Donald Gibson lecture on Afro American writing from 1890 to 1920 at the University of Iowa, April 22, 1970

Speaker 1: The broadcasting service of the University of Iowa, in cooperation with the Department of English and the Afro-American Studies program at the University, presents a series of lectures by Black specialists as material for the University's course Afro-American Literature. The lecturer for this week is Donald Gibson, associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut, speaking on Afro-American writing from 1890 to 1920. Here is Professor Gibson. Donald Gibson: You'll recall that I ended the hour last time talking about Dunbar attempting to account for what I considered to be the essential character of his writing. I believe that I said that his dialect poetry was written out of a particular tradition from a particular perspective, and it was intended to have the function of serving a specific purpose. I said that his non-dialect writing was traditional in that he read and absorbed the forms, themes, language, of the romantic writers as well as pre-romantic writers, both English and American, and he did not, in his writing, stray very far from the beaten path. Donald Gibson: I was saying more specifically at the end of the hour, rather I was talking about more specifically, some of the attempts that have been made, including Dunbar's own, to account for the character of his writing. You will recall that I said that both Benjamin Brawley and Vernon Loggins believe that he felt it was necessary because he was a Black person to prove himself, to prove that he could write as well as other writers. I said that that may have something of the truth in it, but it seems to be that there is something even prior to that. Donald Gibson: I see all of his writing, both poetry and prose, dialect and non-dialect, to be from the perspective I'm looking at it from, all of a piece. They all, it seems to me, reflect the conservative mind at work. I believe that this is evident in all sorts of ways. I want to talk about one of his novels briefly for the sake of buttressing my argument. Donald Gibson: His best novel, or the novel it seems to me to be his best novel, everybody doesn't agree about this, is The Sport of the Gods. This novel is about a Black family who live in the South, in a little town. The family is named Hamilton. The father and the husband is a former slave who has decided to remain in the South. Well, he's falsely accused of stealing money from his employer and eventually is imprisoned. His wife and his children are stigmatized in the small town and they are ultimately forced to leave. They can't get jobs anywhere, no one will give them housing, so they choose to go to New York. There, because of the evil influence on them of the city, the son ultimately becomes a murderer. The daughter is seduced and she becomes an actress. In the novel those two things are seen on the same level. The mother becomes the wife of an evil gambler. Donald Gibson: Eventually, the father is released from prison when it's discovered that he was unjustly accused and the real thief is discovered. The father travels to New York to reunite with his family and there he finds the situation as I described it. The family, prior to their difficulty, was a very respectable family. They were a very hardworking and enterprising family and, of course, when he's imprisoned and they go to the city, they simply fall apart. Actually, after the husband goes to New York, he reclaims his wife and they return to the South to their old life and their old way of life. Donald Gibson: About this, Dunbar says at the end of the novel, "It was not a happy life, but it was all that was left of them and they took it up without complaint, for they knew they were powerless against some Will," capital W, "infinitely stronger than their own." Donald Gibson: Now, Dunbar, in the novel, says quite clearly and openly that the fate of the family or what happened to the family happens as a result of the operation on the family of supernatural causes. He says, for example, "The stream of young Negro life would continue to flow up from the South to the cities, dashing itself against the hard necessities of the city and breaking like waves against the rock, - that until the gods grow tired of their cruel sport, there must still be sacrifices to false ideals and unreal ambitions." Donald Gibson: Now, the implication here clearly is that the problems that the Hamiltons have are not the result of the operation of social forces, but rather are the result of the operation of supernatural forces. That's the reason for the title of the novel, The Sport of the Gods. The difficulty with this is, of course, that once you take that position, then you relieve everyone of responsibility. That is, you can say people can suffer because they're fated to suffer; they suffer because the gods will people to suffer. Donald Gibson: Well, it seems to me that if you look at this from, well, there are any number of perspectives that would prove the point, I think, seems to me a rather conservative notion. First of all, simply in its