National Humanities Center
Community in African American Culture, 1917-1968
a live, online professional development seminar
Focus Questions
How was African American community
constructed between 1917 and 1968?
Under what circumstances was it created?
How did evolving concepts of community
affect and reflect notions of African American
identity?
Stephanie Shaw
National Humanities Center Fellow
1995-96
Associate Professor of History
Ohio State University
What a Woman Ought To Be and To Do:
Black Professional Women Workers during
the Jim Crow Era (1996)
Soul, Striving, Spirit, and Science: W. E. B.
Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk
(forthcoming)
Community in African American Culture, 1917-1968
Themes
Internal incentives/disincentives to community formation
External incentives/disincentives to community formation
Types of communities:
Geographical communities
Identity communities
Interest communities
Others
Community and consciousness
Dayton, Ohio
July 17, 1917
My Dear Pastor and Wife:
I reed your letter was Glad to hear from you I am do hope the
same for you I am send you some money from my back salary
I will send you some more the 5 of September next month
Give love to all members of the church I will be home on a
visit in Oct are early so pray for me write to me I would have
wrote to you but I didnot no just what to say all of the people
leaves Go to place up East that I did not no weather or not
you care to hear from me are not so I am glad you think of
me. Mr. O_____ write me was going to take out life insurance
with him but he would not send me the paper so I just let it go
as I guess he did not class me with himself I mak $70 month
at this hotel and then not work hard.
Narrative of A. I. and Samuel Dixie
[A.I Dixie] I joined [the Order of the Emancipated Americans] in the thirties. It’s strong
now because I hold a gathering now. It’s not strong as it used to be because folks
[are] making more money. See, you just paid 75 cents a month, [and they] give you
$200 in cash when you die. But when it was start[ed] up, it wasn’t paying that. If you
was a farmer and your mule died, and you belonged to the Emancipated Order,
everybody that had a mule had to give you a day’s work, until they could get you
another mule. And if your house get burned down, they would chip in and help you
get shelter. It wouldn’t be a fine house, but now with the folk making money, we ain’t
got the members we used to have. “That ain’t enough money for me,” but I tell them
every year, “What money?” It was the strength that you help me, and I help you. It
was originally if a member got sick the lodge just send a brother, two brothers to sit
with him if it’s a man, and if it’s a woman, they would send two ladies, because [we]
didn’t have hospitals, just had to sit around. This here was a demand from the lodge;
this was out of their ruling. He could say, “You go stay with so-and-so.” They would
send a different person every night, two different people every night. I had went and
stayed from first dark to five o’clock, time enough to go home and get my breakfast
and get prepared to go to work. When we went there and the family then could go on
to their room and sleep, because they had to [stay and care for] him all that day.
Some of them [lodge members] would go there every night. But now they got
hospitals so — as I was telling the people — I say, “You all don’t understand it like I
did.” That’s what they were doing. If a man’s mule died, and he was a member, and
his crop need plowing and he’d make it known, and this brother go down and give
him a day. That’s how that thing got started. See, folk on a tobacco farm, they’d have
to go up to the boss to get a casket for their people. And one or two wise men said,
“Why can’t us put us little might together, and save us from having to stand around
somebody else’s [the bossman’s] house, when somebody die?” So then they would
give you that cash, and you could go get your casket.
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson,
The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It
One minister read the circular, inquired about the announcements, and
found that all the city’s black congregations were quite intelligent on the
matter and were planning to support the one-day boycott with or without
their ministers’ leadership. It was then that the ministers decided that it was
time for them, the leaders, to catch up with the masses. If the people were
really determined to stage this one-day protest, then they would need moral
support and Christian leadership. The churches could serve as channels of
communication, as well as altars where people could come for prayer and
spiritual guidance. Since the ministers were servants of the people and of
God, and believed in the gospel of social justice, and since the churches
were institutions supported by the people, the clerics could serve as
channels through which all the necessary benefits could flow. Thus, for the
first time in the history of Montgomery, black ministers united to lead action
for civic improvement. There was no thought of denomination. Baptists,
Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, and others
joined together and became one band of ministerial brothers, offering their
leadership to the masses. Had they not done so, they might have alienated
themselves from their congregations and indeed lost members, for the
masses were ready, and they were united!
