“Sympathy”, “We Wear the Mask” & “Harriet Beecher Stowe” by Paul Laurence Dunbar

 A few more poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

 "Sympathy"

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
        When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
    When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
    And the river flows like a stream of glass;
        When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
    And the faint perfume from its chalice steals —
    I know what the caged bird feels!

    I know why the caged bird beats his wing
        Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
    For he must fly back to his perch and cling
    When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
        And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
    And they pulse again with a keener sting —
    I know why he beats his wing!

    I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
        When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
    When he beats his bars and he would be free;
    It is not a carol of joy or glee,
        But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
    But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings —
    I know why the caged bird sings!

"We Wear the Mask"

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
    It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
    This debt we pay to human guile;
    With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
    And mouth with myriad subtleties.

    Why should the world be over-wise,
    In counting all our tears and sighs?
    Nay, let them only see us, while
            We wear the mask.

    We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
    To thee from tortured souls arise.
    We sing, but oh the clay is vile
    Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
    But let the world dream otherwise,
            We wear the mask! 

“Harriet Beecher Stowe”

She told the story, and the whole world wept

At wrongs and cruelties it had not known

But for this fearless woman’s voice alone.

She spoke to consciences that long had slept:

Her message, Freedom’s clear reveille, swept

From heedless hovel to complacent throne.

Command and prophecy were in the tone,

And from its sheath the sword of justice leapt.

Around two peoples swelled a fiery wave,

But both came forth transfigured from the flame.

Blest be the hand that dared be strong to save,

And blest be she who in our weakness came—

Prophet and priestess! At one stroke she gave

A race to freedom and herself to fame.

“Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes” by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Born in Dayton, Ohio, 1872, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s first collection of poems Oak and Ivy was published in 1893. Because of the favourable review by William Dean Howells of Dunbar’s second book Majors and Minors (1896), Dunbar’s success was assured from that time on and he became a national literary figure. Other works soon followed, even after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1900: Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), Folks from Dixie (1898), Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899), The Strength of Gideon (1900), Lyrics of Love and Laughter (1903), In Old Plantation Days (1903), The Heart of Happy Hollow (1904) and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905). He passed away in 1906.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,

  Which all the day with ceaseless care have sought

The magic gold which from the seeker flies;

  Ere dreams put on the gown and cap of thought,

And make the waking world a world of lies,—

  Of lies most palpable, uncouth, forlorn,

That say life’s full of aches and tears and sighs,—

  Oh, how with more than dreams the soul is torn,

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,

  How all the griefs and heart-aches we have known

Come up like pois’nous vapors that arise

  From some base witch’s caldron, when the crone,

To work some potent spell, her magic plies.

  The past which held its share of bitter pain,

Whose ghost we prayed that Time might exorcise,

  Comes up, is lived and suffered o’er again,

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,

  What phantoms fill the dimly lighted room;

What ghostly shades in awe-creating guise

  Are bodied forth within the teeming gloom.

What echoes faint of sad and soul-sick cries,

  And pangs of vague inexplicable pain

That pay the spirit’s ceaseless enterprise,

  Come thronging through the chambers of the brain,

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,

  Where ranges forth the spirit far and free?

Through what strange realms and unfamiliar skies

  Tends her far course to lands of mystery?

To lands unspeakable—beyond surmise,

  Where shapes unknowable to being spring,

Till, faint of wing, the Fancy fails and dies

  Much wearied with the spirit’s journeying,

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,

  How questioneth the soul that other soul,—

The inner sense which neither cheats nor lies,

  But self exposes unto self, a scroll

Full writ with all life’s acts unwise or wise,

  In characters indelible and known;

So, trembling with the shock of sad surprise,

  The soul doth view its awful self alone,

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

When sleep comes down to seal the weary eyes,

  The last dear sleep whose soft embrace is balm,

And whom sad sorrow teaches us to prize

  For kissing all our passions into calm,

Ah, then, no more we heed the sad world’s cries,

  Or seek to probe th’ eternal mystery,

Or fret our souls at long-withheld replies,

  At glooms through which our visions cannot see,

When sleep comes down to seal the weary eyes.

Excerpt from 'Twasinta’s Seminoles / Rape of Florida'

Albery A. Whitman was born in 1851, Hart County, Kentucky, and lived an existence in slavery until 1863. Already an orphan by 12, he accomplished to be a well known minister of the AME church (African Methodist Episcopal Church) and a schoolteacher by the age of 25. He is known for his epic-length poem “Not a man and yet a Man” published in 1877, though his best known work is The Rape of Florida, published 1884, and reprinted the following year Twasinta’s Seminoles. In 1890 both poems were again reprinted along with some short poems. In 1893 he composed and read “The Freedman’s Triumphant Song” at the Chicago World’s Fair. The Octoroon, An Idyl of the South, his last publication, came out in 1901, the year he passed away. He fought a hard struggle with alcohol and pneumonia but he was a light in this world with his wonderful words.

The following excerpt is from Twasinta’s Seminoles / Rape of Florida.

Canto 1

I

The negro slave by Swanee River sang;

Well-pleased he listened to his echoes ringing;

For in his heart a secret comfort sprang,

When Nature seemed to join his mournful singing.

To mem’ry’s cherished objects fondly clinging;

His bosom felt the sunset’s patient glow,

And spirit whispers into weird life springing,

Allured to worlds he trusted yet to know,

And lightened for awhile life’s burdens here below.

II

The drowsy dawn from many a low-built shed,

Beheld his kindred driven to their task;

Late evening saw them turn with weary tread

And painful faces back; and dost thou ask

How sang these bondmen? how their suff’rings mask?

