upon a Maryland plantation. Then he was bought by a Baltimore
shipbuilder. He learned to read, and, being attracted by "The Lady of
the Lake," when he escaped in 1838 and went disguised as a sailor to New
Bedford, Mass., he adopted the name _Douglas_ (spelling it with two
_s's_, however). He lived for several years in New Bedford, being
assisted by Garrison in his efforts for an education. In 1841, at an
anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, he exhibited such intelligence,
and showed himself the possessor of such a remarkable voice, that he was
made the agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He now
lectured extensively in England and the United States, and English
friends raised L150 to enable him regularly to purchase his freedom. For
some years before the Civil War he lived in Rochester, N.Y., where he
published a paper, _The North Star_, and where there is now a public
monument to him. Later in life he became Recorder of Deeds in the
District of Columbia, and then Minister to Hayti. At the time of his
death in 1895 Douglass had won for himself a place of unique
distinction. Large of heart and of mind, he was interested in every
forward movement for his people; but his charity embraced all men and
all races. His reputation was international, and to-day many of his
speeches are to be found in the standard works on oratory.
Mr. Chesnutt has admirably summed up the personal characteristics of the
oratory of Douglass. He tells us that "Douglass possessed, in large
measure, the physical equipment most impressive in an orator. He was a
man of magnificent figure, tall, strong, his head crowned with a mass of
hair which made a striking element of his appearance. He had deep-set
and flashing eyes, a firm, well-moulded chin, a countenance somewhat
severe in repose, but capable of a wide range of expression. His voice
was rich and melodious, and of carrying power."[4] Douglass was
distinctly dignified, eloquent, and majestic; he could not be funny or
witty. Sorrow for the slave, and indignation against the master, gave
force to his words, though, in his later years, his oratory became less
and less heavy and more refined. He was not always on the popular side,
nor was he always exactly logical; thus he incurred much censure for his
opposition to the exodus of the Negro from the South in 1879. For half a
century, however, he was the outstanding figure of the race in the
United States.
[Footnote 4: "Frederick Douglass," 107-8.]
Perhaps the greatest speech of his life was that which Douglass made at
Rochester on the 5th of July, 1852. His subject was "American Slavery,"
and he spoke with his strongest invective. The following paragraphs from
the introduction will serve to illustrate his fondness for interrogation
and biblical phrase:
Pardon me, and allow me to ask, Why am I called upon to speak
here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your
national independence? Are the great principles of political
freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of
Independence extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon
to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to
confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the
blessings resulting from your independence to us?
* * * * *
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when
we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the
midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive
required of us a song; and they that had wasted us required of
us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall
we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O
Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not
remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.[5]
[Footnote 5: Quoted from Williams, II, 435-6.]
The years and emancipation and the progress of his people in the new day
gave a more hopeful tone to some of the later speeches of the orator. In
an address on the 7th of December, 1890, he said:
I have seen dark hours in my life, and I have seen the darkness
gradually disappearing, and the light gradually increasing. One
by one I have seen obstacles removed, errors corrected,
prejudices softened, proscriptions relinquished, and my people
advancing in all the elements that make up the sum of general
welfare. I remember that God reigns in eternity, and that,
whatever delays, disappointments, and discouragements may come,
truth, justice, liberty, and humanity will prevail.[6]
[Footnote 6: Quoted from Foreword in "In Memoriam: Frederick
Douglass."]
Booker T. Washington was born about 1858, in Franklin County, Virginia.
After the Civil War his mother and stepfather removed to Malden, W. Va.,
where, when he became large enough, he worked in the salt furnaces and
the coal mines. He had always been called Booker, but it was not until
he went to a little school at his home and found that he needed a
surname that, on the spur of the moment, he adopted _Washington_. In
1872 he worked his way to Hampton Institute, where he paid his expenses
by assisting as a janitor. Graduating in 1875, he returned to Malden and
taught school for three years. He then attended for a year Wayland
Seminary in Washington (now incorporated in Virginia Union University in
Richmond), and in 1879 was appointed an instructor at Hampton. In 1881
there came to General Armstrong, principal of Hampton Institute, a call
from the little town of Tuskegee, Ala., for someone to organize and
become the principal of a normal school which the people wanted to start
in that place. He recommended Mr. Washington, who opened the school on
the 4th of July in an old church and a little shanty, with an
attendance of thirty pupils. In 1895 Mr. Washington came into national
prominence by a remarkable speech at the Cotton States Exposition in
Atlanta, and after that he interested educators and thinking people
generally in the working out of his ideas of practical education. He was
the author of several books along lines of industrial education and
character-building, and in his later years only one or two other men in
America could rival his power to attract and hold great audiences.
