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25 The Afro-American In his 1890 article “The Afro-American,” Fortune explains his use of the term “Afro-American,” which, he explains, includes anyone of African origin who is “not ashamed of his race,” over “Negro” or “colored” as a designation for the race. The purpose of writing the article was to respond to a piece written by Senator John T. Morgan of Alabama in which he referred to the term “Afro-American” as a reference exclusively used for mulattoes. Fortune took the opportunity to correct the senator and also to address fully the issue of the mixing of the races, a problem that, Fortune explains, is on the hands of the southern white man. Fortune also addresses the issue of social privileges and civil rights, a topic discussed in greater detail at other times, including in his 1885 article “Civil Rights and Social Privileges” (chap. 12). The Afro-American —Arena 3, no. 13 (1890): 115–18 As I am, in some sense, responsible for the term “Afro-American,”1 in the general application of it to the Afro-American League, organized January 15, 1890, at Chicago, I wish to correct an error into which Senator John T. Morgan2 allowed himself to lapse in discussing “The Race Problem in the United States,” in the September number of THE ARENA. Senator Morgan : “The Afro-Americans, as the mulattoes describe themselves, believe that the precedent has been set, by their foremost man, which they can follow, with the aid of the politicians, that will secure their incorporation, by marriage , into the white families of the country. These vain expectations will be followed with the chagrin of utter disappointment, and will increase their discontent.” Senator Morgan displays the same amount of recklessness in the general discussion of the “Race Problem” that he exhibits in specifically defining the term “Afro-American.” He is so saturated with prejudice and hatred of race that the violence of his argument of fact is worth as much as, and no more than, his argument of fiction, figments of his brain. As a matter of fact, the term “Afro-American” was first employed by advanced thinkers and writers of papers devoted to the interests of Africans in the United States, as the most comprehensive and dignified term in sight to cover all the shades of color produced by the anxiety of the white men of the South to “secure their incorporation,” without “marriage, into the ‘black’ families of the country.” If the Morgans of the South had been as virtuous, as earnest to preserve the purity of Anglo-Saxon blood before, and even since, the war, as the Senator from Alabama now insists, there would be no mulattoes in the Republic to give them “a Roland for an Oliver.” But the term “Afro-American” was never intended to apply in the circumscribed sense implied by Senator Morgan. It was intended to include all the people in the Republic, of African origin. It does include them. It has been adopted, and is used, almost generally, by the leading newspapers. The term “negro” signifies black. Not three-eighths of the people of African parentage in the United States are black. If they were, there is no negro race. “Colored” may mean anything or nothing, from extreme white to extreme green; and, in any event, as applied to a race, is a misnomer from every point of view, without force or dignity. Both terms are used by writers everywhere as common nouns and in a contemptuous sense, just as Senator Morgan uses them. African is a proper name; it has a race behind it; and no writer will venture to treat it as a common noun. The same is true of the term “Afro-American,” which includes every man, woman, and child in the country who is not ashamed of his race, and who insists that he shall be honorably designated as other races are. When the Hon. Frederick Douglass3 exercised his undoubted right of choice to select a second wife, and took a white lady of splendid social position and acknowledged literary attainments, nearly every one of the one hundred and seventy-five Afro-American newspapers condemned him for it. The paper I edited at the time was one of the few that maintained that Mr. Douglass did perfectly right in exercising his personal preference in selecting his wife. I know that the masses of the people were in sympathy with the indignant protests hurled at Mr. Douglass. The scaffolding...

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