National Humanities Center

Community in African American Culture, 1917-1968

a live, online professional development seminar

Focus Questions

How was African American community constructed between 1917 and 1968?

Under what circumstances was it created?

How did evolving concepts of community affect and reflect notions of African American identity?

Stephanie Shaw

National Humanities Center Fellow1995-96

Associate Professor of HistoryOhio State University

What a Woman Ought To Be and To Do: Black Professional Women Workers during

the Jim Crow Era (1996)

Soul, Striving, Spirit, and Science: W. E. B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk

(forthcoming)

Community in African American Culture, 1917-1968

Themes

Internal incentives/disincentives to community formation

External incentives/disincentives to community formation

Types of communities:

Geographical communities

Identity communities

Interest communities

Others

Community and consciousness

Dayton, OhioJuly 17, 1917

My Dear Pastor and Wife:

I reed your letter was Glad to hear from you I am do hope the same for you I am send you some money from my back salary I will send you some more the 5 of September next month Give love to all members of the church I will be home on a visit in Oct are early so pray for me write to me I would have wrote to you but I didnot no just what to say all of the people leaves Go to place up East that I did not no weather or not you care to hear from me are not so I am glad you think of me. Mr. O_____ write me was going to take out life insurance with him but he would not send me the paper so I just let it go as I guess he did not class me with himself I mak $70 month at this hotel and then not work hard.

Narrative of A. I. and Samuel Dixie

[A.I Dixie] I joined [the Order of the Emancipated Americans] in the thirties. It’s strong now because I hold a gathering now. It’s not strong as it used to be because folks [are] making more money. See, you just paid 75 cents a month, [and they] give you $200 in cash when you die. But when it was start[ed] up, it wasn’t paying that. If you was a farmer and your mule died, and you belonged to the Emancipated Order, everybody that had a mule had to give you a day’s work, until they could get you another mule. And if your house get burned down, they would chip in and help you get shelter. It wouldn’t be a fine house, but now with the folk making money, we ain’t got the members we used to have. “That ain’t enough money for me,” but I tell them every year, “What money?” It was the strength that you help me, and I help you. It was originally if a member got sick the lodge just send a brother, two brothers to sit with him if it’s a man, and if it’s a woman, they would send two ladies, because [we] didn’t have hospitals, just had to sit around. This here was a demand from the lodge; this was out of their ruling. He could say, “You go stay with so-and-so.” They would send a different person every night, two different people every night. I had went and stayed from first dark to five o’clock, time enough to go home and get my breakfast and get prepared to go to work. When we went there and the family then could go on to their room and sleep, because they had to [stay and care for] him all that day. Some of them [lodge members] would go there every night. But now they got hospitals so — as I was telling the people — I say, “You all don’t understand it like I did.” That’s what they were doing. If a man’s mule died, and he was a member, and his crop need plowing and he’d make it known, and this brother go down and give him a day. That’s how that thing got started. See, folk on a tobacco farm, they’d have to go up to the boss to get a casket for their people. And one or two wise men said, “Why can’t us put us little might together, and save us from having to stand around somebody else’s [the bossman’s] house, when somebody die?” So then they would give you that cash, and you could go get your casket.

Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It

One minister read the circular, inquired about the announcements, and found that all the city’s black congregations were quite intelligent on the matter and were planning to support the one-day boycott with or without their ministers’ leadership. It was then that the ministers decided that it was time for them, the leaders, to catch up with the masses. If the people were really determined to stage this one-day protest, then they would need moral support and Christian leadership. The churches could serve as channels of communication, as well as altars where people could come for prayer and spiritual guidance. Since the ministers were servants of the people and of God, and believed in the gospel of social justice, and since the churches were institutions supported by the people, the clerics could serve as channels through which all the necessary benefits could flow. Thus, for the first time in the history of Montgomery, black ministers united to lead action for civic improvement. There was no thought of denomination. Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, and others joined together and became one band of ministerial brothers, offering their leadership to the masses. Had they not done so, they might have alienated themselves from their congregations and indeed lost members, for the masses were ready, and they were united!

