150 YEARS OF THE ATLANTIC

Civil Rights <^ Black Identity

FOUR OF THF MOST INFLUENTIAL BLACKS IN AMERICAN HISTORY authored the k\h.rx\\z pieces diatfollow. Fearing that the sacrifices ofthe Civil War might be wasted. Frederick Douglass argued in 1866for "a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their person andproperty. "He saw black political participation as the primary vehicle by which recomtruction could be attained and protected. Within four years of his essay's publication, black men did indeed obtain the right to vote. But in the South that right was soon subverted by fraud and violence, and wiihin little more than a decade the brutal pigmentocracy of which he had warned had fully reemerged. Thirtyyears later, Booker T. Washington articulated his optimisticsome might say naivebelief that by dint of probity, hard work, and prosperity, blacks could persuade white society to accord them respect He maintained that "friction betiveen the races [would]pass away in proportion as the Mack man ,.. can produce something that the white man wants." Yet numerous acts of anti-black mob violence stemmed from resentment against the very sort ofentrepreneurialism that Washington championed. The final txvo pieces have each attained iconic status Any well-educated collegian ought to recognize W. E. B. Du Bois's famous evocation ofthe African-Americans dual identity: ''an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts; two unreconciled strivings .., " ^ less familiar passage, which also warrants attention, is Du Bois's clear response to the question: What does the African-American want? "He simply wishes," Du Bois insisted, "to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of self-development."

Finally, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter is twentieth-century Americas most quoted and inspiring manifesto in defense of humane dvil disobedience. Although it addressed most immediately the vexingproblem of ends and means in the 1960s strug^efor African-American liberation. King's polemic has ^ne on to enthrall audiences around the world. Nothing better animates the idea of universal human rights than his declaration that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." RANDALL KENNEDY

The arm ofthe Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of disDecember 1866 tant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS or they will go unprotected, in spite of al! the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book. Frederick Dougla.i.i, the prominent African-American writer, Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in speaker., and govemment ojjicial, warned Congress of the poten- the depths of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has tial for the de facto reenslavement of Macks in the absence of real not neglected its own conservation. It has steadily exerted reforms to the antebellum political system. In the essay excerpted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own continuhere, Douglass exhorted Congress to pass a civil-rights amendment ance. And to-day it is so strong that it could exist, not only affirming the equality of blacks and whites in the United States. without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South; and hether the tremendous war so heroically fought when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority ofthe master, and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results,a you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again scandalous and shocking waste of blood and This is the second in a series grow, but under which it is impossible for the treasure,a strife for empire ... or whether, on of archival excerpts in honor Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward ofthe magazine's 150th anni- the Federal govemment be armed with despotic ver.\-ary. This installment is of victory over treason have a solid nation, introduced by Randall Ken- power, to blot out State authority, and to station entirely delivered from all contradictions and nedy, ihe Michael R. Klein a Federal officer at every cross-road. This, of social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, Professor ofLaw at Harvard course, cannot be done, and ought not even if Law School and the author of and equality, must be determined one way or the Interracial Intimacies, and it could. The true way and the easiest way is to Race, Crime, and the Law. make our government entirely consistent with other by the present session of Congress ...

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itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for his protection. One ofthe invaluable compensations ofthe late Rebellion is the highly instructive disclosure it made ofthe true source of danger to republican government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and despotic governments, no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them ... The people [themselves] demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present anarchical state of things in the late rebellious States,where frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and property; such a one as will cause Northern industry. Northern capital and Northern civilization to fiow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall can now be tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this important work. The plain, common-sense way of doing this work ... is simply to establish in the South oue law, one government, one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the elective franchise, for men of ail races and colors alike. This great measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by loyal blacks, and is needed ahke by hoth. Let sound political prescience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be done.
Volume 18. Number 110,pp. 761-765

This is [a] reason why at Tuskegee we push the industrial training. We find that as every year we put into a Southern community colored men who can start a brick-yard, a sawmill, a tin-shop, or a printing-office,men who produce something that makes the white man partly dependent upon the negro, instead of all the dependence being on the other side,a change takes place in the relations ofthe races. Let us go on for a few more years knitting our business and industrial relations into those ofthe white man, till a black man gets a mortgage on a white man's house that he can foreclose at will. The white man on whose house the mortgage rests will not try to prevent tliat negro from voting when he goes to the polls. It is through the dairy farm, the truck garden, the trades, and commercial life, largely, that the negro is to find his way to the enjoyment of all his rights. Whether he will or not, a white man respects a negro who owns a two-story brick house ... It is well to hear in mind that slavery taught the white man that labor with the hands was something fit for the negro only, and something for the white man to come into contact with just as little as possible. It is true that there was a large class of poor white peopie who labored with the hands, but they did it because they were not able to secure negroes to work for them; and these poor whites were constantly trying to imitate the slave-holding class in escaping labor, and they too regarded it as anything but elevating. The negro in turn looked down upon the poor whites with a certain contempt because they had to work. The negro, it is to be borne in mind, worked under constant protest, because he felt that his labor was being unjustly required ... Labor with him was a badge of degradation .