description of the nature of the universe it seems to me to be conservative, and certainly in regard to a racial perspective it's conservative, because this perspective has the function, it seems to me, of maintaining the status quo. That is, if you say, "Well, racial relations are as they are because the gods will it," then there's nothing to do. This is what Dunbar says. It would seem to me, again, to be rather conservative notion and it's not a notion, it seems to me, that is related to his desire, whatever desire he might have had, to either entertain whites or to prove that he could write as well as whites. It would seem to me that you can't account for the philosophical perspective of this book in most terms. Donald Gibson: This, it seems to me, is what Dunbar felt. This is what the man actually believed himself. Robert Bone, when talking about this novel, makes two statements. One, it seems to me, stands in contradiction to the other and is less truthful about Dunbar or less correct about Dunbar and his career than the other. He says, in the first place, "Dependent for his income on the vagaries of the market, he," Dunbar, "was not overly disposed to challenge the prejudices of his white audience." Donald Gibson: Now I don't think that that explains it as clearly as some other things, as, for example, another statement that Bone makes about the novel, and this is, perhaps, the only sensible thing that Bone has ever said. He says, "On a deeper level, his Midwestern agrarian values coincide at many points with the anti-industrial bias of the plantation tradition." I think he's right there. I think that Dunbar was truly a conservative man and it seems to me that his conservatism determined the character and quality of his writing. Donald Gibson: This doesn't necessarily mean that the statements, the conclusions, that Brawley came to and that Loggins came to, it doesn't mean that they're necessarily wrong. That is, that Dunbar wrote as he did in order to prove that he could write as well as anyone else could. It's simply that it seems to me that conservatism is the prior notion, is the more basic and fundamental idea, because, after all, he would only want to write to prove to the rest of the world that he could write as well as whites if he began, you see, from what I've described as a conservative position. That seems, from my perspective, the answer to the question I ask. Why is it that his poetry and his novels and his short stories show such a consistent conservatism? Or rather a consistent quality or character, and this seems to me to answer the question. Hence, the title of the lecture, The Conservative Temper of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Donald Gibson: Of course, one might, in his own mind, expand this into a generalization. This is an area that I'm working in and have a lot more thinking and reading and talking and writing to do, but it seems to me that the temper of a writer, the position of a writer, the political position of a writer, political bent of a writer, will have a great deal to do with what he says and how he says it. Donald Gibson: Now, I don't believe that you knew. I believe that you were given some indication of what I was going to talk about during these lectures, but I don't think that you knew, I'm sure you didn't know, because I didn't know at the time myself, that I was going, also, to talk about a writer named Sutton E. Griggs. I would like to talk about Sutton E. Griggs in relation to Charles Chestnutt. At first I thought, "Well, there won't be time to do Griggs," and then in thinking about the matter it occurred to me that I must do Griggs. He stands in such great contrast to Dunbar and Chestnutt. Was writing about the same time as they. Was born in precisely the same year as Chestnutt, 1872, and in many respects is a very interesting writer. I think from a contemporary perspective, he might be more interesting than any of the other writers. Donald Gibson: He, himself, was a Baptist minister and he was the son of a Baptist minister. He was born in Texas. Hugh Gloster, in his introduction to the Arno Press reprint of Griggs's most famous novel, Imperium in Imperio, says that Griggs was probably better known among Black people than either Chestnutt or Dunbar. His works were printed privately. He printed them himself and he marketed them himself. It's underground novel and a novel that still is not very widely known. He wrote some other novels, too, but this one, I think, is the most interesting one and seems to me the best of them as well. Donald Gibson: He is not a person, I suppose, who considered himself to be primarily a novelist. As I said, he was a minister. He had certain political ideas and attitudes, very much concerned with the matter of race, with solutions for the racial problem, with the way or ways that Black people should go about responding to our condition in this country. He wrote novels as one means of going about doing something which would seem to him to be an important thing. He's a very radical man. Not ultimately so, but comparatively so. Certainly, if you compare him with Dunbar or with