Song is the soul of sympathy divine,

And hath an inner ray where hope may bask;

Song turns the poorest waters into wine,

Illumines exile hearts and makes their faces shine.

III

The negro slave by Swanee river sang,

There soon the human hunter rode along;

And eagerly behind him came a gang

Of hounds and men, – the bondmen hushed his song –

Around him came a silent, list’ning throng;

“Some runaway!” he muttered; said no more,

But sank from view the growing corn among;

And though deep pangs his wounded spirit bore,

He hushed his soul, and went on singing as before.

IV

So fared the land where slaves were groaning yet –

Where beauty’s eyes must feed the lusts of men!

‘Tis as when horrid dreams we half forget,

Would then relate, and still relate again –

Ah! cold abhorrence hesitates my pen!

The heavens were sad, and hearts of men were faint;

Philanthropy implored and wept, but then

The wrong, unblushing trampled on Restraint,

While feeble Law sat by and uttered no complaint.

V

“Fly and be free!” a whisper comes from heaven,

“Thy cries are heard!” the bondman’s up and gone!

To grasp the dearest boon to mortals given,

He frantic flies, unaided and alone.

To him the red man’s dwellings are unknown;

But he can crave the freedom of his race,

Can find his harvests in the desert sown,

And in the cypress forest’s dark embrace

A pathway to his lonely habitations trace.

VI

The sable slave, from Georgia’s utmost bounds,

Escapes for life into the Great Wahoo.

Here he has left afar the savage hounds

And human hunters that did late pursue;

There in the hommock darkly hid from view,

His wretched limbs are stretched awhile to rest,

Till some kind Seminole shall guide him thro’

To where by hound nor hunter more distrest,

He in a flow’ry home, shall be the red man’s guest.

VII

If tilled profusion does not crown the view,

Nor wide-ranged farms begirt with fences spread;

The cultivated plot is well to do;

And where no slave his groaning life has led,

The songs of plenty fill the lowliest shed.

Who could wish more, when Nature, always green,

Brings forth fruit-bearing woods and fields of bread?

Wish more, where cheerful valleys bloom between,

And herds browse on the hills, where winter ne’er has been?

[…]

X

Fair Florida! whose scenes could so enhance –

Could in the sweetness of the earth excel!

Wast thou the Seminole’s inheritance?

Yea, it was thee he loved, and loved so well!

‘Twas ‘neath thy palms and pines he strove to dwell.

Not savage, but resentful to the knife,

For these he sternly struggled – sternly fell!

Thoughtful and brave, in a long uneven strife,

He held the verge of manhood mid the heights of life.

XI

A wild-born pride endeared him to thy soil!

When roamed his herds without a keeper’s care –

Where man knew not the pangs of slavish toil!

And where thou didst not blooming pleasures spare,

But well allotted each an ample share,

He loved to dwell: Oh! isn’t the goal of life

Where man has plenty and to man is fair?

When free from avarice’s pinch and strife,

Is earth not like the Eden-home of man and wife?

[…]

XIX

Oh! sing it in the light of freedom’s morn,

Tho’ tyrant wars have made the earth a grave;

The good, the great, and true, are, if so, born,

And so with slaves, chains do not make the slave!

If high-souled birth be what the mother gave, –

If manly birth, and manly to the core, –

Whate’er the test, the man will he behave!

Crush him to earth and crush him o’er and o’er,

A man he’ll rise at last and meet you as before.

XX

So with our young Atlassa*, hero-born, –

Free as the air within his palmy shade,

The nobler traits that do the man adorn,

In him were native: Not the music made

In Tampa’s forests or the everglade

Was fitter than in this young Seminole

Was the proud spirit which did life pervade,

And glow and tremble in his ardent soul –

Which, lit his inmost-self, and spurned all mean control.

XXI

Than him none followed chase with nimbler feet,

None readier in the forest council rose;

To speak for war, e’er sober and discreet,

In battle stern, but kind to fallen foes;

He led the charge, but halted, – slow to close

The vexed retreat: In front of battle he,

Handsome and wild his proud form would expose;

But in the cheering van of victory,

Gentle and brave he was the real chief to see.

XXII

Lo! mid a thousand warriors where he stands,

Pride of all hearts and idol of his race!

Look how the chieftains of his war-tried bands

Kindle their courage in his valiant face!

And as his lips in council open, trace

How deep suspense her earnest furrows makes

On ev’ry brow! How rings the forest-place

With sounding cheers! when native valor wakes

His dark intrepid eyes, and he their standard takes!

XXIII

Proud spirit of the hommock-bounded home

Well wast thy valor like a buckler worn!

And when the light of the other times shall come, –

When history’s muse shall venture to adorn

The brow of all her children hero-born, –

When the bold truth to man alike assigns

The place he merits, of no honor shorn;

The wreath shall be, that thy proud brow entwines,

As green as Mickasukie’s** everlasting pines!

XXIV

Well bled thy warriors at their leader’s side!

Well stood they the oppressor’s wasting fire;

For years sweep on, and in their noiseless tide,

Bear down the mem’ries of the past! The dire

And gloomful works of tyrants shall exire,

Till naught survives, save truth’s great victories;

Then shall the voyager on his way aspire

To ponder what vast wrecks of time he sees,

And on Fame’s temple columns read their memories!

XXV

Not so with Osceola***, thy dark mate;

The hidden terror of the hommock, he

Sat gloomily and nursed a bitter hate, –

The white man was his common enemy –

He rubbed the burning wounds of injury,

And plotted in his dreadful silent gloom;

As dangerous as a rock within the sea.

And when in fray he showed his fearless plume,

Revenge made sweet the blows that dealt the white man’s doom.