Malcolm X, “Not Just and American Problem, but a World Problem”
As many of you know, I left the Black Muslim movement and during the summer
months, I spent five of those months on the—in the Middle East and on the
African continent. During this time I visited many countries, first of which was
Egypt, and then Arabia, then Kuwait, Lebanon, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Zanzibar, Tanganyika—which is now Tanzania—Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia,
Algeria. And then the five months that I was away I had an opportunity to hold
lengthy discussions with President Nasser in Egypt, President Julius Nyerere in
Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Milton Obote in Nigeria, Nkrumah in Ghana,
and Sekou Toure in Guinea.
And during those conversations with these men, and other Africans on that
continent, there was much information exchanged that definitely broadened my
understanding, and I feel, broadened my scope. For since coming back from
over there, I have had no desire whatsoever to get bogged down in any picayune
arguments with any bird-brained or small-minded people who happen to belong
to organizations, based upon facts that are very misleading and don’t get you
anywhere when you have problems as complex as ours that are trying to get
solved.
Malcolm X, “Not Just an American Problem, but a World Problem”
We are living in a society that is by and large controlled by people
who believe in segregation. We are living in a society that is by and
large controlled by a people who believe in racism, and practice
segregation and discrimination and racism. We believe in a — and I
say that it is controlled, not by the well-meaning whites, but
controlled by the segregationists, the racists. And you can see by
the pattern that this society follows all over the world. Right now in
Asia you have the American army dropping bombs on dark-skinned
people. You can’t say that — it’s as though you can justify being that
far from home, dropping bombs on somebody else. If you were next
door, I could see it, but you can’t go that far away from this country
and drop bombs on somebody else and justify your presence over
there, not with me.
It’s racism. Racism practiced by America. Racism which involves a
war against the dark-skinned people in Asia, another form of racism
involving a war against the dark-skinned people in the Congo . . . as
it involves a war against the dark-skinned people in Mississippi,
Alabama, Georgia, and Rochester, New York.
Malcolm X, “Not Just an American Problem, but a World Problem”
Since the civil rights bill — I used to see African diplomats at the UN crying out against the injustice that was being done
to Black people in Mozambique, in Angola, the Congo, in South Africa, and I wondered why and how they could go back
to their hotels and turn on the TV and see dogs biting Black people right down the block and policemen wrecking the
stores of Black people with their clubs right down the block, and putting water hoses on Black people with pressure so
high it tear our clothes off, right down the block. And I wondered how they could talk all that talk about what was
happening in Angola and Mozambique and all the rest of it and see it happen right down the block and get up on the
podium in the UN and not say anything about it.
But I went and discussed it with some of them. And they said that as long as the Black man in America calls his struggle
a struggle of civil rights — that in the civil rights context, it’s domestic and it remains within the jurisdiction of the United
States. And if any of them open up their mouths to say anything about it, it’s considered a violation of the laws and rules
of protocol. And the difference with the other people was that they didn’t call their grievances “civil rights” grievances, they
called them “human rights” grievances. “Civil rights” are within the jurisdiction of the government where they are involved.
But “human rights” is part of the charter of the United Nations.
All the nations that signed the charter of the UN came up with the Declaration of Human Rights and anyone who
classifies his grievances under the label of “human rights” violations, those grievances can then be brought into the
United Nations and be discussed by people all over the world. For as long as you call it “civil rights” your only allies can
be the people in the next community, many of whom are responsible for your grievance. But when you call it “human
rights” it becomes international. And then you can take your troubles to the World Court. You can take them before the
world. And anybody anywhere on this earth can become your ally.
So one of the first steps that we became involved in, those of us who got into the Organization of Afro-American Unity,
was to come up with a program that would make our grievances international and make the world see that our problem
was no longer a Negro problem or an American problem but a human problem. A problem for humanity. And a problem
which should be attacked by all elements of humanity. A problem that was so complex that it was impossible for Uncle
Sam to solve it himself and therefore we want to get into a body or conference with people who are in such positions that
they can help us get some kind of adjustment for this situation before it gets so explosive that no one can handle it.
Focus Questions
How was African American community constructed
between 1917 and 1968?
Under what circumstances was it created?
How did evolving concepts of community affect and
reflect notions of African American identity?
Final slide
Thank you.