|
Books by Marcus Bruce
Christian
Song of the Black Valiants: Marching Tempo
/
High Ground: A Collection of Poems /
Negro soldiers in the Battle of New Orleans
I am New
Orleans: A Poem
/
Negro Ironworkers of Louisiana, 1718–1900 /
The Liberty Monument
* * *
* *
The Federal Writers Project For Blacks
in Louisiana
By Ronnie W. Clayton
Division of
Social Science / Meridian Junior College / Meridian,
Mississippi
During the Great
Depression of the 1930s numerous work programs evolved
to assist the unemployed. The largest and perhaps best
remembered of these programs is the
Works Progress
Administration.1 One phase of the WPA
was the
Federal Writers’ Project.2
Developers of this program decided to employ attorneys,
teachers, newspapermen, photographers, librarians,
archivists, typists, cartographers, and others with
training in research, writing, and editing to prepare
travel guidebooks to the states and to some of their
larger cities.3
The national
director of the Federal Writers’ Project,
Henry Alsberg,
selected directors for the various state writers’
projects and therefore appointed the dean of Louisiana
writers, Lyle Saxon of New Orleans, to head the
Louisiana Writers’ Project.4 Accepting
his appointment in late 1935,5 Saxon
selected his staff to work on the three main
publications of the Louisiana Writers’ Project,
Louisiana: A Guide to the State, the
New Orleans
City Guide, and
Gumbo Ya-Ya.6
Unlike the two guides, the latter work embraces
Louisiana folklore.
As soon as the
writers’ program began in Louisiana, Saxon received
applications from black writers. To provide work for
them Saxon developed a federal writers’ project for
blacks in Louisiana. The project was called the Dillard
Writers’ Project because of its location, Dillard
University.
The person
partially responsible for generating momentum for the
Dillard Writers’ Project was James B. LaFourche. Despite
his training and experience as a journalist, WPA
officials assigned LaFourche to a manual labor job when
he applied for work on the Writers’ Project. He resented
“digging and ditching,” and brought his complaint to the
attention of the Executive Secretary of the Joint
Committee on National Recovery,
John Davis of New York.
Impressed with LaFourche’s credentials as well as with
the validity of his complaint, Davis contacted
Henry Alsberg and other national WPA officials. They suggested
that he contact Saxon about assigning LaFourche to the
Louisiana Writers’ Project.7
Davis wrote Saxon
that “common justice” required the proportionate
employment of Negroes on writers’ projects. Only blacks,
contended Davis, could accurately portray the record of
Negro life in Louisiana. Saxon should avoid this
“excuse,” Davis wrote, that a lack of funds precluded
hiring “negro writers every bit as capable and doubly as
needy as white writers.”8
Saxon informed
Davis that he hired persons strictly on the basis of
their ability as writers and on the sequence of their
applications. Race, he insisted, did not enter into the
picture. His problem, Saxon protested, was truly a lack
of funds to hire needy writers on relief rolls, both
black and white.9
Saxon indicated
that LaFourche was only one of several blacks seeking
work on the
Louisiana Writers’ Project, and suggested
that their best chance for employment was on a
segregated writers’ project he hoped to create. To do
so, however, he needed additional funds from Alsberg,
and Saxon asked Davis to encourage the national director
to release funds for the Negro project.10
Saxon then
contacted Alsberg about the possibility of a black
writers’ project in Louisiana. The “plight of the
educated Negro in the South,” he told the national
director, was “most unfortunate,” and that a partial
remedy could be found in the establishment of a black
writers’ project in New Orleans. The black writers would
routinely gather material for inclusion in the state
guide and the city guide, but, in addition, Saxon
proposed that they would also prepare a history of their
race from time of their arrival in Louisiana until the
1930s. Saxon agreed to edit the work and find a
publisher for the volume. The black writers’ project, he
concluded, would be the best solution to the “delicate .