Chestnutt, if you compare him with practically anybody who was writing at this time, he seems to be very radical. Donald Gibson: Imperium in Imperio, I'm sorry he called the novel that, but he did. It's published in 1899 and it means the empire within the empire. This has to do with the theme of the book. Now, I said some things during my first lecture which suggested that I'm more concerned about what a writer says than with how he says it. Naturally, and I think reasonably, and I do consider myself reasonably reasonable, naturally this is all a matter of degree and obviously the matter of how a writer says something is important. After all, if a writer can't write at all, if he can't use language, maybe he can't even understand. You see, that's the further exchange, so I recognized I'm overstating the case to some degree, but I think it's necessary at this particular point in time to overstate the case. Donald Gibson: This novel, even I must admit, is a rather poorly written novel, I have to say. It has a lot of slapstick in it. It has a lot of somewhat childish humor in it. For example, there's a scene during which the students in the classroom put a tack on the teacher's chair and he sits on it, then jumps up and runs around the room and so forth and so on. On one of the central character's graduation days, his graduation from primary school, he's been persecuted all this time by his teacher and so he's plotted revenge. During the graduation ceremonies we learn that he has dug a pit underneath the platform and filled it with water and he has a string or a rope that goes underneath the floor and comes up to his seat where he's bored a hole and he has a release for the trap door. At the proper moment, he pulls it and this man who's been persecuting him drops down into this hole and gets all wet and muddy. Donald Gibson: Another character, the same character much later on in the book, says that he wants to find out what whites really think about Black people. What does he do? He leaves town, goes away, and he puts on a wig and a dress and comes back and hires himself out as a maid. He listens at the keyholes and looks and observes. The implication is that he finds out what whites really think of Black people. He finds out that white people don't know anything about Black people and so forth and so on. Donald Gibson: I'm saying that kind of thing probably would have been, there's a problem of logic there, isn't there? A person who's a little bit more careful about what he was doing probably wouldn't have made that same error. Obviously, he couldn't go into one family and listen and then come out and say now I know what the white man thinks of the Black man. It's a little bit more complicated than that, I would say. I'm not being precious about this, by the way. The kinds of observations I'm making, I think, are the kinds of observations that the most sympathetic reader of this book couldn't help but make himself. Donald Gibson: In one particular instance in the book describes a church service. It says that one sister, who had a white lady's baby in her arms, got happy and flung it entirely across the room. Well, we could have done without that, I think. There are a lot of other kinds of things like that, things that a more clever novelist wouldn't have done. For example, he says, "We can now reveal the whereabouts of Belton and James Henry." That's the central character and his brother. "We can now reveal the whereabouts," which means, you see, that he had the problem of letting the reader know where he was, but he does it in a rather awkward way. He frequently will stop the action and say, "Well, now let's look at this," you see, "let's stop looking at this and look at that," and so forth and so on. Donald Gibson: Another place I'm looking at here, "The judges now retired to deliberate as to whom to give the prize. While they are out, let us examine Belton's plans for carrying out the second thing upon the accomplishment of which he was determined." Rather formal style and rather awkwardly formal. "The judges now retired to deliberate as to whom the prize should be given," and, "the accomplishment of which he was determined." Donald Gibson: Okay, well, it wasn't for those reasons, I don't think, that publishers wouldn't touch that book. I don't know whether Griggs tried to have his book published or his books published by major publishers, but if he didn't try he was probably a wise man. He just saved himself a lot of time, because no publisher would have touched this book for reasons which will be forthcoming. Donald Gibson: The book goes this way. First of all, it's held together by an antithesis that Griggs sets up between Belton Piedmont, the hero of the book, and Bernard Belgrade, who serves not precisely, well, in certain ways as the counter hero, I suppose is better. He's not an antagonist precisely, though in some respects he is. Belton Piedmont is a Black man and Bernard Belgrade is Mulatto. That distinction is made in the book. I don't know precisely what to make out of that fact, but the two are always in competition throughout the whole book. They are rivals