What might your students be thinking during your class? (and further musings on "interracialism")

For your consideration, Pauli Murray, 1932:

"My one bad experience with race at Hunter College was a year-long American history course. I was the only Negro in the class, and as far as my professor was concerned I did not exist. She was not openly insulting, but she never once suggested that colored people played any role in the nation's development other than as abject objections of the national controversy over slavery. Her treatment of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction made me shrivel in my seat in the back row, feeling shame and resentment. I knew from my own family history that her presentation was one-sided but was too unsure of myself to challenge her in class. Unable to mount an effective protest against her bias, I performed so indifferently in the course that I got only passing grades in a subject in which I had always excelled. That ordeal, however, spurred me to become a passionate student of Negro history after leaving college.

"The experience also led me to take my first tentative steps toward activism." More after the jump.

"Distressed over the general invisibility of Negro students at Hunter and the scant attention given to Negro life in our courses, I began to discuss the problem with another student, Elizabeth McDougald, whom I admired greatly and whose mother, Gertrude Ayers, became the first Negro principal in New York City's public school system. Betty was strikingly tall and regal-looking, knowledgeable, self-assured, and she had great leadership ability. After informal talks with other Negro students, she drafted a plan for an organization intended to create greater self-awareness among the Negro students at Hunter through the study of Negro culture and achievements. The group would hold weekly discussions, and membership would be open to the entire student body. Our modest plan would seem tame indeed to a generation of militants in the late 1960s, who took over college buildings to dramatize their demands for Black Studies. We had neither the numerical strength nor the political climate to support a proposal that our legitimate concerns become part of the school's curriculum, but in 1932 our groping efforts were a beginning, a radical step for those times.

"Our plan alarmed some of the leading white students, who feared that a separate organization would reflect adversely upon Hunter's reputation as an inclusive institution. The largest and most active organization in public affairs, International Student, which was affiliated with the National Students League of America, came forward with a counterproposal, an interracial plan. Betty McDougald and I were selected to meet with their eladers in the spring of 1932 to discuss the alternative proposals. They recommended that instead of creating a new organization, the Negro students incorporate their program into that of International Student, which would undertake a special 'study of the social and cultural as well as the political status of the Negro' through 'special readings, bibliographies, historical surveys, [and] the securing of the best Negro speakers, writers, economists, and social workers.' The program would be launched in the fall semester, would take the form of weekly discussions, and would follow the syllabus outlined in Betty's proposal. International Student's executive board would be enlarged to include Negro students.

"Both plans were presented to the Negro students as well as to the executive board of International Student for consideration. Betty McDougald had strong misgivings about a joint venture because she was aware of the struggles for power within the International Student between members of the Young People's Socialist League and the Young Communist League, and she feared that our program would become a political football between warring factions. I had no political experience and was inclined to go along with the interracial approach, which was ultimately accepted. I graduated just after the program got under way at the end of the fall term, but I learned later that Betty['s fears were justified and the Negro students eventually withdrew from International Student to set up their own program."

In addition to the interesting insight into the life of an undergraduate history student, this passage also confirms my growing sense that one of the things which made the interwar era distinct in the trajectory of the African American freedom struggle was the emphasis upon interracialism among sympathetic whites and whites interested in preserving segregation. I'm working on building a definition and gathering a wide range of examples of how the emphasis on "interracial dialgoue" exhibited itself during the interwar era. Perhaps it will turn into its own article, although it has already informed the two articles I submitted this summer and the book I'm working on. I'm presenting the idea to honors students at the University of Kentucky this fall and am interested to find out whether they find it an entirely old-fashioned notion or whether parts of interracialism still inform the way that "we" (political culture of mainstream America, whatever that is) still think about race. It will also be interesting to see if that "we" has black or white inflections in discussing the idea.

What might your students be thinking during your class? (and further musings on "interracialism")

For your consideration, Pauli Murray, 1932:

"My one bad experience with race at Hunter College was a year-long American history course. I was the only Negro in the class, and as far as my professor was concerned I did not exist. She was not openly insulting, but she never once suggested that colored people played any role in the nation's development other than as abject objections of the national controversy over slavery. Her treatment of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction made me shrivel in my seat in the back row, feeling shame and resentment. I knew from my own family history that her presentation was one-sided but was too unsure of myself to challenge her in class. Unable to mount an effective protest against her bias, I performed so indifferently in the course that I got only passing grades in a subject in which I had always excelled. That ordeal, however, spurred me to become a passionate student of Negro history after leaving college.

