The reason for the duchess’ and Lady Hyacinth’s excitement the night of the party for Herbert Newell was soon made apparent. Both the noble ladies were panting with an unsimulated eagerness to be the first to break the important news, but Donald, who was ironically calm, if a bit unsteady, stole their thunder.
“The duchess has just discovered a marvelous record concerning the aviatic exploits of one Lieutenant Julian,” he explained. “A marvelous poem, set to entrancing, barbaric music. The noble sentiments expressed in the verses make the duchess and Lady Hyacinth certain that the record can be a mighty weapon in awakening the American Negro to a sense of his duty. In order to aid the duchess in a work with which I have not the slightest sympathy, I have just donated one hundred of these records to the cause. The duchess contemplates sending them to all the centers where there are branches of the Back-to-Africa movement. I’ve brought along one for you to listen to.”
They had to crowd close to the victrola in order to hear; for near by Mrs. Vanderbilt-Jones and Agatha Winston, a sleek, café-au-lait soubrette, who had just returned from eighteen months of European triumphs, were having a shouting bout. Agatha had gone to London over three years past with a sepia-colored musical comedy which had not caused a conflagration on the Thames. The sponsor of the engagement had paid the actors a tithe of the wages promised them, and then had left them to scuttle for themselves. And they had scuttled in dreary, dejected bands of three and four, some back to America, others across Europe as far as Russia, improvising as they went. An egotistic streak had caused Agatha to shun all offers of partnership, and to shift for herself. She had worked her way to Paris, where a slight ability to sing and dance, the knack of crossing her eyes, and of twisting her limbs out of joint, while attired in the minimum amount of clothes permitted by the French penal code, had soon made her the darling of France. She was now back in America for a brief visit to Harlem, intent on dazzling a world too immersed in having a good time to be more than faintly amused by a French maid, the display of divers gifts from infatuated European royalty, and the consciousness that it all emanated from a talent which could be duplicated and eclipsed in any Harlem pleasure cave.
“An Earl with a coat of mail and everything, and I turned him down.” Agatha’s voice soared in strident self-approval over the soft preparatory grating of the needle.
“And to think you could have been an earless, the first colored earless in the world, a stepping-stone for the race,” Mrs. Vanderbilt-Jones shouted back her disapproval, and clucked her tongue.
Clustered around the victrola, Constancia, the duchess, Lady Hyacinth, and Donald formed a trembling and excited group which was soon augmented by Lottie Smith, who, never having been to Europe, couldn’t abide Agatha’s airs. As the first bars of the rich mongrel music, in which notes of Africa, Harlem, and the Orient could be traced, flooded the room, Lottie rolled her eyes upward in an ecstatic convulsion and snapped her fingers rhythmically, while the duchess stood with bowed and pensive head, as if the strains of a Negro “Marseillaise” were causing her ample bosom to seethe and stir with patriotism. In gusty Jamaican pride the voice of the singer heralded the exploits of Lieutenant Julian:
At last, at last, it has come to pass, Hélas, hélas! Lieutenant Julian will fly at last, Lindbergh flew over the sea, Chamberlin flew to Germany, Julian said Paris or eternity.
The chorus with which this melodic eulogy opened set the keynote of racial pride and hope which was to run through the amazing verses:
Negroes everywhere, Negroes in this hemisphere, Come, come in a crowd, Come let us all be proud, When he conquers the wave and air, In his glory we are going to share.
He said Paris or eternity.
White men have no fear, White men have conquered the air, Julian with him will compare, About his life he has no fear, Why should we not do what we can To help this brave colored man.
He said Paris or eternity.
“They simply cannot love like colored men,” Agatha’s indecent and compromising avowal shocked in midair with the termination of the panegyric on Lieutenant Julian.
The duchess heaved a mammoth sigh, and wiped away a pearly tear as the last heroic strains died off.
“What do you think of it?” she asked Constancia, who had not yet recovered.
