Uplifting Black Souls: the African American Jeremiad

Mission Statement

A black jeremiad is a writing or a speech that constantly emphasizes the need for and methods to achieve social change. David Howard Pitney in his book The Afro-American Jeremiad, rightly suggests what the components of a jeremiad are: "1) citing the promise, 2) criticism of present declension or retrogression from the promise, 3) resolving prophecy that society will shortly complete it's mission and redeem the promise"(Howard-Pitney 8). The authors we have chosen have written prominent jeremiads, and we will show why they can be considered jeremiads; why they were important when they were written; and why they are still important today.

History

David Walker (act.1828-1829), Frederick Douglass (act. 1852-1880), Booker T. Washington (act. 1895-1915); and W.E.B. DuBois (act. 1895-1968) are some of the most important African-American jeremiads in our history.

Black jeremiads stem from the Jeffersonian idea of "natural and divine law." This law emphasizes the right to freedom as well as liberty. The American jeremiad originated amongst 17th century Puritans who believed that their destiny was to form a utopian society in the Americas. By the 19th century, black jeremiads had adopted these Puritan ideals and used them to incite the need for the abolition of slavery and to serve as a warning of the punishment that would await those who continued with the sins of slavery. The writings and speeches of these jeremiads was used to uplift and unify their race and to promote blacks to take action in order to achieve equality but not self-separation from the rest of American society. This idea of unification without self-separation, illustrates the idea of black nationalism with established the rhetoric for jeremiads.

On David Walker

One of the most persuasive African American writers of antebellum America, was able to shake the American society with his pamphlet: Appeal to The Colored People of the United States. Walker, A free Negro born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1796, although enjoyed a little more "freedom" than the rest of his colored brethren in bondage took on the role of a Jeremiadic speaker and writer to his people. In Walker's Appeal, Walker followed a method used by a Free black man in 1788 using the pseudonym of "Othello" in a two-part essay responding to Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia , called Essay on Negro Slavery. Following "Othello's" Jeremiadic essay, Walker had a warning for white Christian America about the wrathful vengeance of God that would befall upon them because of the institution of slavery. Like Othello and many other Black Jeremiad speakers and writers, Walker is able to manipulate the "messianic myth" of the coming messiah, as a means of gaining the support of his black audience whom if nothing else knew about the Bible and the importance of the word of God (Moses 12-13). This Messiah will save the black people from their situation, but not without their own collective effort as a people. Walker goes on to establish a great rapport as a black jeremiah not only through his prediction of punishment from God upon white Christian America, but also through his forecast of a bright future for the blacks in America in his speech "To Unite The Colored People" addressed before the General Colored Association at Boston. During this speech, he mentions,

But, Sir, I cannot but bless God for the glorious anticipation of a not very distant period, when these things which now help to degrade us will no more be practised among the sons of Africa--for, though this, and perhaps another, generation may not experience the promised blessings of Heaven, yet, the dejected, degraded, and now enslaved children of Africa will have, in spite of all their enemies, to take their stand among the nations of the earth. And, sir, I verily believe that God has something in reserve for us, which, when he shall have poured it out upon us, will repay us for all our sufferings and miseries. (Bracey 33-34)

Furthermore, Walker uses a black nationalistic rhetoric to echo the ideas of liberty for all men which Jefferson calls "divine and natural law" while emphasizing the need for black unity as the only means to overcome slavery for these "chosen people of God". To achieve this unity, Walker established the need to overcome ignorance and the urgency in stopping black mental and physical subordination to the white man:

Ignorance and treachery were almost synonymous in Walker's vocabulary. He did not believe that a truly intelligent and knowledgeable person could work against the interest of his or her race, for this would violate self-interest. Servility could result only from acceptance of inferiority, which was a mark of ignorance. Had Jefferson maintained that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites? Well, how were we to contradict him "when we [were] confirming him every day by our groveling submissions and treachery" (p.39)? (Moses, p.42)

Walker is one of the most influential Black Jeremiad writer and speaker, because of his motivational rhetoric which sets a trend for future Black Jeremiad writers such as Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver. Walker's continuous emphasis on the evils of slavery, although defined by many as "a doleful complaint" served its purpose which is to uplift the black minds of the nineteenth century.