"The experience also led me to take my first tentative steps toward activism." More after the jump.

"Distressed over the general invisibility of Negro students at Hunter and the scant attention given to Negro life in our courses, I began to discuss the problem with another student, Elizabeth McDougald, whom I admired greatly and whose mother, Gertrude Ayers, became the first Negro principal in New York City's public school system. Betty was strikingly tall and regal-looking, knowledgeable, self-assured, and she had great leadership ability. After informal talks with other Negro students, she drafted a plan for an organization intended to create greater self-awareness among the Negro students at Hunter through the study of Negro culture and achievements. The group would hold weekly discussions, and membership would be open to the entire student body. Our modest plan would seem tame indeed to a generation of militants in the late 1960s, who took over college buildings to dramatize their demands for Black Studies. We had neither the numerical strength nor the political climate to support a proposal that our legitimate concerns become part of the school's curriculum, but in 1932 our groping efforts were a beginning, a radical step for those times.

"Our plan alarmed some of the leading white students, who feared that a separate organization would reflect adversely upon Hunter's reputation as an inclusive institution. The largest and most active organization in public affairs, International Student, which was affiliated with the National Students League of America, came forward with a counterproposal, an interracial plan. Betty McDougald and I were selected to meet with their eladers in the spring of 1932 to discuss the alternative proposals. They recommended that instead of creating a new organization, the Negro students incorporate their program into that of International Student, which would undertake a special 'study of the social and cultural as well as the political status of the Negro' through 'special readings, bibliographies, historical surveys, [and] the securing of the best Negro speakers, writers, economists, and social workers.' The program would be launched in the fall semester, would take the form of weekly discussions, and would follow the syllabus outlined in Betty's proposal. International Student's executive board would be enlarged to include Negro students.

"Both plans were presented to the Negro students as well as to the executive board of International Student for consideration. Betty McDougald had strong misgivings about a joint venture because she was aware of the struggles for power within the International Student between members of the Young People's Socialist League and the Young Communist League, and she feared that our program would become a political football between warring factions. I had no political experience and was inclined to go along with the interracial approach, which was ultimately accepted. I graduated just after the program got under way at the end of the fall term, but I learned later that Betty['s fears were justified and the Negro students eventually withdrew from International Student to set up their own program."

In addition to the interesting insight into the life of an undergraduate history student, this passage also confirms my growing sense that one of the things which made the interwar era distinct in the trajectory of the African American freedom struggle was the emphasis upon interracialism among sympathetic whites and whites interested in preserving segregation. I'm working on building a definition and gathering a wide range of examples of how the emphasis on "interracial dialgoue" exhibited itself during the interwar era. Perhaps it will turn into its own article, although it has already informed the two articles I submitted this summer and the book I'm working on. I'm presenting the idea to honors students at the University of Kentucky this fall and am interested to find out whether they find it an entirely old-fashioned notion or whether parts of interracialism still inform the way that "we" (political culture of mainstream America, whatever that is) still think about race. It will also be interesting to see if that "we" has black or white inflections in discussing the idea.

News In Black Intellectual History

A few days ago The New York Times reported on problems between Malcolm X's daughters in relation to holdings by Betty Shabbaz. Shabbaz died in 1997, and the daughters have been arguing over the estate since. One of the casualties of that argument has been intellectual history. How? I'll let the article explain:

The daughters have traded accusations of irresponsibility, mental incapacity and fiscal mismanagement of the estate, which is worth about $1.4 million. But the greater value may reside in a trove of unpublished works from Malcolm X and Dr. Shabazz.

As the dispute drags on in Westchester County Surrogate’s Court, efforts to publish the works have been thwarted by the daughters’ bickering; all must sign off on any plan to sell and release the material, which includes four journals that Malcolm X kept during trips to Africa and the Middle East in 1964, a year before his assassination.

