SENIOR ESSAY

Th^ Psychological Effects of On The Black Man Prior to and Following the Passing of the Emancipation Pro clamation•

Submitted in Partial Requirement for the Bachelor of Divinity (B.D.) degree or Ma.ster of Divinity degree

By

William H. Walker, //

April 8, 1971

Interdehominational Theological Center , Oeorgia OUTLINE

Introduction

A. The African In American History

B. The African The Myth of Small Understanding

C. Comments On The Africans* Accomplishments 7/hil in Slavery

D. Slavery Dehumanization Quotes from Frederick Douglass Re-claiming Humanity

E. Slavery in the "20th.” Century Personal Views Quotes from John Oliver Killens

P. The Emancipation Proclamation Its Purpose In This Paper Its Original Purpose Review of Earlier Attempts to Free the Negro

Bibliogra,phy Introiuction

The essence of the following essay centers around the implications and the effects of myths shout the Africans in .America as sla.ves. The Caucasians are the authors and the perpetuators of these myths.

African-Americans are a much written about people these days, but there have been very few writings written for the purpose of throwing off all of the myths that have circulated for centuries about black people. The primary question is why is it that the African-American has suddenly become the center of attraction for 20th. century writers. Is the world demanding the African-American to teach it something that it has not been taught previously? Is the world coming alive to the psychological needs of a people that it has denied for years? Is the world, especially

America,, now willin,g to admit that it has' held a race of people at bay for hundreds of years by circulating lies about them? Whatever the problem or its answer may be, the eyes of the world are being re¬ focused on the African-American.

While talking about myths on people there will also be a. discussion of the effects of slavery on the Africans who were brought to America. Slavery had several effects on his life, but none were so damaging as those which damaged the mind of him. Here is where the core of this essay will be centered, in the psychological effects of slavery. I

A. The Africa.n In American History-

One of the major drawbacks to the image that black people in this country have of themselves as a race is the fact that we are not covered to any appreciable degree in the pages of American history. As I studied, both in high school and in college, I remember very few instances when the black American was mentioned as a man. He was usually pictured, if at all, as a slave only. American textbooks are quite unreliable when it comes to discussions of the actual contributions made by the black m.an to this culture. When reflecting back on the past I am amazed at the small amount of data I have deen able to collect on the progress of my people in this country. Is it because our forefathers were too ^ lazy to get off their haunches and do something for the good of the culture, or is it because the contributions of our African ancestors were deliberately overlooked by the compilers of American history. Why did this happen? Pound within the solution to this question is perhaps the origin of many "myths" which were taught by the culture about the black American. One such myth, that comes into play at this point, is that "we black

Americans have no ability to do anything worthwhile for the good of this culture."

Charles Frazer captured my present mood when in 1965 he wrote:

Those were dark days for the black man when he was rounded up on the coast of the African

y 2

continent, driven by the lash like dumb cattle into ships, forced into the galleys below, and chained to the oars and forced to row himself into bondage. But this was nothing new in the conduct of the white man toward his defenseless brother. Centuries before, the Romans practiced the same outrage upon their own until the commoners won equality and citizenship through the assembly. I

What a way to start life anew, in a new dwelling place. Frazer's simimation is appreciable because it shows, among other things, who were thought to be in relations to other people who were the victims of the white man's captivity in centuries before. The Romans enslaved their inferior, with the Roman nobility constantly reminding Roman peasants that they were peasants, and that as such they had no place in Roman

CTAlture. At the same time Frazer is showing me myself because a man's self-image is shaped in part by his present culture and by his heritage- in that culture,

"like dumb animals," is an attitude which continues to linger within the culture. It is one of those "mytho¬ logical concepts" that managed to survive beyond the days of black involuntary servitude. These character¬ izations were used to say that we were slow to move, non-enthusiastic, stubborn, and sluggish’. Consequently, if white America was to gain anything from us we had to be beaten before we would move. Thus the reference to the lash. It is an instrument designed to get faster movement out of the slow.