in grammar school. The same teacher who dislikes Belton so much favors Bernard and does all kinds of favors for him and helps him along, helps him to prepare his graduation speech where the two of them are speaking, by the way. Both very, very bright. Both very, very good students. Donald Gibson: Then, after they leave primary school, they both go to ... Well, I guess that's another error in the book, because they both go to college. Now, it's said that they both go to college. Bernard goes to Harvard and Belton goes to a Black school in the South. Both are preparing to be race leaders. The focus of the book is on Belton and when they go to school we lose sight of Bernard. He drops in later on. Belton goes to college. He does very well while he was there, and while he's there, he does something that's very, very interesting. Most of the professors at the school are white, but there's one who is Black. Belton is extremely impressed by this and he even goes so far as to look in one night on a faculty meeting to see what goes on and how he's treated, and so forth and so on. Donald Gibson: He's extremely proud of his man, but he discovers at one time that this Black professor doesn't take his meals with his white colleagues. Belton decides that something should be done about that. So what does he do? He organizes the students. The students have as their motto "equality or death". They have chapel services and, at this particular time, one of he students hands the president of the college at the end of the service a note saying that we demand that you change your usual procedure so that the Black professor will eat with his colleagues. Donald Gibson: The president is a bit taken aback by this and he says, "I have in my hands a paper from the students of this institution concerning a matter with which they have nothing to do. This is my answer. The classes will please retire." What happens? They sit there, you see. They won't move. "The president fell back aghast and the white teachers were all struck dumb with fear. They had not dreamed that a combination of their pupils was possible and they knew not what it foreboded. A number grasped the paper that was giving so much trouble and read it. They all then held a hurried consultation and assured the students that the matter should receive due attention. The president then rang the gong again, but the students yet remained. Belton then arose and stated that it was the determination of the students to not move an inch unless the matter was adjusted then and there, and that faculty of white teachers beat a hasty retreat and held up the white flag. They agreed that the colored teacher should eat with them. The students broke forth into cheering and flaunted a black flag on which was painted in white letters 'victory'. They rose and marched out of doors, two by two, singing John Brown's Body Lies Moldering in the Grave and We Go Marching On. The confused and bewildered teachers remained behind, busy with their thoughts. They felt like hens who had lost their broods." Donald Gibson: This is the beginning of Belton's career as a leader of the race. After he leaves college, he becomes a school teacher in Richmond, Virginia, and he's dismissed from his post because of his militancy. He has a government appointment as postmaster in a little town, or a clerk perhaps it is, and he starts a newspaper. Again, he's dismissed because of his militant attitudes on the question of racial matters. He's appointed the president of a college in Louisiana, but discrimination ends that job as well. Prior to this, he has left his wife. He's married, by the way, a person who teaches school with him and they have a child. The child doesn't look like him and he thinks that the child is someone else's and so he leaves her and leaves the child, and the wife is in disgrace, but later on that problem is solved. Donald Gibson: Bernard, meanwhile, discovers the identity of his father, who turns out to be a very prominent congressman. This thing is very, very complicated and I can't really explain it all, because it would take the rest of the period, but in any case Bernard becomes engaged. His fiance commits suicide because she fears that the race is being destroyed by miscegenation. Donald Gibson: She commits suicide and leaves a note saying, "While I lived, I could not tell you what I am about to tell you. Death has brought me that privilege. The book," a certain book that she has read, "proved to me that the intermingling of the races and sexual relationship was sapping the vitality of the Negro race and, in fact, was slowly but surely exterminating the race. It demonstrated that the fourth generation of the children born of intermarrying Mulattoes were invariably sterile or woefully lacking in vital force and asserted that only in the most rare instances were children born of this fourth generation, and in no case did such children reach maturity. This is a startling revelation. While this intermingling was was impairing the vital force of our race and exterminating it, it was having no such effect on the white race for the following reason. Every half