. . situation” in which he found himself, despite his
efforts to avoid being “influenced in any way by local
politics.”11
While Alsberg
mulled Saxon’s request for a Negro project in Louisiana,
the idea gained new thrust when Edgar B. Stern,
president of the Board of Trustees at Dillard
University, notified Alsberg of his desire to cooperate
“to the fullest extent,” in developing a writers’
project for Negroes in Louisiana. Stern assured Alsberg
that Dillard had an excellent faculty to supervise the
work undertaken by some of the institution’s needy
students. He felt certain Alsberg was aware of the
“traditional difficulty in the lower South of mixed
Projects” and could understand his desire for “getting
the granting of funds for an all-Negro project.”12
Enthusiasm for the
Dillard Writers’ Project was also forthcoming from
Lawrence D. Reddick, a member of the Department of
History at Dillard. Alsberg should, wrote Reddick,
immediately allocate funds for the project. Materials
were available for a study of the Negro in Louisiana,
competent unemployed blacks to compile the history were
registered for relief, and the need for such a history
was “overwhelming.”13
Alsberg concluded
that the Dillard Project had merit, and in January,
1936, he authorized Saxon to employ ten additional
writers, five of whom could be blacks to begin work on
the Dillard Project. Thus, approximately four months
after the Louisiana Writers’ Project began, the Dillard
Project got underway, but immediately encountered
several difficulties.14
A continuing
problem for the Dillard writers was their limited access
to public records. The writers were not received well in
the public libraries and on occasion were denied entry.
Some librarians told Saxon the blacks were not welcome
and they were not to return. When admitted the writers
were segregated from the white patrons and a few
librarians refused to provide the materials sought by
the workers. One Dillard worker claimed it was necessary
to know the complete holdings of the libraries because
librarians would provide only the material specifically
requested.15
The Dillard Project
workers also encountered difficulty gathering
information from some Negro cult leaders. These leaders,
suspicious of Dillard workers because of their
education, knew the black writers could not be tricked
like their uneducated customers. Nevertheless, blacks,
in general, were more expressive to the Dillard writers
than they were to the white writers of the Louisiana
Writers’ Project.16
Despite these and
other, more personal, obstacles to information, the
Dillard writers gathered information about their people
for inclusion in the publications of the Louisiana
Writers’ Project and the Dillard Writers’ Project. How
each group used this common material is instructive, for
whites saw the black experience in Louisiana differently
than did the blacks. This contrast is best illustrated
by comparing Gumbo Ya-Ya with the outline and
prospectus of the intended black history written by the
Dillard workers.
Gumbo Ya-Ya
is the most creative work done by the Louisiana Writers’
Project. The folklore book was ideally suited for Saxon,
an authority of the history of Louisiana and especially
on the folklore of the state. He edited the manuscript
and saw it through to publication, and of the three main
publications of the Louisiana Writers’ Project, Gumbo
Ya-Ya was Saxon’s favorite. In a letter to Paul
Brooks of Houghton Mifflin, Saxon stated that he had
“put a good deal of [him]self into this book” and that
was his “pet.” He considered it “more important, in its
way, than the Guide Books.”17 He wrote
Lee Barker, also of Houghton Mifflin, that he “would
certainly like to get the Folklore book out” before
closing the LWP. “Personally,” concluded Saxon, “I think
it is our masterpiece.”18
According to
Gumbo Ya-Ya, the antebellum period was the golden
age for Louisianians. “The best of all possible worlds
existed in the South and it was destroyed,” stated the
text. If only a portion of “this remembered grandeur
once existed in reality,” it said, “Louisiana plantation
life must have been almost paradisiacal.”19
A comparison
between the white interpretation of slavery as appeared
in Gumbo Ya-Ya and the black interpretation as
presented in “The History of the Negro in Louisiana”
indicates how the two groups of writers differed in
their interpretations of the slave experience. Gumbo
Ya-Ya, for example, did not consider the institution
of slavery during the antebellum period as heinous.
Blacks as well as whites owned slaves and “the Negro
master of other Negroes is reputed to have been the
sternest of all slave owners.” Whites generally treated
their slaves well, for they were “valuable property.”
