Negroland: A Memoir (3 page)

Is it any surprise that he writes formal, rather eighteenth-century prose, quoting Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, and Thomas Gray, or that he savors highly constructed metaphors and diction?

The machinery of the watch will not fulfill its intent, unless the impulse of the spring be applied; and, though things inanimate are not to be compared with the human soul, yet, neither can a man be expected to rise to eminence in a given department, where, as is the case with men of color, there is not only an absence of all encouragement—all impulse—all definite motive to cheer him onward—but from the exercise of the legitimate functions of which, even were he fitted therefor, he would be absolutely excluded!

There are no reports on his speaking voice, but surely all evidence of a Southern accent had been eradicated. I’m moved by his choice of image: the tension between a perfectly constructed mechanism and a human soul striving to function perfectly, because of course the human can never attain that kind of perfection, any more than a Negro in antebellum America could be accorded perfect respect or equality.

Why did he choose the pseudonym “A Southerner”? His authorship was well known to the colored elite he wrote of. Still, it offered an appearance of discretion he must have hoped would calm their fear that any public criticism might inflame Anglo-Saxon prejudice. At moments he seems to imply that only “A Southerner” knows just how fragile Negro rights are, even in the North. Pennsylvania Negroes would do well, he counsels, to pursue their interests “
in the manner of suitors; and show themselves very humble in the exercise of even that prerogative.”

He may have hoped his moniker would encourage Northern white readers to think themselves liberal compared to Southern slaveholders, and give more credence to his observations.
In fact, after receiving a small number of respectable reviews in both white and Negro newspapers, the book disappeared. White reviewers amiably condescended. One, an abolitionist, “glanced” at the work to find that “its outward appearance seems creditable,” and that the author, “himself a colored man,” showed some writing ability. Another lauded Willson for correcting his people’s “errors,” but failed to notice that he was far more eager to correct white people. Negro reviewers took pains to show their insider knowledge: one recorded the “disapprobation” of certain members of the higher classes; another commended the author’s “moral courage,” given the subject’s delicacy. Already we were keeping close count of our achievements: written in “rather good style” (a touch of fraternal competition here?), Willson’s book, noted the reviewer, “adds to the number of our authors.”

—

Almost twenty years later—two years before the Civil War—author Cyprian Clamorgan publishes
The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis
. He offers a much showier, more worldly view. The times have changed and, in keeping with his florid, luxuriant name, he savors certain tonal liberties.

Clamorgan opens by making clear that he is a man on intimate terms with all kinds of important people, from “
Fred. Douglass and his able compatriots” to eighteenth-century voyageurgrandees like his grandfather, who was among the First White Families of St. Louis. In their travels, Clamorgan explains, such men, while trading in land, fur, and slaves, sometimes “obtained wives” with the blood of Africa in their veins, and from this commingling came the colored aristocracy of the city: “those who move in a certain circle; who, by means of wealth, education, or natural ability, form a peculiar class—the elite of the colored race.” His grandfather obtained and owned a series of such wives, owning all and marrying none; his grandmother was the third of five who bore the grandee’s children. The colored Clamorgans inherited property from this grandee, who, they claimed, had been awarded about a half million acres by the king of Spain in 1796.

Cyprian belongs to what he jauntily calls the “
tonsorial profession.” Starting out as a barber in one of the city’s fine hotels, he then entered business with his brothers, who owned a “Depot of Elegant French and English Parfumeries, Toilet and Fancy Articles, Combs, Brushes, Razors &c.” Many colored aristocrats are “knights of the razor”—could it be, he posits, that they are the only men in the community who truly enjoy free speech? After all, “they take the white man by the nose without giving offense and without causing an effusion of blood.” He likes his little jests.

Cyprian flaunts his birth and skin color as well as his people’s looks, money, property, and fine taste; he considers himself more arbiter than chronicler. Joseph Willson would have shuddered to name a gentleman’s income, speak of a lady’s amours, or salute those “
separated from the white race by a line of division so faint that it can be traced only by the keen eye of prejudice.” But we have left the East for a city where brash Western manners meet Southern extravagance; where blood is hot; where fortunes and reputations are made and squandered every day.

