“I am the prophet of the dusky race,The poet of wild Africa. Behold,The midnight vision brooding in my face!Come near me,And hear me,While from my lips the words of Fate are told.A black and terrible memory masters me,The shadow and the substance of deep wrong;You know the past, hear now what is to be:From the midnight land,Over sea and sand,From the green jungle, hear my Voodoo-song;A tropic heat is in my bubbling veins,Quintessence of all savagery is mine,The lust of ages ripens in my reins,And burnsAnd yearns,Like venom-sap within a noxious vine.Was I a heathen? Ay, I was—am stillA fetich worshipper; but I was freeTo loiter or to wander at my will,To leap and dance,To hurl my lance,And breathe the air of savage liberty.You drew me to a higher life, you say;Ah, drove me, with the lash of slavery!Am I unmindful? Every cursed dayOf painAnd chainRoars like a torrent in my memory.You make my manhood whole with ‘equal rights!’Poor empty words! Dream you I honor them?—I who have stood on Freedom’s wildest hights?My Africa,I see the dayWhen none dare touch thy garment’s lowest hem.You cannot make me love you with your whineOf fine repentance. Veil your pallid faceIn presence of the shame that mantles mine;StandAt commandOf the black prophet of the Negro race!I hate you, and I live to nurse my hate,Remembering when you plied the slaver’s tradeIn my dear land ... How patiently I waitThe day,Not far away,When all your pride shall shrivel up and fade.Yea, all your whiteness darken under me!Darken and be jaundiced, and your bloodTake in dread humors from my savagery,UntilYour willLapse into mine and seal my masterhood.You, seed of Abel, proud of your descent,And arrogant, because your cheeks are fair,Within my loins an inky curse is pent,To floodYour bloodAnd stain your skin and crisp your golden hair.As you have done by me, so will I doBy all the generations of your race;Your snowy limbs, your blood’s patrician blueShall beTainted by me,And I will set my seal upon your face!Yea, I will dash my blackness down your veins,And through your nerves my sensuousness I’ll fling;Your lips, your eyes, shall bear the musty stainsOf Congo kisses,While shrieks and hissesShall blend into the savage songs I sing!Your temples will I break, your fountains fill,Your cities raze, your fields to deserts turn;My heathen fires shall shine on every hill,And wild beasts roam,Where stands your home;—Even the wind your hated dust shall spurn.I will absorb your very life in me,And mold you to the shape of my desire;Back through the cycles of all crueltyI will swing you,And wring you,And roast you in my passions’ hottest fire.You, North and South, you, East and West,Shall drink the cup your fathers gave to me;My back still burns, I bare my bleeding breast,I set my face,My limbs I brace,To make the long, strong fight for mastery.My serpent fetich lolls its withered lipAnd bares its shining fangs at thought of this:I scarce can hold the monster in my grip.So strong is he,So eagerlyHe leaps to meet my precious prophecies.Hark for the coming of my countless host,Watch for my banner over land and sea.The ancient power of vengeance is not lost!Lo! on the skyThe fire-clouds fly,And strangely moans the windy, weltering sea.”