For the uninitiated, this is precisely one of the most fertile times in Malcolm X's intellectual life. While his autodidact period of intense prison reading gave him a heavy dose of Western cultural literacy, the African and Middle East travel period represent a growth in wisdom. Black intellectual history will benefit greatly when the daughters work out their competing interests. If it's just about money, this might be a good time for the proverbial "silent donor" to speed the process along. - TL

News In Black Intellectual History

A few days ago The New York Times reported on problems between Malcolm X's daughters in relation to holdings by Betty Shabbaz. Shabbaz died in 1997, and the daughters have been arguing over the estate since. One of the casualties of that argument has been intellectual history. How? I'll let the article explain:

The daughters have traded accusations of irresponsibility, mental incapacity and fiscal mismanagement of the estate, which is worth about $1.4 million. But the greater value may reside in a trove of unpublished works from Malcolm X and Dr. Shabazz.

As the dispute drags on in Westchester County Surrogate’s Court, efforts to publish the works have been thwarted by the daughters’ bickering; all must sign off on any plan to sell and release the material, which includes four journals that Malcolm X kept during trips to Africa and the Middle East in 1964, a year before his assassination.

For the uninitiated, this is precisely one of the most fertile times in Malcolm X's intellectual life. While his autodidact period of intense prison reading gave him a heavy dose of Western cultural literacy, the African and Middle East travel period represent a growth in wisdom. Black intellectual history will benefit greatly when the daughters work out their competing interests. If it's just about money, this might be a good time for the proverbial "silent donor" to speed the process along. - TL

Grouchy Crouch: Black Intellectuals

I was just reading Stanley Crouch's introduction to a 2005 edition of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual and it is a very strange document. It professes the importance of Cruses' work while tearing apart all the ideas presented in it as either wrong or rather silly. For example:

The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual seemed to assume that there was a substantial intellectual tradition among American Negroes. That was neither true forty years ago nor is it true now. Very little arrived that would challenge the depth of thought found in the works of men like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edmund Wilson, T.S. Eliot, Gilbert Seldes, Lincoln Kirstein, Malcolm Cowley, Alfred Kazin, and so on. There has never been a substantial body of thought on any Afro-American subject that was formed of deep studies, original theories, probing cultural examination, complex religious assessment, and schools of philosophical concern that raised questions about essences as opposed to superstitions, hearsay, and propaganda. There have been attempts here and there, usually caught up in Negro politics or Negro art movements based more in exotica than the kinds of challenges to convention that jazz brought to the table of Western music. No serious gathering of ideas, as full of yea as of nay, has appeared that was so well conceived and so eloquently expressed that it would add something of value to either American thinking or the larger and more formidable fact of life we call Western thought.

In the Salon, Amy Alexander explains that this is typical Crouch.

Armed with an elephant's memory and a passionate knowledge of and engagement with art (blues and jazz especially, though not exclusively) and history (American, though not exclusively), Crouch delights in slaying the dragons of convention -- particularly those that guard the sometimes-insular world of black intellectuals.

But also argues that there is more to him than his contrariness:

Underneath the mask of Crouch the Grouch is a down-to-earth individual who would rather engage you in debate than cut you dead with pretensions of writerly superiority. He is one of the rare top-echelon literary figures who not only welcomes conversation with unknown young writers (he gives out his home office phone number and usually picks up when it rings), but is also wont to commandeer them for marathon swirls through his downtown universe of smoldering jazz clubs, big-portion restaurants and Runyonesque watering holes.
...
Although routinely and incorrectly described as a black conservative, Crouch calls himself a "radical pragmatist." To the uninitiated, his philosophy might best be described as rigidly humanist. It centers on an unsentimental vision wherein we must fight the siren temptation to obsess about our (mostly superficial) differences, lest we miss the chance to embrace our (very real and very numerous) commonalities.

Of all the things that could be said of Crouch, one cannot deny that he is a very intelligent man and an excellent jazz critic. Why, then, would he claim that there was no black intellectual tradition? Why would a publisher, New York Reviews Books Classic, put him at the beginning of the reprint of Cruse, generally acknowledged as a major contribution to black intellectual history? What can we take seriously in Crouch's critique and what can we dismiss as his famous "grouchiness?"

I think this might be more interesting as a discussion than simply me offering an opinion, though I will point out that Du Bois' interpretation of the Reconstruction, published in the 1930s, is now the staple interpretation (minus some of Du Bois' Marxism).

