In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

55 2. Black Chicago and the Color Line The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. —W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk By necessity, an examination of America’s social fabric must take into account the nation’s obsession with skin color. African Americans responded to extant circumstances by developing disparate sentiments to address the issue of race that existed behind an “internal color line” as well as the nation’s oppressive color obsession that buttressed racism and promoted discrimination. Differences in African American thinking on race manifested themselves in various mind-sets that often intersected and even overlapped with similar characteristics. They ranged from a willingness to accept a unique form of pragmatic, voluntary separation as a salutary feature of their well-being to an embrace of a yet unrealized and theoretical egalitarianism as the only legitimate path to individual and group fulfillment. To these ways of thinking, there must be added that of persons less willing to confront acculturation in a new setting and subject to falling prone to fatalism. Additionally, a small, almost invisible minority assumed a white persona to match a Caucasian outer appearance (a behavioral pattern described as “passing for white”). W. E. B. Du Bois’s prediction of conflict and competition throughout the twentieth century between Social Darwinian forces embracing white hegemony and countervailing reform influences encouraging black independence of action proved accurate enough over time.In 1903 the renowned scholar had written in his classic The Souls of Black Folk that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”1 It was a pronouncement of 56 Black Chicago and the Color Line national significance in Chicago’s major black South Side enclave,euphemistically referred to as the Black Belt,where internal and external race relations played out in a unique way. So, evaluating the African American perception of self-identity,along with individuals’and the group’s pursuit of advancement (or progress),which might seem acceptable today,would not necessarily have seemed so several generations ago. Any understanding of these phenomena requires a focus on the multidimensional character of internal and external race relations in the past. Race as an identifying locus for the African American’s being and self-affirmation , for example, was a subject of contention based not only on observable facts and indisputable truths but also on conjecture. Furthermore, other factors had pertinence, such as that of racial admixture and purity; of sensibilities as to singular or multiple dimensions of personality relating to the singularity or duality of consciousness; of racial nomenclature; of the linkage between racial protocol and place; and of ideology as it shaped racial strategy for advancement. Therefore, at least four segments of thought and action were readily discernible among the general population, sometimes found overlapping but more often assuming distinct characteristics. Lastly, the core of interracial relations leading to amicability—that is, mutual trust— warrants exploration. At the dawn of the new century, race as a biological construct (rather than as a social construct) dominated thinking. Du Bois, for example, advocated this view.2 However, earlier in the nineteenth century and before emancipation , Frederick Douglass had defined the locus of race identification as experiential, its roots being found in the enslavement of African peoples in America. “It is more than a figure of speech to say, that we are as a people, chained together. We are one people—one complexion, one in common degradation , one in popular estimation.”3 One protégé found cause to disagree. Recent Chicagoan H. Ford Douglas, who was the son of a slave owner and slave woman, disagreed. Douglas “felt superb about his African blood; he was disdainful of his white blood, but not so much as he would had it been Saxon instead of Scottish.”4 Leading emigrationist Martin R. Delany, who visited Chicago in 1863 to promote a return to West Africa and who was a child of two unmixed African parents (with one being of identifiable Ibo descent), disagreed fervently as well with Frederick Douglass. Delany’s genotypical linkage to Africa led Douglass to challenge Delany, “I thank God for making me a man simply, but Delany always thanks him for making him a black man.”5 The very character of the new racial group that was externally designated Negro or Colored indicated that anything other than a distinct genotype existed. The Colored population at the end of slavery amounted to an admixture of...

Share