“I am the prophet of the dusky race,The poet of wild Africa. Behold,The midnight vision brooding in my face!Come near me,And hear me,While from my lips the words of Fate are told.A black and terrible memory masters me,The shadow and the substance of deep wrong;You know the past, hear now what is to be:From the midnight land,Over sea and sand,From the green jungle, hear my Voodoo-song;A tropic heat is in my bubbling veins,Quintessence of all savagery is mine,The lust of ages ripens in my reins,And burnsAnd yearns,Like venom-sap within a noxious vine.Was I a heathen? Ay, I was—am stillA fetich worshipper; but I was freeTo loiter or to wander at my will,To leap and dance,To hurl my lance,And breathe the air of savage liberty.You drew me to a higher life, you say;Ah, drove me, with the lash of slavery!Am I unmindful? Every cursed dayOf painAnd chainRoars like a torrent in my memory.You make my manhood whole with ‘equal rights!’Poor empty words! Dream you I honor them?—I who have stood on Freedom’s wildest hights?My Africa,I see the dayWhen none dare touch thy garment’s lowest hem.You cannot make me love you with your whineOf fine repentance. Veil your pallid faceIn presence of the shame that mantles mine;StandAt commandOf the black prophet of the Negro race!I hate you, and I live to nurse my hate,Remembering when you plied the slaver’s tradeIn my dear land ... How patiently I waitThe day,Not far away,When all your pride shall shrivel up and fade.Yea, all your whiteness darken under me!Darken and be jaundiced, and your bloodTake in dread humors from my savagery,UntilYour willLapse into mine and seal my masterhood.You, seed of Abel, proud of your descent,And arrogant, because your cheeks are fair,Within my loins an inky curse is pent,To floodYour bloodAnd stain your skin and crisp your golden hair.As you have done by me, so will I doBy all the generations of your race;Your snowy limbs, your blood’s patrician blueShall beTainted by me,And I will set my seal upon your face!Yea, I will dash my blackness down your veins,And through your nerves my sensuousness I’ll fling;Your lips, your eyes, shall bear the musty stainsOf Congo kisses,While shrieks and hissesShall blend into the savage songs I sing!Your temples will I break, your fountains fill,Your cities raze, your fields to deserts turn;My heathen fires shall shine on every hill,And wild beasts roam,Where stands your home;—Even the wind your hated dust shall spurn.I will absorb your very life in me,And mold you to the shape of my desire;Back through the cycles of all crueltyI will swing you,And wring you,And roast you in my passions’ hottest fire.You, North and South, you, East and West,Shall drink the cup your fathers gave to me;My back still burns, I bare my bleeding breast,I set my face,My limbs I brace,To make the long, strong fight for mastery.My serpent fetich lolls its withered lipAnd bares its shining fangs at thought of this:I scarce can hold the monster in my grip.So strong is he,So eagerlyHe leaps to meet my precious prophecies.Hark for the coming of my countless host,Watch for my banner over land and sea.The ancient power of vengeance is not lost!Lo! on the skyThe fire-clouds fly,And strangely moans the windy, weltering sea.”
“I am the prophet of the dusky race,The poet of wild Africa. Behold,The midnight vision brooding in my face!Come near me,And hear me,While from my lips the words of Fate are told.
“I am the prophet of the dusky race,
The poet of wild Africa. Behold,
The midnight vision brooding in my face!
Come near me,
And hear me,
While from my lips the words of Fate are told.
A black and terrible memory masters me,The shadow and the substance of deep wrong;You know the past, hear now what is to be:From the midnight land,Over sea and sand,From the green jungle, hear my Voodoo-song;
A black and terrible memory masters me,
The shadow and the substance of deep wrong;
You know the past, hear now what is to be:
From the midnight land,
Over sea and sand,
From the green jungle, hear my Voodoo-song;
A tropic heat is in my bubbling veins,Quintessence of all savagery is mine,The lust of ages ripens in my reins,And burnsAnd yearns,Like venom-sap within a noxious vine.
A tropic heat is in my bubbling veins,
Quintessence of all savagery is mine,
The lust of ages ripens in my reins,
And burns
And yearns,
Like venom-sap within a noxious vine.
Was I a heathen? Ay, I was—am stillA fetich worshipper; but I was freeTo loiter or to wander at my will,To leap and dance,To hurl my lance,And breathe the air of savage liberty.
Was I a heathen? Ay, I was—am still
A fetich worshipper; but I was free
To loiter or to wander at my will,
To leap and dance,
To hurl my lance,
And breathe the air of savage liberty.
You drew me to a higher life, you say;Ah, drove me, with the lash of slavery!Am I unmindful? Every cursed dayOf painAnd chainRoars like a torrent in my memory.
You drew me to a higher life, you say;
Ah, drove me, with the lash of slavery!
Am I unmindful? Every cursed day
Of pain
And chain
Roars like a torrent in my memory.