B. The African B'lyth of Sma,ll Understanding

^Charles Frazer, White Man Black Man, 1st ed (New York: Exposition Press’^ Inc., 1965), 21. 3.

I reraemlDer when I worked for a white family in my home town, when I was a student in junior high school. The mother in the family often complained about not being able to make me understand what it was she wanted me to do. Therefore, she relied on her danghter to instruct me in my chores for the day. Prom the ex¬ pression on her face and from the tone of her voice she was depicting me as a non-understander. I can not speak for all other young black students who worked for white families in that day, in one way or another, but I can say that I felt that this woman was referring to some statement she had heard somewhere about Negroes, or either to something she had experienced with some

Negroes in general. Because we carry the label of laziness, slowness, and uneducableness there was to be forever some communication difficulties between the two races involved. There is where I first felt the psychological effects of "myths'* taught about our race. The actions of the entire Negro people were being summarized in the implications behind this person's faulty characterization I felt the sting of Charles Frazer's "lash." It is out of this type of background that I chose to write this essay. Those held-over-from-slavery myths have damaged the African-American community because, probably, at one time we accepted them and held them as truths. Fortunately, not all of us made that dreadful error. Some of us knew the place for our people was not in slave quarters. #e knew that we were neither 4

lazy, nor stupid, nor non-understanding, just like tha,t. have always had something at stake in life and we fought to protect that stake, using whatever means that was necessary, even if it were momentary stupidity. Classic examples of black people during the time of slavery, as well as in our current struggle, are Harriet B. Tubman, Nat Turner, Martin 1. King, Jr., Elijah Muhammad and the entire Nation of Islam in

Amreica, Malcolm X, and others. Plowever, this essay speaks not to these individuals, but to that which each of them directed their fight, namely faulty characteris¬ tics of their being.

C. Comments On The Africans Accomplishments While in. Slavery *

Charles Frazer, writing o.n the issues sur¬ rounding the achieveme.nts of the African slave, says that:

Almost immediately upon their unwanted arrival in this country, trees and forest, hills and valleys, began to yield to the strong arm and might of the slaves from the Dark Continent. They felled the trees, rolled thellogs, and ploughed the new ground. They planted the corn and picked the cotton and sang their songs, sometimes under the lash of the mounted over¬ seer, while the master of the big house feasted on the fat of the lamb, drank his wine, and nursed his gout. 2

Spacious mansions rose on many plantations, built by the brain, brawn, and muscle of the black journeyman. 3

^Ibid. ^Ibid. 5.

The African-American is not to be applaued for ving served as the slave, the hard-working, well- dicated, unpayed servant. Our ancestors would have

en much better off, when you look back on the kind of rson slavery produced, had we not been forced to wrap

at particular yoke around our necks.

The problem comes in when you turn through the ges of American history and find that the educational

stem has left us at the slave level. Our progress, nee we were emancipated, has not been, as yet, brought bear on the minds of the people, both black and white, o pass through the educational structure yearly. To lustrate this, one simply has to get the history books at he used in high school or in college. Can you recall ything written on the major contributions of the ricans, serving as more than someone else's chattal operty, in this culture? As this pattern of education rsist it can be interpretated a.s leveling a grave cusation againat the black man via an age old trick, at being to present the view of him as never ntributing anything to the culture.

When drawing this conclusion, I am stating one

my primary gripes against institutional structures, ch as the educational system. I feel that they are e of the chief contributors to the mental frustrations ced by African-Americans, by deliberately attempting keep his frame of reference, his motives for being,

that same slave level as was once a portion of the rican-America’s existence in this country. As edu- 6

cated black youth we are presented with the problem of seeking information on the accomplishments of our people outside of the educational arena. For within that arena is nothing other than "myths" about our people which are designed to produce psychological barriers within the being of each black person who is affected by its presence.

It thus becomes easy for the black youth populace to identify with statements like the following, when it comes to slavery:

But slavery is one means by which men have been lifted up into a, higher realm of society. The desire to be free, God-given in the great plan of life, swells within the breast of the enslaved and bursts forth into various forms of action. 4

As a result of these paragraphs it is based on personal desires that each man must see the picture through his ovm. eyes. It is hoped that you will see the picture as it really is, and not as you think it ought be. It is hoped that by now there is created a picture of the situations a race of people are placed in once "myths" about them overshadow the truth about their lives.

