Darwin Turner lecture, "Survey of Black Literature #3," July 14, 1969

Darwin Turner: About the significance of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the re-evaluation of Paul Laurence Dunbar as a social figure but please let me remind you that even though this course inevitably will be involved with matters of history, sociology, economics, there's still a focus on literature and it is important to look at Paul Laurence Dunbar, briefly at least, as a literary figure. To attempt to determine with Dunbar and with the other writers we will study. The excellence of the individuals according to particular standards. Now the real question that is going to trouble us throughout this course is, what standards will be used? Darwin Turner: I think the standard that must be used for the artist of a particular period is the standard that he has selected for himself. Now in the case of Paul Laurence Dunbar that standard was English and American poetry of the 19th century. Particularly, the English poetry of the 19th century which Paul Laurence Dunbar had read in school, and the American poetry of James Whitcomb Riley which he had read as one who was a state neighbor of Riley. Paul Laurence Dunbar and all fairness to Dunbar should be judged as a poet, rather than as a social philosopher. Although, he wrote novels, short stories, and essays his major talent was his ability as a poet. Darwin Turner: Unfortunately, his poetic talents have not been appraised with sufficient care. Their relatively few articles are books concerned with an examination of Dunbar as a poet. Consequently, his reputation is based largely on two very popular myths. One is that the well intended but misguided judgment of William Dean Howells prevented full recognition of Dunbar as a poet of standard English, that if it hadn't been for Howells, if it hadn't been for the weight that William Dean Howells could bring to his pronouncements about literary excellence, Paul Lance Dunbar would have been recognized as a talented writer of standard English, rather than of dialect. A second myth identifies Dunbar as a Black Bobby Burns, a Robert Burns if you prefer the more formal term for the [Scottish] poet. Instinctively singing about nature and about people, these are both myths. Dunbar is partly responsible for the first myth. He wanted to be remembered as a writer of standard English verses, rather than as a writer of dialect. Therefore, he blamed Howells because editors preferred the dialect poems. Darwin Turner: Actually however Howells is not all together responsible. Howells' initial evaluation of Dunbar's talent was a perceptive evaluation. As a writer of standard English verse Dunbar was talented but undistinguished. His unique contribution to American literature is his dialect poetry. Dunbar had talent but Dunbar had traditional weaknesses, the weaknesses of a young poet. He didn't write memorable lines in standard poetry, standard English poetry. His imagery was a copy book imitation of the cites and sounds which were familiar to poets of England, but not to the poets of Southern Ohio. He was nightingale floating through the sky... skies and as a native of Ohio I have yet to see a nightingale in Souther Ohio. Nevertheless, Dunbar did posses talent, he was a droit in the use of rhythm. He was extremely skillful in characterization to create suspense and humor. Now, he could have used these talents effectively either in standard comic or in dialect comic or in dramatic narratives and dialogue but as long as he wrote in standard English he kept remembering Shelley and Keats and the poets he was trying to rival. He felt artificial and he was artificial. Darwin Turner: When he wrote in dialect he felt less constrained he was able to write more smoothly more naturally. Those nightingale are replaced by Whippoorwills, the brooks and the reels and the streams, that he borrowed from English poetry turned into the cricks of the pastoral American poetry and the sentimentality of his poetry I think is less offensive to contemporary readers when it's partially hidden behind dialect. If you get a full dose of 19 century sentimentality in standard English it's awfully hard to take. If you have it partially hidden behind dialect, sometimes you can accept it a little more easily. Now once again this does not imply that Dunbar could not write in standard English. Quite to the contrary as Howells pointed out even in the early poems Dunbar wrote well, but Dunbar himself effectively appraised the limitations of his standard English poetry when he described the poems as graceful little verses. Within 25 years after Dunbar the poetry of America was the stentorian singing of Walt Whitman the intellect torturing verse of T.S. Eliot and the mind dazzling imagery of the images. Darwin Turner: Graceful little verses were shattered and swept under a rug, before World War I. In contrast the laughing, weeping people of Dunbar's dialect poetry could dance their way, and gossips their way, and flirt their way, into World War II. Now the second myth that Dunbar was simply a natural poet, one who never had a lesson, one who never