The African-American Experience in Ohio: Selections from the Ohio Historical Society

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Speeches, editorials, and photographs in The African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920 capture the attitudes and beliefs of a number of African Americans persevering through the social turmoil of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Newspaper articles allow for an in-depth examination of Jim Crow laws, while materials relating to the colonization movement open the way to considering the issue of how to respond to racism in America. Other items provide the opportunity to practice analyzing text while learning about the Emancipation Proclamation, to create timelines, and to research African-American inventors and the slave trade.

Chronological Thinking

Charles W. Chesnutt’s short article on Frederick Douglass is followed by a chronology covering the years 1817 to 1895 that illustrates Douglass’s influence on pivotal events in American history. A search on Frederick Douglass also yields a number of articles chronicling various speeches and appearances that Douglass made, which can enhance the use of the biographical timeline.

Representative Benjamin W. Arnett, 1886.

A number of surveys from pamphlets and news articles, such as the Reverend George Williams’s Centennial: The American Negro from 1776-1876 offer examples of continuity and change, and of cause and effect relationships that unfold over time. Visual timelines illustrating a variety of topics, including African Americans in the military, the Civil War, ex-slaves, and politicians, can be created using images found through searches that combine photograph with other relevant terms.

Historical Comprehension: Jim Crow Laws

In the late nineteenth century, states established laws to segregate the services that they provided to white and African-American citizens. One of these Jim Crow laws (borrowing their name from a black character on the minstrel stage) was New Orleans’ 1890 legislation that required separate railroad cars for black passengers and white passengers. Homer Plessy, a light-skinned African American, was arrested for refusing to ride in the car designated for blacks. In 1896, Plessy took his case to the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. The court ruled against him and set the precedent that "separate but equal" accommodations for both races were constitutional. This decision led to legalized segregation in a variety of public services and contributed to a growing racial divide, decades after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Negro Drinking at "Colored" Water Cooler in Streetcar Terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1939. FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945.

A search on Jim Crow provides a number of newspaper articles that emphasize the harsh reality that separate services were not always equal. Articles from the 1891 Cleveland Gazette such as "Challenging Jim Crow" and "New Orleans Citizen Committee Fund to Fight Jim Crow Cars" offer a glimpse of the plans that went into the court challenge of the Louisiana separate car law. The 1895 editorial, "The 'Jim Crow' Car" describes a similar situation on rail cars in Georgia:

White men, and Negroes too, come in and smoke, spit, curse and drink whisky in the face of our wives, sisters and mothers, and there is no means of redress. If a self-respecting colored man offers a protest to the conductor against such treatment, that high official tells him: "If you are not satisfied with the accommodation you are getting, just get off and walk." If the Negro says anything more he is likely to be mobbed, put off the train, and possibly lynched. And all of this in the face of the fact that the Negro pays the same fare that the white people pay, and may be as decently dressed and as well behaved as any person in the car.

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• What is the difference between the expectations of "separate but equal" accommodations and the reality of such a situation?
• Would a conductor have been likely to treat complaints from white passengers by telling them they can get out and walk?
• Where is the threat of being mobbed or lynched coming from?

A 1907 article from the Cleveland Journal entitled, "Inter-State Commerce Commission and Jim Crow" reported that the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that "the railroad ‘has unduly and unjustly discriminated in some particulars against colored passengers’ and orders that . . . similar accommodations shall be provided for Negro passengers paying a similar fare."

• What was the basis for this decision?
• Does this ruling affect the significance of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson?
• The reporter argues "discrimination may be resorted to at any time, anywhere, providing 'just as good' is furnished." What kind of discrimination exists even when equal accomadations are provided?

Historical Analysis and Interpretation: William Allen’s Speech

Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans from the bonds of slavery and called for their enlistment in the Union Army as a means to end the Civil War. Congressman William Allen of Ohio argued against a bill calling for the use of African-American soldiers in his speech to the House of Representatives on February 2, 1863.

"General Grant and African American Soldier," 1892. "The Guard, Being Under Instructions, Would Not Permit Even Grant to Pass Before He Had Thrown Away His Cigar."

