How Organizations Uplifted African American Communities - Coursework Example

Organizations to Uplift the African-American Community 2006 Introduction The Emancipation Proclamation passed in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln declaring “all persons held as slaves” in the states facing civil war “are, and henceforward, shall be free” did not really bring them freedom as we know it today to the four million African-American slaves. Although the proclamation did not free a single slave immediately and it did not even apply to the border-states that did not take part in the civil war, it set the stage for black freedom. Black men were allowed into the U.S Army and Navy and these men became active in liberating the slaves. Yet, although slavery was abolished after two hundred and fifty years since the Africans were chained and shipped to America, official and unofficial segregation between the white and the black communities continued in the North and South of the country for the next one hundred years (Lincoln and Mamiya, 1990). Riddled with poverty and lack of education and skills, the former slaves had to fend for themselves. It was the self-assertion by the black Americans, boosted by their leaders and organizations that helped them to free their shackles over the years to come. From the time of emancipation to the recent, various organizations and leaders have had to mobilize the African Americans to be assertive and demand for their rights. In this paper, I will discuss some of the organizations and leaders who have played important roles in the uplift of the African-American community and make their voice heard. Emancipation Era One of the most influential African-American leaders in the period immediately following the Emancipation Proclamation was Booker T Washington (1856-1915) though he has often been accused of being too moderate. Most significantly, his Atlanta Exposition Speech (1895) called for a coexistence of the whites and blacks in America. His autobiography, Up from Slavery (1901), describes his journey from slavery to an educator and was the first principal of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, opened on July 4, 1881 to (as the website of the institute now mentions) "to embody and enable the goals of self-reliance" among the African Americans (wikipedia). The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute later became the Tuskegee Institute and is now the Tuskegee University. In his autobiography, Washington tells the story of Tuskegee's growth, from classes held in a shantytown to a campus with many new buildings. Washington also founded the National Negro Business League (NNBL) to inspire African-Americans in “commercial, agricultural, educational, and industrial advancement" (wikipedia). W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), a teacher and writer, had views that were a contrast to Booker T Washington’s advocacy for peaceful co-existence, arguing that this amounted to the Blacks settling for less education. Rather, Du Bois was a forerunner of the civil rights movement, which he espoused for in The Souls of Black Folks (1903). In this book, Du Bois develops the notion of “twoness”, a divided awareness of one’s identity: "One ever feels his two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." Harlem Renaissance Like Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was a multidimensional person, being the first African American admitted to the Bar of Florida since the end of Reconstruction, the field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), co-composer of the song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” – written to commemorate Lincoln’s birthday and which would later be known as the Negro National Anthem – as also being a professor, journalist, writer and one of the founders of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1895, Johnson founded the Daily American, a newspaper that reported on African American issues. Although the newspaper did not survive more than a year, Johnson was not defeated, went on to become a lawyer and growing tired of this as well, took to writing songs. His work of fiction, An Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man (1912), in which the narrator is the illegitimate child of an interracial relationship, is considered as a sociological document of the black community. The Harlem Renaissance, the period from the end of the World War I to the 1930s Depression, was marked by a large number of African American poets, singers and writers who wrote about their alienation and marginalization using their folk traditions. The Harlem Renaissance marked an epoch of self-consciousness – ‘back to Africa’ – and the explosion of a particular type of music – the jazz and the blues of James Langston Hughes, for example. Black Church The Black churches played important roles in mobilizing the African-American community as they were barred from the white churches even during the Restoration period. The religious traditions of the “black sacred cosmos”, as Lincoln and Mamiya (1990) calls the African-American church, was a synthesis of the original ritualistic traditions of the blacks and the white culture that they witnessed from the periphery. Lincoln says, “The direct relationship between the holocaust of slavery and the notion of divine rescue colored the theological perceptions of the black laity and the themes of black preaching in a very decisive manner, particularly in those churches closest to the experience”. The black Christians found their savior in Jesus who suffered pain like them and hoped for resurrection. They also found hope in biblical references of being “children of God” despite the U.S Constitution defining the slaves as “three-fifths” human. The term “freedom” meant various themes in Black Christianity – during the days of slavery, it was freedom from bondage, after the emancipation, it was the right to be educated and employed and in the twentieth century, it was the right for social and economic justice (Lincoln and Mamiya, 1990). Hence, African-American religious leaders like Martin Kuther King Jr, Richard Allen, Nat Turner and others had great influence on the poor black population, who were much enthused and enlivened. Other leaders like Du Bois observed this as well. Freedmen’s Bureau The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, popularly known as Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in 1865 to address matters of concern for the freed slaves under reconstruction. Although the bureau suffered from lack of funds, weak internal organization, opposition from the conservatives and apathy from Southern communities, it helped African American communities to set up schools and churches, gave rations and medical services to the poor blacks, gave voice to the community by setting up its own courts when those in the southern states did not hear the black men, controlled confiscated land and property in the former Confederate states and negotiated on behalf of the blacks in labor contracts with the whites. The Bureau was disbanded in 1872. Washerwomen’s Strike The Freedmen’s