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was one of the most important Jeremiad writer and speaker of his time. Douglass has been hailed by many for inspiring the black race through his writings and speeches over the years. The story of his life Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, is a chronology of his life from slavery until his freedom In his many writings, Douglass followed the classic jeremiad process.

To blacks Douglass preached self-help and unification of the race. Like Booker T. Washington, Douglass also promoted racial pride. Douglass encouraged blacks to better themselves in order to achieve equality amongst whites. In his writings in the Frederick Douglass Papers, he emphasized his belief that blacks controlled their own destiny and that it was up to them to lead a socially respectable life. Douglass urged the black Americans to remember "that our elevation as a race is almost wholly dependent upon our own exertions." (Howard-Pitney 21)

In the classic jeremiad approach, Douglass not only chastised white America for slavery, but he also urged that blacks come together and help themselves. He mentioned that the black people should not think that slavery is God's will, but that soon, God will one day deliver them from the hands of slavery. As Douglass says:

"We have no organization among ourselves," he lamented, but we are divided by jealousy into petty factions. The "ignorant colored clergy" were partly responsible "for the apathy of the colored people to their own cause" because they preached passive otherworldly social messages to the people, especially the "absurd notion to expect God to deliver us from bondage. We must elevate ourselves by our own efforts," Douglass challenged the blacks, because God helps those who help themselves. (Howard-Pitney 23)

Another classic jeremiad approach is to reprimand the white race for their hand in slavery and to claim that God will soon punish those that do not repent. In Douglass' speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?", Douglass tells his audience that he does not celebrate this holiday. He also says that he will not celebrate this day of independence while so many slaves are still not free. Throughout his speech, Douglass constantly lambastes white Americans for their treatment towards blacks. Douglass says:

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony...I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!(Douglass 359)

Booker T. Washington

Although we can consider Booker T. Washington's works to be jeremiads, he used a different approach in his writings. Washington, unlike for example, David Walker and Frederick Douglass, refrained from denouncing whites in his narratives and speeches. Washington's emphasis was on the positive characteristics of blacks, rather than on the negatives aspects of whites. Washington did not believe, as many other jeremiads did, that God would punish white Americans, if they did not repent and mend their evil ways.

In Washington's Atlanta Address, he stressed the importance of blacks and whites working together to overcome their issues. He encouraged blacks not to distance themselves from the white man, but instead to never "underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the southern white man...their next door neighbor," for he claimed, "when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world."

Although Washington chooses this distinct method for expressing his views, we can still consider his works to be jeremiads. In his autobiography Up From Slavery, Washington uses the same principles as his fellow Jeremiahs, when he talks about uplifting the black race. As Washington says in a speech that he gave during a Commencement ceremony at Harvard University in 1896:

If my life in the past has meant anything in the lifting up of my people and the brining about of better relations between your race and mine, I assure you from this day it will mean doubly more. In the economy of God there is but one standard by which an individual can succeed - there is but one for a race. This country demands that every race shall measure itself by the American standard. By it a race must rise or fall, succeed or fail, and in the last analysis mere sentiment counts for little. During the next half-century and more, my race must continue passing through the severe American crucible. We are to be tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; in our ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all. (Washington 192 )

While Walker or Douglass would have said that whites were sinful in their promoting slavery, Washington on the contrary believed that "the outside world does not know, neither can it appreciate, the struggle that is constantly going on in the hearts of both the Southern white people and their former slaves to free themselves from racial prejudice; and while both races are thus struggling they should have the sympathy, the support, and the forbearance of the rest of the world."(Howard-Pitney 58 )

Further, in Washington's article Industrial Education for the Negro, he says that he believes that the slave plantations were a type of "industrial school" for blacks. Washington in his attempt to unify the black race, shows the reader how they could possibly learn something positive from the evils of slavery.

I do not mean in any way to apologize for the curse of slavery, which was a curse to both races, but in what I say about industrial training in slavery I am simply stating facts. This training was crude, and was given for selfish purposes. It did not answer the highest ends, because there was an absence of mental training in connection with the training of the hand...this business contact with the Southern white man, and the industrial training on the plantations, left the Negro at the close of the war in possession of nearly all the common and skilled labor in the South." (Washington 5)

Washington used a different approach to unify his race. Nonetheless, Washington is still one of the most important jeremiadic speaker and witer in Nineteenth century history because he appealed to whites as well as blacks, in an effort to end the division between the two races.