So the book is arranged like a tour of the great houses, part boosterism, part scandal sheet.

“
If the reader will accompany me down Seventh street to the vicinity of Rutgers, I will show him a large mansion, which, with the yard and out-buildings, occupies half a block of ground. Entering this mansion, I will introduce him to its mistress.” That would have been Mrs. Pelagie Rutgers, a former slave who purchased her freedom for three dollars and is now worth half a million: “
Mrs. Rutgers is an illiterate woman, but lives in good style; she has in her house a piano which cost two thousand dollars but her wealthy daughter, the sole heiress to her large estate, is not able to play upon it.” Dashing Samuel Mordecai made his fortune in gambling, “
and is good for one hundred thousand dollars when flush”; his daughter was sent to England for her schooling, and he talks of settling in Paris, where “he would be received into the first circles.”

William Johnson opened a barbershop, set money aside, bought a city block for $1,000 when real estate values were low, then sold it for $100,000: “
Not so bad a speculation for a colored man!” Cyprian commends ladies for their intelligence but dwells far more on the particulars of their skin tone, hair grade, and social graces or lapses.

London Berry “
is a good man, his only fault being too great a fondness for cards.” Recently, though, his wife committed the faux pas of attending a ball given by the “second class of colored people” and has been banned from the better parties ever since. Cyprian’s judicious counsel: “
They are both no doubt sorry for their conduct and will be again received next winter and their indiscretion forgiven.”

The “
rather dilapidated” Mrs. Pelagie Foreman, he notes with spiteful satisfaction, was once a fascinating but saucy “lump of yellow flesh” who earned a cowhiding she probably deserved from her white lover; her indiscretions have made her a social outcast, but (this he notes with approval) she remains a shrewd property owner who “
can command the cool sum of one hundred thousand dollars.”

Other cities, North and South, have their variously flavored antebellum elites: among the most established are in Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Lexington, Fayetteville, Natchez, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. Sociologically, they range from petit bourgeois to lower upper class and middle upper class. Their ancestries, as they are always proud to boast, extend into the highest ranks of white society. Strains of Indian and African royalty are also welcome.

Cyprian Clamorgan ends his
Colored Aristocracy
with a promise to write a second book about the “second” class of colored St. Louisians—those who give balls the aristocrats are expected not to attend, and whose exploits “
will startle many of our white friends.” But it is 1858. He had begun his book by invoking Harriet Beecher Stowe, Solomon Northrup, and Frederick Douglass; he had declared Missouri’s Emancipation Party “
the result of the unwearied and combined action of the wealthy free colored men of St. Louis, who know that the abolition of slavery in Missouri would remove a stigma from their race, and elevate them in the scale of society.” His second book never appeared. It was the Civil War that elevated the wealthy, the poor, the free, and the enslaved colored men, women, and children.

*
What had once been the Douglass High School in Baltimore, Maryland, became Coppin State University in 1926.

1861–1865: In the South male slaves build Confederate forts, make Confederate artillery, maintain Confederate railroads, serve their masters in Confederate army camps. Women slaves work the fields that produce food for the Confederate army, cook and clean for Confederate mistresses who now run farms and plantations in the absence of their men, care for the children of those Confederate mistresses, care for their own children, cook and clean, and nurse soldiers in Confederate hospitals. As the war goes on, slaves begin to desert their owners, flee Confederate fields and towns for Union army camps, where—as contraband rather than slave property—the men build forts, repair railroads, haul supplies and equipment, and serve as scouts and spies for Union troops, while the women cook and clean in the camps, nurse soldiers, serve as scouts and spies for Union troops, and take care of the children they have brought along.

Free Negroes struggle to defeat or evade new laws that constrict their liberties. A small mulatto upper class swears loyalty to the Southern cause and volunteers to fight for it. (Nearly all such offers are refused: equality of sword and musket is not an appealing notion to the Confederate army.) Negroes who own land and slaves are expected to use both to provide food and labor for the Confederate troops. Others, less conspicuous, lie low, even do what they can to aid the cause of freedom: prepare themselves to be leaders when the war ends and slavery is past and gone, when they have a Negro community and constituency to lead.

