The Ethiopian Prophecy in Black American Letters

5. Psalm 68:31 and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America

5 Psalm 68:31 and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America One of the grand narratives of race in America painted a picture of white dominance and black capitulation from the eighteenth century to the latter decades of the twentieth century. The intertwined images of white supremacy and black vacuity attempted to present the discussion of race in America as a white monologue in which black people were defined legally , scientifically, politically, and culturally by the dominant population. Whites had the final word about race, and it became the official and solely legitimate discourse on the subject. Moreover, this discourse attempted to foreclose further discussion about race as a figure, issue, or topic. However , this narrative of the white monologue is one-sided and does not take into account the subtle and constant dialogue on race in America that has occurred since the eighteenth century. Despite the marginalization of blacks in America since the birth of the country, black readers and writers have been engaged in a dialogue about the question of race. Instead of allowing themselves to be defined as objects, black readers have inserted themselvesintothediscussionbyreading,andtherebyattaininghistorical subjectivity, and they have contributed to the discussion by sending ripostestothediscoursesofwhitesupremacyandblackvacuitythatoppose them as the final arbiters of race. One of the dominant ripostes of black writersinAmericaistheassertionoftheirhumanityintermsrecognizable to white people. In the last two chapters, Negro hermeneuts offered their own versions of the final word against the Negro’s essential human deficiencies through interpretations of Psalm 68:31. The conversion and acculturation 112 / The Ethiopian Prophecy in Black American Letters of the figure of Ethiopia, the Afro-Asiatic myth, and emigration were all ripostes to the narratives of white innate supremacy and the Negro’s essentialvacuousness .Biblicalprophecy,a recognizedandsacreddiscourse, attested to the essential humanity of the Negro, and constituted the final word by God on this matter. Nevertheless, the conversion of the figure of Ethiopia neither constituted the only interpretation of Psalm 68:31 nor thefinalwordonthequestionofraceinAmerica.Manyblackhermeneuts understood the verse as a prefiguration that slavery would end and the former slaves and free people of color would be included into the social and political fabric of the United States. For these readers, such as Rev. Allen , David Walker, Maria Stewart, and Frederick Douglass, migration was out of the question. Emigration to Africa represented capitulation to the narrative that America was solely a white country, but more importantly, it was to acquiesce to the story of the essential otherness of the Negro. Those opposed to emigration—and this constituted the overwhelming majority of black hermeneuts and black people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—employed the modern discourses of emancipation and the rights of man to agitate for inclusion within the American social contract.1 The current chapter will discuss writers who fall into this category. Freedom, Fraternity, and Revolution: Prince Hall’s Reading of Psalm 68:31 It was within the struggle to become legal Americans that novel readings of Psalm 68:31 refigured Ethiopia anew. Instead of reading for the verse to change the nature of the Negro, these readers read Psalm 68:31 to change the social and political status of the Negro. These interpretations proclaimed the end of slavery and the emancipation of the Negro. Shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War and the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights until a few years before the secession of the South from the Union, Psalm 68:31 provided the hermeneutic basis for the hope for Negro emancipation and even inclusion within the United States as citizens, as well as criticism of American hypocrisy. The first interpretation of Psalm 68:31 in relation to Negro liberation was made by Prince Hall. The founder of Negro Masonry, Hall was a manumitted slave, a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and a Methodist The Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America / 113 minister. He cited Psalm 68:31 in two sermons at the African Masonic Lodge in Boston just prior to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Like the African Methodist Episcopal Church and numerous other black institutions, the African Masonic Lodge was created because white Masons in Boston and other major American cities refused to integrate their institutions. Many white institutions held the belief that, like the country, their institutions were for whites only. Hall used the platform of the African Masonic Lodge to organize free people of color to agitate against slavery.HisinterpretationofPsalm68...