Darwin Turner lecture, "Survey of Black Literature #5," January 21, 1970

Darwin Turner: Do a little feeling my way. First, when the outline was passed out to you last week, I had not proofread it. Would you please make one correction at least? And I admit I still haven't proofread beyond the beginning of the Renaissance. The name of Chesnutt is misspelled on your outline. The correct spelling is on the sheet that's being passed around to you. Darwin Turner: You should receive four pages. May I have a copy of each of those being passed out? Darwin Turner: You should receive four pages. One is a bibliography of Paul Laurence Dunbar. One Charles Chesnutt. Another, a bibliography of Du Bois. And still another, a bibliography of James Weldon Johnson. Darwin Turner: Now, if you glance at these you will recognize very quickly that in general I have listed nothing except books. There are various articles which are of some significance. But for the sake of the mimeographing I have tried to concentrate on the books that you might be interested in. These are not required readings. Some of you, however, will want to go further into the field, will want at least to know what are the basic materials for each writer. Darwin Turner: This is a horrible place to be trying to teach a class from. It's still far too much the lecture atmosphere. I think, if I can find a way to get my notes with me, I'm going to see if I can come down at least a half a level, particularly if we're going to be here any length of time. Darwin Turner: I understand that there's been a problem with the books going on reserve, that the individuals who tried to put them on were informed that there were 70 orders, 70 to a hundred orders in advance, and it might be a couple of weeks before any more go on. I understand The Souls of Black Folk is on reserve. Now, there seems to be a question about a second book which should be on reserve, that's Chesnutt's The Wife of His Youth. Speaker 2: It was there last night. Darwin Turner: It's there. You may want to take down these call numbers. A request has been made that these books be placed on ... The call number of the Dunbar book is PZ3 ... This is The Strength of Gideon. PZ3D911ST. And the Dusk of Dawn by Du Bois is E185D8. That's all. This is the Dusk of Dawn, the one in which you would find the Litany at Atlanta. Darwin Turner: Now, how many in here have had the opportunity to read anything from The Souls of Black Folk? And how many in here are not part of the class itself? All right. Darwin Turner: Since this is essentially a classroom situation then, I'd like to go back to the original idea of presenting materials rather than a somewhat more general lecture that I had been thinking of this morning. Darwin Turner: The period that we're going to concern ourselves with now is a period roughly from 1880 to 1914. A period which tested many Black individuals in America. The approaches that most of them made during that period were in many ways different from the approaches which are being tried today. But it's the very fact that they tried those approaches almost a hundred years ago and failed to do anything which they considered significant, it is that very history of failure through an approach of reason which is in part at least responsible for some of the ideas, some of the methods, some of the approaches which are being tried today. Darwin Turner: We said previously that one problem for Black people in America at the time of the Civil War was the fact that Black people were considered non-human. Now, if they were considered non-human, then logically the first thing for them to attempt to do was to prove that they were not only human, but to prove that they could take the standards which were being used for all Americans, that they could work according to those standards, live according to the standards and prove themselves. Darwin Turner: This was for a new generation a period of enterprise that I think has been treated unjustly by contemporary white liberal critics, and treated unjustly by many Black people living in 1968, 1969, because one cannot start any consideration of Black people in 1880 from the point of view of what a Black person in 1968 wants. You have to start instead from the other angle, from the angle of a person whose family had been enslaved just 25 years earlier. Our individuals who knew that their parents had been free, but who knew that other Black people in this country had been enslaved, again, 25 years ago. Darwin Turner: This was a generation which wanted to do what America has advertised is possible. It wanted to prove that once Black people were accepted as part of the American life, they would perform just as the white Americans would. There was a lot of faith, a lot of hope, a lot of optimism. Darwin Turner: Now, the writers that we're going to be talking about in general were writers who believed this. Our first was Paul Laurence Dunbar, who has been described as an accommodationist. There are some who don't know Dunbar who talk about him simply as an Uncle Tom, as an