breed, or, for that, every person have a tinge of Negro blood, the white people cast off." Donald Gibson: She goes on to say that since Bernard is Mulatto, she cannot marry him, because she'll be contributing, you see, to the destruction of the race. She says she's been doing everything that she could to discourage people who are of mixed parentage or she's done everything she could to break up such relationships, she says. She goes around trying to convince all Black women that they should indeed not bear the children of white men. Because Bernard is Mulatto, she can't marry him and she commits suicide, which goes to show that you shouldn't believe everything that you read. In any case, the point, I think, is actually the amount of determination that she has for the particular cause that she has, but that's one of the complications. In any case, both these people, their relationships with their mates and potential mates, I suppose, don't work out very well. Donald Gibson: Eventually Belton joins the Imperium, the empire within the empire, and this is a secret organization of Black people which has its own system of representation. It's a national organization. It's an organization to which practically all Black people owe allegiance. They have their president or their leader, he's called a president, and they have something like a congress. In fact, it's modeled on the government of the United States to some extent, but still secret. Belton joins the Imperium and eventually invites Bernard to join as well. Donald Gibson: Eventually, the two men quarrel. Bernard is for immediate open rebellion of Black people against the government, against the existing system, military rebellion. On the other hand, Belton is for, first of all, trying to convince whites of the seriousness of Black people and the seriousness of the situation of the determination of Black people to be free. He's for trying this for five years, revealing the existence of the Imperium, revealing the strength of the Imperium, and he feels that this will convince whites of the necessity of making the necessary changes. He says, "We should try this for four years, and if this doesn't work, then we should by, peaceful and legal means, take over the state of Texas." All Black people should move to the state of Texas under a certain pretense and then vote, you see, by vote take over the government and then live there. Donald Gibson: Well, Bernard won't have any of that. He says that's not the way to do it. He says we should take over the state of Texas by force, set up guns around it to defend it, make alliances with other nations who, at the time that the revolution occurs, will come to our aid, get Black people in the navy to, at a certain moment, to destroy the ships of the navy so that the navy won't be able to be used to attack them, and so forth. The two argue these two points, you see. Obviously, of the two points, one is more conservative than the other, but it seems to me terribly, extremely radical that this man would discuss such issues at this time, 1899, in the open. I'm sure, as I said before, that none of the major publishers would have touched this book with a 10 foot pole. Donald Gibson: The two are in conflict and eventually we have Belton being executed by the Imperium. That, in itself, is interesting because Griggs's sympathies are with Belton. Griggs believes that Belton's less militant way is the way, you see. In a way, he has it both ways by having him executed at the end of the novel, because he says that the more viable way, or says by implication, that the more viable way is Bernard's way. That is what he says makes more sense, though he apparently still doesn't want to give himself over to that particular solution. Donald Gibson: What's very impressive and interesting in this novel is what gets said in it. In certain ways, the kinds of things that he says are as contemporary as the things that we hear from Malcolm and from Eldridge. Let me simply read a few passages from the novel. Donald Gibson: At one point we are told at this particular point, this is a person in the novel speaking. I don't want to go into saying who he is and what his role is in the novel, but "He reasoned that the Negro, who had endured the hardships of slavery, might spend his time looking back and thanking God for that from which he had made his escape. But the young Negro, knowing nothing of physical slavery, would be peering into the future, measuring the distance that he had yet to go before he was truly free and would be asking God and his own right arm for the power to secure whatever rights were still withheld. He argued that living as the Negro did beneath the American flag, known as the flag of freedom, studying American history and listening on the outer edge of 4th of July crowds to eloquent orators' discourse on freedom, it was only a matter of a few years before the Negro would deify liberty as the Anglo-Saxon race had done and count it a joy to perish on her altar. Donald Gibson: In order that the Republic might ever stand, he knew that the principles of liberty would have to be continually taught