Harvard University conferred on him the degree of Master of Arts in
1896, and Dartmouth that of Doctor of Laws in 1901. He died in 1915.
In the course of his career Mr. Washington delivered hundreds of
addresses on distinguished occasions. He was constantly in demand at
colleges and universities, great educational meetings, and gatherings of
a civic or public character. His Atlanta speech is famous for the
so-called compromise with the white South: "In all things that are
purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand
in all things essential to mutual progress." On receiving his degree at
Harvard in 1896, he made a speech in which he emphasized the fact that
the welfare of the richest and most cultured person in New England was
bound up with that of the humblest man in Alabama, and that each man was
his brother's keeper. Along somewhat the same line he spoke the next
year at the unveiling of the Robert Gould Shaw Monument in Boston. At
the Chicago Peace Jubilee in 1898 he reviewed the conduct of the Negro
in the wars of the United States, making a powerful plea for justice to
a race that had always chosen the better part in the wars of the
country. Mr. Washington delivered many addresses, but he never really
surpassed the feeling and point and oratorical quality of these early
speeches. The following paragraph from the Atlanta speech will
illustrate his power of vivid and apt illustration:
A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly
vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a
signal: "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the
friendly vessel at once came back: "Cast down your bucket where
you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; send us
water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered:
"Cast down your bucket where you are." And a third and a fourth
signal for water was answered: "Cast down your bucket where you
are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the
injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of
fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To
those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a
foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of
cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who
is their next door neighbor, I would say: "Cast down your
bucket where you are"--cast it down in making friends in every
manly way of the people of all races by whom we are
surrounded.[7]
[Footnote 7: Quoted from "Story of My Life and Work," 165-6.]
The power to realize with fine feeling the possibilities of an occasion
may be illustrated from the speech at Harvard:
If through me, an humble representative, seven millions of my
people in the South might be permitted to send a message to
Harvard--Harvard that offered up on death's altar young Shaw,
and Russell, and Lowell, and scores of others, that we might
have a free and united country--that message would be, Tell
them that the sacrifice was not in vain. Tell them that by
habits of thrift and economy, by way of the industrial school
and college, we are coming up. We are crawling up, working up,
yea, bursting up--often through oppression, unjust
discrimination and prejudice, but through them all we are
coming up, and with proper habits, intelligence, and property,
there is no power on earth that can permanently stay our
progress.[8]
[Footnote 8: Quoted from "Story of My Life and Work," 210-11.]
The eloquence of Douglass differed from that of Washington as does the
power of a gifted orator differ from the force of a finished public
speaker. The one was subjective; the other was objective. Douglass
swayed his audience, and even himself, by the sweep of his passion and
rhetoric; Washington studied every detail and weighed every word, always
keeping in mind the final impression to be made. Douglass was an
idealist, impatient for the day of perfect fruition; Washington was an
opportunist, making the most of each chance as it came. The one voiced
the sorrows of the Old Testament, and for the moment produced the more
tremendous effect; the other longed for the blessing of the New
Testament and spoke with lasting result. Both loved their people and
each in his own way worked as he could best see the light. By his
earnestness each in his day gained a hearing; by their sincerity both
found a place in the oratory not only of the Negro but of the world.
IX
THE STAGE
In no other field has the Negro with artistic aspirations found the road
so hard as in that of the classic drama. In spite of the far-reaching
influence of the Negro on American life, it is only within the last two
years that this distinct racial element has begun to receive serious
attention. If we pass over Othello as professedly a Moor rather than a
Negro, we find that the Negro, as he has been presented on the English
or American stage, is best represented by such a character as Mungo in
the comic opera, "The Padlock," on the boards at Drury Lane in 1768.
Mungo is the slave of a West Indian planter; he becomes profane in the
second act and sings a burlesque song. Here, as elsewhere, there was no
dramatic or sympathetic study of the race. Even Uncle Tom was a
conventional embodiment of patience and meekness rather than a highly
individualized character.
On the legitimate stage the Negro was not wanted. That he could succeed,
however, was shown by such a career as that of Ira Aldridge. This
distinguished actor, making his way from America to the freer life of
Europe, entered upon the period of his greatest artistic success when,
in 1833, at Covent Garden, he played Othello to the Iago of Edmund Kean,
the foremost actor of the time. He was universally ranked as a great
tragedian. In the years 1852-5 he played in Germany. In 1857 the King of
Sweden invited him to visit Stockholm. The King of Prussia bestowed upon
him a first-class medal of the arts and sciences. The Emperor of Austria
complimented him with an autograph letter; the Czar of Russia gave him a
decoration, and various other honors were showered upon him.
Such is the noblest tradition of the Negro on the stage. In course of
time, however, because of the new blackface minstrelsy that became
popular soon after the Civil War, all association of the Negro with the
classic drama was effectively erased from the public mind. Near the
turn of the century some outlet was found in light musical comedy.