XXVI

The pent-up wrath that rankled in his breast,

O’er smould’ring embers shot a lurid glare,

And wrongs that time itself had not redrest,

In ghost-like silence stalked and glimmered there.

And from the wizard caverns of despair,

Came voice and groan, reminding o’er and o’er

The outrage on his wife so young and fair;

And so, by heaven and earth and hell he swore

To treat in council with the white man never more.

XXVII

Such were the chiefs who led their daring braves

In many a battle nobly lost or won,

And consecrated Mickasukie’s graves

To that sweet province of the summer sun!

And still shall history forgetful run?

Shall legend too be mute? then Poesy,

Divinest chronicler of deeds well done,

From the blest shrine and annals of the free,

Sing forth thy praise and man shall hear attentively.

XXVIII

The poorest negro coming to their shore,

To them was brother – their own flesh and blood, –

They sought his wretched manhood to restore, –

They found his hidings in the swampy wood,

And brought him forth – in arms before him stood, –

The citizens of God and Sovran earth, –

They shot straight forward looks with flame imbued,

Till in him manhood sprang, a noble birth,

And warrior-armed he rose to all that manhood’s worth.

XXIX

On the dark front of battle often seen,

Or holding dang’rous posts through dreadful hours, –

In ranks obedient, in command serene,

His comrades learn to note the tested powers

Which prove that valor is not always ours,

Be whomsoever we: A common race

Soon from this union flows – soon rarest flowers

Bloom out and smile in beauty’s blending grace,

And rivals they become for love’s sublimest place.

XXX

The native warrior leads his ebon maid,

The dark young brave his bloom-hued lover wins;

And where soft spruce and willows mingle shade,

Young life mid sunniest hours its course begins:

All Nature pours its never-ending dins

In groves of rare-hued leaf without’n end, –

‘Tis as if Time, forgetting Eden’s sins,

Relents, and spirit visitors descend

In love’s remembered tokens, earth once more to blend.

XXXI

The sleepy mosses wave within the sun,

And on the dark elms climbs the mistletoe;

Great tangled vines through pendant branches run,

And hang their purple clusters far below;

The old pines wave their summits to and fro,

And dancing to the earth, impatient light

Touches the languid scene, to quickly go,

Like some gay spirit in its sunny plight,

That, visiting the earth, did glance and take its flight…

* “Atlassa” refers to Wild Cat, also called Coacoochee, who was a leading Seminole chief during the 2^nd Seminole War

** Miccosukee – name of a Native American tribe and an area in Florida

*** Osceola was an influential leader and war leader among the Seminoles

"Bury Me In a Free Land" by Frances Harper

Make me a grave where’er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Naje ut anibg earth’s humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not rest I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother’s shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.

I’d shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.

If I saw young girls from their mothers’ arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.

I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.

George Moses Horton, Myself

George Moses Horton, Myself

I feel myself in need

Of the inspiring strains of ancient lore

My heart to lift, my empty mind to feed,

And all the world explore.

I know that I am old

And never can recover what is past,

But for the future may some light unfold

And soar from ages blast.

I feel resolved to try,

My wish to prove, my calling to pursue,

Or mount up from the earth into the sky,

To show what Heaven can do.

My genius from a boy,

Has fluttered like a bird within my heart;

But could not thus confined her powers employ,

Impatient to depart.

She like a restless bird,

Would spread her wings, her power to be unfurl’d,

And let her songs be loudly heard,

And dart from world to world.

Excerpt from "Comedy, American Style" by Jessie Fauset

Born in Philadelphia, and educated at Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Collège de France, Jessie Fauset (1882-1961) has taught French at Dunbar High School in Washington and in New York City. She has written verse as well as the novels There is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1929), The Chinaberry Tree (1932), and Comedy, American Style (1933). The excerpt below is from the last-named novel.


[Color Struck]