D. Slavery

D ehimiani z atio n Quotes from Frederick Douglass Re-claiming H-umanity ;

To begin the discussion of slavery, I*d like to say that as I understand it from previous study the

'^Ibid.p"] 22. 7

slave is a by-product, A slave in this country in the seventeenth end in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was what remained of an African when he was removed from his culture, where he enjoyed his life, and placed in one that reduced him to the lowest level of specimen living in that culture. The African was, over t the years, stripped of his personhood and of his humanity. Without these it is virtually impossible to function with any degree of high self-esteem. Constantly confronting the African were sta,tements such as.

You can never contribute anything worthwhile to this culture.

You have no capacity to learn.

Your only value to us is what you are, a cheap labor source.

You are less than human. You belong with the other docile animals.

In short, the mind of the African was shut off, thus not allowing him to ever think for himself, or to work out the problems he encountered by using his ovm in¬ tuition. He was a "no thing." Being driven to the brink of this predicainent of nobodyness, the African began feeling the pains of de¬ humanization. An ex-slave, Frederick Douglass, bears witness to this fact as he spoke to the role music played in the life of the slaves on a Colonel Lloyd's plantation, where he lived for a brief period of time. Says Douglass:

I did not, when a slave, understand the deep 8.

meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see ajid hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble compre¬ hension:; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony agahnst slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

Continuing he says:

The hearing of these wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness ... To those I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. 5

You can not conceive of slavery and not mention dehumanization. An old term tha,t carries new meaning, it is taken as meaning to reduce a person to a state of psychological nothingness. Or better put, when a person is forcefully relieved of that which ms,kes him human, which to me is his manhood and his peoplehood. Also, in conjunction with dehumanization goes the lie about him not being capable of fimctioning on his oto.

Consequently, he is a dependent. He asks for everything he should have. He is forced to be dependent on others for those things that God has given him for his enjoyment, freely and in abundance.

. This is why Frederick Douglass can look back on the lives of his people and lament over their con¬ ditions. He expresses it in such a way that I am tempted to say that the African was aware of what slavery was doing to his mind.

5 Harrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An Auto- biography (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845), p. 14. 9

Too often we have presented the view that our ancestors did not knov\^ what was really being done to them by the slave system. If not all of them history verifies that at least a goodly number of them were. Had they been completely in the dark Mr. boLiglass could never have expressed himself in this fashion as he rejects a northern Negroes attitude toward slave music. He v/rote that;

I have been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most V'/hen they are most unhappy. The songs of the slaverrepresent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart by its tears. 6

Frederick Douglass went on to say that at least for him, while still in the jaws of slavery he never sang to show somebody that he was ha,ppy. He said that he often sang to dro'wn his ovn sorrow. But Frederick

Douglass and the singing slaves on Mr. Lloyd’s plantation were but a handful of people who expressed a common sentiment, that being that the slaves were neither as joyeous nor as happy as other thought they were. A man who is forced to be less than human, psy¬ chologically, can never be rejoiceful and happy. That is both foolish and stupid. The forces of dehumanization can only produce the yearning to be human, again.

E. Slavery In The "20th,'* Century Personal Views Quotes from John 0. Killens

Ibid., p. 15 10

In this day the yearnings of the black American are rooted in those yearnings of his past. The situation in America today for black Americans is not too much different from the situation of earlier centuries. The

response coming from several black Americans today is that same "bitter anguish" that was the ma-jor means of expression of the slave. While Frederick Douglass wrote

about inward anger in l845, that most of his fellow brothers were not allowed to express outwardly, writers

in this day, such as John Oliver Killens, sla,p their people in the face for relying on the motion picture

industry to relate to them the essence of black existence in this country. This particular industry has played a significant role in shaping our attitudes toward ourselves. However, that influence is lessening sharply. Writes Killens:

