John Hope Franklin lecture, "The Americanization of George Washington Williams," at the University of Iowa, June 19, 1975

Speaker 1: The following is a presentation from the seventh annual Institute of Afro American culture held at the University of Iowa, June 15th to the 27th, 1975. The Americanization of George Washington Williams is the subject of this lecture by John Hope Franklin professor of American history at the University of Chicago. Introducing professor Franklin is Darwin Turner, chairman of the Department of Afro American Studies at the University of Iowa. Darwin Turner: If I were a wise individual tonight, I would do all that is necessary when one introduces a truly distinguished individual. I would say merely it is my pleasure to introduce Dr. John Hope Franklin, but I've never professed to be wise. And if I don't do a little something during the course of a day, people might think that I'm not doing anything as director. Therefore, for those few of you in the audience who may not be familiar with the work of a truly distinguished scholar of American history, let me review some of the facts. Darwin Turner: He's the John Matthews Manly distinguished service professor of history at the University of Chicago. A native of Oklahoma, where he attended the public schools of Tulsa. He received his Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude from Fisk university. At Harvard he received the master and PhD degrees in history. Subsequently, he has been honored by more than 35 colleges that have conferred honorary degrees upon him. For post doctoral research, he's received grants from the precedents fund of Brown university, the social science research council, the Guggenheim foundation, the center for advanced study in the behavioral sciences, where he served as a fellow most recently in 73, 74. Darwin Turner: He was a foundation member of the Fisk university chapter of the society, Phi Beta Kappa. And this year he is national president of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1973, he was elected to membership of the American Philosophical Society. He started numbers of places, Fisk, Saint Augustine's, North Carolina College at Durham, Howard University. He went to Brooklyn College as head of the history department and then as I've said to the University of Chicago. He served as visiting professor at several universities in America. He served as a professor in Austria and Cambridge. Darwin Turner: He's lectured at universities throughout the world. As a matter of fact, one of my greatest pleasures is not merely the opportunity to invite Dr. Franklin here, but the fact that I managed to locate him while he was still in this country, that's not always an easy thing to do. Later this summer, he will be in India, lecturing in various places. He will be traveling extensively for the balance of this summer. In 1960, he was the Fulbright professor at several Australian universities. Darwin Turner: His many books are too extensive and a list to enumerate, but let me mention simply some. The Free Negro in North Carolina was his first. He's brought out the civil war Diary of James T. Ayers. One of his best known, certainly among students of universities, is From Slavery to Freedom, which is now in its fourth edition. He's authored The Militant South, an edition of Tourgee's A Fool's Errand, an edition of Higginson's Army Life in a Black Regiment. In 1963, The Emancipation Proclamation, Reconstruction After the Civil War, a work that's being studied in our institute. In 1967, he co-edited The Negro in the 20th century. Darwin Turner: For 20 years he served on the editorial board of The Journal of Negro History. He served on the executive committee of the Organization of American Historians. He has served on the council of the American Historical Association and is just completing a term as president of that association. Ladies and gentlemen, I could continue at great length, but it's not necessary with someone like John Hope Franklin. It gives me great pleasure to introduce him to speak tonight on George Washington Williams, a black historian. Dr. John Hope F...: Thank you, very much. The process by which new world settlers, Europeans, Africans and Asians, became transformed into something new and different has fascinated both outsiders and insiders for more than two centuries. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur sought to describe this process in 1782, when he answered his own question, "what then is the American, this new man?" He is either an European or the descendant of an European, Crevecoeur said, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great alma mater. Here, individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Dr. John Hope F...: This was one of the earliest expressions of the notion that the process of Americanization involved the creation of an entirely new mode of life that would replace the ways of life, of the racial and ethnic groups that were a part of the process. It contained some imprecisions and inaccuracies that would in time become a part of the lore or myth of the vaunted melting pot and would grossly misrepresent the crucial factor of race and ethnicity in American life. By suggesting that only Europeans were involved in the process of becoming Americans, Crevecoeur pointedly ruled out three quarters of a million blacks already in the country, along with their progeny, who would be regarded as ineligible to become Americans for at least another two centuries. To be sure, the number of persons of African descent would increase enormously, but the view that they were ineligible for Americanization would be very slow to change. Dr. John Hope F...: And when such a change occurred, even if it merely granted freedom from bondage, the change would be made most reluctantly. And without any suggestion that freedom of itself qualified one to be received just as others were in the broad lap of alma mater. It was beyond the conception of Crevecoeur, as indeed it was beyond the conception of the founding fathers, that Negroes, slave or free, could become true Americans enjoying that fellowship and a common enterprise about which