worried about anything but simply sat down and dazed off poem, after poem, that's always a bit frustrating to me because I have written a few poems and they don't come out quite that easily. Virginia Cunningham however wrote a biography of Dunbar and gave the impression that Dunbar for instance would see a little Black child and instantly all of the lines of a poem would flow out of Dunbar's mind. It's a very popular image which I'm afraid, does considerable injustice to Paul Laurence Dunbar who worked very hard to create a particular kind of poetry especially in his early verse. He was one of the most conscious experimenters with metrics, with verse form that America had produced at that particular time. He was in his early poetry concerned with working with such things as the Alexandrine Line. Darwin Turner: Ream quae almost every possible experimentation with verse form with meter. Dunbar has been considered also a pastoral port, again he's identified with the plantation tradition it's assumed that he loved nature and wrote effectively about nature and the irony is that Dunbar was simply not an individual as at home outside as indoors. His wife, a port in her own right explained once that Paul Laurence Dunbar appreciated nature but he couldn't write about it. His outdoor scenes even those which are peopled by Black characters, his outdoor scenes has the flatness of painted canvases. His most effective poetry is the poetry inside the house, with images drowsing beside a popping fire, burrowing beneath the bed covers to smoother out the morning call of the mother who wants their son to get up. Mentally tasting and devouring the food still cooking on the stove. Darwin Turner: Dunbar's poetry should be examined briefly at least, as an art form, as we said at the beginning of his career he was consciously experimenting with various rhyme schemes. He wrote: “I am big pentameter, I am big tetrameter", but he is still best known for the dialect poetry and here again there is the assumption that Dunbar simply wrote one form of dialect meet... meter for his dialect poetry and stuck with that, this true... this too is false. Dunbar experimented with a meter that would do exactly what he wanted to do in the dialect poetry, and when he finally found it over period of some years then he continued to work within that scheme. Darwin Turner: One part of Dunbar's art that has not been considered sufficiently is his use of two dialects. The dialect of the Black man, a dialect which Dunbar in part coined for his white readers invented for his white readers because Dunbar knew that there was no single dialect Dunbar also knew that he was not sufficiently familiar with the dialects spoken by Negros in various regions of the , to be able to distinguish one from another on paper. One kind of dialect that Dunbar wrote was the dialect which he gave to the Negro, a second dialect was the dialect of the white man around Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky. Now Howells recognized Dunbar's ability to distinguish between these two dialects but the editors who asked Dunbar for more poems and the readers who made Dunbar one of the three most popular American poets at the beginning of the 20th century. These people were not distinguishing between the white dialect and the Black dialect. I was amused earlier this year, I attended a program at which a teacher was reading Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry and she was reading it obviously because Dunbar was Black and because this was an emphasis on attitudes of Black people. Darwin Turner: One of the poems that she selected was a poem that Paul Laurence Dunbar had written after an experience with a German music teacher who was protesting against the musical taste of his young white students but for most people dialect is dialect. Not for Dunbar, the distinctions are fairly easy to spot and I would suggest that two poems that you may use as examples, two poems that you can find in the complete poems fairly easily are a poem called The Spelling Bee. The Spelling Bee, which is a rather sentimental poem I'm rather fond of it I guess at times I am sentimental, it's the story of a young white boy who's engaged in a spelling contest and in the contest also is the young white girl he has a crush on and of course at the critical moment he has to lose deliberately so that she can win. Now this is in the dialect that Dunbar knew from the white people in his region. A second poem in Negro dialect is a poem called Temptation. Now very briefly to avoid going too deeply into this the distinctions are rather easily to spot. Darwin Turner: There's certain sounds which Dunbar repeated in both dialects, the sound F for if or is, those sounds occur in both and in both Dunbar regularly omitted certain final consonants particularly D, F, and G as you realize this is primarily for the benefit of those of you who are very interested in poetry, those of you who are upper level English majors and minors. In the Negro dialect more sounds are omitted or substituted than in the non-Negro. For instance, D is regularly the duh is regularly