individual who was so concerned with publishing his works that he would simply put out whatever the white editors and white critics wanted. Darwin Turner: The next we'll talk about is Charles Chesnutt, who also shared the Black experience with Dunbar, but whose ancestry and experiences were sufficiently different that his approach to the problem was different. Darwin Turner: The third we'll talk about is W.E.B. Du Bois. How many of you in selecting happened to read Of Our Spiritual Strivings by Du Bois? Good. In a way, I'm glad that no one else did because I'd like to approach this period simply by reading sections of this essay to you, as a kind of digression in the ardor of the lecture. Darwin Turner: Du Bois, in 1903, published a book of essays called The Souls of Black Folk. In this work, as you probably know from the introduction that you read, he was trying to capture what he believed to be the culture, the spirit, the aspirations, the anxieties of Black people in America. But Du Bois recognized, because of his particular ancestry and his experiences, he recognized a polarity that he wanted to explain first. And I think Black Americans today must come to grips with the question of this polarity, and it is a question that white Americans should be aware of also. And forgive me for reading so much to you today. Darwin Turner: It begins, "Between me and the other world, there is ever an unasked question. Unasked by some through feelings of delicacy, by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All nevertheless flutter around it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then instead of saying directly, 'How does it feel to be a problem?' they say, 'I know an excellent colored man in my town,' or, 'I fought at Mechanicsville,' or, 'Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil?' At these, I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer. To the real question, 'How does it feel to be a problem?' I seldom answer a word." Darwin Turner: And yet, even though Du Bois would not answer for others, he had to answer for himself. What does it mean to be a Black person in America? I think everyone who is here today was here last time. Let me remind you again that I am going to be using the term interchangeably, Negro, Afro-American, colored and Black. Historically, I have to. If you want to find an individual as militant as any individual you could conceive of today, that individual with his aristocratic background and training was W.E.B. Du Bois, who, as you know, has had his name taken for some organizations that are definitely the so-called militant organizations. Yet Du Bois in his own day was fighting to gain respectability for the term Negro, in America particularly, and for the term colored, to identify with the other non-white peoples of the world. And I think I am fairly safe in using the term as freely as Du Bois used it. Darwin Turner: It was a question he had to answer for himself, and this is how he tried. "After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil and gifted with second sight in this American world. A world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness. An American, a Negro. Two souls, two thoughts. Two unrecognized scribings. Two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife. This longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self." Darwin Turner: Now, remember again the date of this, 1903. Darwin Turner: "In this merging, he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa." Darwin Turner: Du Bois and many other Americans in 1903 were not as disillusioned with America as many Americans are in 1969. America at that time still seemed a land of promise. It was a land being contrasted with the more corrupt and older monarchies of England, France, Russia. Darwin Turner: "He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American. Both a Negro and an American. Without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face." Darwin Turner: Now, those last two or three sentences summarize the history of the Black man in America from 1865 to 1969. That's what all the struggle's been about. Various approaches have been used as disillusionment has crept in. When one approach has been tried, when Black people have proved that they can prove themselves one way and nothing's happened. Then they try another way. Nothing happens. That's where we are in 1969. Most of the old ways have been tried. Darwin Turner: "This then is the end of his striving, the purpose of his striving, the result that he's aiming for. To be a coworker in the kingdom of culture. To escape both death and isolation. To husband and use his best powers in his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past, flips through the tail of Ethiopia, the shadowy, and of Egypt, the sphinx. Darwin Turner: "Throughout history, the powers of single Black men fly here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gaged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since emancipation, the Black man's turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength seem to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. Darwin Turner: "The double-aimed struggle of the Black artisan, the double-aimed struggle on the one hand to attempt to escape the contempt that white people give to mere artisans, the hewers of wood, the drawers of water, on the other hand, to plow and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken hoard, this double-aimed struggle could only make him a poor craftsman for he had but half a heart in either cause." Darwin Turner: Again, an issue that is pertinent today. Even though prestige is at the moment a dirty word, there are millions of Americans, including Black Americans, who are a bit obsessed with this question of prestige. Can one be a respectable window washer? If I can cite something ironic from my own experience. When I was working on the doctorate at Chicago, in addition to the scholarship I had I needed some extra money and I got the quickest job that I could find. It so happened that I applied for a job as a waiter. Was delighted to find that they didn't have any position for waiter but they would let me be a kind of janitor and wash windows. This really pleased me because it meant that I could be by myself. But when I told some people in the Black community about this, they quickly told me that I was supposed to inform people that I was waiting tables instead of washing windows, because apparently there was a little greater respectability in being a waiter than a window washer. Darwin Turner: Now, Du Bois is concerned with this. What if you develop a group of people who seem to be merely the workers rather than the professional men, rather than the teachers, isn't it possible that the other part of this American culture will have contempt for those individuals? If, on the other hand, you develop only the professionals then you're neglecting the masses of Black people who need assistance. Du Bois', which he could not fully answer in 1903, is not fully answered today. Darwin Turner: "By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister of doctor was tempted towards quackery, and by the criticism of the other world towards ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks, the would-be Black professor was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors. While the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. Darwin Turner: "Years have passed away since bondage. 10, 20, 40. 40 years of national life. 40 years of renewal and development. And yet the swarthy specter sits in its accustomed seat at the nation's feast. In vain do we cry to this, our vastest social problem, take any shape but that. This nation has not yet found peace from its sins. The freed man has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people. A disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded, save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people." Darwin Turner: Now, in what's going to take about the next 15 minutes, Du Bois summarizes the history of this period far more effectively than I could summarize it, even though I'm going to come back to it. Darwin Turner: "The first decade, roughly from '65 to '75, was merely a prolonging of the vain search for freedom. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku Klux Klan, the lies of carpetbaggers, the disorganization of industry and the contradictory advice of friends and foes left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom." The cry which is heard again in the 1960s. Darwin Turner: "The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these, the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him. And why not? He saw that votes had led to war. Votes had led to the emancipation of people. Votes could give power to the freed man. Darwin Turner: "Was anything impossible to a power that had done all this? A million Black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom, so the decade flew away. The Revolution of 1876 came, and left the half-free serf weary, wandering but still inspired." Darwin Turner: The present Civil Rights legislation in this decade is not the first Civil Rights legislation in America. In the 1870s, Congress had passed a Civil Rights Bill guaranteeing many of the things that Congress found it necessary to guarantee again, because the Supreme Court in the 19th century overturned the law of Congress, declared that it was unconstitutional. Darwin Turner: "1875 then, hope. In 1876, revolution. The dream beginning to die. Slowly but steadily, in the following years a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power. A powerful movement. The rise of another ideal to guide the unguided. It was the ideal of book learning. The curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the letters of the white man. The longing to know. This was going to be the road." Du Bois says, "The Road to Canaan. Longer than the highway of emancipation and law, steep and rugged, but straight. Leading to heights high enough to overlook life." Darwin Turner: And it took an awfully