Crevecoeur spoke so warmly. It was as though Crevecoeur were arguing that race, where persons of African descent were concerned was either so powerful or so sinister as to make their assimilation entirely impossible or so unattractive as to make it entirely undesirable. In any case Americanization in the 18th and 19th centuries was a precious commodity to be cherished and enjoyed only by a select group of persons of European decent. Dr. John Hope F...: It was an unthinkable that Africans could become a part of the process. And from the time of American independence to the Civil War, white Americans built up a body of justifications for the exclusion of blacks from the process. Not only were they slaves or should be slaves, but they were morally, intellectually and physiologically inferior and were therefore disqualified. What began and as a relatively moderate justification for slavery soon became a vigorous aggressive defense of the institution and consequently, some reason to exclude the bondsman from ever becoming Americans. Slavery became the cornerstone of the Republican edifice. To a governor of South Carolina, it was the greatest of all the great blessings that a kind Providence had bestowed upon the glorious region of the South. It was indeed one of the remarkable coincidences of history, that such a favored institution had found such a favored creature in the African, to give slavery the high value that was placed on it. Dr. John Hope F...: A childlike race prone to docility and manageable in every respect. The African was the ideal subject for the slave role. Slaveholders had to work hard to be worthy of this great providential blessing. Nothing that Negroes could do or say could change are seriously affect this view. They might graduate from college as John Russwurm did in 1826, or they might write the most scathing attack against slavery as David Walker did in 1829. It made no difference. They might teach in an all white college as Charles B. Reason did in New York in the 1850's. Or, they might publish a newspaper as Frederick Douglass did during that same decade. Their racial and cultural backgrounds disqualified them from becoming Americanized. They could even argue in favor of their capacities and their potentiality as Henry Highland Garnet did. Or, they might argue that their right to fight for freedom and union, as 186,000 dead in the Civil War, made no sense for white Americans to give serious consideration to their arguments and their actions. Dr. John Hope F...: They were beyond the veil. As Jews had been beyond the veil in the barbaric and bigoted communities of Eastern Europe. The views regarding Negroes that had been so carefully developed to justify and defend slavery would not disappear with emancipation. If they were heathens and barbarians and intellectual imbeciles in slavery, freedom could not relieve them of these baleful qualities. And any effort to initiate them into the sacred rights of Americanization and impose them on a free white society should be vigorously and relentlessly resisted, even if it meant that a new and subordinate place for blacks had to be created. And gradually the new subordinate place emerged. It would be seen in the legal definitions of what constituted a Negro, that anticipated by many generations the Nuremberg laws of Nazi Germany. Dr. John Hope F...: It was manifested in the exclusion from the polling places with its specious justification that blacks were unfit to participate in the exalted function of voting. It was evident in the black back stairway or the freight elevator at the public places, the separate miserable railway cars, the separate and hopelessly inferior school and even the Jim Crow cemetery. The task of becoming Americanized after the Civil War was thus a formidable, if not an impossible one, for blacks who had been free, as well as those would have been slaves. They had to confront them shameless defiance of the larger white community that slammed the door of opportunity and equality in their faces. They had to overcome the resistance of the government, which even at every level and in every way, placed difficult obstacles in their way. They had to develop new and creative ways of making good their claims of being more American than the newly arrived immigrants from Europe and the right of becoming participants in the ever unfolding and widely celebrated drama of Americanization. Dr. John Hope F...: Of the many blacks who could make valid claims that they were as American as any whites and who could carry on a life long struggle to gain recognition, as Americans, George Washington Williams was one of the most representative. He was born in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania in 1849. The son of a mother who was of Pennsylvania Dutch stock and a father whose ancestors were both Welsh and African. Although this was not precisely the racial admixture heralded by Crevecoeur when he described the American, this new man, even Crevecoeur should have been impressed by it's exotic, if not it's authentic, qualities. Dr. John Hope F...: Like so many Americans of the middle years of the 19th century, the parents of George Washington Williams were a restless couple who moved successively from Bedford Springs to Johnstown, Pennsylvania by the time Williams was one year old, then to New Castle, Pennsylvania before he was six years old. During these years, and those later, the formal education of Williams was extremely limited. But, at a Pennsylvania house of refuge when he was 10 or 12, he not only learned a trade, but came under the powerful religious influence of the men who conducted the house. The influence was a lasting one and it had much to do with at least a portion of Williams's subsequent colorful career. Williams was only 13 years old when the Civil War began and when blacks were finally permitted to enlist, he was 15. By that time, as he was to say later, his heart burn with eager joy to meet the planter on the field of battle and prove our human character. Dr. John Hope F...: Consequently, he ran away from home, 15, assumed the name of an uncle and enlisted in branch of the armed services that was coming