When I was a boy in Macon, , one of the greatest compliments a benevolent white man could give a Negro was usually found in the orbituary column of the local newspaper: "He was a black man, but he had a white heart." And the burden of every black man was supposedly just a little easier to bear that day. It was a time when many of us black folk laughed at the antics of Amos *n* Andy and wept copious tears at a ridiculous movie'very aptly titled Imitation of Life. Most of us looked at life through the eyes of white America. 7

Killens is speaking to all of us. For we have been guilty of seeing ourselves "through the eyes of white America." Are we, Africans in this country, to be

7 'John Oliver Killens, Black Man’s Burden, chapter I (New York: Trident Press, 1965^, p. 3. II.

"blamed for this? How else could we see ourselves? In fact, "the moving-picture eyes of white America" was one of the earliest vehicles through v/hich our lives "became known. At the time my childhood we were not responsible for the images of us that were flashed across the picture screen. This period just mentioned represents a time when very few of us really knew a"bout ourselves.

'f’lha.t was that psychologica.1 image flashed across the screen for millions to "be entertained by? Killens cites two of them.

The great fictional (and film) ma.sterpieces on the American racial theme usually fell into two categories. One theme dealt with the utter heartbreak of the miulatto, who rejected his black blood and was in turn rejected by his white blood. A variation of this theme was the shattering experience of "passing." The other theme was the "Uncle Tom," or what I prefer to call the "Gunga Din," theme. This one also had many variations, but over all there was the image created by the great apologist for colonialism, Rudyard Kipling, of a man who

. . . For all 'is dirty 'ide *E was white, dear v/hite, inside When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire! 8

The images themselves are but part of the problem.

The other half of it is the response we gave to those images. For example, I well remember my emotional response to the rejected mulatto in Imitation of Life. I found sympathy for her. I found myself identifying with a woman who was running away from herself, rimning away from tha-t part of her that connected her being with

Ibid., p. 4. 12.

my "being. No doubt she was taught from her past that she was to escape the black part of her. Afterall, one of the first things a rejected person will do is try to get free that part of him that is not accepted so that it will be either accepted or he can get away from it. perhaps this particular mulatto knew that the blackness in her, which was descendent from her slave past, was to be eliminated before she could be free to live. To her, acceptable was living free from her slave heritage.

This story goes on to illustrate that today the

African-American must cease from attempts to escape who he is. Ke must not try to get away from his heritage. It is true that we are the victims of an undesirable back¬ ground in this country. We are expected to get away from who we are by any means feasible. This country wants us to accept the myth that in order for a black person to survive, or to live, properly in this culture he must strive to be as white as he possibly can. Our minds must be attuned to these myths which are still being designed to curb our self-awareness and self-acceptance. In short, if we as a race of people do not become fully cognizant of the rigid psychological warfare that is being waged against us by certain racist elements in the culture we will never rise above the level of a twentieth century slave. We will eventually end up as slaves to our ov/n ignorance.

Another common myth about our race is that we are content. The slave, before the passing of the

Emancipation Proclamation, Icnew v/ho he was and what 13

purpose he was to serve in this ciilture. Prom history comes the lesson that many slaves were bitterly opposed ■to this situation. But, when black students are finally given the story it usually reads that they were totally satisfied with their situation. We are supposed to be a people who like what we are doing, regardless of what it is we’re doing, and can adjust to whatever situation someone else puts us in, whatever the situation may be.

It is Just as frustrating to me to think that someone expects me to like and adjust to every situation I am placed in. This is as much a disregard for manhood as it was for a group of people to enslave another.