long time for Black people to give up the hope of that path, the path through education. Darwin Turner: "Up the new path the advanced guard toiled, slowly, heavily, doggedly. Only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull understandings of the dark pupils of these schools, know how faithfully this people strove to learn. It was weary work, but it was profitless work. It changed the child of emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect. In those somber forests of his striving, his own soul rose before him. He began to have a dim feeling that to attain his place in the world he must be himself and not another. For the first time, he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back. That dead weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem. Darwin Turner: "He felt his poverty. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor man in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two nations of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers." Darwin Turner: And Du Bois includes this section. "A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world." Darwin Turner: A line, an idea, almost ironically picked up 60 years later by Franz Fanon, in the sense that one concentrates first on doing that which must be done first. Why try to match the culture of the rest of the world, as long as you remain a handicapped people? But if you're living in a nation which judges you according to your matching of that culture, then you don't have much choice, at least not in 1903. Darwin Turner: "Alas, while sociologists gleefully count the bastards of the Black man and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating Black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice and learnedly explain it as the natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the higher against the lower. To which the Negro cries, 'Amen.'" Darwin Turner: And this is the point at which Du Bois felt he and other Black people in America found themselves in 1900. Darwin Turner: Now, shortly prior to 1900, two individuals had become prominent in the literary scene. They became prominent nationally even before W.E.B. Du Bois. Each trying in his own way to break through, to be responsible to Black people in America, to help them, to lead them to a brighter future. At the same time, to meet fully the tests presented to them by Black America. Both have been criticized subsequently, but for various reasons. Darwin Turner: The first is Paul Laurence Dunbar. At the turn of the 20th century, Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of America's most popular writers. Editors and readers demanded his works, especially those amusing poems and stories written in the dialect of Negros. From 1892 to 1904, very brief period for a writer, from 1892 to 1904 he published six books of poetry, four collections of four stories, four novels, and numerous sketches, poems and essays. A very productive writer, particularly when one considers that during most of the period he was in very poor health and found it difficult to sustain his writing. Darwin Turner: Dunbar at this time was highly popular as a symbol. William Dean Howells, whom many of you as English majors know, William Dean Howells, a highly-respected critic, asserted that, quote, "Intellectually, Dunbar makes a stronger claim for the Negro than any Negro has yet done." The main trouble with Howells, other than enthusiasm, was he didn't know enough about Black people who had lived in the world before Dunbar. He was forced to modify this pronouncement later when he was reminded that Alexander Dumas had Negro ancestry. He wasn't aware of Pushkin. And he wasn't even aware of the fact that Charles Chesnutt, some years before this, had published a short story in The Atlantic. But Howells was enthusiastic. Even after he was taught some things, he continued to praise Dunbar as the first American Negro who evidenced innate distinction in literature. Howells, of course, did not know William Wells Brown. But as we'll point out later, Charles Chesnutt didn't know William Wells Brown. Darwin Turner: Dunbar was an excellent example of the intellectual heights a Negro could attain when educated. He read poetry effectively, he looked distinguished, and his Black skin took away any doubt that he was Negro. I stated last time that it is rather troublesome that the more significantly a Black person contributes to the culture of the world the greater is the effort to whitewash him, to find that there was some kind of white strain that is responsible for the talent. Darwin Turner: Now, Dunbar prided himself on the fact, as I said before, that he was so very Black that there could be no question. But Dunbar didn't live long enough. An article was written not too many years ago in which some historian, completely disregarding the belief of Dunbar's family, had visited Dunbar's home, had met Dunbar's mother, and had said that no woman looking like Dunbar's mother was all African, therefore somehow along the line there was some white