You make my manhood whole with ‘equal rights!’Poor empty words! Dream you I honor them?—I who have stood on Freedom’s wildest hights?My Africa,I see the dayWhen none dare touch thy garment’s lowest hem.
You make my manhood whole with ‘equal rights!’
Poor empty words! Dream you I honor them?—
I who have stood on Freedom’s wildest hights?
My Africa,
I see the day
When none dare touch thy garment’s lowest hem.
You cannot make me love you with your whineOf fine repentance. Veil your pallid faceIn presence of the shame that mantles mine;StandAt commandOf the black prophet of the Negro race!
You cannot make me love you with your whine
Of fine repentance. Veil your pallid face
In presence of the shame that mantles mine;
Stand
At command
Of the black prophet of the Negro race!
I hate you, and I live to nurse my hate,Remembering when you plied the slaver’s tradeIn my dear land ... How patiently I waitThe day,Not far away,When all your pride shall shrivel up and fade.
I hate you, and I live to nurse my hate,
Remembering when you plied the slaver’s trade
In my dear land ... How patiently I wait
The day,
Not far away,
When all your pride shall shrivel up and fade.
Yea, all your whiteness darken under me!Darken and be jaundiced, and your bloodTake in dread humors from my savagery,UntilYour willLapse into mine and seal my masterhood.
Yea, all your whiteness darken under me!
Darken and be jaundiced, and your blood
Take in dread humors from my savagery,
Until
Your will
Lapse into mine and seal my masterhood.
You, seed of Abel, proud of your descent,And arrogant, because your cheeks are fair,Within my loins an inky curse is pent,To floodYour bloodAnd stain your skin and crisp your golden hair.
You, seed of Abel, proud of your descent,
And arrogant, because your cheeks are fair,
Within my loins an inky curse is pent,
To flood
Your blood
And stain your skin and crisp your golden hair.
As you have done by me, so will I doBy all the generations of your race;Your snowy limbs, your blood’s patrician blueShall beTainted by me,And I will set my seal upon your face!
As you have done by me, so will I do
By all the generations of your race;
Your snowy limbs, your blood’s patrician blue
Shall be
Tainted by me,
And I will set my seal upon your face!
Yea, I will dash my blackness down your veins,And through your nerves my sensuousness I’ll fling;Your lips, your eyes, shall bear the musty stainsOf Congo kisses,While shrieks and hissesShall blend into the savage songs I sing!
Yea, I will dash my blackness down your veins,
And through your nerves my sensuousness I’ll fling;
Your lips, your eyes, shall bear the musty stains
Of Congo kisses,
While shrieks and hisses
Shall blend into the savage songs I sing!
Your temples will I break, your fountains fill,Your cities raze, your fields to deserts turn;My heathen fires shall shine on every hill,And wild beasts roam,Where stands your home;—Even the wind your hated dust shall spurn.
Your temples will I break, your fountains fill,
Your cities raze, your fields to deserts turn;
My heathen fires shall shine on every hill,
And wild beasts roam,
Where stands your home;—
Even the wind your hated dust shall spurn.
I will absorb your very life in me,And mold you to the shape of my desire;Back through the cycles of all crueltyI will swing you,And wring you,And roast you in my passions’ hottest fire.
I will absorb your very life in me,
And mold you to the shape of my desire;
Back through the cycles of all cruelty
I will swing you,
And wring you,
And roast you in my passions’ hottest fire.
You, North and South, you, East and West,Shall drink the cup your fathers gave to me;My back still burns, I bare my bleeding breast,I set my face,My limbs I brace,To make the long, strong fight for mastery.
You, North and South, you, East and West,
Shall drink the cup your fathers gave to me;
My back still burns, I bare my bleeding breast,
I set my face,
My limbs I brace,
To make the long, strong fight for mastery.
My serpent fetich lolls its withered lipAnd bares its shining fangs at thought of this:I scarce can hold the monster in my grip.So strong is he,So eagerlyHe leaps to meet my precious prophecies.
My serpent fetich lolls its withered lip
And bares its shining fangs at thought of this:
I scarce can hold the monster in my grip.