Allen claims that this legislation threatens to "destroy the relation of master and slave in the slaveholding States" even though "[i]t was admitted before the war began that Congress had no right to interfere with this institution." The Congressman also argued that Lincoln’s Republican Party "has presented for the admiration of the American people the negro in nearly every attitude which it was thought might win popular favor, and the last act in the great ‘drama’ is the negro playing soldier." (Page 5 [Transcription]) Allen contrasts this last act of the Republican "drama" with its previous acts, which he describes as a committment to the improvement of African Americans at the expense of white soldiers:

It is not probable that commanding officers who permit ambulances and army wagons to be used to aid ‘contrabands’ in their exodus from the South, while weary, exhausted white soldiers march on foot, would place the contrabands in the front ranks of the Army for the purpose stated; or that a department of the Government that feeds, clothes, and provides so amply for fifty or sixty thousand of these persons, who, in the language of the President, ‘do nothing but eat,’ while our white soldiers are frequently on half rations, and their families at home suffering from want, would place the negro in any hazardous position for the purpose of shielding the white man from harm."

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• What are Allen’s arguments against the Emancipation Proclamation and the enlistment of African-American soldiers?
• Who is Allen’s audience and what tone does he take in addressing them? How do these factors influence the interpretation of his speech?
• How is Allen’s audience supposed to feel about government provisions of food to African Americans considering the President’s characterization that they "do nothing but eat"?
• What is the effect of Allen quoting Abraham Lincoln in this way?
• How is the audience supposed to feel about the white soldiers and their families "suffering from want"?
• How is the audience supposed to feel about the President who allows this to occur?
• In addition to the Emancipation Proclamation, what else does Allen really seem to be criticizing?
• What does he hope to accomplish by giving this speech?
• How might Lincoln respond to Allen’s speech?

Historical Issue-Analysis and Decision-Making: Responding to Racism in America

The social conditions in the United States after the Reconstruction era prompted some African Americans to form their own communities in the United States and abroad. A search on colonization provides a number of news articles about communities forming in locations such as Mexico and Oklahoma. A 1903 article in the Informer entitled, "Negroes to the Philippines" even reported Alabama Senator John Morgan’s proposal that the Roosevelt administration use the Philippine Islands as an African-American colony:

"Negroes to the Phillipines."

The plan would not deprive them of their protection under the flag of the United States; it would not deprive them of citizenship . . . and it would enable them to become a self-sustaining and prosperous race of people, because the land in the Philippine Island is extremely rich and fertile. The climate is exactly suited to the Negroes physical and industrial character.

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While some organizations considered relocating in or near the United States, some African-American groups were interested in heading to Africa. Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) emigration society was one of the most famous organizations to embrace the "back to Africa" movement but it certainly wasn’t the first. The 1903 Cleveland Gazette article, "Bishop Turner’s Emigration Society" describes an organization interested in purchasing "a steamship for African emigration and commercial purposes." A search on emigration offers other examples of emigration plans while a search on Liberia provides contemporary articles on the West Coast nation that traces its origin to the American Colonization Society.

"The Negroes of Xenia, Ohio: A Social Study (1830-1900)" provides a detailed examination of one of the oldest towns in Ohio that "has a very well-defined group of Negroes settled almost entirely in one section . . . and these Negroes have among them some of the oldest residents of the city, and also some of the most recent immigrants."

• What does the study imply about the viability of an African-American colony?
• Is emigration a viable solution to racial strife in America?
• Is there any difference between plans for African-American colonies made by African Americans and similar plans developed by whites such as Senator Morgan?

While some African Americans planned on packing their bags, others chose to dig in their heels and fight against contemporary social ills. An 1886 article in the Cleveland Gazette, quotes Frederick Douglass as describing the life he experienced in France while yet committing to staying in America: The absence of colorphobia is as notable as its presence in the land of the free. But, my friend, do not imagine that the absence of prejudice here or the presence of it in America will beguile me or drive me from my home. Though it could be pleasant to remain in this free and highly civilized country, and though I have already earned the right to retire from active service, you may depend upon my return to my old field of labor. Page 2

Illustration of Frederick Douglass from a Cleveland Gazette Article.