Mrs. Olivia Blanchard Cary glanced out of the window of her pleasant residence in West Philadelphia and saw her daughter Teresa, her books under her arm, strolling down the street, with two other little girls similarly laden. One of her companions, a very fair blonde with dark blue eyes and gay gilt hair, Mrs. Cary identified immediately as Phebe Grant. She was not so sure of the identity of the third youngster. Closer inspection revealed to her, however, the dark brown, the piquant features, the sparkling black eyes and the abundant, silky and intensely curly locks of Marise Davies. Mrs. Cary frowned. "As often as I've told Teresa to keep away from that Davies child!" she murmured angrily to herself.
She met them at the front door. The countenances of the three children were in striking contrast. Teresa's wore a look of apprehension, Phebe's of bland indifference, Marise's of acute expectancy.
"Good-afternoon, Teresa," Olivia said. "Good-afternoon children. I’m afraid it's not best for Teresa to have so much company today.
She gets excited and worn out and it’s hard afterwards for her to settle down to her lessons. I don't mind if one of you stays. Phebe, suppose you come in and play with her a while, and Marise, you can come back another time.”
"Tomorrow? " asked Marise, whose black eyes had never left Olivia’s face.
"Well, hardly tomorrow,” the woman replied, flushing a little. She really disliked this child. "Horrid, little pushing thing,” she inwardly apostrophized. But aloud she continued. "Hardly tomorrow, but some other day very soon, I am sure. Come on in, Phebe.”
"No, thank you, Mrs. Cary,” the child answered, pushing back the thick gilt hair which framed her face. “I was with Marise first, so I'll go on with her. We were just going to ask you to let Teresa come along with us. My mother expects me to be at Marise’s if I’m not home.” She spoke simply, no trace of the avenging angel about her.
The two children, hand in hand, backed off the bottom step on which they had been precariously teetering. Marise, ignoring Olivia completely, waved a slender hand toward Teresa. “Come on over whenever you can. My mother doesn't mind."
From the pavement both looked back once, more to wave a careless farewell to their schoolmate. “G’bye, Treesa!”
“Treesa!” Olivia echoed angrily. “Why can't they pronounce your name right?" She glanced sharply at her daughter's tear-stained face. "What's the matter, Teresa?"
The little girl wiped away a tear with the back of her hand.
"Mamma, why, can’t play with Marise? She’s such fun.”
Her mother sighed. I have " she thought, "the stupidest children and husband too in the world. Why can’t they see this thing the way I want it?” Not unkindly she took out her handkerchief and wiped the child's eyes.
"Now, Teresa, it isn't worth while going all over this matter again. I don't mind your having Phebe here; in fact I rather like Phebe. But I don’t like to have colored people in the house if we can possibly avoid it.”
"But, Mamma, Phebe is colored too."
“I know she is but nobody would ever guess it.”
“They don’t have to guess it; she tells it; she stood right up in class and said so.”
“What nonsense!” Olivia countered angrily. “What occasion would a girl, looking like her, have to talk about color?”
“She didn't say it of her own accord, Mamma. The teacher was having a review lesson on races one day and she asked Phebe what race she belonged to and Phebe said: `I belong to the black or Negro race.’”
"What did the teacher say?"
She just giggled at first and then she said: `Well, Phebe, we all know that isn't true. Don't try to be funny. Now tell us what race you do belong to, dear!' And Phebe said it all over again. She said: ‘I belong to the black or Negro race.’”
Olivia gasped. "Silly little thing! The idea of a girl as white as she saying that! What happened then?"
The teacher had her stay after school and Phebe showed her the picture of her mother. She wears it in a locket around her throat all the time. And her mother is colored. Not black, you know, Mamma, but real, real brown. Almost as brown as Marise, you know. You should have seen how surprised Miss Packer was!"
In spite of herself the mother was interested. "What did she say then?"
"She looked awful queer and asked Phebe if she looked like like her father and Phebe said she looked exactly like him . . . and that he didn't live here and that he was married to someone else…
And then Miss Packer turned kind of red and never said another word. ... How can Phebe's father not be married to her mother, Mamma?"
"Oh, I don't know . . . probably they couldn't get along so they seperated. Married people often do that. They call it getting a divorce." Hurriedly she changed the subject: "Did the children act any different to Phebe after that?"
Teresa considered this a moment. "Well, you see, Mamma, the chiIdren don't act any special kind of way to Phebe anyway, because Phebe don't care anything about them. The only child Phebe likes a whole lot in school is Marise."
"I thought she liked you."
“O she does, but not the same way she likes Marise. Marise is so smart you know. She can think up all the most wonderful things. Why she changed her name herself. It used to be Maria. And she said that was all wrong. She said she didn't look like a Maria person and she didn't feel like a Maria person…. Isn't that funny, Mamma? And she can sing and play and dance. You never saw anyone dance like her. And she can think up such smart things to say. I don't see why you don't like her, Mamma."
"I don't dislike her," her mother retorted in exasperation. "You don't understand these things, yet, Teresa. But you will when you're older . . . and you'll be grateful to me. I just don't want you to have Marise and people like that around because I don't want you to grow up among folks who live the life that most colored people have to live ... narrow and stultified and stupid. Always pushed in the background . . . out of everything. Looked down upon and despised! ...
"Teresa, how many times must I tell you these things? You and your father and Christopher almost drive me crazy! You're so will-fully perverse about it all! Here we could all be as white as the whitest people in Philadelphia. When we moved in this neighborhood not a soul here but thought we were white! And your father is never happy unless he has some typical Negro hanging about. I believe he does it to tease me. And now here you are, all wrapped up in this Davies child!"
"But, Mamma, what difference does it make? And anyway, there's Oliver!"
There indeed was Oliver.
Olivia, with very little love for her husband, Dr. Cary, with no enthusiasm, as such, for the institution of matrimony and with absolutely no urge for the maternal life, had none the less gone cheerfully and willingly into both marriage and motherhood because she believed that through her children she might obtain her heart’s desire. She could, she was sure, imbue her offspring with precept and example to such an extent that it would never enter their minds to acknowledge the strain of black blood which in considerable dilution would flow through their veins.
She could be certain of their color. Her twin sister and brother, only two years older than her own children, had proven that. It was worth every one, she felt, of her labor pains not to hold in her arms little Teresa, her first-born, – but to gaze on that tiny, unremarkable face and note the white skin, the thick, "good" dark hair which covered the frail skull; to note that the tell-tale half-moons of which she had so often read were conspicuously absent. It seemed to her that the tenuous bonds holding her ever so slightly to her group, and its station in America, were perceptibly weakened. Every time she appeared in public with the little girl she was presenting the incontestable proof of her white womanhood…
And when Christopher, the second child was born, she was not the least fraction worried over the closely curling tendency of his slightly reddish hair. She had known Jews with hair much kinkier. Time and care would attend to all that. And meanwhile his skin was actually fairer than that of his little sister, his features finer and better chiselled. He had, she felt, a look of "race," by which she meant of course the only race which God, or Nature, for hidden, inscrutable purposes, meant should rule.
But she had not reckoned with the children's father. Christopher had finally established in his the fact of his chaste wife’s frigidity. When he fully realized that her much-prized "aloofness," instead of being the insigne of a wealth of feeling, was merely the result of an absolute vacuum of passion, young as he was, he resolved not to kick against the pricks.
He had, he told himself, been sold, as many a man before him had; tricked as completely by his deliberate submission to ideals, entirely false to his nature and his desires, as a young girl might be by her first surrender to a passion which her heart tells her is natural, though her mind and breeding might warn her of its inexpediency. The first of that hardening process which was so to change him did have its inception during this period, but as he had some humor and a sense of justice beyond his years he refused to let the iron enter his soul.
Moreover, Olivia, though not a "comfortable" house-keeper, was a clean and considerate one. She really never interfered with his “papers”; she never, even from the beginning, troubled him with the delinquencies of the help. And in those days, and for some years to come, she never exceeded the budget which he allowed her. Also her obvious willingness, even eagerness, to have children pleased and touched him. In his total ignorance of the plans which nestled eternally in the back of her sleek, dark head, he reasoned that a woman so fond of children must by a very natural extension develop eventually a certain tenderness for their father. So he hoped for many things and forgave her much with a somewhat rueful and yet amused indulgence.
Until he found in her the unalterable determination to carry himself and his children definitely across the narrow border-line of race! This too he at first regarded with some indulgence, but her unimaginative persistence finally irritated him. He was too busy to undertake completely the education of the children – he was responsible for their maintenance. But he could let them see his manifest respect and liking for many men who had been his boyhood friends and who bore the badge of their mixed blood plainly upon them.
He told the children every story he knew about the heroes of the race. Olivia would have preferred them to be ignorant of their own remote connection with slavery. But he did strive to make them realize the contrast between their present status and that of their black forebears. He emphasized the racial progress, stressing the brief span of years in which it had been accomplished.
And the children, straightforward, serious little things without an ounce of perversity in their make-up, were entranced, thrilled. Perhaps because they never met with any open expression of prejudice they seemed to find their greatest interest and amusement among the children of their father's friends who most definitely showed color. For a brief while Christopher's hero was Crispus Attucks; Teresa's brave Sojourner Truth. But later, through lack of nourishment, their interest in this phase of history died.