So strong is he,
So eagerly
He leaps to meet my precious prophecies.
Hark for the coming of my countless host,Watch for my banner over land and sea.The ancient power of vengeance is not lost!Lo! on the skyThe fire-clouds fly,And strangely moans the windy, weltering sea.”
Hark for the coming of my countless host,
Watch for my banner over land and sea.
The ancient power of vengeance is not lost!
Lo! on the sky
The fire-clouds fly,
And strangely moans the windy, weltering sea.”
Now this would be poetry if it were only truthful. Simple and sensuous it surely is, but it lacks the third requisite—truth. The Negro is utterly incapable of such vindictiveness. Such concentrated venom might be distilled in the cold Saxon, writhing and chafing under oppression and repression such as the Negro in America has suffered and is suffering. But the black man is in real life only too glad to accept the olive branch of reconciliation. He merely asks to be let alone. To be allowed to pursue his destiny as a free man and an Americancitizen, to rear and educate his children in peace, to engage in art, science, trades or industries according to his ability,—andto go to the wall if he fail. He is willing, if I understand him, to let bygones be bygones. He does not even demand satisfaction for the centuries of his ancestors’ unpaid labor. He asks neither pension, nor dole nor back salaries; but is willing to start from the bottom, all helpless and unprovided for as he is, with absolutely nothing as his stock in trade, with no capital, in a country developed, enriched, and made to blossom through his father’s “sweat and toil,”—with none of the accumulations of ancestors’ labors, with no education or moral training for the duties and responsibilities of freedom; nay, with every power, mental, moral, and physical, emasculated by a debasing slavery—he is willing, even glad to take his place in the lists alongside his oppressors, who have had every advantage, to be tried with them by their own standards, and to ask no quarter from them or high Heaven to palliate or excuse the ignominy of a defeat.
The Voodoo Prophecy has no interest then as a picture of the black, but merely as a revelation of the white man. Maurice Thompson in penning this portrait of the Negro, has, unconsciouslyit may be, laid bare his own soul—its secret dread and horrible fear. And this, it seems to me, is the key to the Southern situation, the explanation of the apparent heartlessness and cruelty of some, and the stolid indifference to atrocity on the part of others, before which so many of us have stood paralyzed in dumb dismay. The Southerner is not a cold-blooded villain. Those of us who have studied the genus in its native habitat can testify that his impulses are generous and kindly, and that while the South presents a solid phalanx of iron resistance to the Negro’s advancement, still as individuals to individuals they are warm-hearted and often even tender. And just here is the difference between the Southerner and his more philosophical, less sentimental Northern brother. The latter in an abstract metaphysical way rather wants you to have all the rights that belong to you. He thinks it better for the country, better for him that justice, universal justice be done. But he doesn’t care to have the blacks, in the concrete, too near him. He doesn’t know them and doesn’t want to know them. He really can’t understand how the Southerner could have let those little cubs get so close to him as they did in the old days—nursing from thesame bottle and feeding at the same breast.
To the Southerner, on the other hand, race antipathy and color-phobiaas suchdoes not exist. Personally, there is hardly a man of them but knows, and has known from childhood, some black fellow whom he loves as dearly as if he were white, whom he regards as indispensable to his own pleasures, and for whom he would break every commandment in the decalogue to save him from any general disaster. But our Bourbon seems utterly incapable of generalizing his few ideas. He would die for A or B, but suddenly becomes utterly impervious to every principle of logic when you ask for the simple golden rule to be applied to the class of which A or B is one. Another fact strikes me as curious. A Southern white man’s regard for his black friend varies in inverse ratio to the real distance between them in education and refinement. Puck expresses it—“I can get on a great deal better with a nigger than I can with a Negro.” And Mr. Douglass puts it: “Let a colored man be out at elbows and toes and half way into the gutter and there is no prejudice against him; but let him respect himself and be a man and Southern whites can’t abide to ride in the same car with him.”