blood. Darwin Turner: Now, this is nothing new for Black people in the world, and the repetition of this is one of the small, continuing reasons for bitterness. Darwin Turner: Because Dunbar, however, looked like a purebred Negro, his sponsors hoped by exhibiting him to encourage Northern businessmen to contribute financially to the education of Southern Negros, and Dunbar went along with it. Dunbar was able to do in public something that he could not do successfully on the printed page. There was no doubt that a person listening to Dunbar, who was an excellent reader, there was no doubt that that person would draw a distinction between Paul Laurence Dunbar and the character in the poem or story which Dunbar was reciting, because Dunbar came out in elegance. Attired in tails, lecturing in a flawless approximation of whatever is considered standard English, somewhat altered because he was speaking in Ohio which had a variety of course different from the Bostonian. Then, after introducing himself as an individual who obviously met any standard you want to set up, Dunbar would lapse into Negro dialect. And the distinction was apparent. But he was not always as successful on the printed page. Darwin Turner: The white people then saw him as a symbol of what the freed man could do. Afro-Americans also considered Dunbar a symbol, a symbol which arrived at the moment of need. In 1875, at the Atlanta Exposition, Booker T. Washington had argued that Negros, temporarily at least, should abandon classical studies in order to concentrate on agricultural, mechanics, commerce and domestic service. Those things which he called, "The everyday practical things of life, which they will be permitted to do in the community in which they reside." A logical argument from Washington's point of view. "Train the man to do that which the American community will permit him to do." Darwin Turner: Now, that is conformity to what Washington was regarding as a racist community, acknowledging the fact that the Black person would not have the opportunity to do everything in the community. Darwin Turner: This statement seemed to support the contention that Negros could not be educated beyond the barest rudimentary level. But one year later, Paul Laurence Dunbar gained national recognition ... I'm sorry. I think I read 1875, that's 1895. One year later, Paul Laurence Dunbar gained national recognition, not merely as a sponge capable of absorbing classical studies, but as a creator of distinguished literature. In view of these social pressures, there's no wonder that some Afro-American critics praised Dunbar excessively. He never was as good a poet as some wanted him to be. Darwin Turner: Within a generation, however, by the 1920s Paul Laurence Dunbar became for Countee Cullen and his contemporaries a tragic figure. "Simultaneously tormented and protected by his laughter", Countee Cullen wrote of Dunbar, "Born of the sorrowful of heart, mirth was a crown upon his head. Pride kept his twisted lips apart in jest to hide a heart that bled." Darwin Turner: That was the attitude by the young radicals of that generation, the intelligentsia who saw themselves as the new saviors of Black people. Darwin Turner: Recently, Dunbar's image has suffered even more severely. It's suffered from scholars who have criticized him for portraying only the comic Negro characters who were stereotyped in minstrel shows and plantation tales. His reputation has suffered from such a scholar as Robert Bone, who in The Negro Novel in America alleged that whenever Dunbar, quote, "had something to say which transcended the boundaries of the plantation tradition, he resorted to the subterfuge of employing white characters rather than attempting a serious literature portrait of the Negro." Darwin Turner: Dunbar's reputation has suffered also from readers who, like too many scholars, have tried to summarize everything that Dunbar had to say in a few brief phrases. These scholars too often failed to take into account the changes in Dunbar's life, the changes in Dunbar's attitude about possibilities for Black people in America. And if you get anything out of this course, one thing that I'm hoping you will get out of this or any other literature course is awareness that a writer does not come into the world writing that which he writes at maturity. Writers have to grow. They learn ideas. They're affected by their times. They are developing themselves intellectually as well as artistically. Darwin Turner: Dunbar was one who changed as a result of experiences. Nevertheless, the currently popular image of Dunbar is that of a disenchanted angel fluttering his wings against the restrictions by publishers, or some kind of money-hungry Isar willing to betray his birthright for a mass of popularity. Darwin Turner: In order to erase these images, I want to take time enough with Dunbar to go into some of these works, to explain why he, at his stage of life in America, could not write the kind of protest which some of his critics have wanted, and why Dunbar actually should be regarded as