Owners of large plantations provided hospitals for their
slaves and small plantation owners personally cared for
their sick subjects. Slave owners also provided
excellent child care “so that the mothers of the
youngsters might work in the fields.” Expectant slave
mothers in most cases “received careful attention”
because “each child increased the planter’s wealth.”20
During the
antebellum period race relations, observed Gumbo
Ya-Ya, were excellent. Harmony between whites and
blacks began at birth. The plantation owner assigned to
his newborn child a slave for life. A daughter received
a “mammy” and a son a “valet” who became “one of the
beloved ‘Uncles’.” Slaves loved these assignments. They
were “proud of the honor” and “boasted of raising ‘the
chillum’.” Some slaves received emancipation like
“confused” and “lost children” and “exhibited strange
reaction to emancipation.” A few tried to pretend their
status had never changed. These worked “without wages
and without wanting them.” They evidenced “affection for
the white folk who had kept them all these years” and
“could not be pried loose” from their owners.21
Despite this utopia
allegedly existing during the antebellum period, some
slaves sought to leave their masters and others tried to
rebel against them. Gumbo Ya-Ya noted, however,
the slave rebellions “were surprisingly rare.” Uprisings
were not initiated by discontented slaves but by
northern abolitionists. As early as 1839, abolitionists
were “fomenting discontent among the Negroes and
actually promoting disorders.”22
The Dillard writers
planned to present the black experience in Louisiana
from their viewpoint. This account differed from the one
appearing in the guides and in Gumbo Ya-Ya. The
black writers maintained that Negroes did make cultural
contributions to the state, that slavery was not
acceptable system of labor, that slaves longed for their
freedom, and that blacks were not always duped by
whites.
According to the
outline of the intended Dillard history, slaves made
“numerous efforts in concert with white liberals” to win
their freedom. While their white counterparts claimed in
Gumbo Ya-Ya that slave rebellions were
“surprisingly rare,” the black-prepared outline
maintained that “there were so many insurrections and
attempts at insurrections that it [was] hardly possible
to name them all.” Because whites held blacks in
bondage, a “pall of nameless fear hung over the entire
Southland.” Whites knew that “some terrible day of
retribution” would come in which “waves of human blood”
would be spilled to pay the “debt that the American
Commonwealth owed the slaves.”23
Louisiana slaves
capitalized upon the invasion of the Union army into the
state. They rushed to arms to serve General Benjamin F.
Butler in New Orleans. Through their enlistment,
declared the prospectus, Louisiana blacks “set the
precedent by which Negro soldiers were later enlisted in
the Union Armies.” Blacks were also instrumental in
obtaining suffrage for their race. “ . . . It was
largely due to Mechanic’s Hall Riot of 1866 that
universal suffrage was accorded to Negroes of the United
States. . . .”24
While Gumbo
Ya-Ya tended to portray blacks in a stereotype role
of buffoons, the Dillard writers intended to describe
whites in a jocular fashion. In their history blacks
outwitted whites, as illustrated in the story of a
mulatto fleeing a “Negro trader” named Hall.*
The mulatto,
according to the outline, fled his master in New
Orleans, crossed the Mississippi River, and went into
Algiers. Somehow the slave trader, Hall, learned of the
escape and pretended the slave was the property of a
North Carolina master. Hall followed the runaway to
Algiers and asked other slaves for information. One
slave “mischievously pointed out a dark-complexioned
Creole in a nearby barroom” as the runaway slave.25
Hall approached the
Creole and pretended to admire his shirt cuffs. The
unsuspecting Creole proudly extended his arms so that
his admirer might have a better view of the cuffs. The
Negro trader quickly handcuffed the Creole and dragged
him away for a trip to the slave market in New Orleans.
The Creole, however, was “a well-known citizen of
Algiers.” He began to scream that he was being
kidnapped. Hall ignored the protestations and said for
all to hear: “I know you well; you belong to Colonel
______, in North Carolina.” The Creole
replied by shouting: “Je ne suis pas un naigre!