Writes Killens on this contentment business:

last year I did considerable research on that bygone "utopian" era, and I got a very different picture, slightly less romantic. I found that the slaves were so happy that most of the plantation o'wners couldn't afford the astronomical rates of fire insurance. Those rapturous kept setting fire to the cotton patches, burning down the, planta.tion, every day the Lord se,nt them. They organized countless insurrections, killed their masters, poisened their mistresses, even put spiders in the Big House soup. They demonstrated their contentment in most peculiar ways. 9

Continuing, Killens says:

The point is, m-ost white Americans cling desperately to these wish-fulfillment fantasies, but most of us Negroes have become unbelievers. We don't break into cheers any more when the cowboys chase the Indians across the movie screen, or when the Army finally ca.ptures old John Bro’m. Indeed, our favorite epic of the west has become

'^Ibid., p.6. 14

Custer’s Last Stand. Sitting Bull is a colored hero. Many black folk wish that this mighty warrior had been an. American Negro. 10 I could write for hours on both of these themes, but much of it would eventually be duplication since much has been ’/vritten on them by other more scholorly writers. In summary, I can only say that in:order for

the African to be kept in his place as a slave he had to be re-conditioned so that he thought of himself as not being able to exist independently of his slave master. He was taught, primarily by his culture, that he needs assistance. Through the process of keeping chains on his mind he was easily, or easier managed. But a mistake was made, that being that he was never recognized as a person who would one day wake up from his sleep. F. The Emancipation Proclamation Its Purpose In This Paper Its Original Purpose Review of Earlier Attempts to Free the Negro

Throughout this paper there have been various allusions to the document knov/n as the Emancipation

Proclamation. You are probahly wondering why it is being mentioned. It is used here as a symbolic representative of change for the Negro. This is not saying that the

Negroes life in this country wa.s changed an iota, but there was an attempt to offer a solution to the situation.

A. word of caution is in order.

The Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery but

10 Ibid. 15.

begaji a new tradition of social and economic oppression. ’.Vhite extremist groups like the Ku Kiux Klan took the law into their own hands and Jim Crow segregation became a southern way of life. II

The Emancipation ProclamB-tion was a vehicle that got the African off of the plantation. This particular

vehicle is only one of many attempts to free the African.

This document put an end to the system that said that Africans were the chattal property of his white coimter- part.

Previous efforts by some Civil War military officers to free slaves had failed, the intention being that prior to 1863/65 the Ifegro was not to be freed on

any condition, not even by President Lincoln. Benjamin

Brawley commented in 1921 on thefate of a few such officers.

On August 30, I86I Major-General John C. Fremont, in command in Missouri, placed the state imder martial law and declared the slaves there emancipated. The administration was embarrassed, Fremont's order was annulled, and he was relieved of his command. 12

This is but one incident which is used here to illustrate the point of the United States* government willfully admitting that Negroes would not be freed, but in the back of Lincoln's mind was the word emancipation.

This was all Negro enamcipation was to the president,

some thing in the back of his mind. But so that the

Union may be saved Mr. Lincoln issued his Proclamation on January I, 1863. Brawley speaks to the issue and put

Black Americans From Colonial Bays To The Present, text by John Kurt Willonan (New York: Universal Pub- lishing, 1969), p. 26. 12 Benjamin Brawley, A Social History of the American Negro (New York: Macmillan Co., 1921), p.253. 16.

it this way;

At the outbreak of the Oivil War two great questions affecting the Negro overshadowed all others-his freedom and his employ,rnient as a. soldier. The North as a whole had no special enthusiasm about the Negro and responded only to Lincoln's call to the duty of saving the Union. Among both officers and men moreover there was great prejudice against the use of the Negro as a soldier, the feeling being that he was disqualified by slavery and ignorance. Privates objected to meeting black men on the same footing as themselves and also felt that the arming of slaves to fight their former masters would increase the bitterness of the conflict. If many men in the North felt thus, the South was furious at the thought of the Negro as a possible opponent in arms. 13

The use of Negroes a,s soldiers, coupled v;ith the objections to their use, shows that even in the liberal North the Negro felt the pains of not being able to display his worth as a human being. History shows that even after he was freed he was to be denied this right.

The Negro was still confronting those social forces which desired to destroy his mind and push him back socially and economically.

G. The 20th. Century The The Blank Pov/er Movement

The African-American’s story in this century is familiar to practically all Ajnericans, white and black. You have read about desegregation, integration, and black power, and are familiar with many of the names

13 Ibid.. p. 252. 17.

and organizations associated with, these terms. This

century, like the ones preceding it, has produced its share of rehellers who have helped alter the thinking of many black Americans about their past. This century has

seen the surge to rid ourselves of our slave mentalities. This war is being fought from two angles.