more bitter, more critical than this legend would suggest. Darwin Turner: In general, the experiences of Dunbar, his political and economic philosophies, and his artistic ideals, prevented his writing the kind of criticism that some people, born in an urban community in America in the 1960s, 1950s, would want Dunbar to have written back in the 1890s. Darwin Turner: One part of all this is something we're going to have to come to grips with. I state this not as a pronouncement that is to be accepted, but something that is to be thought about as one examines literature by Afro-Americans. There has been a kind of unwritten commandment that talented Negros, intellectuals and artists, must not laugh at their Black brothers. When any Afro-American writer has defied this edict, scores, both white and Black, denounce him. The denunciation often depends on the particular generation. They cry that he shouldn't reveal the frailties of Negros, as if they expect people to believe that Black people are angels, as they are not. Or they accuse the writer of attempting to deny his identity by mimicking white man's contemptuous ridicule of the race. This kind of criticism has been launched against Claude McKay, a West Indian we'll talk about in connection with the Renaissance. It's been launched against Wallace Thurman, who was one of the most talented writers of the Renaissance. Against George Schuyler, a vitriolic writer who was trying to be a Black H. L. Mencken. Darwin Turner: This kind of criticism has been launched against Langston Hughes. Charles Chesnutt rather vainly tried to point out that he thought he was being funny in some of his books, other than The Conjure Woman, but the readers wouldn't let him be amusing. Even the satirists, satirists like Schuyler and Thurman, have not been free to laugh at slaves or freed men. And there is an understandable but disturbing sensitivity here. The time must come when the Black person in America feels the freedom to laugh freely at some of the weaknesses of Black people who were enslaved. Darwin Turner: While I am on this subject, let me remind you again of the novel we haven't come to. I think I've mentioned it. Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston got away with it, with the laughter directed towards slaves, by simply telling the story of the Hebrew children in such a way that anyone reading carefully could see that there was a marked similarity between the Hebrews she described and Negros, both as slaves and as freed men. Darwin Turner: But in general, the Black writer has not been able to ridicule the Black slave or the Black free man. These individuals must be treated gently, because they have so often been ridiculed by the white writers who created stereotypes to brand an entire race. Darwin Turner: But Paul Laurence Dunbar could not identify himself with the slaves or the newly-freed Negros about whom he wrote. He sympathized with uneducated Negros. He tried to help them, to teach them. He certainly didn't minimize the intellectual potential of Afro-Americans. Nevertheless, he identified himself with a character he created, a Howard [Doxbury], who has been born and reared in the North, who goes South to be a minister, but who must learn a new language, a new way of life before he can communicate with his uneducated Southern congregation. Darwin Turner: Now, there are reasons in his life that Dunbar inevitably was drawn to this position. He was born free in Dayton, Ohio. He was elected president of his high school literary club, editor of the school newspaper. And a predominantly white school, therefore, it was his white classmates who elected him. He was published and praised in England and America. Dunbar, therefore, tried to consider the skin color a very thin bond to link him with the Souther-born, half-Pagan slave, colored and controlled by Africa's savagery. Darwin Turner: Dunbar thought that slaves had been more savage than human. Dunbar knew only what he learned from the books that he read. Somewhat like a Don Quixote, he energetically launched himself to dispel this notion of savagery in the slaves, not recognizing that neither he nor the authors of the books knew enough about Africa to recognize the qualities of the Black people there. Darwin Turner: Dunbar's personal experiences, those of his family, simply did not cause him to hate Caucasians, at least not at the time at which he started writing. Many of Dunbar's opportunities resulted from assistance by white sponsors, and followed his catalog. When Dunbar was earning $4 a week operating an elevator in Dayton, Ohio, because that's the best-paying job that he could find despite his having graduated from high school, despite his talent, when Dunbar was earning $4 a week as an elevator operator, William Blocker of United Brethren Publishers extended Dunbar the credit that he needed to publish his first book of poems. He had no money, Blocker trusted him. Darwin Turner: Charles Thatcher, another white man, lent him money, and with still another white man financed the publication of Majors