substituted for the initial sound of ta or the that becomes dat. Darwin Turner: The eh sound is regularly substituted for the ah sound, so that make in standard English becomes mec in the dialect. The short a sound is regularly substituted for the short O, drap become I'm sorry drop becomes drap or the short A is regularly substituted for the long I so that like becomes lack. Now Dunbar was not always consistent in doing this, remember again he was at times inventing something as he went along and in one poem for instance he spelled parlor, PA-LOR now logically that would mean that ore and nore should be spelled or and nor but Dunbar wrote them as er and ner. You will find such inconsistencies. The non-Negro dialect was identified by different substituted sounds. The short U is regularly substituted for the short I in the middle, first becomes fust again not in Negro dialect for Dunbar but in white dialect of the Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky area. The short I is regularly substituted for a long O, rose turns into ris. Darwin Turner: Although, Howells first review of Dunbar's poetry erroneously had implied that the dialect poems represented a larger portion of majors and minors Dunbar's second book represented a larger portion than they actually did. Howells made an accurate prediction when he judged that Dunbar's unique contribution to American literature would be his dialect poetry. He was an artist for the folk, not just Black folk but all common people who lived close to nature, who enjoy music especially singing, who love and laugh among friends and who pursue the simple pleasures of hunting, fishing, eating, telling stories to children and napping by a fire. This was what Dunbar liked, this was the kind of poetry he wrote, these were the people he wrote for, although such people generally art...are identified with the pastoral tradition Dunbar wrote about them most effectively when he placed them in their homes. One fact however must be underscored although Dunbar was an artist for the folk, he was not a folk artist. He was not a rural bard unconsciously creating melodies. He was an educated conscious creator of rhythmic songs of likable people and of desirable retreats from the materialistic urbanized age which he found around him. Darwin Turner: To be complete, one should say a word about Dunbar's fiction it is definitely not as good as his poetry I have called to your attention the one or two books I would strongly recommend to you. The Strength of Gideon is one, The Sport of the Gods Dunbar's last novel is the other. In much of his fiction Dunbar was simply bowed down by the sentimental melodramatic traditions of the age in which he wrote. There are some critics who say rather unfairly that poetry was moving into the day, I'm sorry that pro's fiction was moving into the day of Theodore Dreiser and Hemingway and Faulkner but these writers were quite a distance off even for the white writers. Dunbar was more concerned about the best selling writers of his own time. You have on the bibliography a list of the various collections of poems, short stories, and a list of the novels. Darwin Turner: You'll notice on the sheet of bibliography also that your attention has been directed to Victor Lawson's book Dunbar Critically Examined, you might be interested in looking at that if you have the opportunity. Take Virginia Cunningham's: Paul Laurence Dunbar and His Song, very carefully. It's a highly imaginative book written by someone who was quite impressed by Dunbar but who was somewhat in... unrealistic about life and writers, in general. We said yesterday, that Dunbar's approach to the problems of the Black person in America was one. Dunbar as we said, was trying to appeal to the conscience of white America to show how good the Black men had been. Darwin Turner: A writer who was very different in background, environment, early experiences, was Charles Waddell Chesnutt who not too strangely shared the same idea. Chesnutt also, believed that it was important for Black Americans to advance through the assistance of white Americans but Chesnutt was not always as optimistic as Dunbar in his early years about the possibility. Chesnutt was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1858. When he was eight years old his family moved to North Carolina, where his mother had been born. Chesnutt lived there for the next 17 years, if you're interested this may make you feel a bit backward, he started teaching school when he was 14 years old. It was a kind of compromise however, the family needed more money Chesnutt's father wanted him to drop out of school to help support the family and a teacher was so alarmed at the possibility of having Chesnutt stop his education at that point that he offered Chesnutt a job helping teach the younger students and Chesnutt continued in this manner. Darwin Turner: He wrote his first story while he was still in his teens but Chesnutt despite the fact that he was advancing academically Chesnutt wanted to get out of the South, and felt that the only way was to teach himself a skill. The new skill that was impressive