Free Negroes who emigrated north shortly before the war have learned the inconvenient truths that Northern Negroes have long known: many public accommodations are closed to them; most churches are closed to them; most schools are closed to their children. Law and custom restrict their right to use the job skills they have or to acquire new ones: white workers do not want them as competition.

Two years into a war the Union fears losing, the Emancipation Proclamation frees the slaves. Negro men are at last permitted to enlist in the Union army. Approximately 180,000, North and South, do so. It’s a chance for them to prove their competence and their loyalty; it’s a new job market, even if for most of the war they are paid less than their white counterparts. War gives Negro women new jobs too, or at least new settings for old jobs. Most of them still cook, clean, launder, sew, and nurse: now they cook, clean, launder, sew, and nurse for their country, in Union hospitals and camps. They are paid less, for the war’s duration, than their white counterparts.

Still, there are life-changing opportunities for a small group of free Negroes who claim membership in the higher ranks of the abolitionist movement. Some have been free for years; they’re leaders in their communities. Some are the former slaves who’ve won national recognition by publishing narratives of their lives. These men and women travel America and Europe to lecture on the evils of slavery, to urge immediate emancipation, to collect funds for war relief. A few even travel south to teach eager, provisionally freed slaves (Union army contrabands) to read and write. A life-changing opportunity and a profound culture shock.

October 1862: Charlotte Forten arrives in South Carolina. She is from one of Philadelphia’s most distinguished colored families, prominent abolitionists since the eighteenth century (James Forten was her grandfather). She was the first of her race to graduate from the Salem Normal School of Salem, Massachusetts, and she has come to Port Royal to teach reading and writing to the contraband slaves freed by the Union army. “
On the wharf was a motley assemblage—soldiers, officers and ‘contrabands’ of every hue and size. They were mostly black, however, and certainly the most dismal specimens I ever saw,” she tells her journal. Later that night, waiting in the commissary’s office, she encounters the “the little Commissary himself,…a perfect little popinjay, and he and a Colonel somebody who didn’t look any too sensible, talked in a very smart manner, evidently for our especial benefit. The word ‘nigger’ was plentifully used, whereupon I set them down at once as
not
gentlemen.”

She is twenty-five years old and has spent her life studying French and Latin, astronomy and history; reading Spenser, Milton, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Dickens, the Brontës, Emerson, and Stowe;
The Atlantic
and
The Liberator
. She has socialized with renowned abolitionists, colored and white; she faithfully attends literary lectures and antislavery meetings; she always disparages the occasional poem or essay she contributes to antislavery journals.

She rages against bigotries, big and small; falls into a depression (“
I wonder that every colored person is not a misanthrope. Surely we have everything to make us hate mankind”), then upbraids herself for being insufficiently stoic. She strives for perfect selflessness. “Conscience answers it is wrong, it is ignoble to despair…Let us take courage, never ceasing to work,—hoping and believing that if not for us, for another generation there is a better, brighter day in store.” She sinks back into self-doubt. She is not a misanthrope, she is a melancholic—a depressed gentle-woman.

Dutifully, doggedly, she teaches at a white elementary school in Massachusetts and a black elementary school in Philadelphia before ill health threatens her ability to earn her living. She longs to visit Italy; she longs to be a literary genius, to do something that will make her “forever known.” She doubts her abilities and opportunities. She resolves: “
I will pray that God, in his goodness, will make me noble enough to find my highest happiness in doing my duty.”

It’s so easy, so temptingly easy, to upbraid or at least mock her pieties, the decorum that dulls her, the taint of naïve snobbery. How pleased and surprised she is that some of her students are so very bright; how laughable she finds their ebullience and physical intensity. (The leader of the singers one Sunday is Prince, large, black, and “
full of the shouting spirit…It was amusing to see his gymnastic performances. They were quite in the Ethiopian Methodists’ style.”)