Why this anomaly? Is it pride? Ordinarily, congeniality increases with similarity in taste and manners. Is it antipathy to color? It does not exist. The explanation is the white man’s dread dimly shadowed out in this Voodoo Prophecy of Maurice Thompson, and fed and inspired by such books as Minden Armais and a few wild theorizers who have nothing better to do with their time than spend it advocating the fusion of races as a plausible and expedient policy. Now I believe there are two ideas which master the Southern white man and incense him against the black race. On this point he is a monomaniac. In the face of this feeling he would not admit he was convinced of the axioms of Geometry. The one is personal and present, the fear of Negro political domination. The other is for his posterity—the future horror of being lost as a race in this virile and vigorous black race. Relieve him of this nightmare and he becomes “as gentle as the sucking dove.” With that dread delusion maddening him he would drive his sword to the hilt in the tender breast of his darling child, did he fancy that through her the curse would come.
Now argument is almost supersensible with a monomaniac. What is most needed is asedative for the excited nerves, and then a mental tonic to stimulate the power of clear perception and truthful cerebration. The Southern patient needs to be brought to see, by the careful and cautious injection of cold facts and by the presentation of well selected object lessons that so far as concerns his first named horror of black supremacy politically, the usual safeguards of democracy are in the hands of intelligence and wealth in the South as elsewhere. The weapons of fair argument and persuasion, the precautionary bulwark of education and justice, the unimpeachable supremacy and insuperable advantage of intelligence and discipline over mere numbers—are all in his reach. It is to his interest to help make the black peasant an intelligent and self-respecting citizen. No section can thrive under the incubus of an illiterate, impoverished, cheerless and hopeless peasantry. Let the South once address herself in good faith to the improvement of the condition of her laboring classes, let her give but a tithe of the care and attention which are bestowed in the North on its mercurial and inflammable importations, let her show but the disposition in her relative poverty merely to utter the benediction,Be ye warmed and fed and educated,even while she herself has not the wherewithal to emulate the Pullman villages and the Carnegie munificence, let her but give him a fair wage and an honest reckoning and a kindly God-speed,—and she will find herself in possession of the most tractable laborer, the most faithful and reliable henchman, the most invaluable co-operator and friendly vassal of which this or any country can boast.
So far as regards the really less sane idea that amicable relations subsisting between the races may promote their ultimate blending and loss of identity, it hardly seems necessary to refute it. Blending of races in the aggregate is simply an unthinkable thought, and the union of individuals can never fall out by accident or haphazard. There must be the deliberate wish and intention on each side; and the average black man in this country is as anxious to preserve his identity and transmit his type as is the average white man. In any case, hybridity is in no sense dependent on sectional or national amity. Oppression and outrage are not the means to chain the affections. Cupid, who knows no bolt or bars, is more wont to be stimulated with romantic sympathy towards a forbidden object unjustly persecuted. The sensible course is to removethose silly and unjust barriers which protect nothing and merely call attention to the possibilities of law-breaking, and depend instead on religion and common sense to guide, control and direct in the paths of purity and right reason.
The froth and foam, the sticks and debris at the water-top may have an uncertain movement, but as deep calleth unto deep the mighty ocean swell is always true to the tides; and whatever the fluctuations along the ragged edge between the races, the home instinct is sufficiently strong with each to hold the great mass true to its attractions. If Maurice Thompson’s nightmare vision is sincere on his part, then, it has no objective reality; ’tis merely a hideous phantasm bred of his own fevered and jaundiced senses; if he does not believe in it himself, it was most unkind and uncalled for to publish abroad such inflaming and irritating fabrications.