Bureau attempted to make African American women to work as well by insisting the husbands sign contracts for the entire families and declaring those women who did not work as “unworthy”, equating them with prostitutes and vagrants. However, marriages under slavery were informal and the Freedmen’s Bureau’s attempts to mediate between family members dissociated during the Civil War failed. Instead, as Tera Hunter (1997) has shown, black women saw their work as means of gaining self-esteem than survival itself. Thousands of former slaves flocked the southern cities and a large number of black women found employment as household laborers and washerwomen from the postbellum era to the Great Migration during World War I. The civil infrastructure of the southern cities was in a shambles with the large influx of migrants. The Black women suffered most, being responsible not only for themselves but also for their families since they were the ones in the families who managed to find jobs. Nearly one-third of the black women maintained their families alone. More women worked in Atlanta as washerwomen than men as common laborers. It was a tedious job, working mostly in their homes and making the soap themselves, carrying gallons of water, washing, boiling and rinsing by hand. In return, they were paid nominal wages (afl-cio). However, as Hunter (1990) shows, the work gave the black women self-confidence despite the hardships. They negotiated wages and threatened to quit when they found working conditions unbearable. Over 3,000 laundresses of Atlanta formed the Washing Society and even dramatically threatened a strike in 1881, which went on to be known as the washerwomen’s strike. Encouraged by the laundress’ resolve, the city’s cooks, maids and nurses too began to demand higher wages. In the end, the strike forced the authorities to raise wages. At the same time, this marked the first instance of black women asserting their rights and demonstrating their political acumen. Islam A small but significant number of slaves from Africa were Muslims. Over the nineteenth century, many of the immigrants into America were Muslims as well. In the Emancipation period, the conversion to Islam began and began more popular later. Elijah Mohammad (1897-1975) motivated many African American youths to convert to Islam, preaching black nationalism and Islam simultaneously. The momentum gained prominence in the 1960s when Malcolm Little (Malcom X, the name that he took signal for his lost heritage) joined the group in a prison cell. He led the civil rights movement while boosting self-confidence and identity of African Americans through their initiation into Islam. Civil Rights’ Movements Despite the emancipation, establishment of various organizations like the NAACP and the tacit attempts by ex-slaves like Booker Washington to work hand in hand with the whites, the assimilation did not happen even over the next century. The post-emancipation of white blacklash, emergence of the Ku Klux Clan and the hands-off attitude of the Congress only added to the alienation of the African American community. As late as 1954, in the Brown vs Board of Education case, the Supreme Court relented that “separate” was “not equal” for blacks in America (blackpanther.org). Even then, schools were heavily segregated, the blacks lived in ghettos and lacked education and employment. As a result, the civil rights movement developed through sporadic activities – the Montgomery (Alabama) bus boycott in 1955, voter rights efforts, sit-ins in white public facilities. Martin Luther King Jr, whose famous speech “I have a Dream” motivated all black Americans to march and protest for freedom and justice forced the Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act that outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (originally called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense) of the 1960s was perhaps the most aggressive African American organization since the Civil War days. In contrast to most of the previous organizations that attempted to uplift the African American community through peaceful measures, the Black Panther had a revolutionary agenda of using force to achieve equality, justice and freedom (blackpanther.org). The party was formed by Huey P Newton in the wake of massive black uprising in California following the assassination of Malcolm X and civil rights movement by Martin Luther King Jr. Walking away from the civil rights organizations of the African Americans, the Black Panther wanted a more radical movement to assimilate the community with the mainstream. The violence against the blacks during the civil rights movement angered the youth of the community to rise against the injustice. The Black Panther party members, led by Bobby Seale, entered the Congress fully armed in 1967 to protest against a proposed guncontrol bill. The Party, which aligned itself against the Americans in the Vietnam war, gained support even from the white Americans, angered by the US position in the Vietnam war. The party, also involved with social programs like helping the poor blacks, existed till 1973 after which internal organizational problems led to its demise. Assata Shakur (born Joanne Deborah Byron Chesimard), who has been living in exile in Cuba since 1979, writes of her experiences of victimization in an alleged encounter with State Troopers in which she has been accused of murder. She was tortured and beaten in state prisons, charged of crimes of murder and burglary, before escaping the prison in 1979. Conclusion Since the emancipation in 1865, the American governments have avowed the principles of equality in a half-hearted manner. The African-American community instead depended on a number of organizations to voice their feelings of mistrust for the white population. While the early leaders and organizations tried to uplift the community through education and cooperation with the whites, later generation of African American leaders realized that they had to protest and adopt more violent postures. The result has been the mergence of movements and organizations that have used force to earn their rights. Works Cited AFL-CIO, America’s Union Movement, Atlanta’s Washerwomen’s Strike, retrieved from http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/history/ww_strike.cfm Black Panther, Rise of the Black Panther Party, retrieved from http://www.blackpanther.org Booker T Washington, UP From Slavery: An Autobiography, New York: Doubleday, 1901; Bartleby.com, 2001 Du Bois, W.E.B, The Soul of Black Folk, 1903, Bantam Classics, 1989 Emancipation Proclamation, retrieved from http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_pr clamation/ Freedmen’s Bureau Project, retrieved from http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~ela/freedmen/overview.html Hunter, Tera, ‘Joy My Freedom, Harvard Univerity Press, 1997 Johnson, James Weldon, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Sherman, French and Company, 1912 Lincoln, C Eric and Lawrence H Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience, Duke University Press, 1990 Shakur, Assata, Assata: An Autobiography Read More

