Dr. Margaret Bristow,
Hampton University

Red and Black: The Indian Presence in Black American Literature

I'd like to thank Ms. Clayton for that introduction and I would also like to thank Mrs. Anita Harrell and Mr. Hugh Harrell for inviting me to speak in conjunction with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. I see some familiar faces in the audience: one of my former students, Darryl Dance. I see my sister, Carolyn Smith, and my niece Tibrich. Anita, slow me down if I speak too fast, and stop me if I speak for over 30 minutes.

My title is: Red and Black: the Indian Presence in Black American Literature. Let me begin with quotations from the late Black sociologist, W. E. B. DuBois, and his collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, written in 1903. "After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil and gifted with second sight in this American world - a world which yields him no true self-consciousness." I wish I could read it as DuBois would have read it. That's one of his famous passages. But only, let's see him himself through the revelation of the other world. "It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness. One ever feels his "two-ness", an American, a Negro, his two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideas, and one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

Now compare this with Longing, a poem written by Renee Kemp, a Chickasaw student in the twelfth grade class in Oklahoma, writing in 1989. This was in Rising Voices: Writings of Young Native Americans, which is an excellent book to use with adolescents. It's from Native Americans writing their own thoughts from I would say elementary school on up through the 12th grade. It's edited by Arlene Hirshfelder of the New School for Social Research, who has written extensively on the negative stereotypes of Native American children and children's books. The poem, "The Longing," reads:

"My soul longs for freedom
To be free as an eagle that soars the sky
My soul thirsts for my tribal ways
It longs for the tribal beliefs which are so dear to my heart
If I could only be free,
Be free to exist,
To be me.
I am Indian in a confusing world,
In a world that won't let me be free.
Oh, how I long for my freedom."

What we do see in common with both, written 86 years apart, is the agony, the Angst, the storm and stress of two-ness, double-ness, two warring ideas in both. In researching this topic, my hypothesis was that I expected Black novelists in the early Nineteenth Century to incorporate early stereotypes of Indians. Later on, from the 1970s to the present, I expected Black novelists to be more sympathetic and informed due to increasing multicultural knowledge of Native American cultures and contributions to the Americas. My research paradigm would involve an analysis of portrayal, of females' portrayal of the Indian's religion and cultural attitudes in these Black texts. Portrayal of the Indian's relationship with Whites. Portrayal of the Indian's relationship with Blacks. Forgive me, sometimes, for using "Indian" versus "Native American". The book The Invasion Within, written in 1985, claims that "Indian" was the name preferred by the vast majority of Native people themselves, past and present. So, not only is there a warring two-ness in some Blacks and Native Americans, but there seems to be a re-evaluation of names with the ways both races would like to be referred to. For some Blacks, the latest is a wish to be called African; not African American, African. 

Of note is the fact that even though DuBois had conspicuous Indian ancestry - and also our most prolific Black literary writer, Langston Hughes, like a lot of Blacks, according to Katz, had Indian ancestry - nowhere does DuBois write about his Indian ancestry in detail. Also, Dr. Arnold Rampersand, who has done expensive work on Hughes, including a 1000-page, two-volume critical biography, found nothing of any significance to expand upon in terms of Hughes' Indian ancestry, even though Hughes has written a lot and traces back his lineage to Pocahontas. However, in Hughes' The Best of Jesse B. Simple Jesse, the main character (some of you are familiar with Jesse B. Simple - he can be very funny) makes reference to being, if I'm not mistaken, of the Blackfoot nation, but comically puts an emphasis on his black feet. 

There is an anthology of early Black writers - plays written by Blacks between 1858 and 1938, edited by Leo Hamlin and James Hatch. By the way, most of the books I'm mentioning are on the table in the back. I talked with Hatch recently,  and he agreed with me that there was no reference to Native Americans in any of the plays, except perhaps  for a reference to the Red River in terms of setting. In this book of Black plays there is a play by Shirley Graham DuBois, whom we know married the late W. E. B. DuBois. Shirley Graham DuBois had a Cherokee mother; but her plays make no reference to Indians. Her play "Tom Tom", written in 1932, was saturated with Africanisms but there is no reference to Indian ancestry. 

