Black Manhood and Community Building in North Carolina, 1900–1930

4. “Let the white man put himself in the negro’s place”: Black Men Navigate the Terrain of Race Ambassador

4 “Let the white man put himself in the negro’s place” Black Men Navigate the Terrain of Race Ambassador In March 1904, an overflowing crowd of Asheville’s black men and women gathered at theYMI assembly hall to attend a meeting that was billed with the title“Solve the Problem.” There they received advice that the Asheville Citizen-Times described as “practical, timely, beneficial.” Using blunt and gendered language, YMI secretary William J. Trent pleaded “most manfully for racial integrity, purity, manliness and moral force, leaving the result with God.”1 Miss. L. T. Jackson, principal of the Hill Street School, similarly counseled self-help, or the“social regeneration” of the black race, as the way to hasten better race relations. Rev. C. B. Dusenbury’s address “What Really Is the Problem” recommended that black people exercise more economy and morality, again “with an implicit confidence in God.” Rev. Samuel Orner took the discussion in a new direction. Really solving the problem, in his estimation, required the active engagement and imagination of both races. In particular, he stressed that white and black men needed to envision themselves as their racial opposites to grasp and feel the reality of racial inequality.“Put yourself in the white man’s stead,” he said pointedly. See him exalted in a day to the legislative hall, the senate . . . and the bar with a citizen’s power in his hand, then you can realize the white man’s position....Let the white man put himself in the negro’s place, liberated yet not free, privileged yet no right to exercise those privileges ; rights that no man is bound to respect, a titled citizen without legal protection; then the white man can get an idea of the things that trouble the negro’s inner soul and stir his manhood.2 131 Black Men Navigate theTerrain of Race Ambassador Orner hoped that this role-playing exercise would elicit from white men a mix of sympathy, understanding, and acknowledgment of a shared vision of manhood and citizenship. The gendered rhetoric of interracial outreach and collective problemsolving continued at theYMI’s annual Emancipation Day ceremonies that year.As part of the 1904 commemoration in Asheville,celebrants filled the assembly hall to capacity. The program began with music sung by a chorus of 100 schoolchildren followed by speeches from residents Ida Briggs (a domestic science teacher) and Ada Young. In the principal address, “Thirty-Nine Years a Freedman: The Status of Affairs in this Country as It Affects the Negro,” Rev. Orner traced the black man’s hardships, loyalty , patriotism, and progress up to the current day. The speech, observers noted,showcased Orner’s talents as an orator and scholar,skills illustrative of his value not only to the race but to Asheville as well. Commenting in the Citizen-Times,an Emancipation Day participant lamented that Orner’s speech was not reprinted in the white press“so that our friends of the other race may know what men we have and are producing and the progress we have made.”At the close of the ceremony, in keeping with the event’s stress on racial progress and uplift, a New Year’s offering was taken up and given to the city’s Colored Orphans Home.3 This chapter focuses on black male leadership roles and its transition within the context of North Carolina’s state fair and Emancipation Day ceremonies. These community events, which drew black and white audiences , became forums wherein the merits or shortcomings of race strategies were debated. Emancipation Day ceremonies and the “colored” state fair (the latter organized by Raleigh educator Charles Norfleet Hunter) were central sites for stimulating interracial dialogue, intraracial unity, and debate in the early Jim Crow South. In these settings, North Carolina’s black community put on performances that showcased the industriousness, citizenship , and cultural heritage of African Americans. Through exhibits and rhetoric, black North Carolinians aspired to advance pride and progress within the race and interracial dialogue outside of it. The state’s leading black men were prominent on these occasions; they were the primary organizers , they wrote the Emancipation Day resolutions, and they delivered the keynote addresses. In part, this gendered structure advanced the race’s claim that it had evolved into the highest state of “civilization.” This Black Manhood and Community Building in North Carolina, 1900–1930 132 discourse emphasized sexual differentiation among men and women of civilized...