Malcolm X, “Not Just and American Problem, but a World Problem”

As many of you know, I left the Black Muslim movement and during the summer months, I spent five of those months on the—in the Middle East and on the African continent. During this time I visited many countries, first of which was Egypt, and then Arabia, then Kuwait, Lebanon, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zanzibar, Tanganyika—which is now Tanzania—Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Algeria. And then the five months that I was away I had an opportunity to hold lengthy discussions with President Nasser in Egypt, President Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Milton Obote in Nigeria, Nkrumah in Ghana, and Sekou Toure in Guinea.

And during those conversations with these men, and other Africans on that continent, there was much information exchanged that definitely broadened my understanding, and I feel, broadened my scope. For since coming back from over there, I have had no desire whatsoever to get bogged down in any picayune arguments with any bird-brained or small-minded people who happen to belong to organizations, based upon facts that are very misleading and don’t get you anywhere when you have problems as complex as ours that are trying to get solved.

Malcolm X, “Not Just an American Problem, but a World Problem”

We are living in a society that is by and large controlled by people who believe in segregation. We are living in a society that is by and large controlled by a people who believe in racism, and practice segregation and discrimination and racism. We believe in a — and I say that it is controlled, not by the well-meaning whites, but controlled by the segregationists, the racists. And you can see by the pattern that this society follows all over the world. Right now in Asia you have the American army dropping bombs on dark-skinned people. You can’t say that — it’s as though you can justify being that far from home, dropping bombs on somebody else. If you were next door, I could see it, but you can’t go that far away from this country and drop bombs on somebody else and justify your presence over there, not with me.

It’s racism. Racism practiced by America. Racism which involves a war against the dark-skinned people in Asia, another form of racism involving a war against the dark-skinned people in the Congo . . . as it involves a war against the dark-skinned people in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Rochester, New York.

Malcolm X, “Not Just an American Problem, but a World Problem”

Since the civil rights bill — I used to see African diplomats at the UN crying out against the injustice that was being done to Black people in Mozambique, in Angola, the Congo, in South Africa, and I wondered why and how they could go back to their hotels and turn on the TV and see dogs biting Black people right down the block and policemen wrecking the stores of Black people with their clubs right down the block, and putting water hoses on Black people with pressure so high it tear our clothes off, right down the block. And I wondered how they could talk all that talk about what was happening in Angola and Mozambique and all the rest of it and see it happen right down the block and get up on the podium in the UN and not say anything about it.

But I went and discussed it with some of them. And they said that as long as the Black man in America calls his struggle a struggle of civil rights — that in the civil rights context, it’s domestic and it remains within the jurisdiction of the United States. And if any of them open up their mouths to say anything about it, it’s considered a violation of the laws and rules of protocol. And the difference with the other people was that they didn’t call their grievances “civil rights” grievances, they called them “human rights” grievances. “Civil rights” are within the jurisdiction of the government where they are involved. But “human rights” is part of the charter of the United Nations.

All the nations that signed the charter of the UN came up with the Declaration of Human Rights and anyone who classifies his grievances under the label of “human rights” violations, those grievances can then be brought into the United Nations and be discussed by people all over the world. For as long as you call it “civil rights” your only allies can be the people in the next community, many of whom are responsible for your grievance. But when you call it “human rights” it becomes international. And then you can take your troubles to the World Court. You can take them before the world. And anybody anywhere on this earth can become your ally.

So one of the first steps that we became involved in, those of us who got into the Organization of Afro-American Unity, was to come up with a program that would make our grievances international and make the world see that our problem was no longer a Negro problem or an American problem but a human problem. A problem for humanity. And a problem which should be attacked by all elements of humanity. A problem that was so complex that it was impossible for Uncle Sam to solve it himself and therefore we want to get into a body or conference with people who are in such positions that they can help us get some kind of adjustment for this situation before it gets so explosive that no one can handle it.

Focus Questions

How was African American community constructed between 1917 and 1968?

Under what circumstances was it created?

How did evolving concepts of community affect and reflect notions of African American identity?

Final slide

Thank you.