Je ne suis pas un
naigre!” While Hall did not know the Creole was
shouting, “I am not a negro! “I am not a negro! his
nearby friends did. They immediately released the Creole
and placed Hall in jail.26
Although the
account of Negro life in Louisiana differed
significantly in the manuscripts of Gumbo Ya-Ya
and in “The History of the Negro in Louisiana,” neither
one was complete when the Federal Writers’ Project came
to an end.27 Because of America’s
involvement in World War II, President Franklin
Roosevelt on December 4, 1942, ordered the liquidation
of the Work Projects Administration. He granted the
relief program two months in which to cease all
operations.28 As head of the writers’
programs in Louisiana, Lyle Saxon had to make deposition
of all project materials.
Because of his
desire to finish the Dillard history and to have it
published, Saxon made a different deposition of the
Dillard materials than he did for the records of the
Louisiana Writers’ Project. Saxon noted in his final
report on project activities that the Dillard history
manuscript was “virtually complete” when the project
ended. The manuscript consisted of 1,128 pages which
constituted forty-six chapters. A conclusion apparently
was all that required to complete the work.29
| Head of the Dillard
Project, Marcus B. Christian, asked Saxon to leave the
materials at Dillard where Christian might finish the
manuscript. Saxon considered Christian’s request and
wrote A. W. Dent, President of Dillard University. Based
on Christian’s “solicitations,” wrote Saxon, Dillard was
the “logical place” to leave the materials. He asked
President Dent to keep him abreast of developments for
he wished to edit the manuscript and to have it
published. The Dillard President expressed pleasure at
having the materials deposited at Dillard and remarked
that he would make the records available to the public.30 Upon learning about
the special arrangement Saxon made with Christian and
Dent, Clarice H. Rougeou, State Director of the Service
Division, questioned Saxon about the wisdom of leaving
public records with a private institution. |
 |
Rougeou
preferred to leave the Dillard records with the
Louisiana Library Commission in Baton Rouge, a public
agency, sponsor of the project, and the organization
with whom Saxon left the records of the Louisiana
Writers’ Project.31
Saxon decided to
entrust Dillard University with the Dillard Writers’
material since the records were there and Christian and
Dent promised completion of “The History of the Negro in
Louisiana.” The work, however, was never published. Its
fate as well as that of the records is something of a
mystery. Several theories have been espoused as to their
whereabouts.
According to one
version, a storm damaged the records and the Dillard
librarians destroyed them.32 Another
view, however, contends that the records are extant and
in the possession of a former Dillard writer33
who refuses to part with them or to discuss the project.34
If this is so, then the last chapter of the history of
the black writers’ project, in Louisiana remains to be
written. It and when it is, the true black experience in
Louisiana will at last be revealed by those who knew it
best.
[See also, Jerah
Johnson, "Marcus B. Christian and
the WPA History of Black People
in Louisiana."]
Endnotes
1 On July 1,
1939, the name was changed to Work Projects
Administration.
2 The Federal
Writers’ Project was part of “Federal Project No. 1,”
also known as the “Four Arts Projects.”
3
Lyle Saxon, “The Federal Writers’ Project in Louisiana,”
The Bulletin of the Louisiana Library Association,
II (September, 1938), 2; Kathleen O’Connor McKinzie,
“Writers on Relief: 1935–1942” (Ph.D. dissertation,
Indiana University, 1970), pp. 26–27; News release
(Record Group 69, National Archives). Unless
specifically cited otherwise the documents cited herein
are held in Record Group 69, National Archives: Records
of the Works Projects Administration, Records of the
Federal Writers’ Project, Records Relating to the WPA
Writers’ Project in Louisiana, National Archives. Herein
cited as FWP-La.
4 New
Orleans Times-Picayune, April 10, 1946; New York
Times, April 10, 1946, p. 28; Who Was Who in
America, III (Chicago, 1960). Saxon contributed to
Dial, New Republic, and Century Magazine.
Several of his short stories were translated into German
and “Cane River” won for him the O. Henry Memorial Prize
for 1926. His most notable books were Father
Mississippi (1927), Fabulous New Orleans
(1928), Old Louisiana (1929), Lafitte the
Pirate (1930), and Children of Strangers
(1937).
