By DEBRA NEWMAN HAM
A major Library exhibition opening this month, "The African American Odyssey: The Quest for Full Citizenship," explores -- in nine sections -- the methods used by Africans and their American-born descendants not only to resist their enslavement but also to demand their emancipation and full participation in American society. Library of Congress resources included thousands of books, manuscripts, maps, images and music pieces, from which were chosen the items on view in the exhibition. View the exhibition online.
The following was written by a history professor at Morgan State University who is a former specialist in African American history and culture in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and the guest curator of the exhibition.
Slavery - The Peculiar Institution
Captured, shackled and shipped. Beginning in the 16th century, millions of Africans were involuntary immigrants to the New World. Freedom was the byword for those in chains. African captives resisted enslavement on the West African coast by fleeing from slave forts, mutinying on board slave trading vessels or casting themselves into the ocean. In the United States they ran away from their owners, revolted on plantations, feigned sickness or participated in work slowdowns. Some sought legal means to liberty such as self-purchase or military service.
The Europeans, Americans and African warriors responsible for engaging in the lucrative trade in humans did not intend to put into motion a chain of events that would motivate the captives and their descendants to fight for full citizenship in the United States, but they did. The one who penned the words "All men are created equal," could not possibly have envisioned how literally his own slaves and others of their race would take his words. African Americans repeatedly questioned how their owners could consider themselves noble because they had fought for their own independence from England while simultaneously believing that it was wrong for slaves to take the same course of action.
Free Blacks in the Antebellum Period
Free blacks in the antebellum period -- those years from the formation of the Union until the Civil War -- were quite outspoken about the injustice of slavery and the institution's inconsistency with Revolutionary Era protests against British tyranny. These African Americans who had thrown off the shackles of slavery achieved their freedom by two primary means: running away or obtaining freedom from their owners. The political, religious, literary and military activities of this free black community are amply documented in the Library of Congress collections.
Although their lives were circumscribed by numerous discriminatory laws even in the Colonial period, freed African Americans were active participants in American society. Black men enlisted as soldiers and fought in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812. President George Washington's papers, housed in the Manuscript Division, include discussions about the use of black soldiers, and the Gladstone collection contains a few pay receipts for black Revolutionary War soldiers.
Enslaved blacks and their white sympathizers planned secret flight strategies and escape routes for runaways to make their way to freedom. Although it was neither subterranean nor a mechanized means of travel, this network of routes and hiding places was known as the Underground Railroad. Some free blacks were active "conductors" on the Underground Railroad, while others simply harbored runaways in their homes. Maps in the Library's collection show the routes of the Railroad, and books contain the first-person accounts of those who took this perilous route to freedom.
African American Christians opted to form their own churches in their communities when they met with discrimination. These worship centers became the hub of the economic, social and intellectual lives of blacks in many areas of the fledgling nation.
During this time, blacks were outspoken in print. Freedom's Journal, the first black-owned newspaper, appeared in 1827. This paper and other early writings by blacks spearheaded the attack against slavery and racist conceptions about the intellectual inferiority of African Americans.
Free people of color such as Richard Allen, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, David Walker and Prince Hall earned national reputations for themselves by writing, speaking, organizing and agitating on behalf of their enslaved compatriots. Thousands of freed blacks, with the aid of interested whites, opted to return to Africa, helped by the American Colonization Society. A wide variety of books, manuscripts, photographs and broadsides in the Library document the activities of African American freedom seekers who founded Liberia in West Africa under the aegis of the American Colonization Society.
Abolition, Antislavery Movements and the Rise of the Sectional Controversy
Black and white abolitionists in the first half of the 19th century waged a biracial assault against slavery. Their efforts proved to be extremely effective to the point of dividing the American populace and heightening the rift that had threatened to destroy the formation of the nation even as early as the Continental Congress in the last quarter of the 18th century. Although some slave holders were Quakers, members of that religious group were among the earliest to protest the African slave trade, the perpetual bondage of the captives and the practice of separating enslaved family members by sale to different masters.
The abolitionists united to form numerous antislavery societies. These groups sent petitions with thousands of signatures to Congress, held abolition meetings and conferences, boycotted products made with slave labor, printed mountains of literature, gave innumerable speeches for their cause and sometimes advocated violent means to bring the "peculiar institution" to an end.