to some people was that of Stenography. In 1880, Albion Tourgée whom we've mentioned earlier published A Fool's Errand, Chesnutt read the book and became convinced that he too should write a novel, that he should present the experiences of Black Americans through the eyes of a Black American. He wanted to do something else, he also wanted to improve white American spiritually by making them improve in their attitudes towards Black Americans and he felt as Du Bois felt, as Johnson felt, as Paul Laurence Dunbar felt, he felt that Black Americans would be recognized as fully equal only when they produced works that were judged by the standards of white Americans and were judged to be competent. Darwin Turner: At 17, he became the principal of a school in Charlotte that need not indicate anything in particular about the quality of education for Black people in the South in the 1880s and 11890s because in the 19th century both white and Black schools relatively young people who had just finished high school, were teaching in the schools it is more disturbing to think that in the mid-1940s an 18 year old female student who had completed only the sophomore year plus a semester of college was appointed the principal of a school. At 19, Chesnutt became the assistant head and the teacher of reading, spelling, writing, at the Normal school in Fayetteville, North Carolina. In 1880, he became principal of that school but three years later feeling that he could support himself through stenography, three years later he left North Carolina. He published his first major story, The Goophered Grapevine in the Atlantic Monthly in 1887. Seven years remember after he first decided that he was going to become a novelist, almost 10 years remember before Paul Laurence Dunbar became nationally known as a poet. A full five years before Paul Laurence Dunbar was at the stage of publishing anything. Darwin Turner: Chesnutt became associated with George Cable, whom we've mentioned. Cable of the open letter club. He was also associated with Walter Hines Page of the Atlantic Monthly. As early as 1891 he tried to publish a collection of stories, the response of the editor was rather interesting despite George Handle Harris, despite Thomas Nelson Page, the editor wrote to Chesnutt saying "People are not interested in buying books or short stories unless they know the name of the writer, so why don't you write some more short stories and publish them in the Atlantic and then lets make a collection", and Chesnutt did and wrote back to the editor and said "Now would you like to publish" and the editor said, "you know people are really not interested in reading collections of stories that have already been published in magazines". And this is the kind of runaround that Chesnutt continued to get for quite a few years. He tried to publish his first collection in 1891, he did not succeed in publishing his first collection until 1899. Then it was a collection called The Conjure Woman. The Conjure Woman was not the collection that Chesnutt wanted to publish first, he wanted to publish The stories about the problems of Mulattoes. Darwin Turner: The publishers felt that was a bit risky, lets take these stories of folklore and witchcraft this is something which enables you to say what you want to say at the same time it's not going to offend too many people. His next publication was the collection of stories that he had wanted to publish. The collection that is on reserve called The Wife of his Youth and other stories of the color line. His first novel was one called The House Behind the Cedars. A Story which Chesnutt had worked on for many years, it's a story of two children of a colored woman and a wealthy white man in North Carolina, the son passes for white studies law and moved to South Carolina. He marries a white woman and becomes a piller of the community. 10 years later, he brings his sister to South Carolina there she falls in love with a white man and she must decide whether to ruin her brother by identifying herself to the man she loves as Black or whether to pass for white, for the ending you may read the novel. In 1900, Chesnutt began a novel which was based on the race riots in Wilmington, North Carolina and it seems that every writer I mentioned had something to say about the race riots in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898 it was very upsetting thing for Black people those who could write, those who had audiences had something to say about it. Darwin Turner: He spent the year of 1901 lecturing and writing this work called The Marrow of Tradition, that I will be talking about. Chesnutt's last novel was The Colonel's Dream, a work which is available in your library. The Colonel's Dream is the story of a Southerner who after the Civil War, remained in the North, earned a fortune, returned to the South with a dream. At least a dream which he quickly developed, he wanted to help restore the South and he wanted to develop relations between Black people and white people, which would be fair for both groups. Now despite his aristocratic training, background, heritage, sense of