“Very soulful, Duchess,” Constancia assured her.
“And its possibilities?” persisted the duchess.
“Limitless,” conceded Constancia.
“I love the change from alas to hélas in the chorus,” said Lady Hyacinth, dreamily. “I don’t know why, but it gives me a catch in my throat, probably because it’s so foreign and unexpected.”
“I don’t think it’s so hot as sense,” confessed Lottie, bluntly, “but the music would make a grand stomp; it’s so aboriginal.”
“I am going to use it on the lecture platform,” said the duchess, “as I go from city to city addressing our branches. It will inspire thousands to a sense of the possibilities inherent in the simplest black man. I do wish, however, that he had said Africa or eternity instead of Paris. That would be so much more effective for my purpose.
“Lottie,” urged Constancia, anxious to sidetrack the duchess from her favorite topic of African redemption, “won’t you sing something for us, the ‘St. Louis Blues,’ perhaps?”
“There’s nobody to play for me,” demurred Lottie, “or I would. Stanley’s not here yet.”
“You might sing a capella,” suggested Constancia.
“I’m sorry, Constancia,” said Lottie. “You know you never have to beg me, but I don’t know ‘A Capella’ and there’s nobody to play it, if I did. Maybe the duchess will recite. I love to hear her do that piece where she goes mad and talks so crazy.”
“I suppose she means Ophelia,” said the duchess, haughtily, ignoring Lottie and addressing herself to Constancia.
“Yes,” confessed Lottie, unabashed, “that’s the one. I think it’s simply a scream.”
“I assure you that it wasn’t written as a scream, Miss Smith”—the duchess’ dark eyes were charged with enough indignation and disgust to annihilate a less imperturbable soul than Lottie.
“Have it your own way, Duchess,” Lottie retorted, “but it’s a scream to me.”
The duchess did not stoop to further argument, fearful lest an extended discussion rob her of this opportunity to shine.
“I don’t feel very Shakespearian tonight,” she confided to Constancia. “I feel martial. I feel the urge to recount the heroic doings of my people. I could do either ‘Black Samson of Brandywine’ or ‘The Black Regiment.’ Which shall it be?”
“Why not do both, Duchess?” asked Donald, gallantly.
“You dear greedy boy, I will,” the duchess conceded as she tousled his hair and inwardly thanked him from the bottom of her heart for affording her an excuse to render both recitations. “I shall start with ‘The Black Regiment.’ But I must have silence.”
She stepped to the center of the floor, where, after bowing profoundly, she stood in meditative and dignified reproval until all the diminutive whispers, sudden coughs, and epileptic squirmings had ceased.
O black heroic regiment whose bravery has been recounted so nobly by the poet Boker, your immortality is assured so long as there remains a Negro elocutionist to chant your glory! From your dust may flowers rise as garlands for the head of the duchess and all her kind! Well might Ethiopia’s estranged children, captives in a hostile land, let roll down their gay painted cheeks, a few furtive tears, as the duchess, trembling with pride and devotion, unleashed that divine voice:
Dark as the clouds of even,
Banked in the western heaven,
Waiting the breath that lifts
All the dread mass, and drifts
Tempest and falling brand,
Over a ruined land—
So still and orderly Arm to arm,
and knee to knee
Waiting the great event,
Stands the Black Regiment.
Teeth gleam and eyeballs shine;
And the bright bayonet,
Bristling and firmly set,
Flashed with a purpose grand
Long ere the sharp command
Of the fierce rolling drum
Told them their time had come
Told them what work was sent
For the Black Regiment.
There was no need for Donald to veil his eyes now. The duchess was in her element. As if the ghostly regiment stood behind her listening in serried ranks of impalpability to the recital of their bravery, her voice now soft and tender, now rich with frenzy, now high and courageous as if in the midst of battle, swept everything before her. Listening to her, her auditors felt that there was nothing in heaven and hell which their race might not surmount, and even Constancia felt a hard unfamiliar tightening of the throat. And then that opulent petition to which the lords of the land would never open their ears brought the poem to its close:
Hundreds on hundreds fell; But they are resting well;
Scourges and shackles strong Never shall do them wrong. Oh! to the living few, Soldiers, be just and true!