The Library of Congress holds a vast collection of books, manuscripts, pamphlets, reports, hymnals and broadsides relating to the activities of abolition societies as well as individual abolitionists.
The Civil War
Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 led to secession and secession to war. When the Union soldiers entered the South, thousands of African Americans fled from their owners to Union camps. The Union officers did not immediately receive an official order on how to manage this large addition to their numbers. Some Union officials sought to return the unfortunates to their owners but others kept the blacks within their lines and dubbed them "contrabands of war." Many contrabands greatly aided the war effort with their labor.
After Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which was effective on Jan. 1, 1863, black soldiers were officially allowed to participate in the war effort. The Library holds histories and pictures of most of the regiments of the United States Colored Troops as well as manuscript and published accounts by African American soldiers and their white officers documenting their participation in the successful Union effort.
Both blacks as well as whites were outspoken about questions of race, civil rights, and full equality for the newly freed population during the Civil War era. Emancipated blacks were forced to begin their trek to full equality even without the aid of "40 acres and a mule," which many believed had been promised to them.
This Library holds a wealth of information about slave life and culture, the world's romance with the "Negro spiritual" and the "glory" of the United States Colored Troops, and records the blacks' steps toward equality, especially in the areas of employment, education and politics.
Reconstruction and Its Aftermath
During the Civil War, African Americans in rebel states were emancipated, and after the war the 13th Amendment freed all U.S. slaves wherever they were and declared them to be U.S. citizens. During this period it was difficult even for some abolitionists to encourage African Americans in their pursuit of happiness. Blacks faced the difficulty of surviving as a free people surrounded by many hostile whites. One freedman, Houston Hartsfield Holloway, wrote, "For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them."
Even after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, two more years of war, service by African American troops and the defeat of the Confederacy, the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for the newly freed black population. Reconstruction is a term used to describe the methods of reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, to provide the means for readmitting them into the union and to define the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a nonslave society.
President Lincoln wanted leniency for the Southern states and believed that colonization of former slaves was desirable, since he feared that blacks and whites could not live together peaceably. Nevertheless, Lincoln proposed that the rebellious states recognize the permanent freedom of ex-slaves and provide education for them.
Following Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, the newly freed population found that it did not have a friend in President Andrew Johnson. He was as determined that African Americans should not gain full citizenship as they were determined to acquire it.
Black and white teachers from the North and South, missionary organizations, churches and schools united to work tirelessly to give the emancipated ones the opportunity to learn during the years after the war. Former slaves of every age took advantage of the many opportunities to unlock the shackles of ignorance. Grandfathers and the grandchildren sat together in classrooms seeking to obtain the tools of freedom.
Immediately after the Civil War, with the protection of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Acts, African Americans enjoyed a period when they were allowed to vote, actively participate in the political process, buy the land of former owners, seek their own employment and use public accommodations. Enemies of the race, however, rallied against the former bondspersons' freedom and began to find means for eroding the gains for which many had shed their blood.
The Booker T. Washington Era
The 1870s, the period when African American educator Booker T. Washington was gaining ascendancy as a race leader, provides a bittersweet backdrop for the African American quest for full citizenship. The vote proved elusive, and civil rights began to vanish through court action. Lynching, racial violence and slavery's twin children -- peonage and sharecropping -- arose as deadly quagmires on the path to full citizenship. After the presidential election of 1877, the federal government virtually turned deaf ears to the voices of African Americans.
Yet, in this era, blacks were educated in unprecedented numbers, hundreds even received degrees from institutions of higher learning, and a few, like W.E.B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson, earned Ph.D.s. At this time, African Americans also demonstrated their genius in music, painting, sculpture, literature and dance. This section of the exhibit demonstrates the progress of blacks in the last decades of the 19th century.
The Library houses the papers of three presidents of Tuskegee Institute -- Booker T. Washington, Robert Russa Moton and Frederick Douglass Patterson -- and other important manuscripts and photographs relating to the establishment and operations of historically black colleges and universities. These chronicle the way in which African Americans relentlessly pursued education. Only a small percentage of the black population was literate at the close of the Civil War. By the turn of the 20th century, however, the majority of all African Americans were literate.
Both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League were founded by blacks and whites in 1909. This period has been called the "nadir" of black history because so many of the gains earned after the Civil War seemed lost by the time of World War I and because racial violence and lynching reached an all-time high. The papers of both of these major civil rights organizations, which are among the holdings in the Library's Manuscript Division, document the unswerving efforts on the part of blacks and their white allies to ensure that the nation provide "freedom and justice to all."