course he had been created by Chesnutt he was looking at the situation rather objectively. His story like Albion Tourgée's, A Fool's Errand is a story of the failure of a man to bring about this kind of satisfactory relationship, that was Chesnutt's last novel it was his last published work, despite the fact that he continued to live for 35 years, I'm sorry for 30 odd years following that work. Darwin Turner: Robert Boone in the Negro Novel in America, says at the end in his judgment about Black writers and his predictions for them. He says most Black writers just write one or two books, what Boone has probably done by now but did not do before he wrote that novel was to look sufficiently carefully at the pattern of idea developed by the Black writers and to look critically at the last major novel. The pattern becomes a disturbing one. Paul Laurence Dunbar in his early work was relatively optimistic as we said, his last published novel The Sport of the Gods was a story which as we pointed out yesterday, ended on the note of bitterness. The Black man has one of two choices he can go to the North and find moral corruption, he can go South and find physical corruption. Chesnutt began optimistically in his novels. The Marrow of Tradition, the book based on the Wilmington Race Riot tells a painful story, of a Black man who is well educated as doctor, he is the Sydney Poitier type. Darwin Turner: The renowned specialist when the outstanding aristocratic bigot discovers that is son is critically ill he send for the outstanding specialist in America, the outstanding specialist boards the train and finds the young Black surgeon who is his former pupil and asks his naturally to help with the operation but when they get into North Carolina and get into the home of the Southern aristocrat the Black specialist is told that he is not wanted because no Black man has ever come through that door as a guest. Now despite this note and various notes of bitterness the story ends quite optimistically, the Black surgeon manages to forget the fact that his Black son has been killed in a race riot, created by the Southern aristocrat and at the urging of his wife who is the half sister of the Colonel's wife he rushes to assist the Colonel son who is again dying. There's a note of optimism that maybe things can be worked out with the spirit of cooperation among good people who will learn their lessons. Darwin Turner: There's no hope offered at the end of the Colonel's dream the Colonel has failed. He goes North, there's nothing more he can do about the South. Now what else was there for Chesnutt to write he had told the story as completely as he saw it, he would have been able to write another novel, only when he foresaw a change which could make him say something else about the situation of the Black men in America. Near the end of his life maybe Chesnutt thought he saw that, he was working on a new novel. The best work of Chesnutt is actually found in his short stories. His novels are marred by melodrama and sentimentality and as I think I have said to you before, my favorite collection of stories is that called The Conjure Woman, this was not the first collection of folklore by a Black man in America the first is we said last time I was here was William Wells Brown Collection published in 1880, but Chesnutt was a better, Chesnutt was a better write than Brown, a more talented writer even than Dunbar as a writer of fiction and Uncle Julius McAdoo the narrator is a delightful character. Darwin Turner: I ask you if you had the opportunity to read at least one of the stories because of the problems that you're having with books let me simply summarize several of the stories to give you some flavor of the book. The story that Chesnutt was most fond of was The Goophered Grapevine, I think I talked about this last time. The Northern employer, the Northerner who has bought the plantation on which Uncle Julius has been a slave for many years, plans to buy the vineyard Uncle Julius tells him that the vines have been conjured the employer buys anyway and then discovers that Uncle Julius has been using the grapes for many years and of course doesn't want anybody else to be bothering them. Chesnutt's second favorite story is one called Po'Sandy, Po'Sandy in this story Chesnutt was able to use very effectively the sentimentality of the literary tradition of his time. The employer this time plans to tear down a schoolhouse because he wants to use the lumber. Julius tells him that the school house is actually the body of a man, the man had been a slave his sweetheart had turned him into a tree to help his escape slavery but then the sweetheart was prevented from returning to him in time to change him back to human form, a lumberjack came along cut him down therefore, the wood in this schoolhouse is haunted. Darwin Turner: The employer who doesn't trust Uncle Julius would go ahead and cut down and use the lumber, but his wife is deeply moved by the story she forbids him to and Uncle Julius asks If it's not going to be used for anything does anyone mind if he uses it for church meetings and those Black people