5 Saxon
was appointed State Director of the Louisiana Writers’
Project in October, 1935. He reported to work on October
15. Lyle Saxon to Henry Alsberg, October 17, 1935, FWP-La.
6 During
its history from October, 1935, to January, 1943, the
Louisiana Writers’ Project had but two major books
published. These were the New Orleans City Guide
in 1938 and Louisiana: A Guide to the State in
1938 and 1945, after the project closed. All three books
generally were well received by the reading public and
by the book critics.
7 James
B. LaFourche to John Davis, November 30, 1935; Henry
Alsberg to James LaFourche, December 30, 1935; Jacob
Baker to John Davis, December 19, 1935; John Davis to
Aubrey Williams, December 6, 1935. FWP-La.
8 John Davis to Lyle
Saxon, December 12, 1935, ibid.
9 Lyle Saxon to John
Davis, December 15, 1935, ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Lyle
Saxon to Henry Alsberg, December 16, 1935 (Louisiana
Collection, Louisiana State Library, Baton Rouge,
Louisiana). Hereinafter cited as LaCol-LSLBR.
12 Edgar B. Stern to
Henry Alsberg, January 3, 1936, FWP-La.
13 Lawrence D. Reddick
to Henry Alsberg, January 8, 1936, ibid.
14 Henry Alsberg to Lyle
Saxon, January 10, 1936 ibid.
15 Interview with a
former Dillard Project worker who asked to remain
anonymous, January 22, 1974.
16 Interview with
Caroline Durieux, January 27, 1974.
17 Lyle Saxon to Paul
Brooks, March 5, 1943, Lyle Saxon Collection
(Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New
Orleans, La.). Hereinafter cited as LSCol-HTML.
18 Lyle Saxon to Lee
Barker, December 8, 1942, ibid.
19 Lyle Saxon, Edward
Dreyer, and Robert Tallant (comps.) Gumbo Ya-Ya: A
Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales (Boston, 1945),
pp. 212–13.
20 Ibid., 229–32.
Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales
deals with the folklore of all Louisianians, not just
blacks. The author uses the chapters on slavery for
comparative analysis.
21 Ibid., pp.
232, 256.
22 Ibid., pp.
254–55.
* No first name cited.
23 “Outline of ‘The
Negro in Louisiana,’ ” LSCol-HTML.
24 “Prospectus of ‘The
Negro in Louisiana,’ ” ibid.
25 “Outline of ‘The
Negro in Louisiana,’ ” ibid.
26 Ibid.
27
Although Saxon had most of the manuscript ready for
publication when the project ended on January 1, 1943,
it was not published until the fall of 1945. For a
discussion of the reasons behind the delay see Ronnie W.
Clayton, “A History of the Federal Writers’ Project in
Louisiana” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Louisiana State
University, 1974), 212–229.
28 Francis T. Bourne
(comp.), “Preliminary Checklist of the Central
Correspondence Files of WPA and its Predecessors,
1933–1944,” (March, 1946), FWP-La.
29 Lyle Saxon, “Final
Report of Louisiana Writers’ Project,” (January 26,
1943), ibid.
30 Lyle
Saxon to A. W. Dent, December 31, 1942, LSCol-HTML. A.
W. Dent to Lyle Saxon, December 31, 1942, ibid.
As early as 1937, Horace M. Bond commented on the value
of the Dillard records when he wrote Saxon that the
researchers had obtained “invaluable” information.
“This, the raw material of history, will form a
permanent collection of great value; and will provide a
means by which the project itself can make numerous
written contributions to the literature on many
subjects.” He concluded that “by every test the Dillard
Project has justified itself.” Horace M. Bond to Lyle
Saxon, June 9, 1937, ibid.
31 Clarice Rougeou to
Lyle Saxon, February 16, 1943, ibid.
32 Interview with
Geraldine Odester Amos, January 29, 1974.
33 Interview with Dr.
John Blassingame, October 2, 1975.
34 This former project
writer refused to grant the author an interview or to
answer his correspondence.
Source:
Louisiana History • Vol. 19 •(1978)
* * *
* *
Marcus Bruce
Christian
Selected Diary Notes
/ Selected Poems
/
Selected Letters
* * *
* *
Profiles on Marcus Bruce Christian and the Federal
Writers Project
Bryan, Violet Harrington.