Prominent in the transition from minstrelsy to the new form were Bob
Cole and Ernest Hogan; and the representative musical comedy companies
have been those of Cole and Johnson, and Williams and Walker. Bert
Williams is to-day generally remarked as one of the two or three
foremost comedians on the American stage. Even musical comedy, however,
is not so prominent as it was ten years ago, by reason of the
competition of vaudeville and moving-pictures; and any representation of
the Negro on the stage at the present time is likely to be either a
burlesque, or, as in such pictures as those of "The Birth of a Nation,"
a deliberate and malicious libel on the race.
In different ones of the Negro colleges, however, and elsewhere, are
there those who have dreamed of a true Negro drama--a drama that should
get away from the minstrelsy and the burlesque and honestly present
Negro characters face to face with all the problems that test the race
in the crucible of American civilization. The representative
institutions give frequent amateur productions, not only of classical
plays, but also of sincere attempts at the faithful portrayal of Negro
character. In even wider fields, however, is the possibility of the
material for serious dramatic treatment being tested. In the spring of
1914 "Granny Maumee," by Ridgely Torrence, a New York dramatist, was
produced by the Stage Society of New York. The part of Granny Maumee was
taken by Dorothy Donnelly, one of the most emotional and sincere of
American actresses; two performances were given, and Carl Van Vechten,
writing of the occasion in the New York _Press_, said: "It is as
important an event in our theater as the first play by Synge was to the
Irish movement." Another experiment was "Children," by Guy Bolton and
Tom Carlton, presented by the Washington Square Players in March, 1916,
a little play in which a mother shoots her son rather than give him up
to a lynching party. In April, 1917, "Granny Maumee," with two other
short plays by Mr. Torrence, "The Rider of Dreams," and "Simon the
Cyrenian," was again put on the stage in New York, this time with a
company of colored actors, prominent among whom were Opal Cooper and
Inez Clough. This whole production, advertised as "the first colored
dramatic company to appear on Broadway," was under the patronage of Mrs.
Norman Hapgood and the direction of Robert Edmond Jones, and its success
was such as to give hopes of much greater things in the future.
Three or four other representative efforts within the race itself in the
great field of the drama must be remarked. One of the most sincere was
"The Exile," written by E. C. Williams, and presented at the Howard
Theater in Washington, May 29, 1915, a play dealing with an episode in
the life of Lorenzo de Medici. The story used is thoroughly dramatic,
and that part of the composition that is in blank verse is of a notable
degree of smoothness. "The Star of Ethiopia," by Dr. DuBois, was a
pageant, elaborately presented. Originally produced in New York in 1913,
it also saw performances in Washington and Philadelphia. The spring of
1916 witnessed the beginning of the work of the Edward Sterling Wright
Players, of New York. This company used the legitimate drama and made a
favorable impression, especially by its production of "Othello." At
present special interest attaches to the work of the Lafayette Players
in New York, who have already made commendable progress in the
production of popular plays.
The field is comparatively new. It is, however, one peculiarly adapted
to the ability of the Negro race, and at least enough has been done so
far to show that both Negro effort in the classic drama and the serious
portrayal of Negro life on the stage are worthy of respectful
consideration.
X
PAINTERS.--HENRY O. TANNER
Painting has long been a medium through which the artistic spirit of the
race yearned to find expression. As far back as in the work of Phillis
Wheatley there is a poem addressed to "S. M." (Scipio Moorhead), "a
young African painter," one of whose subjects was the story of Damon and
Pythias. It was a hundred years more, however, before there was really
artistic production. E. M. Bannister, whose home was at Providence,
though little known to the younger generation, was very prominent forty
years ago. He gathered about himself a coterie of artists and rich men
that formed the nucleus of the Rhode Island Art Club, and one of his
pictures took a medal at the Centennial Exposition of 1876. William A.
Harper, who died in 1910, was a product of the Chicago Art Institute, at
whose exhibitions his pictures received much favorable comment about
1908 and 1910. On his return from his first period of study in Paris his
"Avenue of Poplars" took a prize of one hundred dollars at the
Institute. Other typical subjects were "The Last Gleam," "The Hillside,"
and "The Gray Dawn." Great hopes were awakened a few years ago by the
landscapes of Richard L. Brown; and the portrait work of Edwin A.
Harleston is destined to become better and better known. William E.