won't be bothered if there's a ghost around perhaps the Christian religion will keep the ghost away. Mars Jeems Nightmare again is a story with a point. The employer this time wants to fire the nephew of Uncle Julius who is extremely lazy and Uncle Julius casually tells him the story about a white master who was once cruel to Black people and he was turned into... by conjuring he was turned into a slave to teach him the lesson not to be so cruel to Black people. The employer this time sees the point, he decides to give Uncle Julius' nephew another chance, and one final one is one called The Conjurer's Revenge. Darwin Turner: The employer can't decide whether he is going to buy a horse or a mule, for the plowing he wants to do. Uncle Julius warns him against buying a mule, he tells him the story of a Negro slave who had been turned into a mule by a conjurer because the slave had stolen his pig and one can never tell the mule that one buys just might be this ex-slave and one certainly wouldn't want to be plowing fields with a former human being. The employer agrees to buy a horse instead Julius tells him that he knows a man who has a horse that is for sale, the employer at this recommendation buys the horse and discovers that this is a broken down nag in which Uncle Julius had a financial interest. Again Uncle Julius must be contrasted with Uncle Remus they are two entirely different kinds of people. Many of you have already had opportunity to read some of the stories of The Wife of his Youth and other stories of the color line. I think there are certain qualities in those stories that your attention should be called to. Darwin Turner: First you'll notice considerable emphasis upon the color line in the among Black people. The idea of color has been stressed both inside and outside the race with differing attitudes about lightness and darkness of skin. The attitude may depend upon a particular region, it may depend upon the social power of the people who are making the judgment, and there can be a complete reversal. In times past the light skinned, the yellow skinned, person of African ancestry was viewed with content. In other regions, at the same time the dark skinned person of African ancestry was viewed with content. Now the first two writers we're starting with exhibit the different poles, Paul Laurence Dunbar as we said was Black, Black, his villains are mulattoes. Chesnutt was a mulatto his villains are Black. Now some critics in the 1950s and 1960s look at this attitude by Chesnutt and say he really didn't like Negros, he really didn't like Black people, he was a snob, and so forth. All Chesnutt was doing was being the kind of Black person that existed in America at the time at which he lived, he was being completely himself. Darwin Turner: Some critics have become very upset by the fact that Chesnutt was trying to distinguish certain kinds of Black people from other kinds of Black people. Chesnutt was trying to distinguish the well-educated, cultured Black person, from the farmhand. Now in doing so he was an intellectual snob, he was a cultural snob, and if you wish he was a social snob. Still, snobbery is one characteristic that has been a part of all people's of the world. It is rather disturbing to me, that snobbery seems to be taboo only when the snob is a Black person. Chesnutt was trying to make the same kind of distinction that Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson made at the same time. In one sense it was totally unfair but in another sense it was very human. Chesnutt was arguing particularly against segregation against on Jim Crow Cars and he was saying to his white readers Why do you think that we who are well dressed want to sit with those who are fresh out of the fields anymore than you do? Darwin Turner: Now, one has to admit Chesnutt was more subtle in his implication that the cultured Negro was not particularly fond of sitting with the smelly white person. He had to be a little more subtle if he was going to get the book published in The Marrow of Tradition for instance he simply shows a situation in which a disreputable white person comes into the Jim Crow Car and the doctor manages to have the porter get the white person out. Student: Do you see any of the North of the segregation laws in the 90s [inaudible] Darwin Turner: This is the time at which Chesnutt was writing and he was definitely reacting against the segregation laws. Now he was not reacting with the humanitarian idea that many people would want, he was not saying this is unfair to all Black people. In some ways one I think could respect him more if he had said this but he was falling and said into another pattern saying Maybe you're right there are class lines, all right lets draw these class lines but there are certain groups of Negros who fully fit into whatever class lines you want to draw, don't treat them as you treat other Blacks. Student: Were his villains prior to this point, were they Black or villains you know [inaudible] Darwin Turner: His villains rather consistently are the darker skinned Negros, because his attitude about light skinned Negros as opposed