Frederick Douglass and other African-American leaders remained committed to changing the attitudes and policies that permitted discrimination in America. This struggle, however, often included competing views within the African-American community. This is evident in the different efforts of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Booker T. Washington developed a set of policies that emphasized industrial educational for African Americans in the South. In his speech at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895 (known as his "Atlanta Compromise" address), Washington offered to accept social segregation and other disenfranchising policies if African Americans were given additional educational and economic opportunities. W.E.B. Du Bois, the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P), and one of Washington’s most adversarial opponents, challenged the established system of segregation.

Compare Washington’s "Atlanta Compromise" speech with "Are You With Us?" a 1918 pamphlet that Du Bois created for The Ohio Federation for Uplift Among Colored People.

• To what extent is Washington’s agenda similar to that of the Ohio Federation?
• How do these agendas differ from W. E. B. Du Bois’s goals?
• How does Du Bois’s pamphlet compare to the claims made in a brief 1903 editorial from Washington that is entitled, "'Are You With Us?' Opportunity for Young Men"?

Compare the strategies of Washington and Du Bois with Bishop Turner's plan for emigration.

• How does each man propose to improve the situation of African Americans? What is each man's response to discrimination?
• What are the potential benefits and hazards of each man's strategy?
• Which plan would you most likely support? Why?

Historical Research: Inventors and The Transatlantic Slave Trade

Print of Granville T. Woods, 1887.

This collection provides the opportunity to learn about African-American inventors. Searches on scientists and inventors yield a number of documents including an 1884 Cleveland Gazette biography of Benjamin Banneker, an eighteenth-century astronomer and inventor. Also available is a print of Granville T. Woods, an electrical and mechanical engineer who had more than sixty patents and was known as the "Black Edison." Searches of names such as George Washington Carver and Garrett Morgan also provide a variety of articles. The collection can also be used to study the transatlantic slave trade from several vantage points. A search on slave trade provides a number of documents including an article, "Among Old Books" based on The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African, describing the life of a slave born on board a slave ship bound for the Spanish West Indies in 1729. Thomas Clarkson’s 1815 account of an interview with Czar Alexander I of Russia discusses the imperial's opposition to the transatlantic slave trade:

[H]e had been always an Enemy to the Slave trade, tho' he . . . knew only that the Africans were taken from their Country against their wills and . . . they were made to work under a System commonly reputed cruel; but this he considered as an outrage against human nature . . . and when he had seen the print of the Slave Ship he felt he sho'd be unworthy of the high situation he held if he had not done his utmost . . . to wipe away such a pestilence from the face of the Earth.

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• How did Czar Alexander I find African slavery intolerable, yet find it easy to countenance serfdom in Russia?

A two-part article entitled "Horrors of the Slave Trade" in the May 1844 edition of the Palladium of Liberty, described the capture of a Portuguese ship that was transporting slaves:

The deck was crowded to the utmost with naked Negroes . . . in almost riotous confusion, having revolted before our arrival against their late masters . . . . The Negroes, a meager, famished looking throng—having broken through all control, had seized everything to which they had a fancy in the vessel; some with handsful of ‘farinha,’ . . . others with large pieces of pork and beef, having broken open the casks, and some had taken fowls from the coops, which they devoured raw.

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Reverend George Williams shed light on the nature of the slave traders in his 1876 oration, "The American Negro from 1776-1876." As he provides a brief history of African Americans from the slave trade through the Civil War, he explains:

The prisons of Europe were emptied of the worst elements of society, to be employed in the slave trade, while every unseaworthy vessel was immediately brought into requisition. The vilest, most ignorant elements of France, Spain, and Portugal engaged in the trade. And before 1650 the seas were covered with the greatest curse that ever afflicted the earth. The southern colonies were populated rapidly, and slavery spread through all the settlements, both North and South.

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In addition, the collection provides information about the conditions of American plantations in W.P.A. narratives and documents such as the Eustatia Plantation, Mississippi, Account Book, which provides an opportunity to investigate the daily workings of a plantation in 1861.

• What were the motives, attitudes, and practices of slave traders?
• How do these compare to the motives, attitudes, and practices of slave owners on plantations?
• What kinds of conditions did the captive Africans live in while aboard slave ships?
• What were living conditions like for slaves on American plantations?
• What are the different objections people have had to slavery?
• What does the seizure of a slave ship in the two-part article in Palladium of Liberty convey about the efforts to outlaw the slave trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century?