On William Edward Burghart Du Bois

Du Bois, one of the most influential scholars of his generation, is also one of the most effective jeremiad speakers and writers of the nineteenth and twentieth century. This era in time focused more on black economic and social progress about thirty years after Emancipation. Nonetheless, Du Bois was able to take on the role of a motivator to his people. He also did not fail to emphasize like many other black jeremiad speakers, that the black people be "in charge" of their "own uplift" as he established in The Philadelphia Negro in the earlier part of the century. Although Du Bois, in his later works and speeches, advocated separatism, he did not fail to always have the progress and total freedom of black people as his main goal in life.

Du Bois had recognized for many years the "curious paradox" that, "unless we had fought segregation with determination, our whole race would have been pushed into an ill-lighted, unpaved, unsewered ghetto. Unless we had built great church organizations and mannered our own Southern schools, we should be shepherdless sheep. . . Here is a dilemma calling for thought and forbearance." (Moses 172-3)

In many of Du Bois' essays in the Crisis Du Bois took on the role of a prophet warning the African-Americans not to "reproduce in our group all the industrial hell of Old Europe and America." Rather, they should strive to transfer control capital to the democratic majority (Howard-Pitney 107). This warning, although later disregarded by black Americans led Du Bois to see economic equality as a dream of the past. The dream for the America without "a color line" died. As most Afro-Americans began to identify with white America in seeking individual economic gains instead of group welfare, Du Bois became more cynical in the quest for a world where blacks would be their own leaders instead of taking the back seat and waiting to prosper through the white man's exploitation of them. Eventually, Du Bois decided to focus on the fight for international prosperity and peace especially for post- colonial Africa. During this period in his life, he issued a lot of prophetic warnings to imperialistic America in his work entitled Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace :

The fervent hopes of world's peoples for lasting peace after the second World War, he concluded, were doomed to disappointment because of the persistent malignant cancer of white racist imperialism. Racism and colonialism, which persistently had led to international injustice and conflict, had emerged from the war more powerful than ever: "It is with great regret that I do not see after this war, or within any reasonable time, the possibility of a world without race conflict." (Howard-Pitney 133).

In conclusion, Du Bois proves to be one of America's most influential jeremiadic speaker, not only because of his motivation for blacks and warnings to whites as well as blacks, but it was also because of his faith in America, a factor which, like Walker and other black jeremiad writers, seems to be a recurring theme. In one of Du Bois' last works: Autobiography , He mentions, "For this is still. . .a wonderful America, which the founding fathers dreamed until their sons drowned it in the blood of slavery. . . and greed. Our children must rebuild it. Let then the Dreams of the Dead rebuke the Blind who think that what is will be forever." (Howard-Pitney 132). Until Du Bois' death in 1968, he stayed one of the most nationalistic and most buoyant force in the social and economic progress of the black soul in American.

These black leaders are innovative jeremiad writers and speakers because they reinforced the promise of freedom and liberty which the Constitution grants to all of American citizen regardless of race, color, or creed. They reemphasized the faults in the American social conscience because of it's short comings of not granting those rights that it promised to all those who worked and built it from their blood and sweat. Nonetheless, they did not fail to reestablish the idea that all these promises will eventually come to fulfilment with the unification of the black people and the upliftment that would occur as a result. Walker, Washington, Du Bois, and Douglass are prime examples of some of the nineteenth century black jeremiads which served to uplift the souls of the disenchanted black people who need a "push" to onward progress. They have clearly paved the way for black leaders today who continue to promote unification of the race and social and economic progress.

References

Douglass, Frederick, The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews Volume 2: 1847-54, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).

DuBois, W.E.B, The Souls of Black Folk 1903. Three Negro Classics. (New York: Avon Books, 1965).

Howard-Pitney, David, The Afro-American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).

Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982).

Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey. (New York University Press, 1996)

Walker, David, Appeal (New York: Hill and Wang, 1965).

Walker, David, "To Unite The Colored People." Black nationalism in America. Ed. by Bracey, J.H.; Meier, August; Rudwick, Elliot. (The Bobbd-Merrill Company, Inc., 1970)

Washington, Booker T., "The Industrial Education for the Negro", The Negro Problem. (New York: James Pott and Company, 1903).

Washington, Booker T., Up From Slavery. 1901. Three Negro Classics. (New York: Avon Books, 1965).