African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives

1. Black Speakers, White Representations: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the Construction of a Public Persona

21 1 Black Speakers, White Representations: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the Construction of a Public Persona Shirley Wilson Logan IN LANGSTON HUGHES’S SHORT STORY “THE BLUES I’M PLAYING,” Oceola, the main character, ultimately resists the attempts of her patron, Mrs. Ellsworth, to mold her into a classical pianist, choosing instead to play the blues. Her patron never attempted to understand Oceola, her preferred lifestyle, or her mode of creative expression (1934). Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, poet, novelist, social activist, and public speaker, addressed audiences for over half a century. Yet she left little in the way of personal reflections on her career, no indication of her intentions, or, to paraphrase the title of Hughes’ short story, no notes from the blues she was playing. Although she consistently received glowing comments on her performances, we know little about the extent to which Harper was an agent in the construction of this public persona. Reporters at various events had a tendency to record audience reactions to nineteenthcentury Black speakers as if those reactions originated solely within a group of self-regulated hearers responding to passive subjects. Two frequent objects of this White gaze were Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. Both left lasting impressions on the woman’s rights and antislavery audiences who heard them. But these speaker-focused impressions revealed limited expectations and tinges of exoticism. Consider, for example, Frances Gage’s “remembered” reactions to Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech, written in 1863: She had taken us up in her strong arms and carried us safely over the slough of difficulty, turning the whole tide in our favor. I have never in my life seen anything like the magical 22 Shirley Wilson Logan influence that subdued the mobbish spirit of the day. (qtd. in Truth, 1988, p. 135) Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1863 essay “Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl” provides another example: I do not recollect ever to have been conversant with anyone who had more of that silent and subtle power which we call personal presence than this woman. In the modern, spiritualistic phraseology, she would be described as having a strong sphere. (qtd. in Truth, 1988, p. 151) In both instances, a White woman recalls or constructs an impression of Truth in terms of the effect she had on those in her presence. Both women claimed to be remembering statements and events that had unfolded a decade or more earlier.1 Both describe how Truth made them feel, how she drew them into her “strong sphere” through her “magical influence.” She is described in terms that evoke an exotic othered protectress.2 Comments about Douglass center on his forceful articulation and magnetic physical presence. In a June 1858 article to her German readers , journalist Ottilie Assing, extolling the power of Douglass’s oratory, revealed more about her own attraction to the speaker than about the speaker himself: This excellent speaker knows how to electrify and captivate his audience. Something like a personal relationship develops between him and the listeners and elicits their undivided sympathy , letting them experience the magic of amiability that wins the heart of everyone who is fortunate enough to meet this vibrant and noble man. (qtd. in Diedrich, 1999, p. 161). Assing had traveled to Rochester, New York, in 1856 to interview Douglass for a journal article and subsequently developed a twenty-eight-year relationship with him. As with Gage in her description of Truth, she wrote here of the effect of Douglass’s performance rather than of its unique characteristics. An American who observed Douglass giving an 1845 speech in Cork, Ireland, recalled the following: He was more than six feet in height, and his majestic form, as he rose to speak, straight as an arrow, muscular, yet lithe and graceful, his flashing eye, and more than all, his voice, that rivaled Webster’s in its richness, and in the depth and Black Speakers, White Representations 23 sonorousness of its cadences, made up such an ideal of an orator as the listeners never forgot. (qtd. in McFeely, 1991, pp. 124–125). Note the initial attention to Douglass’s physical attributes—his height, his posture, his size, his eyes, and finally his voice. All this made him an orator “listeners never forgot.” It is not clear whether they remembered what he said, but they did remember him. A speech at London’s Finsbury Chapel in May 1846, delivered by...