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54

At Tuskegee we became convinced that the thing to do was to make a careful systematic study ofthe condition and needs ofthe South ... and to bend our efforts in the direction SELF-RELIAIVCE of meeting these needs... After fourteen years of experience September 1896 and observation, what is the result? Cradually btit surely, we BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON find that all through the South the disposition to look upon labor as a disgrace is on the wane, and the parents who The African-American spokesman and educator Booker T. IVash- themselves sought to escape work are so anxious to give their children training in intelligent labor that every instituington argued that black education sfirst priority should be to tion which gives training in the handicrafi:s is crowded, and empower blacks with practical skills like those he taught at His own Tuskegee Institute. By leaming to efficiently manage their many (among them Tuskegee) have to refuse admission to own households and produce goods and services of use to the com- hundreds of applicants ,., munity at large, he suggested, blacks would come to be appreciated The social lines that were once sharply drawn between by their white neighbors as valuable fellow citizens. those who lahored with the hand and those who did not are disappearing. Those who formerly sought to escape labor, othing else so soon brings about right relations now when they see that brains and skill rob labor of the between the two races in the South as the industrial toil and drudgery once associated with it, instead of trying progress ofthe negro. Friction between the races will to avoid it are willing to pay to be taught how to engage in pass away in proportion as the black man, by reason of his it. The South is beginning to see labor raised up, dignified skill, intelligence, and character, can produce something that and beautified, and in this sees its salvation. the white man wants or respects in the commercial world. Volume 78, Number 467, pp. .U2-328

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THE "VEIL" OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

August J89 7

LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL

August 1963

BY W. E. B. DU BOIS

BY MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

King's This essay helped introduce the Harvard-educated black sociolo- famous "Letterfrom Birmingham Jail, "published in gist W. E. B. Du Bois to a national audience and went on to The Atlantic as ''The Negro Is Your Brother," was written in become the opening chapter of his classic Souls of Black Folk response to a public statement ofconcern and caution issued by (1905). Du Bois argued that, given the opportunity to educate eight white religious leaders ofthe South. It stands as one ofthe themselves, American blacks would emerge from behind what heclassic documents ofthe civil-rights movement. referred to as their "veil" of self-conscious "differentness." hile confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our etween me and the other world there is ever an present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, unasked question: unasked by some through feelings if ever, do 1 pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, fiutter round it. They approach If I sought to answer all ofthe criticisms that cross my desk, me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compas- my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course ofthe day, and I would have no time for constructive work. sionately, and then, instead of saying directly. How does it feel to be a problem? they say, 1 know an excellent colored But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to man in my town; or I fought at Mechanicsville; or. Do not answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I reasonable terms. smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question. How does I think I should give the reason for my being in Birit feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word ... mingham, since you have been infiuenced by the argument of'outsiders coming in" ... After the Egyptian and Indian, the Creek and Roman, the I am in Birmingham because injustice is here I am Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, bom with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. 1 cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned world,a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere only lets him see himself through the revelation ofthe other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provinlooks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, cial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in oiie dark United States can never be considered an outsider ... body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn We have waited for more than three hundred and forty asunder. The history ofthe American Negro is the history of years for our Cod-given and constitutional rights. The nations this strife,this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merg- goal of political independence, and we still creep at horseing he wishes neither ofthe older selves to be lost. He does and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never to teach the world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait." But when his Negro blood in a fiood of white Americanism, for he you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers believesfoolishly, perhaps, but ferventlythat Negro blood at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro losing the opportunity of self-development brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your This is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to and to husband and use his best powers. the public amusement park that has just been advertised on

Volume 80, Number 47S,pp. 194-198

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55

television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a fiveyear-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white'' and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy'" (however old you are) and vour last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodyness"then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our iegitimate and unavoidable impatience ,..

preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust. Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws ofthe Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if 1 had lived in Germany during that time, 1 would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these antireligious laws .. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word ofthe Declaration of Independence, we were here ... Ifthe inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands ,,. Never before have I written a letter this longor should I say a book? I'm afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers? If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement ofthe truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, 1 beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement ofthe trLith and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

ou express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. 1 would agree with St. Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a maii-inade code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality ... There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to Volume 212, Number 2, pp. 78-88

MARCH 2006