Scott, of Indianapolis, is becoming more and more distinguished in mural
work, landscape, and portraiture, and among all the painters of the race
now working in this country is outstanding. He has spent several years
in Paris. "La Pauvre Voisine," accepted by the Salon in 1912, was
afterwards bought by the Argentine government. A second picture
exhibited in the Salon in 1913, "La Misere," was reproduced in the
French catalogue and took first prize at the Indiana State Fair the next
year. "La Connoisseure" was exhibited in the Royal Academy in London in
1913. Mr. Scott has done the mural work in ten public schools in
Chicago, four in Indianapolis, and especially was he commissioned by the
city of Indianapolis to decorate two units in the city hospital, this
task embracing three hundred life-size figures. Some of his effects in
coloring are very striking, and in several of his recent pictures he has
emphasized racial subjects.
[Illustration: HENRY O. TANNER]
The painter of assured fame and commanding position is Henry Ossawa
Tanner.
The early years of this artist were a record of singular struggle and
sacrifice. Born in Pittsburgh in 1859, the son of a minister of very
limited means, he received his early education in Philadelphia. For
years he had to battle against uncertain health. In his thirteenth year,
seeing an artist at work, he decided that he too would become a painter,
and he afterwards became a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
Arts. While still a very young man, he attempted drawings of all sorts
and sent these to various New York publishers, only to see them promptly
returned. A check, however, for forty dollars for one that did not
return encouraged him, and a picture, "A Lion at Home," from the
exhibition of the Academy of Design, brought eighty dollars. He now
became a photographer in Atlanta, Ga., but met with no real success; and
for two years he taught drawing at Clark University in Atlanta. In this
period came a summer of struggle in the mountains of North Carolina, and
the knowledge that a picture that had originally sold for fifteen
dollars had brought two hundred and fifty dollars at an auction in
Philadelphia. Desiring now to go to Europe, and being encouraged by
Bishop and Mrs. Hartzell, the young painter gave in Cincinnati an
exhibition of his work. The exhibition failed; not a picture was
regularly sold. Bishop and Mrs. Hartzell, however, gave the artist a sum
for the entire collection, and thus equipped he set sail for Rome,
January 4, 1891, going by way of Liverpool and Paris.
In the story of his career that he contributed to the _World's Work_
some years ago, Mr. Tanner gave an interesting account of his early days
in Paris. Acquaintance with the great French capital induced him to
abandon thoughts of going to Rome; but there followed five years of
pitiless economy, broken only by a visit to Philadelphia, where he sold
some pictures. He was encouraged, however, by Benjamin Constant and
studied in the Julien Academy. In his early years he had given
attention to animals and landscape, but more and more he was drawn
towards religious subjects. "Daniel in the Lions' Den" in the Salon in
1896 brought "honorable mention," the artist's first official
recognition. He was inspired, and very soon afterwards he made his first
visit to Palestine, the land that was afterwards to mean so much to him
in his work. "The Resurrection of Lazarus," in 1897, was bought by the
French government, and now hangs in the Luxembourg. The enthusiasm
awakened by this picture was so great that a friend wrote to the painter
at Venice: "Come home, Tanner, to see the crowds behold your picture."
After twenty years of heart-breaking effort Henry Tanner had become a
recognized artist. His later career is a part of the history of the
world's art. He won a third-class medal at the Salon in 1897, a
second-class medal in 1907, second-class medals at the Paris Exposition
in 1900, at the Buffalo Exposition in 1901, and at the St. Louis
Exposition in 1904, a gold medal at San Francisco in 1915, the Walter
Lippincott Prize in Philadelphia in 1900, and the Harris Prize of five
hundred dollars, in 1906, for the best picture in the annual exhibition
of American paintings at the Chicago Art Institute.
Mr. Tanner's later life has been spent in Paris, with trips to the Far
East, to Palestine, to Egypt, to Algiers, and Morocco. Some years ago he
joined the colony of artists at Trepied, where he has built a commodious
home and studio. Miss MacChesney has described this for us: "His studio
is an ideal workroom, being high-ceilinged, spacious, and having the
least possible furniture, utterly free from masses of useless studio
stuff and paraphernalia. The walls are of a light gray, and at one end
hangs a fine tapestry. Oriental carved wooden screens are at the doors
and windows. Leading out of it is a small room having a domed ceiling
and picturesque high windows. In this simply furnished room he often
poses his models, painting himself in the large studio, the sliding door
between being a small one. He can often make use of lamplight effects,
the daylight in the larger room not interfering." Within recent years
the artist has kept pace with some of the newer schools by brilliant
experimentation in color and composition. Moonlight scenes appeal to
him most. He seldom paints other than biblical subjects, except perhaps
a portrait such as that of the Khedive or Rabbi Wise. A landscape may
attract him, but it is sure to be idealized. He is thoroughly romantic
in tone, and in spirit, if not in technique, there is much to connect
him with Holman Hunt, the Pre-Raphaelite painter. In fact he long had in
mind, even if he has not actually worked out, a picture entitled, "The
Scapegoat."