After this cursory glance at a few contributions which have peculiarly emphasized one phase of our literature during the last decade or two, I am brought to the conclusion that an authentic portrait, at once æsthetic and true to life, presenting the black man as a free American citizen, not the humble slave ofUncle Tom’s Cabin—but theman, divinely struggling and aspiring yet tragically warped and distorted by the adverse winds of circumstance, has not yet been painted. It is my opinion that the canvas awaits the brush of the colored man himself. It is a pathetic—a fearful arraignment of America’s conditions of life, that instead of that enrichment from the years and days, the summers and springs under which, as Browning says,
“The flowers turn double and the leaves turn flowers,”—
“The flowers turn double and the leaves turn flowers,”—
“The flowers turn double and the leaves turn flowers,”—
“The flowers turn double and the leaves turn flowers,”—
the black man’s native and original flowers have in this country been all hardened and sharpened into thorns and spurs. In literature we have no artists for art’s sake. Albery A. Whitman in “Twasinta’s Seminoles” and “Not a Man and Yet a Man” is almost the only poet who has attempted a more sustained note than the lyrics of Mrs. Harper, and even that note is almost a wail.
The fact is, a sense of freedom in mind as well as in body is necessary to the appreciative and inspiring pursuit of the beautiful. A bird cannot warble out his fullest and most joyous notes while the wires of his cage are pricking and cramping him at every heart beat. His tones become only the shrill and poignant protest of rage and despair. And sothe black man’s vexations and chafing environment, even since his physical emancipation has given him speech, has goaded him into the eloquence and fire of oratory rather than the genial warmth and cheery glow of either poetry or romance. And pity ’tis, ’tis true. A race that has produced for America the only folk-lore and folk songs of native growth, a race which has grown the most original and unique assemblage of fable and myth to be found on the continent, a race which has suggested and inspired almost the only distinctive American note which could chain the attention and charm the ear of the outside world—has as yet found no mouthpiece of its own to unify and perpetuate its wondrous whisperings—no painter-poet to distil in the alembic of his own imagination the gorgeous dyes, the luxuriant juices of this rich and tropical vegetation. It was the glory of Chaucer that he justified the English language to itself—that he took the homely and hitherto despised Saxon elements and ideas, and lovingly wove them into an artistic product which even Norman conceit and uppishness might be glad to acknowledge and imitate. The only man who is doing the same for Negro folk-lore is one not to the manner born. Joel Chandler Harrishas made himself rich and famous by simply standing around among the black railroad hands and cotton pickers of the South and compiling the simple and dramatic dialogues which fall from their lips. What I hope to see before I die is a black man honestly and appreciatively portraying both the Negro as he is, and the white man, occasionally, as seen from the Negro’s standpoint.
There is an old proverb “The devil is always paintedblack—by white painters.” And what is needed, perhaps, to reverse the picture of the lordly man slaying the lion, is for the lion to turn painter.
Then too we need the calm clear judgment of ourselves and of others born of a disenchantment similar to that of a little girl I know in the South, who was once being laboriously held up over the shoulders of a surging throng to catch her first glimpse of a real live president. “Why Nunny,” she cried half reproachfully, as she strained her little neck to see—“It’s nuffin but a man!”
When we have been sized up and written down by others, we need not feel that the last word is said and the oracles sealed. “It’s nuffin but a man.” And there are many gifts the giftie may gie us, far better than seeingourselves as others see us—and one is that of Bion’s maxim “Know Thyself.” Keep true to your own ideals. Be not ashamed of what is homely and your own. Speak out and speak honestly. Be true to yourself and to the message God and Nature meant you to deliver. The young David cannot fight in Saul’s unwieldy armor. Let him simply therefore gird his loins, take up his own parable and tell this would-be great American nation “A chile’s amang ye takin’ notes;” and when men act the part of cowards or wild beasts, this great silent but open-eyed constituency has a standard by which they are being tried. Know thyself, and know those around at their true weight of solid intrinsic manhood without being dazzled by the fact that littleness of soul is often gilded with wealth, power and intellect. There can be no nobility but that of soul, and no catalogue of adventitious circumstances can wipe out the stain or palliate the meanness of inflicting one ruthless, cruel wrong. ’Tis not only safer, but nobler, grander, diviner,
“To be that which we destroyThan, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.”
“To be that which we destroyThan, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.”
“To be that which we destroyThan, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.”
“To be that which we destroy
Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.”
With this platform to stand on we can withclear eye weigh what is written and estimate what is done and ourselves paint what is true with the calm spirit of those who know their cause is right and who believe there is a God who judgeth the nations.