Excerpt from Fredrick Douglass by William S. McFeely

Excerpt from Fredrick Douglass by William S. McFeely

Shortly after the [Emancipation] proclamation was issued, Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts called for volunteers for what became the famous Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers. Still marching, on the Boston Common, in that greatest of American sculptures, Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s depiction of black men on the way to war, these soldiers were recruited not only in Boston, but in black communities all across the North.

George Luther Stearns, one of the six whites who had backed John Brown, was now a major and headed the recruitment effort. In the eyes of bitter Southern planters, by putting guns in black men’s hands, Stearns was making good on his mentor’s promise of raising an insurrection. As in Brown’s day, however, the black men were skeptical about serving in a white man’s army…Thomas Wentworth Higginson, another of the Secret Six, on the Sea Islands to raise the First South Carolina Volunteers, warned a Worcester neighbor who wanted to enlist, “If taken prisoner by the rebels…you would probably be sold as a slave.” Stearns, recognizing the problem of recruiting free Northern black soldiers, went to Rochester early in February 1863 to seek Douglass’s help.

The editor needed no persuading; in the March issue of Douglass’ Monthly appeared his call for volunteers, bearing the famous title “Men of Color to Arms.” Joining other black leaders as Martin Delany, Henry Highland Garnet, George T. Downing, William Wells Brown, and Jermain Wesley Loguen in recruiting, Douglass traveled across upstate New York, persuading young men to enlist, and he proudly informed Gerrit Smith that the first man he had signed up was his youngest son, Charles. In all, Douglass sent over a hundred young men from upstate New York, to the famous Fifty-fourth Massachusetts. On March 27 Douglass arrived in Boston with one contingent, including Charles and his oldest son, Lewis, and escorted them to the encampment in Readville, outside the city, where the first recruits had been since February….

Boston was too curious; the city’s legendary reserve yielded before the chance to glimpse the wonderful happenings in the bleak barracks in Readville. On April 21, the Ladies Committee, the auxiliary of the group of men sponsoring the regiment, came out for a look; on April 30, the Fast Day called by President Lincoln to bolster the Union’s determination, Governor Andrew was there, With Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. And on May 18, the governor was back, to present the regiment with its colors.

Frederick Douglass was one of the distinguished guests who filled the carriages and extra trains that brought the crowd to Readville that day….

Governor Andrew, as he addressed Colonel Shaw, was surrounded by the men, drawn up in formation. “Now, he said, “in the Providence of God, [they have] given to them, an opportunity while it is personal to themselves, is still an opportunity for a whole race of men. With arms possessed of might to strike a blow, they have found breathed into their hearts an inspiration of devoted patriotism and regard for their brethren of their own color, which has inspired them with a purpose to nerve that arm, that it may strike a blow which, while it shall help to raise aloft their country’s flag – their country’s flag, now, as well as ours – by striking down the foes which oppose it, strikes also to the last shackle which binds the limbs of bondmen in the Rebel States.”

At six-thirty in the morning of May 28, 1863, with orders to ship out of Boston for the Sea Islands, the Fifty-fourth traveled by train from Readville into the city….A crowd cheered as the men in the ten companies left the cars. (The police, whatever their personal reactions to black men with guns, must have been relieved that there was no repeat of the kind of assault Douglass, armed only with words, faced in Boston just two Decembers earlier.) The companies formed into marching order and, behind solemn faced drummer boys, started through the streets of the city. From the sidewalks and windows, the curious watched, and much of patriotic Boston – and all of antislavery Boston – cheered. Handkerchiefs flutters, the cheering rose, and so did the spirits of the new soldiers stepping steadily forward. Somehow, bigger, stretching to fill their still-new uniforms, they were now truly the men of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts…

About noon, marching to the music of “John Brown’s Body,” they moved out along Tremont Street and the streets of downtown Boston to the Battery Warf…Frederick Douglass was one of those who stayed on the dock until the ship, bearing his oldest son, was out of sight.

Walking On Water by Randall Kenan

"I felt that I had somehow in my thinking become both a Booker T. Washington and a Du Bois, an MLK and an X - seeing both sides, advocating for both sides, yet suspicious that arguments about African Americans could be bifurcated, as if there were only two sides to the debate of what must be done to deal with the problems of the great-great-grand-daughters and great-great-grandsons of the slaves. I wanted to believe in the indomitable spirit of black folk and in the wickedness of the great white father - while not dismissing the statistics of murder, drug addictions, and poverty, poverty, poverty; knowing full well that there exists an inherent contradiction in these simplistic views. I was seeing that I had grown up the son of Booker T. Washington, and wanted to run away and live with Dr. Du Bois. But I was getting to be a big boy: wasn't it time to build my own house?

I couldn't have it both ways; nor did I really want to have it either way; I longed for another, fresher vision of the black American situation.

I was trying to come to terms with a desire to speak with hope and pride of black folk and of honestly assessing the problems that conspire to destroy us - yes us - rich, poor, educated and illiterate, a destruction based on color and nothing more."

http://www.amazon.com/Walking-Water-American-Twenty-First-Century/dp/067973788X

http://www.salon.com/books/int/1999/02/cov_24int.html

Stokely Speaks on Liberals

…Many people want to know why, out of the entire white segment of society, we want to criticize the liberals. We have to criticize them because they represent the liaison between both groups, between the oppressed and the oppressor. The liberal tries to become an arbitrator, but he is incapable of solving the problems. He promises the oppressor that he can keep the oppressed under control; that he will stop them from becoming illegal (in this case illegal means violent). At the same time, he promises the oppressed that he will be able to alleviate their suffering – in due time. Historically, of course, we know this is impossible, and our era will not escape history.

The most perturbing question for the liberal is the question of violence. The liberal’s initial reaction to violence is to try to convince the oppressed that violence is an incorrect tactic that violence will not work, that violence never accomplishes anything. The Europeans took American through violence and through violence they established the most powerful country in the world. Through violence they maintain the most powerful country in the world. It is absolutely absurd for one to say that violence never accomplishes anything…

The way the oppressor tries to stop the oppressed from using violence as a means to attain liberation is to raise ethical or moral questions about violence. I want to state emphatically here that violence in any society is neither moral nor is it ethical. It is neither right nor is it wrong. It is just simply a question of who has the power to legalize violence…

Now, I think the biggest problem with the white liberal in America, and perhaps the liberal around the world, is that his primary task is to stop confrontation, stop conflicts, not to regress grievances, but to stop confrontation. And this is very clear, it must become very, very clear in all minds. Because once we see what the primary task of the liberal is, then we can see the necessity of not wasting time with him. His primary role is to stop confrontation. Because the liberal assumes a priori that a confrontation is not going to solve the problem. This, of course, is an incorrect assumption. We know that.

We need not waste time showing that this assumption of the liberals is clearly ridiculous. I think that history has sown that confrontation in many cases has resolved quite a number of problems – look at the Russian revolution, the Cuban revolution,, the Chinese revolution. In many cases, stopping confrontation really means prolonging suffering.

The liberal is so preoccupied with stopping confrontation that he usually finds himself defending and call for law and order, the law and order of the oppressor. Confrontation would disrupt the smooth functioning of the society and so the politics of the liberal leads him into a position where he finds himself politically aligned with the oppressor rather than the oppressed…