........................................


When the children were four and a half, and six, respectively, Olivia found she was going to have another baby. She was really very happy about it with a naïvete and a frankness which, Dr. Cary, as before, found inexpressibly moving and charming. Within herself she was making plans. This child should be her very own. She would make her husband believe that she needed a change, she would take the child away and live with him apart for two, three, perhaps five years. In appearance, in rearing, in beliefs he should be completely, unrelievedly a member of the dominant race. She was a much wiser woman than she had been six years ago. The prospect made her gay and charming, almost girlish; far younger too than her twenty-eight years, younger indeed it seemed to her husband than she had ever been in those remote, so precious years of training.
"This one will be a boy," she told big Christopher gaily. “He’ll be the handsomest and most attractive of us all. And I'll name him after myself. An Oliver for your Christopher."
Her prophecy was, except in one respect, absolutely true. She had boasted of the ease with which her children had entered the world. But this one she was confident would outstrip them all.
"I'm sure I'll be up very soon, Chris," she told her husband. She adopted one of her rare moods of coquetry. "And when I do get up, you ought to reward a dutiful wife. How would you like to send her and your baby son on a little trip to England?" Her eyes were bright with secrecy. He would, he assured her, do anything, give her anything she wanted within his range.
But the unforseen happened. The baby arrived in due course. "Hale and hearty," said his beaming father. There never was a baby haler and heartier. But Olivia did not fare so well. She had one sinking spell after another. For the first time she was unable to nurse her child. She was to meet with no excitement or shock and as the baby was going very well it was best for her not to be concerned with him for a while. She was to concentrate on recovering her strength. So that it was a full month before the baby was set before her, crowing and laughing and persistently and futilely striking his Iittle hands together.
Olivia sat up, arms outstretched to receive him. Her baby! Her eyes stretched wide to behold every fraction of his tiny person. But the expectant smile faded as completely as though an unseen hand had wiped it off. She turned to her husband sharply:
“That's not my baby!"
But it was her baby. It was a boy, handsomer and more attractive than the other children. He was named Oliver... They had been calling him that for a month, her delighted children assured her… his hair was black and soft and curly... and he had the exact bronze gold complexion of Lee Blanchard!
She had reckoned without her own father!
..........................................

For the first time since she had known the futile anger of her early childhood she slipped into a black, though silent, rage. Her early anger had been directed against her father. This later ebullition included both her husband and her helpless little boy. She had no special beliefs about prenatal influences but she did observe to herself in the dark and tortuous recesses of her mind that if big Christopher had not been so decidedly a Negrophile, the appearance of their child would have been otherwise.
The little fellow was of a remarkable beauty. Through one pretext and another Olivia contrived not to be seen on the street with him. But the two older children and his father would proudly conduct him anywhere. And wherever he went he attracted attention… infinitely more so than his brother and sister had ever earned. Added to this was an undeniable charm of manner and of mind. He possessed not only a winning smile and a genuine sweetness of attitude and conduct but he was unquestionably of remarkable mental endowment... If he had possessed an ounce of self-confidence, or even of the ordinary childish conceit which so often marks the "bright boy," he might easily have become unbearable. But even from babyhood little Oliver sensed in himself one lack which early automatically destroyed any root of undue self-esteem. He knew he did not have his mother's love…. Worse than that through some strange childish, unfailing perception he was sure of her active but hidden dislike for him.
When he was home Olivia fed him with the same food, watched over and satisfied his physical welfare as completely and meticulously as she watched over that of the other members of her household. But she never sought his company, she never took him riding or walking as she did the others, never bestowed on him more than the perfunctory kiss of salutation… When people, struck with his appearance and healthy grace, praised him before his face as so often they did, he would turn sometimes toward her thinking dimly that now she must be proud of this fine little boy who was her son. But he never surprised on her countenance a single flash of delight or pride or love.
It saddened his childish days... As soon as he became old enough to be from under her surveillance Olivia saw to it that he spent most of his time with her own mother in Boston or with her husband's mother in South Philadelphia. In both of these homes he met with the intense affection and generous esteem which his finely keyed little nature so craved. Gradually he became able to adjust himself to the inexplicable phenomenon of a mother who not only did not love with especial signal fondness, but who did not love at all, her youngest son. By sheer strength of will he forced himself to steel his brave and loyal heart against this defection and to crush down his pain. His father had some sense of what was happening and in his heart he bore his wife a deep and unyielding dislike.