and minors, Dunbar's second book. Darwin Turner: The second white man, H.A. Tobey, brought Dunbar's poetry to the attention of James A. Herne, who was at that time one of the most popular actors and playwrights in America. Herne in turn recommended the poetry to William Dean Howells. Simultaneously, he recommended Dunbar to William Ingersoll. I'm sorry, Robert Ingersoll. Ingersoll secured a job for Dunbar as a clerk in the Library of Congress. Darwin Turner: After the age of 20, therefore, Paul Laurence Dunbar could know only that every major job he secured, every publication, all national recognition, resulted directly from the assistance of white benefactors. Darwin Turner: Now, publicly, there was no cause for bitterness. It's not remarkable that Dunbar assumed that successful Black people in America need such help. It's not remarkable either that, knowing that he had had such Northern benefactors, he presumed that there must be white people in the South able to help Black people in the same way. Darwin Turner: Now, 1965, '66, '67 would represent a rejection of this theme. It cannot be ignored in the history of Black people in America. The first effort after the Civil War, and what you will find in the literature, what you will find in the history, the first effort was to seek out those white Americans who could and would help. Now, sometimes lies were being told. If you recognized an individual is powerful, if you recognized that he is not as sincere but is one who can be persuaded to help, then you lie to him and tell him that he is a good person, as long as you can get that help. And this was the first pronounced effort in the generation following the Civil War. It was attempted by Dunbar. Du Bois was arguing the same thing in The Ordeal of Mansart, tracing the history. Booker T. Washington was arguing the same thing. The idea was, "The Black person cannot do it by himself. Therefore, let us find those who will help." Darwin Turner: As Dunbar's personal experiences freed him from bitterness towards Caucasians as a group, so his family's experiences failed to create any marked bitterness toward the South. His father, Joshua, had been trained in a trade. Joshua as a slave was taught to read, write and count. Even though he had resented enslavement so bitterly that he had run away and fought with the Union Army, Joshua Dunbar, as a semi-skilled worker hired out, still had not had the experiences that were common for the field hands in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Darwin Turner: Mathilda Dunbar, Dunbar's mother, had unpleasant experiences, unpleasant memories. When she was five, she saw her mother beaten. Two years later, she had been separated from her mother. Because she feared a whipping by her mistress, she ran away in 1864. So the story goes, she hid out in the field. She didn't where to go. She didn't know how to find her way to Ohio. She couldn't go back home, she couldn't go to a neighboring farm, therefore she simply stayed there. Darwin Turner: Bitter memories, yes. But still, not on the level of those in the deeper South. Dunbar's family had been luckier than other families, if you can call any slave at all lucky. Darwin Turner: Furthermore, Paul Laurence Dunbar's only contacts with the South before 1900 were a brief visit to Kentucky and the stories which were told by Negro emigrants, who may have chosen to retell only the more pleasant memories of their former lives. Dunbar, in short, did not know what slavery in the South was like. Charles Chesnutt did. And as we switch to Chesnutt, we'll find a difference in the style of writing. Darwin Turner: Furthermore, there's a problem with Dunbar. His political and social philosophies were identical with the political and social philosophies of many white Americans. Dunbar believed that America's prosperity depended upon the cooperation of the races. He tried to prove that Afro-Americans would work with the white person to build a new America. This is a beautiful dream. It was a beautiful dream. There would be cooperation. And the Black American would go three-fourths of the way. He would say to white America, "We know we have been treated cruelly, but we will forgive. We will forget." And this is what Paul Laurence Dunbar tried to tell in stories. Darwin Turner: Furthermore, just as he tried to emphasize the Negros' willingness to forget injustices, that incidentally is perhaps shown apparently in a poem called Ode to Ethiopia. A poem in which Dunbar was trying to pay tribute to Black people throughout the world. Again, he knew nothing about Africa. Ethiopia was very possibly the only name he knew other than Egypt, and Ethiopia became for him a symbol of Africans throughout the world. Darwin Turner: In Ode to Ethiopia, he wrote, "No other race, white or Black, when bound as thou were to the rack, so seldom stooped to grieving. No other race, when free again, forgot the past and proved their men so noble in forgiving." Darwin Turner: In one of his stories called Nelse Hatton's Vengeance, he tells of a Negro who had been