Washington also founded the National Negro Business League (NNBL) to inspire African-Americans in “commercial, agricultural, educational, and industrial advancement" (wikipedia). W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), a teacher and writer, had views that were a contrast to Booker T Washington’s advocacy for peaceful co-existence, arguing that this amounted to the Blacks settling for less education. Rather, Du Bois was a forerunner of the civil rights movement, which he espoused for in The Souls of Black Folks (1903).

In this book, Du Bois develops the notion of “twoness”, a divided awareness of one’s identity: "One ever feels his two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." Harlem Renaissance Like Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was a multidimensional person, being the first African American admitted to the Bar of Florida since the end of Reconstruction, the field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), co-composer of the song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” – written to commemorate Lincoln’s birthday and which would later be known as the Negro National Anthem – as also being a professor, journalist, writer and one of the founders of the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1895, Johnson founded the Daily American, a newspaper that reported on African American issues. Although the newspaper did not survive more than a year, Johnson was not defeated, went on to become a lawyer and growing tired of this as well, took to writing songs. His work of fiction, An Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man (1912), in which the narrator is the illegitimate child of an interracial relationship, is considered as a sociological document of the black community. The Harlem Renaissance, the period from the end of the World War I to the 1930s Depression, was marked by a large number of African American poets, singers and writers who wrote about their alienation and marginalization using their folk traditions.

The Harlem Renaissance marked an epoch of self-consciousness – ‘back to Africa’ – and the explosion of a particular type of music – the jazz and the blues of James Langston Hughes, for example. Black Church The Black churches played important roles in mobilizing the African-American community as they were barred from the white churches even during the Restoration period. The religious traditions of the “black sacred cosmos”, as Lincoln and Mamiya (1990) calls the African-American church, was a synthesis of the original ritualistic traditions of the blacks and the white culture that they witnessed from the periphery.

Lincoln says, “The direct relationship between the holocaust of slavery and the notion of divine rescue colored the theological perceptions of the black laity and the themes of black preaching in a very decisive manner, particularly in those churches closest to the experience”. The black Christians found their savior in Jesus who suffered pain like them and hoped for resurrection. They also found hope in biblical references of being “children of God” despite the U.S Constitution defining the slaves as “three-fifths” human.

The term “freedom” meant various themes in Black Christianity – during the days of slavery, it was freedom from bondage, after the emancipation, it was the right to be educated and employed and in the twentieth century, it was the right for social and economic justice (Lincoln and Mamiya, 1990). Hence, African-American religious leaders like Martin Kuther King Jr, Richard Allen, Nat Turner and others had great influence on the poor black population, who were much enthused and enlivened.

Other leaders like Du Bois observed this as well. Freedmen’s Bureau The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, popularly known as Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in 1865 to address matters of concern for the freed slaves under reconstruction.

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