Excerpt from 'From Superman to Man' by J.A. Rogers

Joel Augustus Rogers was born in Jamaica (1883-1966). A self-educated man, he was an author, historian and journalist traveling in Europe, Asia and Africa in search of material on the African peoples and the African diaspora. He challenged prevailing ideas about race in his time which is also reflected in the following excerpt. His articles have been published in various newspapers and in such magazines as The American Mercury, The Crisis, The Survey Graphic, and the Journal of Negro History. From Superman to Man (1917), the Maroons of the West Indies and South America (1921), the World’s Greatest Men of African Descent (1931) and Sex and Race (1941), and articles “Impressions of Dixie”, “Jazz at Home”, “The American Negro in Europe”, and “The Real Facts about Ethiopia”, are among his many many publications. The following passage is from The Superman to Man. It contains quite a lot of racist remarks, but I decided not to censor it. The debate between the racist white man and the knowledgeable black man is witty and clever, and I hold it in high regard.

[The Porter Debates the Senator]

THE LIMITED WAS SPEEDING to California over the snow-blanketed prairies of Iowa. On car "Bulwer" the passengers had all retired, and Dixon, the porter, his duties finished, sought the more comfortable warmth of the smoker, where he intended to resume the reading of the book he had brought with him, Finot's "Race Prejudice." He had been reading last of the Germans and their doctrine of the racial inferiority of the remainder of the white race. Having found the passage again, he began to read: – "The notion of superior and inferior peoples spread like wildfire through Germany. German literature, philosophy, and politics were profoundly influenced by it – ." . . .

The Germans of 1854, he reflected, built up a theory of the inferiority of the other peoples of the white race. Some of these so-called inferior whites have, in turn, built up a similar theory about the darker peoples. This recalled to him some of the many falsities current about his own people. He thought of how in nearly all the large libraries of the United States, which he had been permitted to enter, he had found books advancing all sorts of theories to prove that they were inferior. Some of these theories even denied their human origin. He went on to reflect on the discussions he had heard on the cars and other places from time to time, and of what he called "the heirloom ideas" that many persons had concerning the different varieties of the human race. These discussions, he went on to reflect, had done him good. They had been the means of his acquiring a fund of knowledge on the subject of race, as they had caused him to look up those opinions he had thought incorrect in the works of the standard scientists. Moved by these thoughts he took a morocco-bound notebook from his vest pocket and wrote: - "This doctrine of racial superiority apparently incited the other white peoples, most of whom were enemies to one another, to unite against the Germans, and destroy their empire. Will the doctrine of white superiority over the darker races produce a similar result to white empire?"

But at this juncture his thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of someone. Looking up he saw a man clad in pajamas and overcoat, and with slippered feet, enter the room.

Now Dixon had taken special notice of this man for, during the afternoon, he had been discussing the color question with another passenger in the smoker. From what Dixon had overheard, the man just entering was a Southern senator on his way to California on business. Dixon had occasion to go into the room several times. On one occasion he had heard this man say vehemently "The `nigger' is a menace to our civilization and should be kept down. I am opposed to educating him, for the educated `nigger' is a misfit in the white man's civilization. He is a caricature and no good can result from his ‘butting in’ on our affairs. Would to God that none of the breed had ever set on the shores of our country. That's the proper place for a ‘nigger,’” he had said quite aloud, on seeing Dixon engaged in wiping out the wash bowls.

At another time he had heard the same speaker deliver himself of this opinion: – "You may say what you please, but I would never eat with a `nigger.' I couldn't stomach it. God has placed an insuperable barrier between black and white that will ever prevent them from living on the same social plane, at least so far as the Anglo-Saxon is concerned. I have no hatred for the black man – in fact, I could have none, but he must stay in his place."

“That’s nothing else but racial antipathy," his opponent had objected.

“You don't have to take my word for it," said the other, snappily.

“Didn't Abraham Lincoln say: `There is a physical difference between the white and black races which, I believe, will forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality'? Call it what you will, but there is an indefinable something within me that tells me that I am infinitely better than the best ‘nigger' that ever lived. feeling is instinctive and I am not going to violate nature." …

"You, too, had slavery in the North, but it didn't pay and you gave it up. Wasn't your pedantic and self-righteous Massachusetts the first to legalize slavery? You, Northerners, forced slavery on us, and when you couldn't make any more money in it, because England had stopped the slave trade, you made war on us to make us give it up. A matter of climate, that's all. Climes reversed, it would have been the South that wanted abolition. It was a matter of business with you, not sentiment. You Northerners who had an interest in slavery, were bitterIy opposed to abolition. It is all very well for you to talk, but if you Yankees had the same percentage of `niggers' that we have, you would sing a different tune. The bitterest people against the `nigger' are you Northerners who have come South. You, too, have race riots, lynching and segregation. The only difference between South and North is, that one is frank and the other hypocritical," and he added with vehement sincerity, "I hate hypocrisy."

In spite of this avowed enmity toward his people, Dixon had felt no animosity toward the man. Here, he had thought, was a conscience, honest but uneducated.