to be known as United States Colored Troops. The examining surgeon, aware of the fact that Williams's zeal to fight somewhat exceeded his age, rejected him. But, after much pleading, on the part of Williams, well the surgeon relented. This was the first encounter of someone with those persuasive qualities that were to characterize Williams's subsequent career. He rapidly rose from the rank of Private to Sergeant Major. He was wounded in a battle near Richmond, but then he recovered and served for some time after. He was at the end of the war discharged, but soon he re-enlisted and served in the Texas campaign in 1865. Dr. John Hope F...: Then he was mustered out of the United States Army and enlisted in the Mexican Army, starting as Orderly Sergeant. He advanced in one week to the rank of Assistant Inspector General of Artillery, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After the capture of Maximilian, Williams returned to the United States and enlisted in the cavalry service of the regular army, the 10th cavalry, serving in the Comanche campaign in 1867. In 1868 at Fort Arbuckle, he was wounded by a gunshot through the left lung. And shortly thereafter, he received an honorable discharge from the army and after a brief Sojourn in St. Louis and Quincy, Illinois, he returned East where he began his quest for an education. It was while he was in Quincy, Illinois, that Williams heard of a new university that had been established primarily for blacks in Washington, D.C. It was Howard University. Dr. John Hope F...: Thereupon, in characteristic fashion he went to the top, he wrote general Oliver Otis Howard, and said in his very broken, unschooled, semi-literate English, I will appreciate a good schooling. Please let me come. Within a few months, Williams was enrolled as a student at Howard university, but in less than a year he'd moved onto the Wayland Seminary in Washington, and then finally to the Newton Theological Institution in Massachusetts. On arrival at Newton in September of 1870, he appeared before the faculty of the theological institution and realizing that he was by no means prepared to matriculate in the theological program, he was admitted to the program of General Studies, a euphemism for the remedial program at Newton. At the end of two years in the remedial program, he was admitted to the junior class of the theological department. Where he made an excellent record and graduated in 1874, two years later. Dr. John Hope F...: At the Newton commencement, he was selected to deliver one of the orations. Choosing as his subject Early Christianity in Africa, Williams demonstrated his intimate knowledge and an interest in the historical development of Africa in the early centuries of the Christian era. This interest in Africa would remain throughout his life. After his ordination in Watertown, Massachusetts, Williams accepted the pastorate of the 12th Baptist Church in Boston, the most important black religious institution in the city. He had a congregation of some 600 or 700 members, and he had a long tradition there presiding over a institution that had been led for more than a quarter of a century by Leonard Grimes, one of the outstanding divines among blacks in the Northern part of the United States. Dr. John Hope F...: It was while he was the pastor of the 12th Baptist Church that he wrote and published a history of that church. His first serious attempt in writing history. Unfortunately, for anyone who studies Williams, the history has large sections of biographical material, which helped to fill in the gaps with regard to his early years. And although he pledged himself to remain in Boston and build up the 12th Baptist Church into one of the most powerful institutions in the country, he had, by the end of that year, moved on to Washington DC, where he attempted to establish a magazine, The Commoner. Dr. John Hope F...: And although he had, in 1875, the support of a number of distinguished persons, including Frederick Douglass and John Mercer Langston, his efforts there were not successful. And since he had to make a living by working in the Washington post office, he welcomed the call from Cincinnati to become the pastor of the Union Baptist Church there. Ohio, and the late reconstruction era, seemed to land a virtually unlimited opportunity for blacks and Williams made the most of it. He soon became so deeply involved in so many activities that he relinquished the pastorate of the Union Baptist Church. President Hayes appointed him in 1877, the internal revenue storekeeper in Cincinnati, and later he joined the auditor's office of a Cincinnati Southern Railway as secretary. He studied law in the Cincinnati law school. By this time, he had made some very valuable contacts with the Taft family and Judge Alphonso Taft, former Secretary of War and the Attorney General and father of a future president, welcomed him into his office where he studied law and prepared for the bar. Dr. John Hope F...: He was admitted to the Ohio bar, and later he would be admitted to practice before the Massachusetts bar. Meanwhile, he was publishing articles in the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette under the intriguing nom de plume of Aristides. If the political fortunes of the freedmen were rapidly declining in the Southern States in 1877, the same can not be said for blacks in Ohio. As soon as he arrived in Ohio, Williams became deeply involved in Republican politics. And with the backing of people like Charles Fleischmann, of yeast fame, President Rutherford B. Hayes, and Judge Alphonso Taft, Williams was soon launched on a brief but important career in politics. In 1877, he was nominated by the regular Republican committee in Cincinnati for the lower house of the state legislature. He ran a good fight, but he was defeated. He was back again in 1879 and was elected that year, the first black man to sit in the legislature of the state of Ohio. Dr. John Hope F...: During his term, he served as chairman of the Library Committee. He was a very important member of the committee on universities and colleges. And he served as chairman of a special committee on railway terminal