Grouchy Crouch: Black Intellectuals

I was just reading Stanley Crouch's introduction to a 2005 edition of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual and it is a very strange document. It professes the importance of Cruses' work while tearing apart all the ideas presented in it as either wrong or rather silly. For example:

The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual seemed to assume that there was a substantial intellectual tradition among American Negroes. That was neither true forty years ago nor is it true now. Very little arrived that would challenge the depth of thought found in the works of men like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edmund Wilson, T.S. Eliot, Gilbert Seldes, Lincoln Kirstein, Malcolm Cowley, Alfred Kazin, and so on. There has never been a substantial body of thought on any Afro-American subject that was formed of deep studies, original theories, probing cultural examination, complex religious assessment, and schools of philosophical concern that raised questions about essences as opposed to superstitions, hearsay, and propaganda. There have been attempts here and there, usually caught up in Negro politics or Negro art movements based more in exotica than the kinds of challenges to convention that jazz brought to the table of Western music. No serious gathering of ideas, as full of yea as of nay, has appeared that was so well conceived and so eloquently expressed that it would add something of value to either American thinking or the larger and more formidable fact of life we call Western thought.

In the Salon, Amy Alexander explains that this is typical Crouch.

Armed with an elephant's memory and a passionate knowledge of and engagement with art (blues and jazz especially, though not exclusively) and history (American, though not exclusively), Crouch delights in slaying the dragons of convention -- particularly those that guard the sometimes-insular world of black intellectuals.

But also argues that there is more to him than his contrariness:

Underneath the mask of Crouch the Grouch is a down-to-earth individual who would rather engage you in debate than cut you dead with pretensions of writerly superiority. He is one of the rare top-echelon literary figures who not only welcomes conversation with unknown young writers (he gives out his home office phone number and usually picks up when it rings), but is also wont to commandeer them for marathon swirls through his downtown universe of smoldering jazz clubs, big-portion restaurants and Runyonesque watering holes.
...
Although routinely and incorrectly described as a black conservative, Crouch calls himself a "radical pragmatist." To the uninitiated, his philosophy might best be described as rigidly humanist. It centers on an unsentimental vision wherein we must fight the siren temptation to obsess about our (mostly superficial) differences, lest we miss the chance to embrace our (very real and very numerous) commonalities.

Of all the things that could be said of Crouch, one cannot deny that he is a very intelligent man and an excellent jazz critic. Why, then, would he claim that there was no black intellectual tradition? Why would a publisher, New York Reviews Books Classic, put him at the beginning of the reprint of Cruse, generally acknowledged as a major contribution to black intellectual history? What can we take seriously in Crouch's critique and what can we dismiss as his famous "grouchiness?"

I think this might be more interesting as a discussion than simply me offering an opinion, though I will point out that Du Bois' interpretation of the Reconstruction, published in the 1930s, is now the staple interpretation (minus some of Du Bois' Marxism).

Black Power on Campus: Looking for an Intellectual History

(This brief review of an older book is pertinent to USIH readers because the relative weaknesses of the book are directly related to the author’s lack of attention to intellectual history.)

The black power movement had a strong presence on campuses across the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, true at historically black colleges, such as Howard University, and at mostly white institutions, such as the University of Illinois. Black power on campuses was a movement of young people who were reacting to two forces: institutional barriers that transcended the de jure barriers of Jim Crow; and to the apparent failures of the earlier civil rights movement focus on assimilation and integration. It took the form of invented tradition: black power advocates, in response to the stereotypes about black culture and history that pervaded mainstream, white society, sought to accentuate and celebrate blackness, or a version of blackness. The celebration of blackness, of course, often constricted other forms of activism, and on campuses, often served to alienate some black students.

Joy Ann Williamson tells this history in Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-75 (2003), a useful and interesting case study, since the University of Illinois was over 98% white in the mid-1960s, and Champaign-Urbana was known to be overtly racist as a community. It is also a good case study because the majority of the black students on campus were from Chicago, 100 miles north of Champaign-Urbana, where black power and other forms of black nationalism had long flowered. Thus, it should have surprised nobody when tensions erupted on campus, as 250 black students were arrested for a sit-in at the student center on September 10, 1968. Somewhat ironically, just as the university took steps to admit more black students—in response to the emerging consensus that federal law required some form of affirmative action at public institutions—black students became far more militant in their demands. This irony was interpreted as unruliness by local whites, and by state legislators, who quickly enacted Draconian polices against student gatherings (that also targeted mostly white anti-war student protestors).