beaten by his master and who swore to kill the master after slavery. But when the master visits him after slavery, Nelse Hatton is the one who has the money. The master, the former master, is impoverished and Nelse gives him his best suit of clothes and some money so he can get back South to his home. Darwin Turner: Now, it sounds stupid. I'm afraid that I feel it as complete stupidity. Nevertheless, I'm not certain how often Paul Laurence Dunbar believed this happened, although it did happen. Dunbar was not inventing this kind of tale out of whole cloth. But what Dunbar was trying to show was, "Here is a group of people who will go to unbelievable ends to forgive and to forget." Darwin Turner: Dunbar also believed, idealistically, that society should be governed by cultured aristocrats. And the cultured aristocrat whom he has in most of his tales is Stuart Mordaunt. M-O-R-D-A-U-N-T. Darwin Turner: In most of his stories, Dunbar ridiculed individuals who believed that money or social graces were the basis of such aristocracy. But he believed that there was some kind of aristocracy flowing in the blood. Again, remember Dunbar coming out in tails. A social climber in his own way. Darwin Turner: He ridiculed individuals who assumed that there could be artificial bases of this cultural aristocracy. But he was always contemptuous in his works of what he considered the lower classes. Now, most often the characters who are of the so-called lower classes in his works are Black, but he was just as contemptuous if they were white, and he wrote about the whites also. The cowboys, the white cowboys, are virtually on the level of his Black peasants. Because he believed in such aristocracy, Dunbar himself could not readily disagree with other writers who believed in such aristocracy, and most of the other writers were white. Darwin Turner: Dunbar believed that his personal mission in life was, "To interpret his people through song and story." This is a direct quotation from Dunbar. "To interpret his people in song and story, and to prove to the many that we are more human than African." Darwin Turner: Notice those two poles. "More human than African." Again, please do not brand Dunbar yet as an individual against Black people. An individual who in his education had been sold only this myth that everything in Africa is backward, ignorant, savage, Pagan. Paul Laurence Dunbar looked at himself and said, "I'm not that way. If it's in a book, it has to be true that those people were that way. Therefore, we have come a long way, haven't we?" Darwin Turner: It's a very logical reasoning that a lot of Black Americans have been guilty of throughout the years in America. Darwin Turner: What he wanted to do first then was to praise the virtues of Black people. His idol was Frederick Douglass. He idolized Negro soldiers and wrote poems in praise of them. He described this devotion and self-sacrifice of slaves and freed men. And the noblest slave of all is the one who appears in the title story I asked you to look at, the noblest slave of all is Gideon. Darwin Turner: Gideon was born to be a man with a mission. His slave parents felt that. That's why they gave him the name Gideon. But as he grew, he could not discover what his mission was. Then the Civil War came and his master went away, and trusting to Gideon the safety of the white women left on the plantation. And the master was killed, and the master's son was killed. Gideon finally knew his mission. It was at all costs to be the savior, the guardian of the white women on the plantation. And in order to remain true to this mission, Gideon had to refuse to leave with the other slaves. He had to give up love because his Black ex-slave sweetheart said, "You can stay, I'm going." He had to turn down a job. Darwin Turner: Now, this sounds like a slave straight out of the tradition of Thomas Page, because that's the same thing that Thomas Page was writing. And yet, here was Dunbar trying desperately to show, "Look at these incredible people. How can you, America, possibly deny opportunity to people who have served you so well, so faithfully?" Dunbar didn't know human nature. Darwin Turner: He said in one of his poems that he was, "Trying to remind the South of the virtues of those who love thee and thy children so." And as late as 1904, Dunbar was still trying to describe the bravery and the loyalty of slaves. Darwin Turner: There's still another factor that makes Dunbar one who in most of his work simply could not fit in with the contemporary idiom. He'd been reared in the small town of Dayton, Ohio. Dayton at the moment is very much an urban center, but then it was small, provincial. And Paul Laurence Dunbar distrusted cities and he distrusted industry. Darwin Turner: Now, this was not a racial distrust. Logic advised him that if one finds more evil in towns than in villages, or if you prefer if more evil can be found in cities than in smaller places, then surely there's also more good in cities than in smaller places. This Dunbar knew when he sat down and thought about it.