All of this ran through the porter's mind when he saw the pajama-clad passenger appear in the doorway. The newcomer, on entering, walked up to the mirror, where he looked at himself quizzically for a moment, then selected a chair and adjusting it to suit his fancy, made himself comfortable in it; next, he took a plain and well-worn gold cigarette case from his pocket, selected a cigarette, and, after tapping it on the chair, began rummaging in his pockets for a match, all in apparent oblivion to the presence of Dixon at the near end of the long cushioned seat. But Dixon had been quietly observing him and deftly presented a lighted match, at the same time venturing to inquire in a respectful and rather solicitous tone, "Can’t sleep, sir?"

"No, George," same the reply in an amiable, but condescending tone, "I was awakened at the last stop and can't go back to sleep. I never do very well the first night, anyway."

With this the senator began to talk to Dixon quite freely, telling him of his trip from Oklahoma. They soon began to talk about personal matters. Into this part of the conversation the senator injected phrases such as "darkies," "niggers" and "coons."

From this he began to tell jokes about chicken-stealing, razor-fights, and watermelon feasts. Of such jokes he evidently had an abundant stock. Nearly all of these Dixon had heard time and again. One was the anecdote of a Negro headwaiter in a Northern hotel who, when asked by a Southern guest if he were the head "nigger," indignantly objected to the epithet, but upon the visitor's informing him that it was his custom to give a large tip to the "head-nigger" this head-waiter, so the story goes, effusively retracted, saying, "Yessah, Boss, I'se de’ head niggah," and pointing to the waiters, added, "and ef you doan b'leave me ast all dem othah niggahs dah."

The narrator was laughing immoderately, and so was the listener. Had the entertainer been a mind reader, however, he might not have been flattered by his success as a comedian, since it was his conduct, and not his wit, that was furnishing the porter's mirth.

While the senator was still laughing the train began to slow down and Dixon, asking to be excused, slid to the other end of the seat to look out, thus exposing the book he had placed behind him. The senator saw the volume and his look of laughter was instantly changed to one of curiosity.
The book stood end up on the seat and he could discern from its size and binding that it was a volume that might contain serious thought. He had somehow felt that this Negro was above the ordinary and the sight of the book now confirmed the feeling.

A certain forced quality in the timbre of Dixon's laughter as also the merry twinkle in his eye, had made him feel at times just a bit uncomfortable, and now he wanted to verify the suspicion. His curiousity getting the better of him, he reached over to take the volume, but the same instant Dixon's slipping back to his former seat caused him to hesitate. Yet he determined to find out. He demanded flippantly, pointing to the book, – "Reading the Bible, George?"

"No, sir."

"What then?"

"Oh, only a scientific work," said the other, carelessly, not wishing to broach the subject of racial differences that the title of the book suggested. Dixon's very evident desire to evade a direct answer seemed to sharpen the other's curiosity. He suggested off-handedly, but with ill-concealed eagerness: "Pretty deep stuff, eh?" Then in the same manner he inquired, "Who's the author?"Dixon saw the persistent curiosity in the other's eye. Knowing too well the nature of the man before him, he did not want to give him the book, but being unable to find any pretext for further withholding it, he took it from the seat, turned it right side up, and handed it to the senator. The latter took it with feigned indifference. Moistening his forefinger, he began turning over the leaves, then settled down to read the marked passages. Now and then he would mutter: "Nonsense! Ridiculous!” Suddenly in a burst of impatience he turned to the frontispiece, and exclaimed in open disgust: "Just as I thought. Written by a Frenchman." Then, before he could recollect to whom he was talking – so full was he of what he regarded as the absurdity of Finot’s view – he demanded – "Do you believe all this rot about the equality of the races?”

Now Dixon's policy was to avoid any topic that would be likely to produce a difference of opinion with a passenger, provided that the avoidance did not entail any sacrifice of his self-respect. In this instance he regarded his questioner as one to be humored, rather than vexed, for just then the following remark, made by this legislator that afternoon, recurred to him:

“The Jew, the Frenchman, the Dago and the Spaniards are all ‘niggers’ to a greater or lesser extent. The only white people are the Anglo-Saxon, Teutons and Scandinavians.”

This, Dixon surmised, had accounted for the remark the other had made about the author's adopted nationality, and it amused him.

As Dixon pondered the question there occurred to him a way by which he could retain his own opinion while in apparent accord with the passenger. He responded accordingly: –

"No, sir, I do not believe in the equality of the races. As you say, it is impossible.”

The senator looked up as if he had not been expecting a response, but seemingly pleased with Dixon’s acquiescence he continued as he turned the leaves: “Writers of this type don’t know what they are talking about. They write from mere theory. If they had to live among ‘niggers,’ they would sing an entirely different tune.”

Dixon felt that he ought not to let this remark go unchallenged. He protested courteously: "Yes, sir, M. Finot has proved his argument admirably. I am sure if you were to read his book you would agree with him, too."

"Didn't you just say you didn't agree with this book?"

"I fear you misunderstood me, sir."

"Didn't you say you did not believe in the equality of the races?”

"Yes, sir."

"Then why?"

"Because as you said, sir, it is impossible."

"Why? Why?"

"Because there is but one race – the human race."

The senator did not respond. Despite his anger at the manner in which Dixon had received and responded to his question, he stopped to ponder the situation in which his unwitting question had placed him.

