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The Works of James McCune Smith
Black
Intellectual and Abolitionist
By John Stauffer
The first African American to receive a medical degree,
this invaluable collection brings together the writings
of James McCune Smith, one of the foremost intellectuals
in antebellum America.
The Works of James McCune Smith is
one of the first anthologies featuring the works of this
illustrious scholar. Perhaps best known for his
introduction to Fredrick Douglass's My Bondage and My
Freedom, his influence is still found in a number of
aspects of modern society and social interactions. And
he was considered by many to be a prophet of the
twenty-first century. One of the earliest advocates of
the use of "black" instead of "colored," McCune Smith
treated racial identities as social constructions,
arguing that American literature, music, and dance would
be shaped and defined by blacks.
Organized chronologically, the collection covers over 40
years of writing, including speeches, letters, and
essays, and begins with McCune Smith's first speech as
an 11-year old boy to the Marquis de Lafayette.
Providing historical context for McCune Smith's current
cultural relevance, this book showcases writings on
black education and self-help, citizenship, and the
fight against racism.—Publisher
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James McCune Smith
(1813-1865), a dignified and highly trained physician,
was the first university-trained black physician. After
attending the Free African School of New York where he
distinguished himself as a pupil he was helped by a
clergyman to matriculate in the University of Glasgow.
There he worked with the Glasgow Emancipation Society
and completed his MD degree, graduating in 1837. Smith
received from the University of Glasgow (Scotland) the
A.B., M.A., and M.D. degrees.
His mother was
self-emancipated; his father was freed by a New York law
passed in 1827. After his graduation, Smith returned to
America and established two drugstores in New York City.
Dr. Smith became well-known for his
pioneering work in the scientific study of race and for
the scholarly treatment of the slavery question. He was
a prolific writer on the subject of racial equality and
able speaker who fought against the deportation of the
Negro.
With skills of a scholar and a
knowledge of history, the sciences, languages and
literature, he wrote on a remarkable range of subjects
concerning the Negro. By his essays and articles, he
sought to change attitudes toward the Negro and to
direct sober thought to the question of the physical and
moral equality of Negro and white.
Dr.
Smith was a member of the Committee of Free Colored
Citizens that sent a petition to the United States
Senate in 1844. This document, which contained facts
about the social conditions of Negroes in eleven states
of the North, was a scientific protest against
derogatory remarks about Negroes that Secretary of State
John C. Calhoun had made to the British minister to the
United States.—Wilhemena
Robinson, Historical Afro-American Biographies
(1978).
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The absence of James McCune Smith in
the historiographic and critical literature is even more
striking. He was a brilliant scholar, writer, and
critic, as well as a first rate physician. In 1882 the
black leader Alexander Crummell called him "the
most learned Negro of his day," and Frederick
Douglass considered him the most important black
influence in his life (much as he considered Gerrit
Smith the most important white one). Douglass was
probably correct when, in 1859, he publicly stated:
"No man in this country more thoroughly understands
the whole struggle between freedom and slavery, than
does Dr. Smith, and his heart is as broad as his
understanding."
As a prose stylist and original thinker,
McCune Smith ranks, at his best, alongside such canonical
figures as Emerson and Thoreau. His essays are sophisticated and
elegant, his interpretations of American culture are way ahead
of his time, and his experimental style and use of dialect
anticipates some of the Harlem Renaissance writers of the 1920s.
Yet McCune Smith has been completely ignored by literary
critics; and aside from one article on him, he has remained
absent from the historical record.—John
Stauffer. "Introduction"
to
The Black Hearts of Men:
Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (2002) * * * * *
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JOHN
STAUFFER
is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at
Harvard University. He
received his Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale University in
1999, and won the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize for the best
dissertation in American Studies from the American Studies
Association. His
first book,
The Black Hearts of Men:
Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race
(Harvard
University Press, 2002) was the co-winner of the 2002 Frederick
Douglass Book Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Institute; winner of
the Avery Craven Book Prize from the OAH; and the Lincoln Prize
runner-up. He is
completing an edition of Frederick Douglass’ My
Bondage and My Freedom for the Modern Library; editing a
collection of John Brown’s writings; and writing a new book,
“The American Sublime: Interracial
Friendships and the Dilemma of Democracy.”
|
The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, And the Ambiguities of American
Reform . Edited by Steven Mintz and
John Stauffer * * * * *
James McCune Smith
(1813-1865)
 |
James McCune Smith (1813-1865), a dignified
and highly trained physician, was the first
university-trained black physician. After attending the Free
African School of New York where he distinguished himself as a
pupil he was helped by a clergyman to matriculate in the
University of Glasgow. There he worked with the Glasgow
Emancipation Society and completed his MD degree, graduating in
1837. Smith received from the University of Glasgow
(Scotland) the A.B., M.A., and M.D. degrees.
His mother was self-emancipated; his father was freed by a
New York law passed in 1827. After his graduation, Smith
returned to America and established two drugstores in New York
City. Dr. Smith became well-known for his
pioneering work in the scientific study of race and for the
scholarly treatment of the slavery question. He was a prolific
writer on the subject of racial equality and able speaker who
fought against the deportation of the Negro. |
He wrote on abroad range
of subjects concerning the Negro. He sought to change attitudes
toward the Negro and direct sober thought to the question of the
physical and moral equality of Negro and white.
Source:
Wilhemena Robinson, Historical Afro-American Biographies.
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The Last Holiday: A Memoir
By Gil Scott Heron
Shortly after we republished The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, Gil started to tell me about The Last Holiday, an account he was writing of a multi-city tour that he ended up doing with Stevie Wonder in late 1980 and early 1981. Originally Bob Marley was meant to be playing the tour that Stevie Wonder had conceived as a way of trying to force legislation to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. At the time, Marley was dying of cancer, so Gil was asked to do the first six dates. He ended up doing all 41. And Dr King's birthday ended up becoming a national holiday ("The Last Holiday because America can't afford to have another national holiday"), but Gil always felt that Stevie never got the recognition he deserved and that his story needed to be told. The first chapters of this book were given to me in New York when Gil was living in the Chelsea Hotel. Among the pages was a chapter called Deadline that recounts the night they played Oakland, California, 8 December; it was also the night that John Lennon was murdered. Gil uses Lennon's violent end as a brilliant parallel to Dr King's assassination and as a biting commentary on the constraints that sometimes lead to newspapers getting things wrong. —Jamie Byng, Guardian / Gil_reads_"Deadline" (audio) / Gil Scott-Heron
& His Music Gil Scott
Heron Blue Collar
Remember Gil Scott- Heron |
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The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's
wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in
1937, after her cousin was falsely accused
of stealing a white man's turkeys and was
almost beaten to death. In 1945, George
Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled
Florida for Harlem after learning of the
grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie
party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing
Foster made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for the
United States Army and couldn't operate in
his own home town." Anchored to these three
stories is Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively
researched study of the "great migration,"
the exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into the
novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling,
and Pershing settling in new lands, building
anew, and often finding that they have not
left racism behind. The drama, poignancy,
and romance of a classic immigrant saga
pervade this book, hold the reader in its
grasp, and resonate long after the reading
is done. |
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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)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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