Lecture Notes

So I don't get too far behind I am going to post my lecture notes or commentary on the rest of Chapter 2 on DuBois and Garvey as well as Chapter 3. Be sure to check out the textual references and incorporate these notes with your class notes.
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J. Garvey turned up the heat on DuBois and the Talented Tenth leadership and Lewis suggests that: "...Garvey's real message was an ulterior one aimed at assuaging and propitiating the American white power structure. (Garvey's) African Zion was to be built by 'Negro capitalism,' the economic system that was not only 'necessary to the progress of the world,' but had no place in it for labor unions." (p. 72)

1. Seems Garvey was trying to reassure the U.S. Government of his patriotism.

2. Garvey must have sensed he was running out of time. And indeed the mail fraud charges caught up with him in 1922.

3. In the end, DuBois worked to undermine him because he believed he had a more sober, prudent plan of uplift for Africa and African Americans. DuBois even enlisted the support of the President of Liberia in disavowing UNIA.

4. It also came out that Garvey had made contact with the KKK and some racist politicians to enlist their support in allowing blacks to survive and thrive separately or even go back to Africa.

a.) Lewis cites another hard-hitting critique of Garvey in which DuBois exposed his dealings with the Klan. See first paragraph, p. 82 (note how the threat posed by Washington and now by Garvey is characterized by Lewis.)


Chapter 3: On Being Crazy and Somewhat Devious

A. Lewis opens by discussing a short piece of satirical fiction DuBois published in "The Crisis" (July, 1923) -- he indicates that most cultured whites who read "The Crisis" were either shamed or angered or both. "The Crisis" kept track of things that were crazy and becoming even crazier such as lynching: eg. although hard to believe, a university course in lynching, including the chance to observe one, was offered in Missouri.

B. "The Crisis" also exposed some institutional developments of major consequence to educated Negroes: (1) racial discrimination at Harvard, (2) southern white control of the new Veterans' Adm. Hospital at Tuskegee, (3) denial of scholarship assistance to colored American artists by the Fountainbleau School of Fine Arts. All of the above was happening against a backdrop of Anglo-Saxon (WASP) concerns about immigrants, alien political ideas, high birthrates of swarthy immigrants, influx of Negro migrants. That is, "Nativist fears"

1. Regarding the VA Hospital at Tuskegee, DuBois railed -- "The last place on God's green earth to put a segregated Negro hospital was in the lynching belt,..." and then to have it run by an all-white medical and nursing staff! (see, pp. 91-92)

C. Lewis, then, gets into an influential book DuBois published in 1922, "The Gift of Black Folk" (which I had the pleasure to read this past summer), in which he highlights aesthetic, literary contributions of Blacks. He described the Negro as primarily an artist possessed of a special sense of beauty and a "certain spiritual joyousness, a sensuous, tropical love of life" -- "in vivid contrast to the cool, cautious New England reason (of whites)." (p. 95) (almost sounds like a common racial stereotype of Blacks and Whites that people still have.)

1. Lewis notes that this book was actually part of a series which highlighted the contributions of different ethnic groups to the making of America, countering nativist, conservative Gentile whites. Really an early work trumpeting MULTICULTURALISM.

2. It was an effort to deflate the "conquering ideology of whiteness."

3. "The Gift of Black Folk" was, as well, a written history lesson ranging over art, music, education, women's rights, and political theory." (p. 99) It had negligible appeal for white ethnics who were primarily concerned with wanting to be more white.

a.) Notes all the concern at the time of whites desperately trying to maintain white racial purity.

D. DuBois eulogizes his close friend, Colonel Charles Young, a West Point graduate who died in West Africa -- "he had kept the emphasis upon Young's triumphal humanity, his uncompromising patriotism, and his Homeric sense of duty --..." which was indirectly aimed at the War Dept. which had treated him so badly, denying him the opportunity to command black troops in Europe during WWI.

E. Lewis notes the profound impact DuBois made on a couple attractive, talented black women (one of whom was interviewed in the video biography -- Louise Thompson Patterson). Ms. Patterson was so impressed with a speech he made at Berkeley, CA that she walked out of the room "for the first time in my life, proud to be black." (see, pp. 103-104) (Later, Malcolm X would have a similar impact on many who came to hear him speak.)

F. Nina and Yolande come back into the picture, especially Yolande's improvident ways as reflected in her diet, mediocre school performance, chronic illnesses, love life (she dated Jimmie Lunceford, who would become one of the jazz greats in the 1930s).

G. DuBois sets sail for London in Oct. 1923 to attend another Pan African Congress. And on this trip abroad he finally was able to visit Africa -- Liberia, specifically.

1. Lewis notes some of the pronouncements that came out of this gathering. In addition to addressing specific issues such as the brutal exploitation of the Belgian Congo, Lewis makes a broader comment about DuBois's whole approach. See first paragraph, p. 114 ( which I would characterize as a cautious, reasoned elitist approach to independence for African countries.)
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That brings us up to Chapter 4, which is where we'll begin on Thursday, 3/17.