheatley. How does her account compare with the biographical information in this collection?

Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1890.

A search on Dunbar also provides a good deal of biographical information about Paul Laurence Dunbar, an esteemed nineteenth-century poet. Accounts of Dunbar’s life are available in another 1893 Cleveland Gazette piece and a 1914 booklet, while his 1894 poem about a Thanksgiving turkey, "Signs of the Times" provides an example of his dialectical voice. Other poets followed Dunbar’s lead in making African-American dialect a standard in their work. What is the purpose of dialect in poetry? Why does Dunbar use dialect? Who was Dunbar’s audience? What messages does Dunbar relate in his work? How does his work compare with African-American poets from the early twentieth century?

Persuasive Writing

Frederick Douglass's speeches provide a number of excellent examples of persuasive writing and public speaking that lend themselves to dramatic reading and imitation. A search on Douglass speech results in examples of addresses ranging in topics from labor to freedom to the strangeness of birthdays: Birthdays belong to free institutions. We at the South never knew them. We were born at times—harvest times, watermelon times and generally hard times. I never knew anything about the celebration of a birthday except Washington’s birthday, and it seems a little strange to have mine celebrated. I think it is hardly safe to celebrate any man’s birthday while he lives. Page 1 Speech by Fred Douglass

Drawing of Frederick Douglass.

• Why does Douglass speak about birthdays? What other topics does it allow him to speak about? Why doesn't he speak directly about these topics?
• Are Douglass's speeches effective? Why or why not?
• What emotions does Douglass invoke while making an argument?
• How does Douglass use humor in these addresses?
• According to Douglass, what are the prospects for the advancement of African Americans?

A search on editorial yields a number of other examples of persuasive writing in this collection, but two particularly interesting examples are available with a search on Emancipation Proclamation.  Two essays from 1913, "Fifty Years of Freedom," written by a fourteen-year-old girl, and "The New Emancipation" view contemporary social struggles through the lens of emancipation:

Within the next fifty years there must come to the Negro a new emancipation, so that he may celebrate, coincident with the centenary of his emancipation from physical slavery, his emancipation from social degradation, industrial and commercial exclusion, political inequality and all discrimination based on race or color.

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• Where do these essays position African Americans in 1913?
• What have African Americans achieved?
• What must African Americans pursue?
• Why do these authors discuss contemporary struggles in relation to the Emancipation Proclamation? What does this juxtaposition add to their arguments and the power of their appeals?

Symbolism in Song

Two nineteenth-century newspaper articles attest to the power of symbolism in song in their accounts of two groups of African Americans refusing to sing the songs "America" and "Dixie." In 1892, African-American members of a church were assembled to discuss how to improve their condition in the South when the pastor tried to lead them in singing "America." Many in attendance refused to join in and, as the Cleveland Gazette article, "Refused to Sing ‘America’" explained, one man objected, "I don’t want to sing that song until this country is what it claims to be, a ‘sweet land of liberty.’" The congregation did, however, join the pastor when he started a new song.

• What are the values and interests underlying the song, "America"?
• Why was the notion of a "sweet land of liberty" objectionable?
• Might the lyrics of "America" still be objectionable to some? Why or why not?

Nine years later, the Cleveland Gazette article, "Refused to Sing 'Dixie'" described a group of African-American school children who refused to participate in a Memorial Day activity of singing "Dixie". The article reported that one child:

could not see his way clear to celebrate the memory of the fallen soldier and patriot, who died on the battlefield fighting for liberty, by singing a song which means the mingling of the praises of those who fired upon the flag with that of the heroes who gave their lives for their country, and they refused to sing.

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• What are the values and interests inherent in the song "Dixie"?
• Why might some people, particularly African Americans, object to this song?
• Are there similar instances today of songs or other types of symbols being contested?
• How does singing a song such as "Dixie" differ from flying a Confederate flag?
• Upon what grounds might one defend the singing of "Dixie" or flying of a Confederate flag?
• What slant did the newspaper take when reporting this event?
• Does the article represent the thoughts of the children or the writer?
• What might the students and/or the teacher have done differently?
• How does this incident regarding the singing of "Dixie" differ from that of the church members asked to sing "America"? What is the difference between the objections to these two songs?
• What are the expectations of adults in a church and children in a school? How do these expectations impact the significance of the act of singing in these cases?

Newspapers

With more than 15,000 articles from eleven Ohio newspapers, this collection provides an excellent opportunity to investigate the role of newspapers to communities in general and to the early-twentieth-century African-American community in particular. Browse the Subject Index to this collection in order to examine the different issues discussed in African-American newspapers and answer the following questions.

• What resources does the paper provide its community? What roles does it play?
• Does the newspaper provide a political voice? Explain.
• How do these newspapers compare with other publications of the era?
• How do they compare to contemporary African-American newspapers?
• Has the mission of these publications changed over time?