The Myth of New Orleans in Literature. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee, 1993.
Clayton, Ronnie W. “The Federal Writers
Project for Blacks in Louisiana.” Louisiana History
19(1978): 327-335.
Dent, Tom. “Marcus
B. Christian: A Reminiscence and an Appreciation.”
Black American Literature Forum, 1984, Volume 18, Issue
1, pp. 22-26.
Hessler, Marilyn S. “Marcus Christian:
The Man and His Collection.” Louisiana History 1
(1987):37-55.
Johnson, Jerah. “Marcus B. Christian
and the WPA History of Black People in Louisiana.”
Louisiana History 20.1 (1979): 113-115.
Larson, Susan. “Poems in the Key of Life.” Times-Picayune (Book Section), July 4, 1999.
Lewis, Rudolph. “Introduction.”
I Am New Orleans and Other Poems by Marcus Bruce
Christian. Edited by Rudolph Lewis and Amin Sharif. New
Orleans: Xavier Review Press, 1999. Reprinted in revised
form in Dillard Today 2.3 (2000): 21-24.
Lewis, Rudolph. “Magpies,
Goddesses, & Black Male Identity in the Romantic Poetry of
Marcus Bruce Christian.” Paper presented at College
Language Association, April 2000, Baltimore, MD.
Lewis, Rudolph. “Marcus
Bruce Christian and a Theory of a Black Aesthetic.”
Paper presented at the Zora Neale Hurston Society Conference
held June 1999 at University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
Published in ZNHS FORUM (Spring 2000).
Peterson, Betsy. “Marcus Christian:
Portrait of a Poet.” Dixie 18 (January 1970).
Redding, Joan. “The Dillard Project:
The Black Unit of the Louisiana Writers’ Project.”
Louisiana History 32.1 (1991): 47-62
Source:
Wikipedia
* * *
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 |
Southern Journey
A Return to the Civil Rights Movement
By
Tom Dent
A black
youth reared in segregated New Orleans, Dent
went to Mississippi for the civil rights
movement, and that experience stuck with
him. So in 1991, he decided to work his way
south from Greensboro, N.C., to Mississippi,
skirting both large cities and important
officials, to talk to (mostly) black folk
and to assess the movement's legacy. At
times, Dent's meandering approach lacks
depth and is unwieldy, but his personal
connection to his inquiry informs his story
with commitment. In Greensboro, the
unresolved gap between blacks and whites,
exemplified in an anniversary celebration of
the city's historic sit-ins, remind Dent "of
the strained interracial meetings of the
1950s." |
In Orangeburg, S.C., a black academic
tells him ruefully that many social-work students go
into "criminal justice" lacking the broader awareness of
the politics behind the new programs. In Albany, Ga.,
Dent discerns signs of material progress but deep
divisions not only between the races but also within the
black community. In Mississippi, where he sees black
political victories as having had a relatively small
payoff, he becomes convinced that a new black
organization is needed to supplant the NAACP to address
national political issues of special concern to blacks
(education, unemployment) and to monitor cases of police
and official abuse and discrimination. Though not quite
a complete plan, it's a constructive response to Dent's
conclusion that the civil rights movement opened up
doors, but "once inside, well, there was hardly anything
there."—Publishers
Weekly
* *
* * *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
|
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Weep Not, Child
By
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
This is
a powerful, moving story that details the
effects of the infamous Mau Mau war, the
African nationalist revolt against colonial
oppression in Kenya, on the lives of
ordinary men and women, and on one family in
particular. Two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau,
stand on a rubbish heap and look into their
futures. Njoroge is excited; his family has
decided that he will attend school, while
Kamau will train to be a carpenter. Together
they will serve their country—the
teacher and the craftsman. But this is Kenya
and the times are against them. In the
forests, the Mau Mau is waging war against
the white government, and the two brothers
and their family need to decide where their
loyalties lie. For the practical Kamau the
choice is simple, but for Njoroge the
scholar, the dream of progress through
learning is a hard one to give up.—Penguin
|
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
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posted 30 January
2011
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