to the dark skinned Negros was not related to Segregation at all but to his own heritage, just as Dunbar's was not affected by segregation. No, I and I don't mean to imply either that Chesnutt was saying in any way that the Blacker-Black folk should be the ones who are segregated and that the lighter Black folk should not be, was more of a social line, if anything the line would be comparable to that which Harry Golden tried to draw. Some of you may know Golden frequently has written about his Jewish father who emphasized the superiority of the intellectual class. They may have no money, they may have nothing to show, nevertheless they remain superior. Now Chesnutt had this idea but Chesnutt was also conscious of lightness and there's an ambivalence in his treatment of it in some of his stories. Darwin Turner: If you look at some of those stories about The Blue Vein Society, you find Chesnutt sometimes seeming to endorse their ideas but often I think, treating the ideas ironically rather amused at the individuals who are carrying their prejudices as Black people, to the extremes. Now most critics and readers have not found as much irony and humor in those stories as Chesnutt... as Chesnutt felt, one should find in them. The first story the title story is in someways the most sentimental, it's a story of a mulatto who has established himself firmly in the Black society of a community among a group of people who pride themselves on the fact that they have been free, born free and who pride themselves also on the lightness of their skins. After a long period time he has decided that he is going to marry. He has planned a large party at which he is going to announce his engagement to one of the fairest most attractive of all the women around and shortly before the party he receives a visit from an elderly rundown Black ex-slave who tells him that she has been searching for 25 years for the young man she married in slavery. Darwin Turner: Now you know the truth of the story this is his former wife, a woman who was much older than he was. He had married her, he was not legally bound to her because the slave married was not one recognized in any court of law, in any church of America, but he was so deeply touched by the fact that she had spent 25 years searching for him that he renounced the girl he wanted to marry and married this older woman. Some white critics looked at this story and said why punish a good man that way. One has to wonder, nevertheless Chesnutt like Dunbar was trying to emphasize the extremely noble qualities of Black Americans. Another sentimental story, Chesnutt probably invented this but it's a story straight out of literature of various centuries. Darwin Turner: It's the story of the peasant woman whose daughter has an opportunity to marry into high society. The woman who remains on the scene close to the daughter she loves but never reveals her identity to the daughter in order to preserve the daughter's chance for happiness. I'm certain that you know the story from a dozen literature. In Chesnutt, it's called Her Virginia Mammy. A woman who doesn't know her parentage, loves a white doctor who is the descendant of a governor, a former governor of Connecticut. He wants to marry her, he doesn't care, he says who her ancestors were but she says newspapers will point out that your ancestors were governors and judges and they will ask about my ancestors and society will frown upon you. Accidentally she bumps into a Black woman when she is persuaded to accept a colored music class. She's pleasantly surprised by the colored people. Chesnutt says their manners were good, they dressed quietly and as a rule with good taste remember Dunbar's description of the typical Negro house, tastefully decorated, conservative. They avoided rather than choose bright colors and striking combinations. Darwin Turner: Frankly, they were going to another extreme, conservatism has characterized the dress of a certain class of Negros. In an effort to meet what they assume to be the standards that are appropriate in Black society, I'm sorry in white society. In the same story Chesnutt says of mulattoes they think they're a great deal better than any but the best white people. Now Chesnutt had no right to make that statement. Judged by Chesnutt's time it was a stupid statement and unfortunately it is a sentiment which has try... which has characterized the thought of many Blacks and whites in America and continues to characterize, the idea that one group of Blacks can be equal to all but the best whites. As long as you're drawing a line and saying the best Black cannot be better than this, you are implying a natural inferiority. Darwin Turner: I don't know Chesnutt's reason for making this statement, I know in his own life he was not content to accept the barrier and frankly in 1969 if nothing else happens as a result of the meeting of Blacks and whites, the one thing that must happen is the elimination permanently of this sense of inferiority that has been ingrained in Black Americans since the beginning of their existence in America. Chesnutt an intellectual was guilty of it.