Hail them as comrades tried; Fight with them side by side; Never in field or tent Scorn the Black Regiment!
By all that is fine and touching there should have been no applause, there should have been nothing but dark bowed heads, their obeisance hiding proud, glistening eyes. And for a full minute the duchess should have stood there, Ethiopia eloquent, stretching forth her hands for justice and equity in exchange for courage and proven fidelity.
And then while the rumor of great and mighty actions was still with them, while the ghosts of the Black Regiment were yet there, suffused with the memory of their mortal greatness, the duchess should have evoked the towering majesty of “Black Samson of Brandywine,” that fierce black scythe of destruction whom a black poet has sung and whom black declaimers kept alive.
But, alas for the serene and somber Spirit which hopes to reign supreme and tranquil at a Negro gathering. Shut laughter and raillery out; with cotton in every crevice and keyhole bid them begone, yet will they filter their way back through the shaft of light that steals in under the lowered window-shade!
Even as the duchess, sensing the dramatic opportunities of the moment, made the transition from regiment to lone soldier, cleared her throat, and introduced, “Black Samson of Brandywine”—at that moment even, he who in a bright green uniform with gold epaulettes had made his dizzy way from glass to glass through a maze of streets to Constancia’s home, stood beautifully balancing himself in the doorway. The gold buttons flashed their radiance into the room, and mingled their fire with the amber, unclouded enchantment in Constancia’s eyes. Like a lioness defending her young, the duchess turned with open mouth and outraged countenance to confront the intruder, while Lottie Smith rose from her chair, shrieking, “It must be Black Samson himself!”
“No,” disagreed the enchanted Constancia, as with one hand she supported the tottering duchess, while with the other she beckoned Sam to abandon his perilous perch on the threshold, for a place among the company, “it’s only the Emperor Jones!”
Later, as they walked home through the fine Harlem twilight, Mattie rebuked Sam for having endangered her position by his precipitate and unsolicited entrance into her mistress’ home; but in her purse was a crisp new bill of generous denomination and in her ears still echoed the laughter with which Constancia had said: “The duchess and Sam made my soirée. As I refuse to donate to the Back-to-Africa movement, I am giving this to Sam. And don’t scold him.”
1950–1980
THE PROTEST ERA
“I dream of your freedom/as my victory…”
Late in the life of James Baldwin, a television journalist queried the author about his early decision to write as an openly gay African American novelist. “You were black, impoverished, and homosexual,” the interviewer began. “You must have said to yourself, ‘Gee, how disadvantaged can I get?’” Baldwin answered, “No, I thought I hit the jackpot. It was so outrageous you could not go any further. You had to find a way to use it.” 1
THE POSTWAR YEARS MARKED THE BEGINNINGS OF AN ERA OF activism that would irrevocably shape black lesbian and gay writing and thought. Nowhere was this movement for civil rights more readily visible to the world than among African Americans. One of the first events to shake the foundation of American race relations was the Brown v. Board of Education decision. “Separate but equal” treatment, the Supreme Court declared in that historic 1954 ruling, “generates a feeling of inferiority…[and] has no place [in American society].”2 Although the Brown decision went largely unenforced for many years—and some would say it has remained unenforced up to this day—the decision nevertheless presented civil rights activists with the legal grounds to gain recourse against racial discrimination in other public arenas, including accommodations and transportation. Moreover, the Brown decision sent a message to the world that American democracy was not, with respect to race, a complete failure. This message was important given that America was attempting to “contain” communism and promote democracy in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Indeed, the media throughout the United States and around the world celebrated Brown as a “blow to communism.”3