with all the eloquence and astuteness at his command, and if this teaching had the desired effect upon the white man, it would also be powerful enough to awaken the Negro standing by his side. So his ear was to the ground, expecting every moment to hear the far off sounds of awakened Negroes coming to ask for liberty and, if refused, to slay or be slain." Donald Gibson: In another passage, this, I believe is Belton speaking, giving a speech before the Imperium. He says, "The general government says to the citizen, 'I am your sovereign. You are my children and not the citizen of only one state. If I call on you to defend my sovereignty, you must do so even if you have to fight against your own state, but while I am your supreme earthly sovereign, I am powerless to protect you against crimes, injustices, outrages against you. Your state may disenfranchise you, with or without law may mob you, but my hands are so tied that I can't help you at all, although I shall force you to defend my sovereignty with your lives. If you are beset by Ku Klux Klan, white cappers, bulldozers, lynchers, do not turn your dying eyes on me, for I am unable to help you.' Such is what the federal government has to say to the Negro. Donald Gibson: The Negro finds himself an unprotected foreigner in his own home. Whatever outrages may be perpetrated upon him by the people of the state in which he lives, he cannot expect any character of redress from the general government. In order to supply this protection, this conspiracy of which I have spoken has been formed to attempt to unite all Negroes in a body to do that which the whimpering government childishly, but truthfully, says it cannot do. These men are determined to secure protection for their lives and the full enjoyment of all rights and privileges due American citizens. They take a solemn oath offering their very blood for the cause. I see eventually that this will lead to a clash of arms." And goes on after that. Donald Gibson: This is Bernard speaking to the general assembly. "Fellow countrymen, we must be free. The sun that bathes our land in light yet rises and sets upon the race of slaves. The question remaining before us then is, how are we to obtain this freedom? In olden times, revolutions were affected by the sword and spear. In modern times, the ballot has been used for that purpose. But the ballot has been snatched from our hands. The modern implements of revolutions has been denied us. I need not say more. Your minds will lead you to the only gate left open. But this much I will say. Let not so light, so common, so universal a thing as that which we call death be allowed to frighten you from the path that leads to true liberty and absolute equality. Let that which, under any circumstances, must come to one and all be no terror to you. How glad I am that I can glance over this audience and see written upon your faces utter disdain for death. Donald Gibson: Some tell us that a sea is in our way, so deep that we cannot cross. Let us answer back in joyful tones as our vessels push out from the shore that our clotted blood shed in the middle of the sea will float to the other side, even if we do not reach there ourselves. Others tell us that towering, snow-capped mountains enclose the land. To this we answer, if we die on the mountainside, we shall be shrouded in sheets of whitest snow and all generation of men yet to come upon the earth will have to gaze upward in order to see our whitened forms. Let us then, at all hazards, strike a blow for freedom. If it calls for a Valley Forge, be free. If contending for our rights given unto us by God causes us to be slain, let us perish on the field of battle." Donald Gibson: Well, as I said, quite different from what other people were saying at the time, what other writers were writing at the time. There are many other kinds of things like that that are interesting. This is one of the ways, I think perhaps the best demonstration, of the relationship, or one of the best ways in which we can see the relationship of present to past, to see that there are not things that are new, and especially in the particular struggle that we're involved in, to recognize that the problems are not new. It might be helpful and useful to see other people who are just as intelligent, sensitive, knowledgeable as we, it's interesting to see what conclusions, what kinds of things they have thought about. Donald Gibson: Griggs published some other novels. He became less radical as he grew older, which is par for the course, I suppose. Eventually he came to the conclusion in a novel called The Hindered Hand, for example, he came to the conclusion that there was a necessity for cooperation between the races rather than secession, withdrawal, and he never seems to be so terribly optimistic about that possibility, but he raises it as a possibility. At the end of The Hindered Hand, he again has these two characters who are in opposition to each other or stand in antithetical relation. One of them, he has, at the end of the novel, going to Africa to prepare a place for Black people to immigrate to in case the whites do not