World War I and Postwar Society
The war era galvanized the black community in its efforts to make America truly democratic. African American blood had been shed in every American war, yet people of color were still second-class citizens. Black soldiers who served in segregated units during World Wars I and II were leaders in protest against racial injustice, on the homefront and abroad. Of special interest are the diaries of Rayford Logan, a black scholar who, after serving as an officer in France during World War I, stayed as an expatriate there for many years. While there he worked with DuBois in the organization of the Pan African Conferences. He also successfully lobbied to have blacks trained as military pilots during World War II. Logan's diaries are in the Library's Manuscript Division.
Blacks and whites in the newly formed NAACP and other organizations continued to lead the onslaught against discrimination and segregation. Numerous NAACP files labeled "Soldier Troubles" document the efforts taken to prevent mistreatment of African American men and women in the military. Painstakingly, one case at a time, one law at a time, these groups confronted the racial inequities in the legal system by taking hundreds of cases to court. The Library's extensive civil rights collections document the efforts taken during this period on the part of blacks and whites to erase the legacy of slavery.
African American artists, actors and writers led the battle against intellectual and artistic bias. Between the wars and even during the deprivations of the Great Depression, there was a crescendo of African American artistic expression in the period known as the "Harlem Renaissance." Paintings, drawings, classical music, jazz, blues, poetry, drama, novels, plays and more abounded during this era. Blacks participating in the war effort abroad gave the world a taste of African American artistic genius, and the world seemed to long for more. The United States, however, was still reluctant to award full citizenship to blacks.
The Depression, the New Deal and World War II
The stock market crash of 1929 caused soup lines to become the order of the day for the skilled and unskilled alike in urban areas across the nation. African Americans in cities and rural areas, already in poverty in most areas before the Great Depression, were especially hard hit. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932, he promised a "new deal" for all Americans that would provide them with security from "the cradle to the grave." Although there were inequities in the New Deal programs that were established, many blacks had opportunities to receive benefits and obtain employment. These programs generated numerous documents that found their way to the Library's collections.
Yet none of the New Deal programs actually ended the Depression. It was the growing storm clouds in Europe, the rise of Nazism, American aid to the Allies and, ultimately, U.S. entry into World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that revitalized the nation's economy. Remembering their experiences in World War I, African American soldiers and civilians were increasingly unwilling to quietly accept a segregated military or the discriminatory conditions they had previously endured. Northern black troops sent to the South for training often had violent encounters with white citizens there. Black-owned newspapers protested segregation, mistreatment and discrimination. Labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington by more than 100,000 blacks in 1941 to protest discrimination in the military and in defense industries. In the face of rising protests, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 reaffirming the "policy of full participation in the defense program by all persons, regardless of race, creed, color or national origin."
Civil Rights Era
The postwar era marked a period of unprecedented energy against the dual system of citizenship in many parts of the nation. Resistance to racial segregation and discrimination with strategies such as civil disobedience, marches, protests, boycotts, "freedom rides" and rallies received national attention as newspapers, radio and television documented the raw wounds of racial repression.
Success crowned these efforts: the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 helped bring about the demise of the entangling web of legislation that seemed to inextricably bind blacks to second-class citizenship. Library of Congress photographs, film footage, newspapers, magazines, manuscripts and music holdings chronicle this period better than any other collection in existence. In addition to the NAACP and National Urban League papers, the Library also holds papers of civil rights activists such as Thurgood Marshall, Roy Wilkins, Patricia Roberts Harris, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Mary Church Terrell, Robert Terrell, Nannie Helen Burroughs and others.
One hundred years after the Civil War, blacks and their white allies still pursued the battle for equal rights in every area of American life. The 20th century has not brought an end to the quest for full citizenship, but major milestones in civil rights laws are on the books for the purpose of regulating equal access to public accommodations, equal justice before the law and equal employment, education and housing opportunities.
African Americans have taken advantage of unprecedented openings in many fields of learning and the arts. Few other institutions can present the African American mosaic of life and culture as completely as the Library of Congress. The resources here prove that the quest for full equality on the part of African Americans has been relentless and, though fraught with difficulty to this hour, successful.