In perusing the most complete collection of Paul Laurence Dunbar poems, collected by Black professor Joanne Braxton at William & Mary, I was glad to see she had included a poem by Dunbar entitled, "Ode to Columbus." I commend Dunbar for as early as the 1920s recognizing the exploitation of Indians by Columbus. That's something many of our history texts have yet to do. Both Benjamin Brawley in 1918 and Sterling Brown in 1939 have written books on the stereotyping of Blacks in American fiction. That is yet to be done with the Native American image in Black American texts. Even though many Blacks have been heard to brag about their Indian ancestry, saying, "she doesn't show wrinkles because that's the Indian blood in her." Or, " her/his hair is good because he's got Indian blood." 

And of course, William Katz' book on Black Indians points out that historically Blacks had a lot to be thankful for because of being able to take refuge with Indians. That's also on the back table, Black Indians by William Loren Katz. 

So let me give you a brief chronological depiction of Native Americans, starting with the first poem by a Black that mentioned Native Americans. The poem was entitled "Bar's Fight", by Lucy Terry. This was written in 1746, way before Phyllis Wheatley wrote. It was not published until 1893. I have yet to see a copy of the poem, even though I first heard of it in my first Black Literature class at Hampton University in 1972. It is a short poem, and guess what it concerns? Now this is the first Black person to write about Native Americans. Earliest. It concerned a massacre. An Indian massacre in Dearfield, Massachusetts, August 28, 1746. Of importance is that now a play by the famous Black playwright, Ed Bullins, 1992, wait a minute. Not 1992. He's done a collection of plays, and he's captured Phyllis Wheatley and a lot of other Black folk heroes like John de Conquer. But, he's also written a play a play based on the life of Lucy Terry, which I can not wait to read. Now when you get the handout of the annotated bibliography, I've mentioned where to order that book from, in terms of a lady at San Francisco State by the name of Dr. Ethel Pitts Walker. Also, I talked with him and he didn't give me a lot of details on the play when I talked with him from San Francisco. But he did give me several stores that I could purchase the book from, with the play in it.

Let us move on to the second reference of Native Americans by Blacks. This was an Indian Captivity narrative written by a Black slave, Britain Hammond, published in 1760. According to Maryann Stalling (her book is also on the back table) a Black authority on slave narratives, he remained a captive for 13 years. He describes cannibalistic Indians off the coast of Florida who fattened him every day on corn for the big roast. And of course, slave narratives are in the process of being revaluated by scholars in terms of how sensational they were and how they are questionable in terms of some of the details. His title of 200 words reads - and I will read it hopefully quickly to you - his title reads: A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprising Deliverance of Britain Hammond as a Negro Manservant to General Swinslow of Marshville, New England, Who Returned to Boston After Having Been Absent for Almost Thirteen Years, Containing Some of the Many Hardships He Underwent From the Time he Left his Master's House in the Year 1747 to the Time of His Return to Boston, How He Was Casted Away in the Capes of Florida, the Horrid Cruelty and Inhuman Barbarity [this is still the title] of the Indians in Murdering the Whole Ship's Crew, the Manner of His Having Been Carried By Them Into Captivity, Also the Account of His Being Confined for Four Years and Seven Months in a Close Dungeon and the Remarkable Manner in Which He Met With His Good Old Master in London, Who Returned to New England A Passenger In The Same Ship. This was written in Boston in 1760. I guess some would say that if you read the whole title, there's no need to read the book.

The second reference to Native Americans, by a Black slave named Arthur, was written in 1768; that was eight years later. Arthur was - and of course he wrote a narrative before they executed him - Arthur was a thief, a rapist, a lover of prostitutes, and an alcoholic. Now he was a thief who was caught breaking into a store one day, and the same day he received fifteen stripes. Well, the next night, he broke into a store on the same street...

[From an incomplete transcript]