As he had confessed, he did not like educated Negroes, and had no intention of engaging in a controversy with one. His respect and his aversion for this porter had increased with a bound. Now he was weighing the respective merits of the two possible courses – silence and response. If he remained silent, this Negro might think he had silenced him, while to respond would be to engage in an argument, thus treating the Negro as an equal. After weighing the matter for some time he decided that of the two courses, silence was the less compatible with his racial dignity, and with much condescension, his stiff voice and haughty manner a marked contrast to his jollity of a few minutes past, he demanded:

"You say there is only one race. What do you call yourself?"
"An American citizen," responded the other, composedly.
"Perhaps you have never heard of the word `nigger'?"

"Couldn't help it, sir," came the reply in the same quiet voice.
"Then do you believe the `nigger' is the equal of the Anglo-Saxon race?" he demanded with ill-concealed anger.

"I have read many books on anthropology, sir, but I have not seen mention of either a `nigger' race or an Anglo-Saxon one.

“Very well, do you believe your race – the black race – is equal to the Caucasian?”

Dixoni stopped to weigh the wisdom of his answering. What good would it do to talk with a man seemingly so rooted in his prejudices? Then a smile came to him. On a visit to the Bureau of Standards at Washington, D. C., he had seen the effect of the pressure of a single finger upon a supported bar of steel three inches thick. The slight strain had caused the steel to yield one-twenty-thousandth part of an inch, as the delicate apparatus, the interferometer, had registered. Since every action, he went on to reason, produces an effect, and truth, with the impulse of the Cosmos behind it, is irresistible, surely if he advanced his views in a kindly spirit, he must modify the error in this man. But still he hesitated. Suddenly he recalled that here was a legislator: was one of those, who, above all others, ought to know the truth. This thought decided his course. He would answer to the point, resolving at the same time to restrict any conversation that might ensue to the topic of the human race as a whole and to steer clear of the color question in the United States. He responded with soft courtesy:
“I have found, sir, that any division of humanity according to physique can have but a merely nominal value, as differences in physiques are caused by climatic conditions and are subject to rechange by them. As you know, both Science and the Bible are agreed that all so-called races came from a single source. Scientists who have made a study of this question tell us that the Negro and the Yankee are both approaching the Red Indian type. Pigmented humanity becomes lighter in the temperate zone, while unpigmented humanity becomes brown in the tropics. One summer's exposure at a bathing beach is enough to make a life-saver darker than many Indians. The true skin of all human beings is of the same color – all men are white under the first layer.

"Then it is possible by the blending of human varieties to produce innumerable other varities, each one capable of reproducing and continuing itself.

“Again, anthropologists have never been able to classify human varities. Huxley, as you know, named 2, Blumenbach 5, Burke 63, while others, desiring greater accuracy, have named hundreds.

Since these classifications are so vague and changeable, it is evident, is it not, sir, that any division of humanity, whether by color or skin, hair or facial contour, to be other than purely nominal, must be of mentality? And to classify humanity by intellect, would be, as you know, an impossible task. Nature, so far as we know, made only the individual. This idea has been ably expressed by Lamarck, who, in speaking of the human race, says, – 'Classifications are artificial, for nature had created neither classes, nor orders, nor families, nor kinds, nor permanent species, but only individuals.'"

The senator handed back the book to Dixon, huffily. "But, you have not answered my question yet," he insisted, "I asked, do you believe the black race will ever attain the intellectual standard of the Caucasian?"

"Intellect, whether of civilized or uncivilized humanity, as you know, sir, is elastic in quality. That is, primitive man when transplanted to civilization not only becomes civilized, but sometimes excels some of those whose ancestors have had centuries of culture, and the child of civilized man when isolated among primitives becomes one himself. We would find that the differences between a people who had acquired say three or four generations of beneficent culture, and another who had been long civilized would be about the same as that between the individuals in the long civilized group. That is, the usual human differences would exist. To be accurate we would have to appraise each individual separately. Any comparison between the groups would be inexact."

"But," reiterated the other, sarcastically, "you have not answered my question. Do you believe the black man will ever attain the high intellectual standard of the Caucasian? Yes or no?"

"For the most authoritative answer," responded Dixon in the calm manner of the disciplined thinker, "we must look to modern science. If you don't mind, sir, I will give you some quotations from scientists of acknowledged authority, all of your own race."

Dixon drew out his notebook.

"Bah," said the other savagely, "opinions! Mere opinions! I asked you what you think and you are telling me what someone else says. What I want to know is, what do YOU think?"

"Each of us," replied Dixon, evenly, "however learned, however independent, is compelled to seek the opinion of someone else some particular subject at some time. There is the doctor and the other professionals, for instance. Now in seeking advice one usually places the most reliance on those one considers experts, is it not? This afternoon I overheard you quoting from one of Lincoln's debates with Douglas in order to prove your views."

Silence.

Dixon opened his notebook. After finding the desired passage he said:

"In 1911 most of the leading sociologists and anthropologists of the world met in a Universal Races Congress in London. The opinion of that congress was that all the so-called races of men are essentially equal. Gustav Spiller, its organizer and secretary, voiced the findings of that entire body of experts when, after a careful weighing of the question of superiority and inferiority, he said (here Dixon read from the notebook):

“We are then under the necessity of concluding that an impartial investigator would be inclined to look upon the various important peoples of the world as, to all intents and purposes, essentially equal in intellect, enterprise, morality and physique."

Dixon found another passage and said: "Finot, whose findings ought to be regarded as more valuable than the expressions of those who base their arguments on sentiment or on Hebrew mythology, says, – “All peoples may attain this distant frontier which the brains of the whites have reached.” He also says:

"The conclusion, therefore, forces itself upon us, that there are no inferior and superior races, but only races and peoples living outside or within the influence of culture.

"The appearance of civilization and its evolution among certain white peoples and within a certain geographical latitude is only the effect of circumstances.”