change their ways. But, again, you see this as something in the future and something that he doesn't commit himself to entirely. Donald Gibson: I thought it would be worthwhile and interesting to get that material in on Griggs before I went on to Chestnutt. It's interesting, I think, to put Griggs between Chestnutt and Dunbar because of the radicalism of his position as opposed to the relative conservatism of the positions of the other two. Chestnutt, in the traditional sense and most senses, I suppose, is a much better writer than Griggs. He took writing itself more seriously than Griggs did. Chestnutt worked very carefully over his manuscripts. I don't think that Griggs probably did that, because Griggs was really interested in something else. Chestnutt was a literature and he was writing to whites, whereas Griggs was primarily writing to Black people. This has something to do with the character of their writings as well. Donald Gibson: Chestnutt was very consciously writing to change the thinking of whites. I said he was a careful craftsman and he was, but he didn't give himself over to art for art's sake. He believed or he intended that his novels should have a social effect and he speaks of this. This is reported in his biography, which his daughter, Helen Chestnutt, did. Charles Chestnutt, Pioneer of the Color Line, it's called. Donald Gibson: Again, if we're looking at these people in terms of their politics, I suppose he would be a little bit less conservative than Dunbar, but not precisely. That would depend on the perspective you're looking at them from, because in certain ways he's very, very conservative and in certain ways he seems a kind of arch-conservative for that matter. He's clearly an institutionalist and something of an elitist, even. Chestnutt was very conscious of class and he valued class. He believed, I think clearly believed himself to be an aristocrat and he felt himself to be, well, really superior to other people, both white and Black, who weren't of his class. Donald Gibson: You often see in his work references to the quality of the blood of his characters. He believes somehow that what a person is is dependent, in large part, on what his ancestors were. This isn't new, by the way, is it? After all, so that people now are very conscious of their ancestors who came over and like to, if they have ancestors who did something that's outstanding, they like to believe that some of whatever allowed them to do that belongs to them as well. I won't go further with that, but the bad characters in Chestnutt's novels are sometimes bad because they come from the lower classes. Donald Gibson: This is the beginning of that whole phenomena that Faulkner deals with so frequently, say, for example, in The Hamlet and in others of the novels, The Mansion and so forth, where the Snopes family appears. These were the people, you recall who, after the war, these were the people who were landless, the people who were without social connections, politically powerless. These were the people who began to seize control after the destruction of the pre-Civil War Southern society, after the structure of it collapsed. These were the people who became entrepreneurs in various ways, who began to make money and, as they made money, they also seized political power as well. I didn't mean to mention those in that order necessarily. Donald Gibson: There's one novel, by the way, The Colonel's Dream, which Chestnutt wrote, which is largely about this very thing. Chestnutt is as against this as Faulkner is. Remember what he does with the Snopes family. They don't have any manners, we are told, because they don't come from anything. They have no tradition behind them and, consequently, they are mean and vicious people, like Mink Snopes, you'll recall. There's IOU Snopes and Montgomery Ward Snopes and all those people. Chestnutt deals with these same people and has the same negative feelings about them. He believed in the established manners and mores of the Old South. He believed in the necessity of gentlemanly conduct. He believed in the necessity of certain treatment of superiors, treatment by superiors of inferiors. He believed in a code of honor. He believed that there is a certain way in which womanhood should be viewed and that people should act in terms of such codes of conduct. He believed in a static society. He wanted a static society. He gave himself over to the idea of aristocracy, because he himself, of course, was a Mulatto, and he felt his blood was good blood. Donald Gibson: I'll go on with Chestnutt tomorrow. Speaker 1: That was Donald Gibson, Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, with today's lecture. This series of programs is presented by the Broadcasting Service of the University of Iowa, in cooperation with the Department of English and the Afro-American Studies program at the University as material for the course, Afro-American literature. Today's presentation originated as a live broadcast at 1:30 p.m., April 22, 1970, from Shambaugh Auditorium and was recorded for future broadcasts. This is the Broadcasting Service of the University of Iowa.