But only one year later, when Rosa Parks was arrested on a city bus for protesting segregation ordinances in 1955, it became clear that Brown’s “blow” to racism was going to be limited. At the time, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was just twenty-five years old and newly installed as minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Under King’s leadership more than 42,000 African Americans boycotted Montgomery’s buses for thirteen months, until the Supreme Court in December 1956 outlawed restricted seating not only in Montgomery but throughout the United States. The victory, however, was hardly King’s alone. “Much credit has been given publicly to the Rev. Martin Luther King, the Negro leader, and he deserves credit indeed,” remarked one of King’s advisors. “But success was achieved by a revolt of the people. In particular, the women of Montgomery have made this possible.” 4 Jo Ann Robinson, president of the local Women’s Political Council (WPC), had written to the mayor in 1954, threatening a citywide boycott of buses by more than two dozen local organizations if segregation in the public transit system was not reformed at least to the extent that blacks would be allowed to take unoccupied seats in the front of buses. Furthermore, the WPC, nine months prior to the arrest of Parks, had chosen its own test litigant, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin, who had been taken into custody by police for refusing to give up her bus seat in March 1955. “We had planned the protest long before Mrs. Parks was arrested,” Robinson recalled. “There had been so many things that happened, that the black women had been embarrassed over, and they were ready to explode.” 5 Support for Colvin vanished, however, when organizers learned that the unmarried high school student was pregnant and therefore lacking what Robinson described as “the caliber of character” needed to galvanize the city around a boycott.6
The question of who would represent African Americans in protest was hotly contested from the beginning of the postwar movement. Ella Baker, a veteran activist of social reform and executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), struggled with King over leadership of the movement. Founded in 1957 as an assembly of ministers, the SCLC sought to build on the momentum in Montgomery with a wider, southern-based plan of action. With King as its president the organization strove to “redeem the soul of America” through nonviolent resistance. But King often disregarded Baker’s input on important matters, and strained relations are evident in Baker’s remark “Martin did not make the movement; the movement made Martin.” 7 Despite her executive position and notwithstanding the role she played as a founding member of SCLC, Baker’s gender for all practical purposes disqualified her as a civil rights leader. “[T]hose men didn’t have any faith in women, none whatsoever,” wrote SCLC director
of education Septima Clark.8 As a woman, Baker could never be what Hazel Carby referred to as a “race man.” 9
Disenchanted by the politics of SCLC, Baker resigned from SCLC and helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. Composed of organizers from the lunch counter sit-ins that had begun in Greensboro, North Carolina, that same year, SNCC combined nonviolent opposition to racial discrimination with a class analysis that had been historically absent from most establishment protest groups. Originally, King had hoped that SNCC would serve as the youth division of SCLC, but Baker vociferously opposed a formal political relationship between the two groups, whereupon King abandoned the idea. For Baker had envisioned a “group-centered” leadership that would challenge not only white racism but also the gender politics of conventional protest organizations. “I don’t think you could go through the Freedom Movement without finding that the backbone of the support of the Movement were women,” she observed in 1969. “When demonstrations took place and when the community acted, usually it was some woman who came to the fore.”10
Homosexuality proved fully as controversial as gender politics in the postwar movement. In 1942, some fifteen years before SCLC was formed, Bayard Rustin helped found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a pacifist organization that pioneered Gandhian tactics of nonviolence in U.S. race relations. Although Rustin’s homosexuality was widely known among activists, his 1953 arrest on “morals charges,” stemming from sex with two men in a parked car, effectively “outed” him to the larger American public. News reports linked Rustin to CORE’s parent organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a religious- based group that more or less dismissed him within a week after the incident. Rustin’s sexual orientation had been discussed openly in the national press before—Jet magazine, for example, captioned a photograph of his 1948 meeting with Indian Prime Minister Nehru with the question, “Is Homosexuality Becoming Respectable?”11—but never before had the issue been put so forcefully to FOR.
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