facilities. He was also instrumental in the enactment of important legislation, particularly bills relating to police power, the railroads and the schools and colleges. Even before Williams entered the legislature, he had returned to the study and writing of history in which he was to make his most significant contributions. On July the fourth 1876, he delivered an oration in Avondale, Ohio. An occasion that seemed to rekindle in him the desire to study history and the writings. Dr. John Hope F...: He later recalled the incident, in these words, "it being the 100th birthday of the American Republic, I determined to prepare an oration on the American Negro. I at once began an investigation of records of the nation to secure material for the oration. I was surprised and delighted to find that the historical memorials of the Negro were so abundant, and so creditable to him. I pronounced my oration and the warm and generous manner in which it was received, both by those who listened to it and by others who subsequently read it, that I was encouraged to devote what leisure time I might have for further study of the subject." The study and the writing of a history of Negro Americans soon became a full time job for Williams. Indeed, it became a kind of magnificent obsession. Dr. John Hope F...: In Cincinnati, he found several libraries that were of inestimable value. Then while in the legislature in Columbus, he frequented the Library of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio. And soon he was engaged in a full scale study of the history of Negros in America. His many responsibilities of both a public and private nature were so preoccupying that he decided to give all of them up and to devote all of his energies to the writing of history. After his single term in the legislature, therefore he decided to accept no more public responsibilities until his History of a Negro Race in America was published. Dr. John Hope F...: After he had consulted all of the historical materials in Ohio, he went East, where he worked in the best libraries in the United States. He went to the American Antiquarian Society Library in Worchester, Massachusetts. From there, he went to the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. In New York city, he worked in the Lenox Library and in the libraries of the New York Historical Society and of John Austin Stevens, the editor of The Magazine of American History. He spent much time in the Library of Congress using newspapers, manuscripts, and official documents. He purchased some materials in New York and in Washington and traveled to other parts of the country gathering documents, and even interviewing officers and men of Negro regiments, when the adjutant general refused to give him information on them. Dr. John Hope F...: After his researchers were completed, Williams used the remainder of 1881, and all of a year 1882, putting his manuscript in final form. He went so far as to contract with GP Putnam's Sons early in 1882 for the publication of the manuscript. And he therefore had a clear objective in mind that as soon as he was able to complete it, he had a publisher. The organization of the materials he had gathered was a stupendous task. He said that he had consulted over 12,000 volumes and thousands of pamphlets, to say nothing of manuscripts and transcripts of interviews. Dr. John Hope F...: The appearance of a History of the Negro Race in America was an event of unusual significance and publishing and literary circles, never before had a Negro American undertaken so ambitious and so serious a task. Because of the nature and the scope of the work and because the reputable house of Putnam had published it, critics were compelled to take it seriously. Some of them praised it such as the reviewers in The Westminster Review, The Magazine of American history and the Kansas City Review of Science. Others such as the reviewers in the literary world and The Atlantic Monthly, and the nation ranged in their appraisals of it from lukewarm to severely and adversely critical. Dr. John Hope F...: In a number of the black newspapers, he was favorably regarded and reviewed, despite the fact that in some others, he was unfavorably regarded and reviewed. Now the Washington Bee the leading black newspaper in the city of Washington, simply declared that the History of the Negro Race by George Washington Williams was lies, all lies. Even so the publication of the first major history of Negroes in the United States, catapulted the author into national and even international prominence. Soon, he was in demand as a lecturer and writer on both sides of the Atlantic. When he went to Europe in 1884, he sent a note to his wife, Sarah, in which he said, "I'm sorry that I did not get by home before I left. I will return in six weeks, if I do not go to Egypt." In 1887, he would publish his second major historical work, A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion. Harper & Brothers brought this book out and the reviewers were much more favorable in general in their estimate of its content, as well as its literary style. Dr. John Hope F...: The limited literary and financial success of his historical works by no means satisfied Williams, who was a man of burning ambition, boundless energy, and with the determination to make his mark in the world. It was rumored that he was making a good deal out of his historical works. One estimate was that he was receiving an average of $2,500 a year in royalties. And when one of the Philadelphia newspapers published in 1886 a list of the most wealthy blacks in the United States, Williams was listed as being worth around $40,000. This undoubtedly was far wide of the mark and Williams certainly was never in his life far above the poverty level. But, he was ambitious and he was determined to go beyond the publication of a couple of books in the field of history. As he looked about him in the seventies and in the eighties he saw thousands of young Americans, with no greater talents than his, enjoying enormous success in the literary, political and financial worlds. The successful men that were not only from old American style, but also from...