1. A bringing to light our claims to himian rights 2. A gradua.l reclamation of personal dignity and respect In regards to #1, human rights, Negroes across ;■ the United States suddenly brought to focus the fact

that in this country there was no real freedom for a, non¬ white person. Liberty as spelled out in the Declaration of Independence was being interpretated as originally

"for whites only." America was not coming up to her reputation of "a land of the free." Freedom for the

Negro was on pa.per only. It was not in reality. Thus, there emerged a massive Civil Rights Movement which was the Negroes response to the realization that they could not go to school wherever they chose, that they could not eat a mea,l in a downtown restaurant, and that in many places they could not vote.

Characteristic of this movement were the organized boycotts and sit-ins. But as we were sitting- in and boycotting, minds were beginning to cry out for liberation. Negroes were seeking the right to exercise their minds more than they had been allowed. As feet were marching through the streets, minds were beginning

to come forth. Negroes were beginning to v/rite more, to 18

spe3.k in public more, to make certain that their presence was felt more in all w'alks of life in the culture. We began with schools and places of business,

and ended up within the circle of political partici¬ pation that called not only for the right to vote but for the need to be in those places where the political decisions are planned, developed, and administered. As I watched and participated in the Civil

Rights Movement, I saw the beginning of a new unity within the race. We saw the need to respond, but to respond to the voice of a single leadership and to respond in unity, or together as a group, rather than on an individual basis. Men marched with women, boys with girls, adults with children, and whites with Negroes.

The by-words of the Civil Rights Movement were protest, demonstration, and non-violence. The spokesman, by and large, was the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. . The Civil Rights Era extended from the early 1950's to the mid-I960's, ending with the assassination of the Rev.

King, Jr. .

By the I960's you had the rise of a newer form of expression by the Negro. The by-words of this era. bega,n with the rise of the slogan "black power" and extended to those of "Black is Beautiful," "Black

Awareness," and "Liberation". Sandwiched in between were the cries for black solidarity, black unity, a,nd black pride. To most people this era was seen as a,n era of violence, rhetoric, and misundersta.nding. But the mi.nds of numerous young people were being lifted to new heights with the advent of new challenges coming from 19

such movements as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

As this movement grew I watched young people shed the title Negro, and take on the title Black. For Negro was identified with the drudgery and hiimiliation of slavery, and these youthful people wanted the society to know that since the days of the plantation the race has risen above the level of a slave. With .this feeling, all things associated with slavery had to be removed from the race. Included here is the slave name, the slave institutions which drill into the minds of students the contributions made by v/hites instead of those made by black people, and eventua,lly Christianity which came to be termed "the white man’s religion." Now, in spite of what has been said a,bout the positive features of 20th. century Afro-American life, there still remain ma,ny of the negatives. In the 1950's sought refuge in the society by resorting to integration into the white culture, at the expense of their o\'vn dignity. As we moved closer to white churches and schools we were moving aw'ay from those institutions which were established by our forefathers for use by the race. This indicates that within our race as a whole, were those people who still wa,nted to see the world through the eyes of white America. Another negative, and a. more crucial one, is that several of us are still trying to run from who we are. We are not re-searching our heritage in an effort to bring to focus the beauty of it. We are still longing to disclaim it, to deny that slavery is what initially got us to America. 20.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

1. Bva.wley, Benjamin. A Social History of the American Negro (New York: Macmillan do., 1921).

2. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; An .American Slave- An Autobiography (Boston Anti-Slavery Office, 1845).

3. Frazer, Charles. White Man Black Man 1st ed. (New York; Exposition Press, Inc., 1965)

4. Killens, John Oliver. Black Man’s Burden (New York; Trident Press, I965').

Magazine

Black Americans From Colonial Days To The Present, text by John Kurt Wilkman (New York; Universal Publishing and Distributing Corp., I969).