As Williamson tells it, black power was in part successful, as two institutional legacies of it remain on campus: a black studies program; and a black cultural center shared by students and the local black community. Williamson’s institutional history of these developments is thorough and instructive. She is especially good at dealing with the relationship between the Black Student Association (BSA), the organized manifestation of black student power, and the university, which ceded to some BSA demands so as to not be outpaced by inevitable changes taking place on campuses nationwide. For instance, the chancellor recognized that it would be a good move to create a black studies program well before the BSA demanded it, since hundreds of universities were following in the footsteps of San Francisco State College, the first to implement black studies—there, as a response to the student Third World Strike that shut down the campus and aroused political conservatives, including Governor Reagan. Williamson is great in detailing this history.

However, where Williamson is strong in institutional history, she is weaker in intellectual history. Despite her many claims about how conceptions of “blackness” changed to suit the movement, the reader never gets a sense of what this means. Few of the primary intellectuals sources of black power are cited or interpreted. This makes the text duller than need be. Where the author does include such sources, the text flies off the page. I’ll conclude by way of an example. The BSA defined blackness in terms of militancy. A poem from their newspaper Black Rap gives us a sense of this:

Black enough to belong to the BSA
but too white to come to meetings
Black enough to have lived in the ghetto
but too white to return
Black enough to understand our lingo
but too white to speak it
Black enough to wear an Afro
but too white to appreciate it
Black enough for your Honkey friends
but too white for me.

Black Power on Campus: Looking for an Intellectual History

(This brief review of an older book is pertinent to USIH readers because the relative weaknesses of the book are directly related to the author’s lack of attention to intellectual history.)

The black power movement had a strong presence on campuses across the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, true at historically black colleges, such as Howard University, and at mostly white institutions, such as the University of Illinois. Black power on campuses was a movement of young people who were reacting to two forces: institutional barriers that transcended the de jure barriers of Jim Crow; and to the apparent failures of the earlier civil rights movement focus on assimilation and integration. It took the form of invented tradition: black power advocates, in response to the stereotypes about black culture and history that pervaded mainstream, white society, sought to accentuate and celebrate blackness, or a version of blackness. The celebration of blackness, of course, often constricted other forms of activism, and on campuses, often served to alienate some black students.

Joy Ann Williamson tells this history in Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-75 (2003), a useful and interesting case study, since the University of Illinois was over 98% white in the mid-1960s, and Champaign-Urbana was known to be overtly racist as a community. It is also a good case study because the majority of the black students on campus were from Chicago, 100 miles north of Champaign-Urbana, where black power and other forms of black nationalism had long flowered. Thus, it should have surprised nobody when tensions erupted on campus, as 250 black students were arrested for a sit-in at the student center on September 10, 1968. Somewhat ironically, just as the university took steps to admit more black students—in response to the emerging consensus that federal law required some form of affirmative action at public institutions—black students became far more militant in their demands. This irony was interpreted as unruliness by local whites, and by state legislators, who quickly enacted Draconian polices against student gatherings (that also targeted mostly white anti-war student protestors).

As Williamson tells it, black power was in part successful, as two institutional legacies of it remain on campus: a black studies program; and a black cultural center shared by students and the local black community. Williamson’s institutional history of these developments is thorough and instructive. She is especially good at dealing with the relationship between the Black Student Association (BSA), the organized manifestation of black student power, and the university, which ceded to some BSA demands so as to not be outpaced by inevitable changes taking place on campuses nationwide. For instance, the chancellor recognized that it would be a good move to create a black studies program well before the BSA demanded it, since hundreds of universities were following in the footsteps of San Francisco State College, the first to implement black studies—there, as a response to the student Third World Strike that shut down the campus and aroused political conservatives, including Governor Reagan. Williamson is great in detailing this history.

However, where Williamson is strong in institutional history, she is weaker in intellectual history. Despite her many claims about how conceptions of “blackness” changed to suit the movement, the reader never gets a sense of what this means. Few of the primary intellectuals sources of black power are cited or interpreted. This makes the text duller than need be. Where the author does include such sources, the text flies off the page. I’ll conclude by way of an example. The BSA defined blackness in terms of militancy. A poem from their newspaper Black Rap gives us a sense of this:

Black enough to belong to the BSA
but too white to come to meetings
Black enough to have lived in the ghetto
but too white to return
Black enough to understand our lingo
but too white to speak it
Black enough to wear an Afro
but too white to appreciate it
Black enough for your Honkey friends
but too white for me.